June 10, 2013

Jean Harris (photo NPR)

A distraught Jean Harris paid one last visit to her estranged lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, intending to take her own life but ended up shooting him when the famed “Diet Doc” tried to wrest the handgun from her. What should have been ruled an accidental death or, at most, involuntary manslaughter, led instead to Harris’s wrongful conviction of murder.

by Denise Noe

On March 10, 1980, the bestselling Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower received a publicity boost. Tarnower could not enjoy the fruits of it since it was his killing. Called “The Headmistress and the Diet Doc,” the case grabbed international headlines because of the social prominence of Tarnower’s slayer, Jean Harris, the 56-year-old headmistress of the exclusive Madeira School, as well as that of the victim.

In addition, as Diana Trilling observes in Mrs. Harris, “To many women . . . it had only to be known that Tarnower had replaced his mistress of 14 years with a woman 20 years her junior and more than 30 years younger than himself for Jean Harris to be regarded as embattled female spirit.” Trilling continues, “Whoever had known sexual jealousy, that most destructive of emotions – and this would be so for men no less than for women – had known madness” and could sympathize with Jean Harris.

Prominent feminist Betty Friedan saw no feminist implications in the case and derided Harris as a “pathetic masochist” for sticking with Dr. Tarnower after their relationship soured.

As most facts emerged about the case, it was learned that Jean Harris had for years suffered a gnawing sense of being “inadequate” and that she believed she could no longer be “useful” as a human being. Long divorced and with her sons grown, she was terrified of a jobless old age. Her romance with Tarnower had led to her suffering for years under a campaign of extraordinary harassment. By the night of March 10, 1980, she felt that there was nothing solid in her life as both personally and professionally she was being shoved aside. There was overwhelming evidence that she wanted to end her own life.

The Boy from Brooklyn and the Lady from Cleveland

The man who would author a best-selling diet book but become even more famous in death was born Herman Tarnower in Brooklyn in 1910, into a Jewish immigrant family. He finished his premedical training in two years instead of the usual four. In 1936, he opened a Scarsdale, New York office.

A lifelong bachelor, he hired husband and wife Henri and Suzanne Van der Vreken in 1964 to run his house. In the spring of 1966, Tarnower was at a dinner party when he found himself smitten with divorcée Jean Harris, mother of two teenagers. Days later, Harris was bedridden because back trouble flared. Tarnower surprised her with a get-well present, the book Masada, about finds at the ancient Israelite fortress where, in A.D. 73, Jewish men, women, and children committed suicide rather than accept defeat by Rome. “It’s time you knew more about the Jews,” the card said.

Tarnower showered Harris with cards, presents, and calls. The woman who inspired his attention was born Jean Struven in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923, the second of the three daughters of Albert and Mildred Struven. Albert Struven was a civil engineer and vice-president of the Arthur G. McKee, Inc., construction firm. He had a terrible temper, exploding into rage over such problems as a broken light bulb or stalled car. Jean admired her father for his brilliance but feared his tirades. Mildred sometimes called Jean “Miss Infallible” for her self-righteousness.

In high school, Jean won a prize for her essay, “The Man I Took For Granted.” It refers to Life With Father by Clarence Day when she writes, “Oh, Mr. Day, had I your talent with which to tell the story of an equally deserving father! I have not the eloquence to bring it forth. Or perhaps this realization is not entirely an appreciation of father, but a step toward appreciating men in general. It is possible that some day my subject will be, not ‘The Man I Took For Granted,’ but ‘The Man Who Took Me For Granted.’”

When they married, Jean was 23 and Jim Harris, 27. Jean later recalled thinking quiet Jim a nice contrast to blustering Dad.

David Harris was born in 1950 and Jimmie in 1952. In 1964, Jean, feeling stifled in her passionless marriage, divorced Jim.

Jean moved from school teaching to school administration, getting a job as director of the Middle School at Springside, a private school in a Philadelphia suburb. She was working at Springside when she met Tarnower at a dinner party given by Jean’s close friend Marge Jacobson. Jackson described the attraction of Harris and Tarnower as “Instant take!”

Within months of meeting Harris, Tarnower gave her a diamond ring and proposed marriage. She enthusiastically accepted. However, the wedding was delayed – by Harris. She explained to a friend, “I cannot marry Hy for a year. I cannot take those children out of school again.”

As that year passed so did Tarnower’s interest in marriage, something Harris would discover when she pressed him for a new wedding date. In a phone call Harris told Tarnower, “School is going to start, and I have to know where I am to start, and I have to know where I am going to be living, and where the children are going to be in school.” Tarnower replied, “Jean, I can’t go through with it. I’m afraid of it. I can’t go through with it and I’m sorry.” She mailed the ring back.

Harris and Tarnower continued dating despite Harris’s feeling of discomfort in a relationship that could not lead to marriage. Her strongly held and old-fashioned morality inevitably gnawed at her even as she gave in to her love for Tarnower.

Springside’s headmistress retired in 1970 and Harris hoped she would be the replacement. She was not. Harris then learned the Thomas School in Rowayton, Connecticut was searching for a headmistress. She applied and was hired. Rowayton is about a half hour’s drive from Tarnower’s Purchase, New York home.

On April 26, 1973, Harris celebrated her 50^th birthday with sons David and Jimmie. Tarnower was not there. He had long ceased telling Harris he loved her. Instead, as Shana Alexander writes in her book, Very Much A Lady, he repeatedly told Harris, “I don’t love anyone and I don’t need anyone.” He seemed oddly oblivious to the pain this caused her since she was adamant in acknowledging that she loved him deeply. Then again, perhaps he was aware of it and just did not care.

Nasty Phone Calls

At about this time, Lynne Tryforos, a separated mother of two small daughters, became Tarnower’s secretary/receptionist. Although he was 30 years older than Tryforos, Tarnower soon began an affair with her.

In 1974, Harris and others worked out a plan in which the Thomas School merged with another school, a move Harris believed necessary to solve Thomas’s financial troubles.

In 1975, Harris began receiving anonymous phone calls at her home. The caller would graphically describe Tarnower having sex with another woman, jeer at Harris that she should take sex lessons, called her “old and pathetic” and suggested she “roll over and die.”

During this same time period, Harris often received a message at work that she should call a number. She called the number and found she had called Tryforos. Tryforos would demand Harris quit harassing her, changing her unlisted phone number several times. Each time it changed, it was sent to Harris. Harris consulted with a private detective and with two phone company employees in an unsuccessful effort to stop both the anonymous calls to her house and the calls to her work leaving messages to call a certain number that was inevitably the unlisted phone number of Lynne Tryforos. Unable to track down the source of these calls, Harris felt besieged by them. Her sleep was frequently disturbed, leaving her fatigued the next day, and she was made terribly anxious and self-conscious.

Shortly after making the deal that merged Thomas with another school, Harris was hired by the Allied Maintenance Corporation in New York City to write bids for industrial cleaning contracts. Although she now lived over an hour’s drive away from Tarnower, she continued to visit him on some weekends. She was at his home sunbathing in July 1976 when Tryforos and daughters, Electra and Laura, showed up. The children jumped into the pool while their mother started painting garden furniture.

Harris asked, “Does it not seem bizarre to you, Lynne, that you are here painting his furniture while I am here?”

Tryforos stared and said nothing. Harris said, “Lynne, why in hell are you here?”

“I’m here because I’m allowed to be,” she answered.

“Not while I’m here, Lynne,” Harris said.

Tryforos and daughters left.

Tarnower was negligent in keeping evidence of a visit from one woman away from the other. When Harris visited Tarnower, items belonging to Tryforos often confronted Harris. Despite Tarnower’s indifference to her pain, as well as his repeated insistence that he loved no one, Harris could not bring herself to end the relationship.

That same July, Harris learned that the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia sought a headmistress. On December 15, 1976, Harris, then 53, was appointed Madeira School headmistress. She moved into an on-campus house in Virginia in 1977. She continued to see Tarnower even though it meant a drive of about six hours.

At Madeira, the new headmistress quickly became known as “Integrity Jean” because in her lectures on morals and ethics she often mentioned the word “integrity.”

The Making of a Best-Seller

Since overweight can cause heart problems, Tarnower had for years been giving patients diet advice mimeographed on a single page. That page advised eating a high-protein, low-carbohydrate, low-fat, low-sugar diet, and teetotalling.

In the late 1970s, Bantam Books President Oscar Dystel suggested Tarnower write a book based on his sheet. He suggested Samm Sinclair Baker, a practiced self-help book writer, as co-author.

Tarnower and Baker, together with the Van der Vrekens, Harris, and Tryforos, expanded the one page into a book. Alexander writes, “Tarnower talked, Samm took notes, wrote them up, and returned them to the doctor for revisions. Suzanne Van der Vreken created and tested new recipes. Jean Harris read sections of the manuscript, often re-writing parts in her own hand. Lynne Tryforos sometimes took manuscripts in Jean’s handwriting and corrected and clarified portions for the typist. Recipes appeared with names like Mustard Sauce Henri, Borscht Suzanne, and Spinach Delight à la Lynne.

When published in 1978, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower and Samm Sinclair Baker shot to the top of the bestseller lists. At the beginning of the book, Dr. Tarnower explains what he sees as the reason for the popularity of his diet in two words that he italicizes: “It works.”

Dieters were advised to go on the Scarsdale Medical Diet (SMD) for a period of 14 days. They should be on it no less than that for best weight-loss results and no more than that to maintain maximum health. After the two weeks of SMD, they were advised to switch to the less restrictive Keep-Trim Diet (KTD). The book states, “The average person’s food intake contains approximately 10-15 percent protein, variations of between 40-45 percent fat and 40-50 percent carbohydrates.” By contrast, the SMD “averages 1,000 calories or less per day and averages 43 percent protein, 22.5 percent fat, and 34.5 percent carbohydrates.”

When the book appeared, Baker was upset over the first sentence on the acknowledgments page: “We are grateful to Jean Harris for her splendid assistance in the research and writing of this book.” Baker thought her contributions did not merit such prominence and called Tarnower to object. Alexander writes that Tarnower stood firm, “Samm, please leave it just as it is,” but then added gently, “I like to make people feel good and I want to make her feel good.”

In October 1978, Harris bought a handgun, telling the store clerk it was for “self-protection.” Later, she explained, “I felt if I couldn’t function anymore, I could handle it.” Alexander reports that Harris believed she had picked the one weapon likely to end in her suicide rather than rendering her disabled as she also said, “A gun was the one way I knew I wouldn’t mess it up.”

Destroyed Dresses

Harris suffered a major trauma in March 1979. Returning from a trip with Tarnower, Harris found the clothes that she had left in a closet in his home destroyed. Duncan Spencer writes in Love Gone Wrong: The Jean Harris Scarsdale Murder Case, “Suzanne [Van der Vreken] said, ‘[Harris] found her clothes ripped and slashed . . . One sleeve was ripped from the body of a dress, there was a slash in every dress and all of the dresses there were slashed and ripped.’ Suzanne went on to say that Mrs. Tryforos had visited the Tarnower house before the doctor and the headmistress returned from Jamaica.” Reluctant to complain right after their vacation, Harris said nothing to Tarnower – even though one-third of her wardrobe had been viciously destroyed.

This was not the only time Harris found her property destroyed. On one occasion, she found a nightgown covered with orange stains. Even more upsettingly, she found a new dress still in its box, no longer folded, but rolled up and smeared with human feces.

Harris believed Tarnower was responsible for the cost of these two damaged items of apparel. She also knew he kept two wallets filled with cash. She took money that would cover the cost of the two destroyed items from one of those wallets.

In Christmas 1979, Harris and Tarnower vacationed in Palm Beach, Florida. Harris writes in Stranger in Two Worlds, “We were there for two very happy weeks. Mrs. Tryforos outdid herself this time. In addition to phone calls and telegrams, she placed an ad on the front page of The New York Times to tell the doctor, long distance, that she loved him forever. It was something that might be considered ‘cute’ if you could spare the $250 that it cost, if you were in your teens, and if the person you addressed it to wasn’t a 69-year-old man spending a two week vacation with another woman. Under the circumstances it would be hard to imagine anything more tasteless and deliberately mean.” Harris continues that Tarnower reacted with “horror” and exclaimed, “Jesus! I hope none of my friends see it.”

Harris writes that she thought, “I’m your friend, Hy, and I see it.” However, she tried to make light of her pain by saying, “Why don’t you have her try the Goodyear blimp next time, Herm?”

Troubling Times at Madeira

In 1979, just over two years into Harris’s tenure as headmistress, the Madeira Board hired professional school consultants Russell R. Browning Associates to examine how the school rated with potential donors. In May 1979, the Browning Report was complete. Shana Alexander reports, “One director said Jean Harris was the most controversial head of school in the nation.”

The report quoted one parent saying, “Mrs. Harris doesn’t care what she says, and isn’t careful to whom she says it.” It also criticized her lack of ability to handle disciplinary situations effectively, a shortcoming that one “friend” of the school said caused several sets of Madeira parents to try to dissuade prospective new families from applying.

While the report quoted people who made positive comments about Harris, its recommendation was to “get rid of Jean Harris immediately” and install an interim headmistress while searching for her replacement.

The board voted to ignore the Browning suggestion.

Nonetheless, the report devastated the emotionally fragile Harris. She now believed it was likely only a matter of time before she lost her job. It seemed like everything in her life was slipping away from her. Her boys were grown and out of the house. The man she deeply and desperately loved only tolerated her. She was being repeatedly and cruelly harassed. Now she feared losing her job. There seemed to be nothing solid in her life, nothing on which she could depend.

On September 18, 1979, a Madeira clique that called itself the “Brazen Hussies” played a prank that misfired. A member accidentally poured caustic toilet bowl cleaner instead of shampoo over the heads of new members. One girl’s face was badly burned. Harris drove the girl to the hospital. When the injured girl returned to Madeira, she became Harris’s special protégée and friend.

In March 1980, a Madeira official informed Harris about marijuana use in a dorm. “I’ll have a talk with the house mother,” Harris said. The official stated that the house mother was said to be involved. Room searches were made. Marijuana seeds and stems were found along with paraphernalia.

The girls in those rooms were taken to a meeting of both adult officials and Student Council members. Some students said, “If you’re not expelled for this, what do you have to do to get thrown out of this place?” Others said this activity was so common it made no sense to make a big deal out of it.

Harris sided with kids who believed the malefactors should be expelled. A vote was taken and four seniors were expelled only two months before graduation. A student protest developed, leading to a rally in support of them.

In the immediate wake of this blow-up, Harris wrote Tarnower a long, rambling letter in which she pled for his affection and complained about the wrongs she claimed Tryforos had perpetrated. She told him about having 1/3 of her wardrobe slashed and ripped, about finding a nightgown covered with orange stains, and a dress smeared with excrement. She told him about years of being repeatedly awakened in the middle of the night by a jeering caller.

The Fateful Day

On the morning of March 10, 1980, Harris read a letter from the girl who was injured in the Brazen Hussies incident. The teenager wrote, “This isn’t a ‘hate’ letter at all. I just feel that you are not handling the situation correctly.” The girl said people knew pot smoking was common so punishing four with expulsion was “hypocritical.” This gentle criticism from a girl Harris had singled out for protection and special friendship devastated the headmistress. Spencer reports that Harris showed the letter to Madeira’s second-in-command, Kathleen Johnson, and to English teacher Ruth Katz. Johnson, who later took over as Madeira’s acting headmistress, recalled, “It’s too bad that letter upset her.” Johnson said the letter appeared to have an extraordinarily traumatic effect on Harris. “It was as though she had something pulled down in front of her eyes,” Johnson commented. “She hadn’t understood what we had said to her.”

According to Spencer, Katz recalled, “I simply came down the hall to wish her a pleasant holiday, and I observed her over the letter. It was clear to me that Mrs. Harris was weary and discouraged; numb and very quiet – maybe glazed.” Sympathetic to the “drain” Katz saw in Harris, she gathered a bunch of daisies and placed them on the seat of Harris’s car.

The critical letter from a girl Harris had aided and taken under her wing led Harris to a terrible decision. Later, she said in a courtroom, “It sort of put a box on my life.” Spencer reports Harris recalling, “If she thinks I’ve failed her, too [like the board, like Tarnower, like the students], I’ve really blown the whole thing. I’ve failed everyone. I was doing the best I could do; it just wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the strength to do more.”

She decided that she had failed completely and had no reason to live.

Shots in the Night

At 5:16 p.m., she called Tarnower.

“Hy, it’s been a bad few weeks,” she said. “I’d like to come and talk to you for a few minutes.”

He replied that a niece was coming for dinner.

“That’s all right,” Harris said. “She always leaves early. I couldn’t get there before 10:30.”

“It would be more convenient if you came tomorrow,” Hy said.

“I won’t be able to see you tomorrow,” she said. “Please, just this once, let me say when.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied.

After that phone call, Harris picked up the gun. She loaded it, trying to ensure all chambers were filled.

Harris felt she no longer had anything to offer and could no longer function. Thus, she would die. Her death would be peaceful. She would enjoy a last few minutes with Tarnower, talking with him and feeling “safe” one last time. Then should would go to the pond on his property, the one around which the lovely daffodils grew, and shoot herself.

Her drive was oddly peaceful for she knew what she would do and how her life would end. At one point she thought, “What if Hy says something to spoil my resolve to die?” Then she thought, “I won’t let him know what I’m going to do, I won’t stay too long, and I won’t let him spoil my resolve.”

She knew the dedicated doctor was used to getting up in the middle of the night to help people.

She arrived at 10:45 p.m. She expected the front door would be unlocked but it was not. Holding her pocketbook and the daisies she had found in her car, she went through the garage as she often had before and up the circular stairway. “Hy,” she called. “Hy, Hy.”

Harris heard him stirring. She sat on the bed that was “hers” when she stayed at his house. She turned on the light and saw Tarnower in his blue pajamas.

“I thought you’d put a lamp in the window,” she said. “It’s black as pitch out there.”

Tarnower angrily barked, “Jesus, it’s the middle of the night and you wake me up!”

“I only want to talk, Hy, and I won’t be long.”

“I don’t feel like talking in the middle of the night,” he answered.

“I brought you some flowers,” she said. “Have you written any more on the book?” Tarnower had decided to write another book, this one on the subject of longevity.

“Shut up and go to bed,” he said. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Won’t you really talk to me for a little while?” she begged.

Silence.

“There’s a shawl here,” Harris said. “I want to be sure Kathleen [a daughter-in-law] has it. I’ll just get it.”

Harris headed for the nearest bathroom. She turned on the light and saw a greenish blue satin negligee. Believing the owner of that item had destroyed Harris’s clothes, she picked up the negligee and took it to Hy’s bedroom where Harris tossed it on the floor.

Denied the final “safe” feeling she craved, Harris returned to the bathroom where she was confronted by a box of hair curlers she knew to be those of Tryforos. Harris threw the box and it crashed into a side window.

Tarnower jumped up from bed. When Harris walked back into the bedroom, he struck her across the mouth. She ran back to the bathroom, picked up another box, and tossed it so it smashed a mirror.

She went back to the bedroom and he struck her again on the mouth.

Harris felt all agitation drain out. The last few minutes of pleasant talk were not to be. Why bother with going to the pond? She sat on “her” bed and pulled her hair behind her ears. She raised her face to Tarnower, shut her eyes, and urged, “Hit me again, Hy. Make it hard enough to kill me.”

“Get out of here,” he growled. “You’re crazy!”

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.” She zipped open her pocketbook and took out the gun. She raised it to her head. Tarnower lunged at her, knocking the gun down, and making it go off in the process. Spencer writes, “The bullet passed through the web of [Tarnower’s] palm, through a solid inch of muscle, striking no bone, no important nerves or ligaments or tendons, and half-spent, struck Tarnower’s chest wall, hitting the clavicle or collarbone and clipping the vena cava, a large blood vessel returning blood to the heart. The bullet then stopped, having penetrated the chest wall less than an inch.”

Tarnower shouted, “Jesus Christ! Look what you did!” Then he went to the bathroom to treat the (relatively minor) wound. Spencer notes, “There is one lapse in Tarnower’s reaction that merits examination. He knocked the gun out of Harris’s hand even at the expense of the shot to his own hand. But then, having painfully gotten control of the situation, he didn’t take advantage of it by getting the gun and throwing it out the window, unloading it, tossing it down the spiral staircase, or merely hanging onto it with his good hand while he took a close look at the wounds in the bathroom. The logical, consistent explanation is that he knew the first shot had been fired by mistake.”

While Tarnower was in the bathroom, Harris was on her knees looking for the gun under “her” bed. She pulled it out. Tarnower was back. He grabbed her upper arm tightly, causing her to drop it. With the gun in Tarnower’s wounded right hand, he moved to the head of “his” bed and buzzed for his servants. That he buzzed with his left hand and held the gun in his right is provable, as Spencer observes, “by the fact that blood was found on the gun and the bed and none on the buzzer.”

A desperate Harris begged, “Hy, please give me the gun, or shoot me yourself, but for Christ’s sake let me die.”

“Jesus, Jean, you’re crazy, get out of here!” Tarnower shouted.

She pulled herself up and grabbed for the gun. Tarnower left the buzzer to grab her wrist. He lunged forward. She believed she had the gun in her control. She felt what she believed was the muzzle in her belly and pulled the trigger. Despite the loud noise, Harris thought, “My God! That didn’t hurt at all! I should have done it long ago.”

Tarnower fell back. Harris jumped up. She ran out of his reach. She put the gun to her head. She took a very deep breath that she expected to be her last breath and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked.

Astounded, because she was sure she had filled all chambers, she lowered the gun and gazed at it. She pulled the trigger. Boom! A shot rang out. She raised the gun to her head again. She repeatedly pulled the trigger and empty chambers repeatedly clicked.

One thing that must be noted is that Harris could only recall pulling the trigger twice at times when Tarnower was shot. She remembered the time when he brought her hand down from her head, making it go off and into his hand. She remembered consciously firing at herself when she believed the muzzle was poking in her belly, a shot that probably went through Tarnower’s arm.

However, all doctors who examined his corpse believed he was shot at least three times. Most believe he was shot four times. Harris simply could not recall or account for those shots. She may have had a temporary blackout when they were struggling.

She ran to her coat. She knew there were bullets in a pocket. The coat was beside the bedroom TV. She retrieved the coat but realized the gun was full of spent cartridges. She could not put fresh bullets in until the cartridges were out. Harris went to the bathroom to try unloading the cartridges by banging the gun against the bathtub. The bathtub was chipped by her efforts but no cartridges dislodged and the gun flew out of her hand and into the tub.

Harris went back to the bedroom where she saw Tarnower. Harris shouted, “Somebody turn on the goddamn lights! I’m going for help!”

She ran into the rain, got in her car, and raced out of Dr. Tarnower’s driveway. As she began to turn into a parking lot with a phone booth, a police car flashing its lights bore down on her. Making a U-turn, she headed back toward the Tarnower residence. The police car followed. Both cars pulled up in front of that house. Harris jumped out and ran over to the police officer. She shouted, “Hurry up! He’s been shot!” As they ran up steps, Henri Van der Vrekan shouted, “She’s the one! She did it!”

Suzanne Van der Vrekan joined Harris and the police officer in the doctor’s bedroom. Shana Alexander writes in Very Much A Lady“Herman Tarnower was now on his knees between the two beds, slumped against the white telephone, its bloody receiver dangling down. With Suzanne’s help, the police officer gently laid the wounded man down on his back between the beds.” The cop ran downstairs for emergency oxygen as Suzanne took the doctor’s hand and softly spoke to him. Harris caressed his face and wailed, “Oh, Hi, why didn’t you kill me?”

Additional police officers rushed to the scene. Harris admitted she shot Tarnower but said she meant to kill herself. Harris refused medical attention for the bruise near her eye and for the swelling on her upper lip.

Detective Arthur Siciliano asked, “Who had control of the gun?”

“I don’t know,” Harris replied.

“Who owned the gun?” he asked.

“It’s mine,” she said.

“Who did the shooting? Do you recall holding the gun?”

“I recall holding the gun and shooting him in the hand,” she answered.

A stretcher with an unconscious and bloodied Herman Tarnower on it was carried past.

Long-time Harris friends Leslie and Marge Jacobson were asleep in their Manhattan home when awakened by Harris’s call. “Leslie, I think I’ve killed Hi,” Harris said.

Charged with Murder

“Do not utter another word!” he ordered. Leslie dressed to meet Harris and told Marge to phone an attorney who worked with Leslie, William Riegelman, and tell him to rush to the police station to see Harris. Riegelman did and found Harris being booked for aggravated assault. Her white blouse was streaked with blood and she was badly bruised on her mouth and right eye. A call came in from St. Agnes Hospital. Tarnower had been pronounced dead and, at the police station, the charge against Harris increased to second-degree murder, the most serious possible in New York unless the victim is a police officer or prison officer on duty.

Friends recommended respected attorney Joel Aurnou. Aurnou met her. A sobbing Harris said she did not care what happened to her, and wanted no defense. She said she had no reason to live.

Aurnou came up with a reason. He said if she did not defend herself, David and Jimmie would be known as a murderer’s sons. Did she want her sons stigmatized? Love for her grown sons motivated her to want to prove her innocence. She told Aurnou all that she could remember of the bedroom struggle, admitting she could only account for two shots.

Prosecutor George Bolen ridiculed this scenario. He insisted Harris had murdered Tarnower. Before trial, he crowed, “All I need to prove intent is Herman Tarnower’s body and four bullet holes!”

A Defense Puzzle

One puzzling aspect of the trial of Jean Harris is that her plea was simply “not guilty.” Many observers believed she should have pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter, offering the legal defense of “Extreme Emotional Disturbance” or EED. A legal rather than psychiatric term, New York’s penal law in 1967 defined it to state that jurors “may consider all emotions which in fact influence . . . conduct, such as, for example, passion, grief, resentment, anger, terror, fright, hatred or excessive excitement or agitation, and these emotions need not necessarily be of sudden or spontaneous occurrence. They may have simmered in the defendant’s mind for a long time.” In a major EED case, People v. Patterson, the New York Court of Appeals wrote, “It may be that a significant mental trauma has affected a defendant’s mind for a substantial period of time, simmering in the unknowing subconscious, and then explicitly coming to the fore.”

Judge Betty D. Friedlander, who represented the defendant in the Patterson case, asserts, “Jean Harris is the person that defense was written for.”

Alexander believes it was not used because “it implies a homicidal rather than a suicidal state of mind.” In Stranger in Two Worlds, Harris recalls that her lawyers always explained EED as requiring her to say that she “murdered Hy” but “under extreme emotional disturbance.” She writes that she replied, “You’re telling me that the way to be acquitted of murder is to say that I murdered a man. I didn’t murder Hy, and nothing and no one will ever induce me to say that I did.”

However, Alexander believes that the degree of turmoil Harris was suffering makes intent virtually impossible to determine. She also notes, “There is no inconsistency between an EED defense and a ‘tragic accident’ defense. Indeed, one could have caused the other.”

The People v. Jean Harris

Judge Russell Legget presided at trial.

A jury of eight women and four men was impaneled. Four of the jurors were black, three of them women. The foreperson was a male bus mechanic. The other three men were the black social studies teacher, a systems analyst, and a retired school administrator. The black women were a keypunch operator, and anti-poverty worker, and a part-time chambermaid. The eight white women included a special education teacher, a housewife, a reading teacher, an Avon Products salesperson, a worker for the New York City Board of Education, and a part-time cardiac therapy nurse.

The trial began on November 21, 1980.

Bolen read the three charges against Harris: count one, murder in the second degree; count two, criminal possession of a weapon in the state of New York, second degree; and count three, criminal possession of a weapon in a place not the defendant’s home or place of business, third degree.

In his opening, Bolen stated, “No one’s going to appear in the court with a movie camera and a screen, or a videotape and play for you what happened at the residence of Dr. Herman Tarnower March 10 and particularly what happened in his bedroom.” Bolen discussed the way Tarnower divided his romantic and sexual attentions between Harris and Tryforos. Bolen later states that after dinner, Tarnower “went up to the bedroom and retired for the night. Several hundred miles away, Jean Harris placed keys into the ignition of one of the school’s cars and with her in the car was a revolver and a number of cartridges.” He promised to prove that the defendant “consciously, volitionally, and intentionally fired five shots.”

Opening for the defense, Aurnou asserted, “There came a time on that night when both Jean and Dr. Tarnower struggled over the gun, when both Jean and Dr. Tarnower fought over her life – and both of them lost. He lost his life in what we will show you was a tragic accident, and she was left with a life she no longer wanted to live.”

Aurnou also said, “We contend what happened in the case did not happen in the way the prosecutor described it. . . . Facts will show you a very different version; when we say facts, we mean physical facts found and available at the scene.”

After Bolen finished direct examination of one of the first officers at the scene, Daniel O’Sullivan, Aurnou asked in cross-examination, “Did you hear [Harris] indicate that it was her intention that she never return to Virginia alive?” O’Sullivan answered, “Yes.” Aurnou asked, “Did you hear her answer that she did not know [who had control of the gun]?” Again, the officer said, “Yes.” He answered, “That’s correct” when Aurnou asked if she had said she did not know who pulled the trigger. Aurnou asked, “Did you also hear my client say, sir, that she asked the doctor to kill her because she wanted to die?” Yet again, O’Sullivan answered, “Yes.”

Bolen called surgeon Dr. Harold Roth who arrived at the Tarnower residence as the wounded man was being put in the ambulance and accompanied him to the hospital. He administered cardiac massage but Tarnower was dead by the time he got to the hospital. His right arm was “totally disarticulated.”

On cross, Aurnou asks, “If you had had seven or 10 minutes more . . . would that have made a difference in his ability to survive?

“It might very well, yes,” Roth testified. “Any minutes would have made a difference.”

Aurnou laid support for the defense contention that the failure of the police to rush Tarnower to the hospital was part of the “tragic accident” resulting in his death. Alexander writes, “The two fatal bullet holes, one in front, one in back, lined up so perfectly that it appeared to everyone, doctors and medics as well as the cops, that Tarnower had sustained a single, superficial flesh wound clean through the shoulder, an illusion strengthened by the fact that there was surprisingly little external bleeding.”

On redirect, Bolen got Roth to say that police consider a hand wound that goes from front-to-back a “classic defense wound.” The prosecutor argued that Tarnower sustained this wound when he held his hand up to ward off a direct and murderous shot.

Bolen called Westchester County Deputy Medical Examiner Louis Roh, M.D. to the stand. When Roh autopsied Tarnower, he found five wounds, four wound tracks, and three bullets. He testified, “The one bullet that caused the wound to the hand is the one that caused the wound in the right anterior chest wall.” He supported the prosecution contention that the hand wound was sustained when Tarnower vainly tried to ward off a shot because the hand and chest wounds can be lined up and because when the bullet dropped into the chest cavity after hitting the collarbone and cutting a big vein, it did not have much force. He further testified, “It is my opinion that it is consistent with a defense wound.”

Trilling reports, “To counter Aurnou’s claim that the police delay could have caused Tarnower’s death, Bolen questioned the pathologist as to how much blood the doctor would have had to lose to go into intractable shock. Roh believed that the doctor went into intractable shock within five to 10 minutes after he sustained the injuries.”

Harris moaned during this testimony.

Bolen asks if the wounds were “consistent” with a struggle over a gun between a man of Tarnower’s size and a woman of Harris’s.  “It is not consistent with a struggle for the gun. . . . Number 1, the multiplicity, the person receiving three gunshot wounds and four wounds on the body . . . Secondly, the location of these wounds. If two persons are struggling over the gun and discharging during the struggle, I would expect to see the wounds mainly in the front part of the body,” Roh responded.

Aurnou got Roh to admit on cross that in his original autopsy report, he said that four bullets had struck Tarnower instead of the three to which he testified at trial. The suggestion was made that Roh changed his opinion to bring it more in line with the idea that the hand wound was a classic defensive wound.

The prosecution soon rested.

One of the first defense witnesses was Madeira Board Chair Alice Faulkner. Harris trembled and wept as Faulkner testified to finding a letter from Harris as well as a companion document stating, “I want to be immediately CREMATED AND THROWN AWAY.” Both were found on a chair by the living room door of the home Madeira furnished for the headmistress.

The letter reads:

                        Alice –

                                    I’m sorry. Please for Christ’s sake don’t open the place again until you have adults and policemen and keepers on every floor. God knows what they’re doing. And next time choose a head the board wants and supports. Don’t let some poor fool work like hell for two years before she knows she wasn’t ever wanted in the first place. There are so many enemies and so few friends. I was a person and nobody ever knew.

The letter was unsigned. The document asking for cremation is signed twice.

Forensic scientist Herbert MacDonell testified to measuring the angle of a bullet hole through a glass door and tracing a ricochet mark to establish the zone within which the gun was fired. Alexander writes, “If the bullet went through Tarnower’s hand in the manner Jean had described, the blood would spray in certain specific patterns and parabolas, which would tend to confirm her story. In examining the new close-up photos of the door frame, he spotted dark specks that could be human blood.” He later confirmed they were blood. Alexander continues that MacDonell “discovered on the door frame a ‘directional bloodstain,’ an oval droplet 1/25^th of an inch in diameter, which again confirms Harris’s story of where she and Tarnower were standing when the first shot was fired.”

MacDonell attacked Roh’s testimony. MacDonell testified that if the doctor had held his hand up to ward off the gun in “a classic defense posture,” his face and entire pajama sleeve would have been covered with a thin spray of blood – they were not. This testimony powerfully rebuts the contention that Tarnower was trying to ward off a shot from a Harris who came barreling down on him with the gun.

He also testified that his reconstruction indicated that the shot Harris fired when she thought the gun barrel was pointing at her stomach had broken Tarnower’s arm.

MacDonell found small bloodstains in the bathtub – exactly the right size to have been put there by someone banging a gun filled with fresh blood against enamel. MacDonell asserts that the gun was filled with blood when Tarnower held it in his injured hand.

Alexander writes, “By examining the primer in the base of the spent cartridges under low-power magnification, the professor [MacDonell] can tell whether the firing pin has struck the primer once, or more than once. . . . Since he found four shells double-struck, and one single-struck, he has been able to calculate the precise sequence of the five shots fired from the six-cylinder weapon: bang, bang, bang, bang, click, bang, click, click, click, click.” That sequence precisely supports Harris’s recollections.

Bolen asked MacDonell if he had examined the bloodstained bed sheets. MacDonell admitted he had not and said he would like to. The expert spent a lunch hour looking at the sheets. Back in court, he pointed out how the patterns supported Harris’s story. For example, he said a stain looked like someone might have laid a gun across it. MacDonell laid his own gun across it and the fit was perfect.

Over a weekend recess, Bolen talked to a defense pathologist who said that if a bullet passed through a hand before entering the chest, one might find tiny palm tissue in the chest. Bolen related this to Roh and asked Roh to look for such tiny palm fragments.

Bolen recalled Roh who testified he found three tiny fragments that could be palm tissue. On cross, he admitted they could be cartilage, cotton fibers, or collarbone fragments. Aurnou put on several pathologists who said the fragments cannot be identified as palm material.

One of those pathologists was the respected A. Bernard Ackerman, M.D. Ackerman testified, “My diagnosis is unequivocal. All three fragments came from tissue other than the [palm] skin of Dr. Tarnower.”

Bolen recalled Roh yet again and asked if it would be anatomically possible for Tarnower to have sustained the arm wound in various positions. On cross-examination, Aurnou asked, “Is it also anatomically possible he could have sustained it while sitting on the toilet?”

Harris gasped, “Joel, how could you?”

Harris in Her Own Defense

Harris took the stand. Aurnou asked about her mental state after the marijuana brouhaha at the Madeira school. Her reply was agonizingly slow, “I . . . couldn’t . . . function.” He quotes from her resignation letter that stated, “I was a person and no one ever knew.”

Aurnou urged, “Tell the jury what you meant.”

She wept as she said, “I think it had something to do with being a woman who had worked for a long time and had done the things a man does to support a family but is still a woman. I always felt that when I was in Westchester I was a woman in a pretty dress and went to a dinner party with Dr. Tarnower and in Washington I was a woman in a pretty dress and the headmistress. But I wasn’t sure who I was . . . and it didn’t seem to matter.”

Aurnou asked, “It mattered to you, didn’t it?

She said, “I was a person sitting in an empty chair.”

Later, Aurnou asked, “Did you ever that night intend to shoot or kill Dr. Tarnower?”

“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “The most violent thing I did was throw a box of curlers, and I didn’t throw them at him. I never for a moment wanted to hurt Hi, never in 14 years. And certainly not that night.”

Bolen asked if she was upset Herman dated Lynne Tryforos.

“Yes,” she answered. “As I said before, I thought it denigrated Hy . . . I think this whole conversation denigrates Hy and I hate it!”

“You were very concerned about the doctor’s reputation?” Bolen asked.

“I was indeed, and this thing is tearing me apart,” she said.

Later Bolen asked how she referred to Tryforos in the letter she sent Tarnower on March 10.

“I referred to her as what I had experienced her to be . . . Dishonest . . . adulterous . . . a whore,” she said.

He asked, “Those were very strong terms to use, aren’t they?”

“They are,” she answered. “They are very out of character for me to use. But it’s not like me to rub up against people like Lynne Tryforos.”

Bolen entered the letter that she had written just before Tarnower’s death and that would become known as the “Scarsdale Letter” into evidence. Then he read it to the jury. It began, “I will send this by registered mail only because so many of my letters seem not to reach you.” She wrote about years of anonymous taunting phone calls, having her dresses torn, having a nightgown destroyed with orange stains, and the horror of finding a dress smeared with feces. She writes of her pain when she discovered that he sold the ring he had presented to her as an engagement ring: “I desperately needed money all those years. I couldn’t have sold that ring. It was tangible proof of your love and it meant more to me than life itself. That you sold it the summer your adulterous slut finally got her divorce and needed money is a kind of sick, cynical act that left me old and bitter and sick.”

The jury convicted Jean Harris of second-degree murder and of both weapons charges.

Given the powerful scientific testimony of experts like MacDonell and Ackerman stating that the physical facts supported Harris’s story, why did the jury convict? Part of it may be that the testimony was too complex for lay persons to adequately follow and understand. Spencer writes, “The jury ignored almost all the evidence and all but a few of the 92 witnesses who appeared at the three-and-a-half month trial.” The jurors based their verdict on an inability to act out in the jury room a way for Tarnower to have sustained the hand wound in a struggle.

After the trial, Ackerman wrote an essay entitled, “The Physician As Expert Witness: Is Peer Review Needed?” He argued that prosecution doctors appeared to lose scientific objectivity in finding what would be best for the prosecution.

Twelve Years in Prison

Sent to the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Harris washed dishes and stairs and at one point headed the Inmate Liaison Committee, a post she relinquished due to poor health. She worked in the prison nursery. She also wrote three books: Stranger in Two Worlds, They Always Call Us Ladies and Marking Time: Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander.

New York Governor Mario Cuomo denied clemency to her three times but granted it in December 1992. Shortly after her sentence was commuted, she moved into a cabin in New Hampshire. Los Angeles Times reporter Pamela Warrick described Harris as “slight and delicate” as well as “very sad looking, especially around the eyes.” Harris said she entertains few guests other than sons Jimmy and David. After 12 years in unavoidably close quarters with fellow inmates, Harris cherishes privacy. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be alone,” she said.

Harris told New York Times reporter James Feron she wanted to live “where there aren’t a lot of people, where I don’t have to look into someone else’s window.” She told Feron that she spent much time “gardening, painting my garage, and writing.”

Harris continued working for the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Children’s Center. All profits from books she wrote were donated to the Children of Bedford Foundation that aids the center. However, Harris expressed discomfort with the credit sometimes given to her. “I think I’ve helped a little bit with that effort, but it is its founder, Sister Elaine Roulet, who is the moral essence of the Children’s Center and that prison,” she told Warrick.

According to Warrick, Harris rejected comparisons of her case to those of battered women who killed abusers. When Barbara Walters said, “You did become a symbol of the woman wronged,” Harris replied, “No. I think I’m the woman who let herself be wronged.”

She believes that if her case has any larger implications, it is in the need for individual responsibility. She tells anyone struggling with problem relationships, “It’s up to you to make yourself happy.”

At the end of Warrick’s interview, the reporter asked if she would consider dating.

She answered, “Good heavens, no! Whatever for?”

In December 2012, Jean Harris died at the age of 89 in a New Haven, Connecticut assisted-living facility of complications relating to old age.

Bibliography

Alexander, Shana. Very Much A Lady: The Untold Story of Jean Harris and Dr. Herman Tarnower. Pocket Books. 1986.

Feron, James. “Jean Harris Savors a New Life After Prison.” The New York Times. June 27, 2993.

Harris, Jean. Marking Time: Letters from Jean Harris to Shana Alexander. Kensington Publishing Corp.1991.

Harris, Jean. Stranger in Two Worlds. Kensington Publishing Corp. 1986.

Luther, Claudia. “Jean Harris dies at 89; killer of ‘Scarsdale Diet’ doctor.’ Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2012

Sack, Kevin. “Clemency Given to Jean Harris in Murder Case.” The New York Times. December 30, 1992.

Spencer, Duncan. Love Gone Wrong: The Jean Harris Scarsdale Murder Case. A Signet Book. 1981.

Tarnower, M.D., Herman and Baker, Samm Sinclair. The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. Bantam Books. 1980.

Trilling, Diana. Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers.

Warrick, Pamela. “‘The Myth of Me’: Aftermath: Jean Harris rejects the labels thrust upon her after the Scarsdale Diet Doctor murder in 1980, saying she’s just a ‘tired old lady.’ But she still has the energy to speak out for other women still in prison.” Los Angeles Times. July 19, 1993.

June 13, 2013

Anastasia Solovieva-King (Photo AP)

The murders of two mail-order brides in Washington State led the U.S. Congress to enact the Federal International Marriage Broker Regulation Act in 2005. The legislation was intended to stop abuse of mail order brides by prospective husbands with criminal histories.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

The mail-order bride business is booming. In the United States alone there are over 300 such agencies. Clients can peruse information on 150,000 would-be brides on the Internet or catalogues. Many women are enticed by the thought of meeting a wealthy American husband who can offer them a better life.

The vast majority of males using these brokers are from the United States and Western Europe and most brides are Asian, Eastern European or South American. In the United States there are approximately 12,000 mail-order weddings annually through marriage brokers.  Market research shows it is a $2 billion business worldwide and growing.

There are no statistics to prove that mail-order brides are more prone to abuse than women who marry in a more traditional manner. Research has shown that although the divorce rate is high in these marriages, it is still almost 10 percent lower than the U.S. divorce rate. There are no exact figures available as to the number of violent deaths that have occurred in mail-order marriages but there have been several highly publicised ones.

Most of the mail-order bride agencies are reputable and do a thorough check on their potential clients as to their background, criminal records, etc.  However, there have been some instances where the agency did not properly vet the client and lives were put at risk.

The cost for meeting and marrying in this way can vary from $4,000 to $12,000 as it depends on the agency fee, travel to meet the bride, wedding costs and legal fees in obtaining a K-1 Fiancée visa. It is an expensive way of meeting a suitable partner but there are a lot of very happy couples who have met through this method.  

Susana and Anastasia were not so lucky.

Susana Remerata Blackwell

Susana Remerata was born in Cataingan on the island of Masbate in The Philippines to Marcella and Zucino. Masbate is an island with a population of half a million people living in 21 towns scattered around the island. It is one of the 7,100 islands that make up the Philippines and is one of the poorest provinces of one of the poorest nations in Asia.

Susana’s parents, who owned two general stores, were better off than the majority of their neighbors. Even though their home was concrete built it didn’t have a stove, flush toilet or telephone. Owning a car was just a pipe dream. Susana was an honor student at Cataingan National High School. She studied nursing for a brief period but changed to hotel and restaurant management at a college in Cebu, a 12-hour ferry ride away. She was a local beauty queen – Miss Cataingan, Miss Masbate and was a contestant for Miss Cebu.  

Susana was also well educated and she nurtured a dream of leaving her small town in the Philippines for a better life in the United States with the right man. In 1992, at age 21, she entered her photograph and particulars in a catalogue of potential brides. An estimated 20,000 Filipino women leave the country each year to marry foreigners. The majority marry American men who find them attractive because they speak English and are familiar with Western culture. The initial contacts are usually through brokers and conducted by mail.

Shortly after Susana’s particulars appeared in the “Asian Encounters” catalogue she was contacted by Timothy Blackwell who thought she had everything he was looking for in a wife. Mr. Blackwell was a 48-year-old computer technician from Seattle and had trouble meeting women.

The romance blossomed by mail for more than a year before Blackwell flew to the Philippines on March 6, 1993. They were married March 31, 1993.

After a month in the Philippines, Timothy Blackwell returned to Seattle and proceeded with the arrangements needed for Susana to join him. On February 5, 1994 Susana flew to join her husband. In less than two weeks of living with Timothy, she left his home and moved to stay with two Filipino girlfriends, Phoebe Dizon and Veronica Laureta Johnson. She claimed that her husband had been abusive and applied for residency under a battered-wife exception to deportation law.

Lawyers were engaged by both parties and a court date was set for March 1995. The case was complicated as it involved annulment or divorce and deportation. Timothy Blackwell stated that he felt “duped” by Susana and she had used him for money and to gain residency in the United States. He said she was a mail-order bride turned swindler.

When Susana appeared in court she was eight months pregnant by another man. She told the judge that her husband had been abusive from the start but that she had really loved him and had hoped the marriage would work.

On March 3, 1995 final arguments were to be presented to the court. While waiting for proceedings to begin, Susana sat in the hallway of the King Country Courthouse with her friends Phoebe and Veronica chatting. They were approached by Timothy Blackwell wielding a 9mm Taurus semiautomatic handgun and within seconds he shot dead his wife, her unborn baby, and her friends Phoebe Dizon and Veronica Laureta Johnson.

Timothy was quickly wrestled to the ground by courthouse security, taken into custody and within days was charged with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder and causing the death of Susana’s unborn baby.  In Washington State aggravated murder carries a minimum sentence of life imprisonment or a death sentence.

Staff from the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office's Domestic Violence Unit with Prosecutor Satterberg at API/Chaya candlelight vigil for DV victims April 18, 2013 (Photo King County)

On May 29, 1996 a jury of four women and eight men found Timothy Blackwell guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of his estranged wife Susana Remerata, Phoebe Dizon and Veronica Laureta Johnson. He was also found guilty of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Susana’s unborn baby. Returning to the court in June of 1996 for the penalty phase of the trial, the jury deliberated for almost two days but could not, unanimously, agree to a death sentence and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Anastasia Solovieva-King                  

Indie King Jr (Photo KOMO 4 News)

Indie King Jr. was the only son of academic successful parents and grew up in a loving home in Mercer Island, Washington with his sibling, Paige. His friends remember him as a bit of a show off, a good student, happy-go-lucky, ambitious and eager to please. He seemed to be obsessed with Nordic blonde women and often spoke about ordering an “obedient” one through the mail.

In 1984 Indie graduated with honors in business from the University of Washington and worked as an accountant with an oil company. He earned a Master’s Degree in finance in 1987 at the University of Chicago Business School. Several short-term jobs followed which allowed him to accumulate air miles and he decided to use these on a visit to the Soviet Union. Upon his return home it was very clear, to family and friends, that he was very impressed with the beauty and decorum of the young women there and began placing advertisements in Russian publications to meet a partner.

Now living in Cincinnati and studying for a doctorate at the University of Cincinnati, Indie soon started corresponding with 18-year-old Ekaterina Kazakova from Siberia.  He invited her to study in the United States. In September of 1993 she moved to Cincinnati as a visiting biology student. Within a month Indie and Ekaterina were married as he told her that she would not be able to remain in the United States otherwise. Soon after marrying Ekaterina, Indie dropped out of the doctoral program and had several short-term teaching positions but none of these contracts were renewed.                                                                 

Ekaterina found work as a pharmacy technician while studying and was the only breadwinner in the household. Indie encouraged her studies as he saw the potential in her future earning capacity. However, he had become physically violent and threatened to kill her if she reported him to the police or tried to leave him. Even though these threats did make her afraid for her life, Ekaterina did report him to the police and got a restraining order. 

In retaliation, Indie filed for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that it was a fraud by Ekaterina to gain residency in the United States. The annulment was refused and their divorce was made final in July 1997. Ekaterina has since remarried and is a successful practicing dentist who does not wish her new name and location made public.

Indie returned home to Mercer Island a bitter man and told all, who would listen, how he had been duped by Ekaterina to gain citizenship. His old friends were shocked at the change in him. At 5 foot 7 inches, wearing a hairpiece and weighing 290 pounds he was a different person than the Indie they remembered from high school. He soon began searching for another “Mail Order Bride” and began corresponding with 18- year-old Anastasia Solovieva, who had placed her particulars and photograph in a catalogue of prospective brides. Her parents encouraged this as a cousin had found a happy marriage in Florida by that route.                                                                

Anastasia grew up in Kyrgyzstan in the former Soviet Union, spoke three languages and graduated, with top honors, from the Musical College in Bishkek. Indie travelled to Kyrgyzstan and spent a month with Anastasia and her parents, both academics.  Indie and Anastasia were married at the end of the month.

Upon their arrival in the United States, they settled in the Seattle area and Anastasia enrolled at the University of Washington taking business courses. She also found part- time jobs in two local restaurants where she was very well liked by her co-workers. However, it soon became obvious to her friends and colleagues that her marriage was in trouble and they advised her to leave her abusive, controlling husband.

In August 2000, Indie was caught shoplifting some fruit and soft drinks from a local supermarket and told police that his wife was divorcing him and he had no money. This was not true, but one month later Indie filed for divorce. Anastasia then decided to go home to Kyrgyzstan to visit her parents and to discuss her circumstances with them. Shortly after Indie followed her in an attempt at reconciliation. They returned together to Seattle and Anastasia King was never seen alive again.

When her parents did not receive any calls or emails they became very concerned and contacted the police. When questioned by the police, Indie said that he and Anastasia had an argument before flying home from Moscow and he had returned alone. A check by the police proved that they had flown back to Seattle together and police believed that Anastasia had met with foul play by her husband. A close police watch showed Indie making several visits to an inmate in the Snohomish County Jail who had been a lodger in their house in Seattle.                                                               

Detectives questioned this inmate, Daniel Larson, who was in jail awaiting trial for attempting to have sex with a 16-year-old immigrant from the Ukraine. Larson soon broke down and hoping to get off the attempted rape charge, told police that he knew where the body of Anastasia King was and that he had helped her husband murder her. A police search soon recovered the body of Anastasia on a rubbish dump on the Tulalip Reservation.  Indie King was immediately arrested and charged with first degree murder.

In a plea bargain for his testimony, Larson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for his participation in the crime and was sentenced to 20 years.

Trial

The trial of Indie King began in February 2002. Daniel Larson told the court that Indie wanted to kill Anastasia as he didn’t want to go through another expensive divorce. Larson seemed to have been completely under the influence of the older King and said they were involved in a sexual relationship. He agreed to help in the murder and described how he strangled Anastasia with a neck tie while she was held down by her 290-pound husband sitting on her. Larson testified that he and King then removed her clothing, diamond wedding ring and earrings before dumping her body on the reservation.                                                                

For the defense, David Allen, said that Larson had acted alone because he believed she had wanted him out of the house, had been unfaithful to her husband and he had a dislike of immigrants. He also stressed the point that Larson had been offered a “sweetheart deal” by the prosecution for his testimony. 

On the witness stand King’s own testimony was the most damaging to the jurors as it became very clear that his greed was a major factor in his wife’s murder. He admitted that he had given false information to U.S. immigration to have something to hold over his wife, and prevent her from gaining permanent residency, if things didn’t  work out between them.

He also admitted that during their visit to Kyrgyzstan, in June 2000, he had stolen her passport in an attempt to prevent her from returning to the United States and applying for a divorce. Unfortunately, Anastasia was able to convince him to return her passport and they travelled back to Seattle.                                        

The court was presented with emails taken from King’s computer that showed he was contacting another prospective mail-order bride three weeks before the murder of Anastasia. He stated that he would be a free man within a month.

After a five-week trial, the jury found Indie King guilty of first-degree murder. One month later he was sentenced to 29 years imprisonment for his wife’s murder.

Upon hearing the sentence, King addressed the judge saying “I absolutely accept the verdict of the jury. I don’t want my family affected by me.”

In late 2006 Daniel Larson withdrew his guilty plea to second-degree murder in the belief that his conviction would be overthrown. This negated the plea bargain and enabled the prosecution to bring a charge of first-degree murder. Larson was found guilty and sentenced to 29 years.

Postscript   

President George W. Bush signed the Federal International Marriage Broker Regulation Act in January 2005. This legislation was the result of a campaign following the murders of Susana and Anastasia. The legislation was intended to stop abuse of "mail order brides" by prospective husbands with criminal histories.

June 17, 2013

Ulysses S. Grant (Photo CBS)

by David Robb

Two weeks before President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves, his top field general, Ulysses S. Grant, committed the worst official act of anti-Semitism in American history. It was a war crime that went unpunished, and today it is all but forgotten.

It happened two years into the Civil War when Gen. Grant ordered every Jewish man, woman and child out of a vast military district under his control.

It was all about the price of cotton – and the anti-Semitism that was then rampant among the officer corps of the Union Army. On August 11, 1862, General William Tecumseh Sherman, the second-ranking general in the Union Army, wrote a letter to the army’s adjutant general warning that “the country will swarm with dishonest Jews” if the cotton trade is allowed to continue. Six years earlier, in a letter to Lorenzo Thomas, the adjutant general of the Union Army, Sherman had described Jews as “without pity, soul, heart or bowels of compassion.”

Though enemies on the battlefield, the North and South remained trading partners throughout the war. They each had something the other needed: The South had cotton, which the Union army needed for tents and uniforms, and the North had hard currency, which the South desperately needed to fund its war effort.

Lincoln’s top advisors urged him to halt the trading in cotton, but even during wartime, cotton remained king – it was essential to the war effort. So Lincoln allowed limited trading of Southern cotton under strict regulation by the Treasury Department and the Army.

The price of cotton began to soar by the end of 1862, and Grant blamed this on unlicensed Jewish traders. In fact, Jews made up only a tiny fraction of the war profiteers, but they were the easiest targets.

In November, Grant issued General Order No. 9 and General Order No. 10, which banned Jews from all trains traveling south into the areas under his command – the so-called Department of the Tennessee, which included the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky.

“The Israelites especially should be kept out,” he ordered. “No Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point.They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance, that the Department must be purged of them.”

So having thus barred all Jews from entering these three states, Grant next ordered all those remaining out.

On December 17, 1862, from his headquarters in Oxford, Mississippi, Grant issued General Order No. 11, which stated:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department within twenty-four (24) hours from the receipt of this order by Post Commander.

Post Commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

“A number of Jewish families that had been quiet, orderly and loyal citizens of the town of Paducah (Kentucky) for years, hurriedly packed up their goods and left their homes under this cruel order,” the New York Times reported at the time. “They had nothing whatever to do with Grant or his army, but they belonged to the Jews ‘as a class,’ and were denounced and expelled.”

Grant’s men forced 30 Jewish families in that one town alone to pack up and move out. Mass evacuations were also carried out in Mississippi and Tennessee. Across the three states, thousands of Jews headed north – some by train, some by carriage and some on foot.

“Their situation must have revived the history of their unfortunate people during the 12^th, 13^th and 14^th centuries,” the Times reported, “when England, France and Austria successively followed each other in decrees against them of banishment and persecution.”

On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves.

Three days later, he instructed Henry Halleck, General-in-Chief of the Army, to send Gen. Grant a telegram. The message stated: “A paper purporting to be General Orders, No. 11, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its terms, it expels all Jews from your Department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.”

Three days after that, Grant rescinded Order No. 11. The first – and last – American Diaspora was over.

Six years later, Grant became the 18^th president of the United States.

June 20, 2013

From Austria’s first serial killer, Hugo Schenk, to the internationally shocking case of Joseph Fritzl.       

by Faye Karavasili

Austria is widely known mostly for its flowing waltzes and tasty schnitzel. When one walks through its cobbled pavements it is very hard to imagine that this is the same country that, alongside Mozart and Freud, has unleashed depraved monsters such as Jack Unterweger and Joseph Fritzl.

That slightly more disturbing side of the country can be visible to those who want to see throughout history. An excellent record of the country’s criminal history is preserved and reaches all the way to the Habsburg dynasty times with verdicts published in the local newspapers. Within it, both the criminal history of the land and the ensuing legislative adjustments brought about unfold.

During the Habsburg years of the monarchy, 1809 – 1918, crime seems to have been limited to common robberies going wrong or wretches with rat poison doing away with their husbands or rivals for the attention of a gentleman. Often charges were complimented by sorcery accusations.   Executions of violent offenders of either gender were rather commonplace.

Austria’s First Serial Killers

Austria’s first serial killer, at least on record, appears on the scene around 1883. Hugo Schenk began his criminal career with petty frauds at the age of 21. He was sentenced but later pardoned and when he teamed up with Karl Schlossarek, whom he met in prison, murder was not too far away.

Together the pair murdered four domestic helpers. A handsome lad, Schenk had no trouble attracting the attention of the ladies. Charming them into believing his intentions were honorable was not a difficult task for the experienced conman. During a puritanical time when such affairs of the heart needed to be conducted in secrecy, he could move in the shadows.

His method was simple. He would charm the girl, make her believe marriage was imminent and ask her to gather all her belongings (including all of her savings) and meet him at a remote part of the city, or indeed, in the countryside. Then he would rape and rob her. With Schlossarek’s help he would then murder the woman and conceal her body in the wilderness or throw it into the Danube. Both men were arrested and hanged on April 22, 1884. (An almost copycat killer, Max Gulfer, adopted a very similar modus operandi in the 1950s.)

Martha Marek

Another sensational for the time case was this of Martha Marek and her husband Emil. It started out as a routine insurance related case when, in 1925, Emil lost one of his legs due to an accident. Shortly before the accident, he and his wife Martha had taken out an insurance policy worth a hefty sum of money. The experts, however, insisted there was conclusive evidence that the limb was removed deliberately and not only refused to pay the money but they also ensured Martha Marek landed in prison for attempted fraud. Soon enough a compromise was achieved and Martha was allowed to return home to her husband. In the meantime, and while in prison, she had become acquainted with Leopoldine Lichtenstein who had murdered her husband with rat poison. It was later widely rumored that it had been this meeting which had inspired Martha to murder her entire family.

Shortly after she was released from prison, her husband Emil unexpectedly died. He had been suffering from ill health as a consequence of his leg’s amputation – intentional or not – so nobody suspected foul play and sympathy for the young widow poured in, along with the money to support the headless family. She played her role impeccably and took it a notch further, poisoning her own daughter, prompting further expressions of support, monetary or otherwise, after her death. Still, that was not enough and soon the widow found herself in dire need of more cash. It is assumed that her pathological greed was linked to a poor childhood. She had the need to maintain a high standard of living, one she could not really afford. She would get into debt habitually. 

Desperate again for money, she grew careless and resorted to the same scam which had landed her in trouble in the first place. She took an insurance policy in the name of her tenant, Felicitas Kittenberger, who, unsurprisingly enough died after a short and unexpected illness. This time around though, there was an autopsy, the results of which proved that the strikes of fate around Marek had not been fate at all. All bodies were exhumed and the evidence piled against her.

Loyal to Austrian tradition, her death sentence was converted to life imprisonment because she was a woman. This was overturned when Adolf Hitler seized power and her original penalty was reinstated. Martha Marek was decapitated on December 6, 1938.

Alfred Engleder – “The Hammer Rapist”

Prompted by an “intense hatred and contempt” towards women, the first major case of serial rape and murder after the war was that of the aptly named “hammer rapist,” Alfred Engleder, who was born in 1920 in the rural area of Steyr, Austria. He would follow the same pattern every time. He would approach his unsuspecting victims riding a bike, he would then hit them on the head with a hammer, rendering them unconscious. He would then rape them. One of his, altogether six, victims succumbed to the injuries sustained during the attack and shortly afterward Engleder was apprehended after yet another – this time unsuccessful – attempt. Later on, life was to play a somewhat ironic game on the man who hated women as he met his own demise after being stabbed by his latest girlfriend. He had previously been convicted to a life sentence, being conditionally released after 26 years in custody.

Murders in Favoriten

The most sensational story of the 1980s was no doubt incorporating every parent’s worst fear. Three consecutive years, three young girls found murdered and sexually molested in similar fashion and within a close radius from one another in the otherwise peaceful district of Favoriten. Year by year the victim was getting younger, starting with 20-year-old Alexandra Schriefl, found naked, abused, and choked with her own pantyhose tied to a tree on October 27, 1988. The murder shocked the close knit community but efforts to discover the identity of her killer were initially unsuccessful.

In 1989, another gruesome finding came to remind Vienna that a killer was on the loose. Choked in a similar fashion, sexually molested and tied to the railings of a building’s staircase, 10-year-old Cristina Beranek was discovered by her own father on February 2, 1989. The child, just like Alexandra, had been strangled with her own clothing. That murder too went unresolved, in spite of a massive investigation launched by Vienna’s criminal police, including the offering of a significant bounty.

The third victim was 8-year-old Nicole Strau, found on December 22, 1990 in a wooded area. She too had been raped and strangled with her own shoelaces. Efforts intensified and the area was gripped by fear at the, almost inescapable certainty that a sadistic serial killer was operating in the area. However, this was proven not to be the case. After the random arrest of an individual named Herbert P. for an unrelated offense in 2000 and the obligatory DNA samples obtained by him, linked him directly to the rape and murder of Alexandra Schriefl. As it turns out he had been – erroneously – classified in the wrong blood group by mistake when he had been examined back in 1988, thus excluding him from the pool of suspects. Once again, the investigation was reopened and, while Herbert P. was found not to have been the perpetrator of the other two murders, the resolution of the murder of 8-year-old Nicole was not far off. A man named Michael P., at the time romantically linked to the girl’s aunt was questioned once again. Back then, it had appeared that he had an alibi, but authorities reexamined evidence and deemed his refusal to provide with a DNA sample suspicious. Indeed, the man refused a second time around until a judge signed court order brought about the inevitable and the second killer was identified.

What was really extraordinary in these cases was the utter confusion of the jury of lay people concerning DNA science and its application. Especially in the case of Nicole. A certain and crystal clear conviction was almost lost for the prosecutor as jurors struggled with the scientific evidence before them. Regarding the rape charges, and even though a perfect DNA match was available, one juror voted for the defendant’s innocence, not entirely convinced that a one in a billion chance for two individuals to have the same DNA sequence was conclusive enough. Two additional jurors refused to find the accused guilty on the grounds that the DNA evidence only indicated he was the perpetrator of the rape and not necessarily the murder. The trial prompted fierce debate around the problem of extreme reliance on DNA evidence exclusively by jurors who may be inclined to believe trial depictions on fictional shows such as “CSI” are entirely accurate.

The murder of Christina Beranek was never found, as no DNA evidence was available to link either man to her murder. It had also been assumed at some point that the girl was one of the victims of serial killer Wolfgang Ott who was terrorizing and murdering young girls throughout Austria, but this too could never be positively proven.

“Angels of Death”

A slightly different criminal affair stirred a different kind of controversy in the 1980s. The sheer volume of the death toll was, at the time, as unimaginable for the country, as its perpetrators were unlikely. When a rumor began to circulate about a series of murders taking place underneath the nose of the establishment within the sanctuary of the hospital of Lainz the management did not quite believe it. Especially since those boasting the act seemed rather amused by their wicked deeds and eager to find even more victims.

The truth turned out to be uglier than anyone could imagine. It all began when one of the terminally ill patients asked nurse Waltraud Wagner, 23, to help her end her life in dignity. She complied and administered the patient a lethal dose of morphine, viewing her act as a “mercy deed” and thus perfectly justifiable. She did not stop there. Joined by three female colleagues, the murderous company would habitually seek out the meek and the frail and murder them in cold blood. Sometimes they would use insulin, other times sedatives.

Wagner was eventually charged with 32 separate counts of murder (even though she confessed to more than that. Expert testimonies indicate the group’s victims may have been more than a hundred), after bodies were exhumed and the real cause of their death was determined. The women rightfully earned their press nickname, “angels of death,” and insisted their actions were motivated purely by empathy for the terminally ill whose quality of life had deteriorated beyond salvation or even tolerance. All four women were eventually convicted and incarcerated. Today all four of them have been released on probation, relocated and changed their names in an attempt to start a new life. They were released in 2008 after remaining in prison for 17 years.

Modern times are certainly not lacking in either gore or violence, and even though savaged by the World War II, Austria had plenty a moment when a criminal case has attracted international attention or has prompted vigorous debate and parliamentary interventions. Prominent cases include amok killings of the innocent, serial offenders and, of course, the notorious abduction cases of Natascha Kampusch and Josef Fritzl and celebrity serial killer Jack Unterweger.

 “The Vienna Woods Killer” – Jack Unterweger

Jack Unterweger, otherwise known as ‘the Vienna woods killer’ is possibly Austria’s most prominent serial killer. Indeed, his murderous activities spread well beyond the borders of Austria, reaching even the United States. He murdered numerous prostitutes by choking them with their own panty hose or brassiere and mostly dumped their bodies around the Vienna woods area (which earned him his nickname), between 1990 and 1994 when he was finally arrested.

Unterweger spent much of his youth in and out of prison, sustaining convictions mainly for sexual assaults. In 1976 he was sentenced to life with no parole for the murder of a woman. He spent 15 years in prison, developing a charming persona and secured the support of Vienna’s intellectual elite. He was released in 1990, as a stellar example that rehabilitation works, and proceeded to become a celebrity. He murdered four women just on the year of his early release. His killer’s trademark had been the unusually tied knot on the women’s undergarments used to choke them found on every crime scene. He committed suicide before a conviction was secured, leaving the ultimate proof behind him as he hung himself: the same unusual knot.

The Abduction of Natascha Kampusch

The abduction of 10-year-old schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch in 1998 shook Austria to its foundations. The child was taken by a man in a white van while she was on the way to school. In spite of intensive searches and extensive publicity she was not to be found. A deranged man, Wolfgang Priklopil, had kidnapped her and kept her locked in his cellar for eight years. He used the young girl as his own personal slave. Initially, Kampusch was not allowed to leave the tiny cellar underneath the perpetrator’s garage, but gradually she was allowed into the main house where she also interacted with a friend. She even took a ski trip with her abductor at some point but Kampusch felt unable to escape since she was under constant surveillance and she was being threatened. She finally managed to escape on August 23, 2006, and to seek refuge at a neighbor’s home. Priklopil committed suicide by throwing himself on the train tracks to avoid apprehension and Kampusch achieved celebrity status.

A Symbol of Pure Evil – Josef Fritzl

Josef Fritzl went from example of a respectable elderly family man to synonym for pure evil when a series of events led to the unveiling of a gruesome tale of captivity, rape and incest which catapulted him to notoriety. When his eldest daughter Elizabeth disappeared, nobody believed anything bad had happened to her. She had always been rebellious and often clashed with her strict father. Besides, a number of letters written by her indicated she had just run away. In reality, Elizabeth was being kept captive in a soundproof cellar underneath her family’s condominium complex by her own father who raped and terrorized her regularly.

In the course of 24 years, Fritzl had fathered a total of seven children with his daughter. One of them, a boy named Michael died, as he did not receive proper medical care, and was incinerated by Fritzl on his property. Three of the children were removed from the cellar and lived in the family home. Fritzl had claimed to have found the children on his doorstep with notes written by his daughter pleading with him to raise them for her as she was herself unable to. Three more children were kept captive in the basement along with their mother. The tragedy was revealed when Fritzl was forced to take the eldest of these children to a hospital after a serious illness. He was subsequently arrested and convicted to life imprisonment.

Although Austria is, relatively speaking, a peaceful and safe country, it, like human nature, possesses two distinct faces, the elegant and more sophisticated one concealing the darker, more sinister side of the same coin. But when the dark side makes an appearance in the person of Jack Unterweger or Josef Fritzl, it seems the whole world notices.

June 24, 2013

An excerpt from the book American El Dorado: The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872.

by Ron Elliott

Preface

Many years ago, I saw a televised interview in which a famous novelist discussed the differences between fiction and nonfiction.  One of the points he made was that, as there are as many similarities as differences, the line often becomes somewhat blurred. While that is true, the main issue is that in writing fiction, one gets to make up the facts. Still, there are rules.  Once something becomes a fact, even if the writer made it so, for the duration of that work it must remain a fact. If the woman’s eyes are blue and her hair is blond, for example, the eyes must remain blue, whatever she does with her hair. The most important rule, perhaps, is that even created “facts” must be feasible. Every novelist knows that a reader will not stick with a story if the “facts” are too improbable to be believed.

Well, then. What does one do with a true story wherein the actual historical facts are indeed too far-fetched to be believed? All I can do is report the facts as I found them, stick an endnote on it to provide a trail to the source and assure the reader that throughout this entire narrative, other than the conversation, I made up nothing. Although the history herein is offered as accurate, many times through the context of this book, you’ll sit back and ask, “How could that have possibly happened?  Is that a product of imagination?” As the author, I feel obligated to answer the readers’ questions, but with this story, I can only tell you that I don’t know how these things happened, only that they did happen. Or at least one of the people involved said that it did happen. While I cannot say that some of the events are not a product of Philip Arnold or Asbury Harpending’s imagination, I can promise that I didn’t make it up.

One of the few I can explain is how Philip Arnold managed to make investors believe that he’d actually found an “American El Dorado.” The idea was not as fantastic in 1870 as it sounds to me and you. In the first place, who knew there was gold in California until it showed up at Sutter’s Mill in 1848?  Who knew there was silver in Nevada until the Comstock Lode was discovered a decade later? So, then in 1870, who was to say that there were not diamonds to be found somewhere in the largely unexplored American West? And, if such a place did exist, human nature being what it is, everyone who was offered the opportunity would certainly want to be in on the ground floor. Add in the fact that Arnold had taken the trouble to have a San Francisco jeweler certify that his sample consisted of real diamonds and he was off and running. From there, the “great diamond hoax” became a viable concern, sustained by its own momentum.

Two aspects of the story that struck me as most interesting are worth a mention here. I agree with Asbury Harpending that if Philip Arnold had elected to go on the stage, he would have without question been one of the greatest actors of the 19^th century. He played his part perfectly every step of the process, educated himself sufficiently to locate a feasible diamond field, acceded to the investors’ demands when proper and made his own demands when he could get away with it. The other, even more remarkable, is how he managed to keep a straight face through some of the events, such as when Mr. Tiffany produced his evaluation of the diamond sample he examined at $150,000. By extension, that meant that the last haul from the diamond field was worth $1,500,000! It would take a great actor to swallow that while knowing he’d invested only about $8,000 in the entire package.

So, here’s the story of the great diamond hoax. Enjoy it as you shake your head and observe, along with Shakespeare’s Puck, “What fools these mortals be.”

Chapter 1

Wednesday, November 30, 1870[i]

San Francisco, California

San Francisco’s famous fog crept slowly up from the bay, first filling the low spots, then obscuring the mud, then enveloping the board sidewalks and eventually swallowing the buildings and the entire landscape. Through the swirling mist and rain two huddled figures walked east on California Street.

“I hate bein’ in town,” said the shorter man. “It stinks.”

“Well, you don’t smell none too pretty yourself,” commented the other. Unconsciously, he patted the bulge beneath his coat to insure himself that his precious cargo was still there. After a few steps, he added, “I agree with you though, John.  I ‘specially hate this town – you can’t tell if it’s winter or summer around here. I can stand fog and I can stand rain, but the two of ‘em together is almost too much.”

The other man grunted. “Wanna go back to Kentucky, Cousin?”

Again he patted the lump at his waist. “If my plan works out, we’ll be home again soon enough.” They walked a few steps in silence before he added, “And in grand style, too.”

‘”Do you really think they’ll go for it, Phil? These California investment boys didn’t get to be as rich as they are by bein’ fools, you know.”

“You’re right, they ain’t fools. But George Roberts did get to be a millionaire by recognizin’ an opportunity when he sees one and not bein’ slow to jump in. Besides, greed is one of mankind’s great motivators and I’m sure that how many ever millions he’s got ain’t enough. In addition, I’ve gone to some trouble to make sure that what we’ve been out in the wilds doin’ ain’t no big secret.”

“As grubby as we smell and look, it’d be hard to keep anybody from suspectin’ that we’ve been out prospectin’. Why did you have to wait ‘til this time of night?  A man could get robbed, you know.” John Slack glanced anxiously around into the mist.

“Yeah,” Phil agreed, again checking the package inside his coat.  “Just leave it to me -- I’ll do all the talking. You just sit there and try to look like you don’t approve of the whole thing. If Roberts asks you anything directly, be as vague as you can. At any rate, don’t tell him nothin’.”

As the pair neared a street intersection, Arnold peered down the cross street. “This ain’t it,” he concluded, “we got another block to go.”

“What makes you think he’ll even be in his office this late? This ain’t no time of night to be doin’ business.”

“All part of the plan,” Arnold assured. “I sent him a telegram yesterday tellin’ him that we be in town tonight with some important business and asked him to wait in his office for us. As I said, just leave it all to me. Hold it, this is the place.”

The pair stepped off the board sidewalk into the deep mud of the street.  Across the way, a weak beam of light from the gas jet penetrated a few feet out the window into the swirling mist. Arnold rattled the door knob.  Finding the door locked, he knocked loudly.

“Who is it?” came from within.

“Philip Arnold and John Slack.”

Immediately the bolt slid back and the door opened. The men blinked as the light seemed very bright in contrast to the drifting fog in which they been walking.  In the doorway stood George Roberts, a short chubby man dressed in a spotless business suit. His roundish belly pushed his plaid vest out so far that his white shirt was exposed at the waist. “Why, hello Phil.”  He beckoned them to enter.  After shaking hands with Arnold, he turned to Slack. “Good to see you both again,” he said without enthusiasm, eyeing their disheveled appearance and the rifle Slack carried in the crook of his arm. Moving behind his desk, he motioned to the chairs opposite. “So, what’s all the excitement about?”

“Sorry to be so much trouble,” Arnold began hesitantly, “but I knew it’d too late to get to the bank by the time we got the ferry across the bay, and you’re a man I trust.”

Roberts smiled approvingly as he polished his glasses on a handkerchief. “Thanks, Phil, no trouble at all. Always happy to accommodate a friend. Besides, the three of us have had enough gold and silver mining adventures to satisfy me of your honesty and reputation.” Replacing the spectacles on his nose, he leaned his elbows on the desk.  “Now, what can I do for you?’

“Well,” Arnold drew the word out as he exhaled. “I know you’ve got a strong safe in the office here….”

“Why certainly you’re welcome to store your gold dust in my safe,” Roberts broke in. He leaned back him his chair and waited, a little relieved that storing gold dust was all the prospectors wanted.

Arnold hesitated a long moment before he spoke. “It ain’t exactly gold,” he admitted.

Slack spoke his first words since they’d entered the office. “And it ain’t silver, neither.” He started to add something else, but a sharp look from Arnold cut him off.

The relief in Roberts’ eyes vanished. Deeply intrigued now, he again leaned toward his two visitors. He studied Arnold’s face and then Slack’s but could discern no hint of their secret. Then he noticed Arnold once again checking the bundle beneath his coat. He decided to take a stab: “I’ve heard rumors that you boys have been out prospectin’ for diamonds.”

“Why, hell George,” Arnold said with a disgusted grunt. “Ever’body knows there ain’t no diamonds in this country.” He tried to let the mention of the word “diamonds” show no change in his demeanor.

“I don’t know that,” Roberts exclaimed, while he studied Arnold’s face for any sign. “But I do know that back in our gold minin’ days up around Placerville—of course it was called ‘Dry Diggings’ in those days – we used to find a diamond now and then when we washed out the dirt[ii]. Everybody knew that there wasn’t any gold hereabouts, either, ‘til that feller found it up at Sutter’s Mill back in ’48. Everybody knew there was no silver in Nevada ‘til the Comstock lode came in. Now, they’s gold and silver aplenty around here right enough, isn’t there? I was fortunate enough to make a bundle on the Comstock, so who’s to say there ain’t diamonds included in the West’s mineral wealth?”

“Clarence King’s United States Geological Survey, for one,” Arnold said knowingly.

“Yeah, I read that report,” Roberts said with a sigh. “But they admitted that they can’t say for sure. There are locations around where the geology is similar to the diamond fields in South Africa. The Government also said that while it might not pay a man to go out lookin’ for diamonds, if he did happen to see one just layin’ on the ground. it’d be worth his while to bend over and pick it up.”

Arnold turned to stare at his partner as if seeking Slack’s approval. Slack’s expression did not change nor did he even look at Arnold, seemingly mesmerized by the fog drifting by the window. After a moment, Arnold sighed as he snatched his hat from the floor and rose from his chair. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Roberts” he said, motioning Slack to get up.  “I reckon we’ll just be getting’ on.”

“Hold on now,” Roberts shouted, jumping around the desk to grasp Arnold’s arm. “You said you have something you want to store in my safe and you’re perfectly welcome to do so.” As Arnold took another step toward the door, Roberts added, “There are plenty of desperadoes hanging around here, you know. They think nothing of killing a man for whatever might be in his pockets.”

Arnold stopped. Again he looked at Slack for a long moment. “Well,” he began, then stepped purposely toward the door. “Thank you kindly Mr. Roberts, but I suppose we’ll just take our chances.”

“Phil,” Slack seemed to have to force himself to speak, “don’t be a fool. Mr. Roberts is our friend and he does have a point. I felt sure somebody was followin’ us on the way over here.”

Arnold glared disapprovingly at his partner. Then with a sigh, he slowly brought forth the buckskin parcel from beneath his muddy coat. “Would you hold this ‘til I can get to Mr. Ralston’s bank in the morning?” He made no offer to hand the package over to Roberts.

“Certainly, certainly,” the investor gushed, reaching for the pouch. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve got here.”

“NO!” Arnold shouted, jerking away. “What’s in it ain’t none of your affair.”

“I’m not just being nosey,” Roberts said contritely. “But I got to know what it is.  If you come back tomorrow and I have no idea what you left with me, you could claim that I stole half of your goods.”

Realizing the truth of that observation, Arnold’s attitude softened a bit. “You know I wouldn’t do that, George. But I do see your point.” He considered a moment before going on, “Tell you what, give me some that ribbon you’ve got in the drawer and I’ll wrap it in a way that I’ll know if the package has been opened.”

“All right,” Roberts agreed, “fair enough.” He opened a desk drawer and handed Arnold a length of yellow tape. “Wrap ‘er any way you like with this.”

Arnold sat again and made a show of tying an elaborate knot around the mouth of the buckskin pouch. “I guess that’ll do,” he announced handing the package to Roberts. “You keep it safe now and we’ll be back in the morning.”

“You can rest easy tonight,” Roberts assured, resting the package caringly in both hands. “It’ll be right here for you whenever you want it.”

“Thank you kindly, George,” Arnold said shaking hands. “If you don’t mind, I’d like a receipt.”

“What?” Roberts exclaimed, stopping. “How can I give you a receipt when I don’t even know what you’ve left here?”

“Just say ‘a package of great value,’” Arnold instructed.

“Well, I guess I can do that.” Roberts placed the pouch in the safe, banged the door closed and spun the dial. With a satisfied glance at his two visitors, he walked to the desk and scribbled on a sheet of paper. “Here you go,” he said, offering the receipt to Arnold.

“We appreciate your help and good judgment. You got to promise you won’t say nothin’ about this,” Arnold returned his smile. Slack also smiled as he shook the investor’s hand.

“You may rely on my integrity and discretion,” Roberts assured. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The pair of prospectors walked out the door into the drifting moisture outside. “You know that ribbon ain’t gonna keep him out of our goods, “ Slack opined.

“Hush up,” Arnold hissed, grasping his partner’s arm to hurry him up the street. When he determined they’d moved out of earshot, he said, “I’m countin’ on the ribbon not keepin’ him out. If I’m any judge of human nature, I’ll lay odds that he’s got that pouch busted open by now and the contents dumped out on his desk. Since we told him to keep it a secret, I’ll also bet that he’ll bust a gut to get over to the Bank of California and tell his buddy Ralston about it.”

“You don’t reckon he’ll steal our goods?”

After a few hurried steps, Arnold answered, “No, he wouldn’t do that.” After a few steps he gleefully added, “But I’d give a gold goose egg to see the sparkle in Roberts’ greedy eyes right now as he tries to figure out how to cut hisself in on our find!”

Slack laughed.  “Well, he promised not to look and not to tell, so how the hell is he gonna cut himself in on somethin’ he don’t even know exists?”[iii]

June 1, 2013

Italian Hall, December 1913

by David Robb

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is cold in the winter, with temperatures often dipping below zero, but Christmas Eve 1913 was particularly cold. The region’s 9,000 unionized copper miners – mostly immigrants from Italy, Poland and Croatia – had been on strike against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company for nearly six months. Times were tough, but they were about to turn tragic.

The strike had been bloody and violent from the beginning. Strikers attacked and intimidated strike-breakers, and local deputies attacked and intimidated the strikers. The National Guard had been called in to keep the peace, but most of them were recalled in August. Mother Jones, the famous labor and community organizer, had joined the picket lines, but the day she left, two strikers were gunned down and killed by local deputies. As the strike dragged on, more and more of the strikers’ wives and children took to the picket lines to keep the company’s guards from beating their husbands and fathers. It didn’t help. During one melee, a 12-year-old girl was shot and nearly killed.

In good times, the little copper-mining town of Calumet was a company town. Now it was like a company prison. Armed thugs hired by the company patrolled the streets, along with members of the Citizen’s Alliance – a vigilante group funded by the company to break the strike.

Fire!

Christmas Eve 1913 promised a brief respite from the daily battles. The union – the Western Federation of Miners – announced that it would hold a Christmas party that evening for the strikers’ children at the Italian Hall in Calumet. They’d decorated a huge Christmas tree and wrapped presents for all of the kids. On the night of the party, 700 people – including more than 400 children – jammed the hall’s large upstairs auditorium for the festivities.

Therese Sizer, the wife of one of the striking miners, was standing on a table near the front of the stage trying to restrain the rush of children toward the giant Christmas tree, when she heard someone yell “Fire!” The room was noisy, but the shout rose loud and clear above the din. She turned instantly and saw who shouted “Fire!” – a man with a mustache, medium height and wearing dark clothes. She’d never seen him before. He wasn’t one of the strikers.

She leapt from the table, ran to the man and seized him by the shoulders.

“Man, man, what are you doing?” she exclaimed, panic rising in her voice.

“There is a fire,” he replied nonchalantly.

“No! No!” she cried, trying to push him down into a chair.

But by this time, the cry of “Fire!” was being repeated excitedly throughout the hall, and in a mad surge, hundreds of people rushed to get out.

The main exit was a narrow stairway at the back of the hall, leading down to the doors at the street. In the scramble, a child fell in the stairway and others fell over her. Within seconds, the narrow stairway became clogged with bodies as people crawled over one another, filling the stairway to the ceiling.

The stairway

There was no fire, but in the resulting stampede, 73 people – including 59 children and 13 women – were killed.    

The scene on Christmas Day, the day after the stampede

The next day, Charles Moyer, president of the miners’ union, charged that the Citizens Alliance had sent one of their men into the hall to yell “Fire!” in order to disrupt the festivities. A few days later, Moyer was beaten up, shot, dragged through the streets of Calumet and thrown onto a train bound for Chicago.   

The local coroner held an inquest and several witnesses testified that the man who shouted “Fire!” that fatal Christmas Eve wore a white badge on his coat signifying that he was a member of the Citizens Alliance vigilante group.

John Burcar, a 15-year-old boy whose 12-year-old sister Victoria died in the stampede, told a coroner’s inquest that he saw the man who did it.

“He hollered ‘Fire!’ and then ran out,” the boy said. “I ran out too. He had an Alliance button on his coat.”

Frank Schaltz, another boy who’d been in the hall that night, said he also saw the man who shouted “Fire!” and recalled having seen him in town a few weeks before the panic, carrying a club.

Mrs. John Koski said she saw the man too. He was wearing a blue coat and a white badge. “It looked like an Alliance button,” she said, “but I was too far away to read it.”

Eric Erickson testified that he saw two men in the doorway wearing Citizens Alliance insignia shortly after the call of fire.

Many years later, folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the tragedy called “1913 Massacre,” in which he laid the blame squarely at the feet of strike-breaking thugs.

     The copper boss thugs stuck their heads in the door,

     One of them yelled and he screamed, "There's a fire!"

     A lady she hollered, "There's no such a thing;

     Keep on with your party, there's no such a thing."

     A few people rushed and there's only a few,

     "It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you."

     A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down,

     But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.

     And then others followed, about a hundred or more,

     But most everybody remained on the floor.

     The gun thugs, they laughed at their murderous joke,

     And the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.

The strike was broken; no one was charged and there was never a trial, and to this day the Italian Hall Disaster remains the most deadly stampede in American history, and the nation’s worst unsolved mass murder.

This Christmas Eve of 2013 will mark its 100^th anniversary.

July 8, 2013

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger wormed his way into Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign by volunteering to act as the Republican’s mole at the Paris peace negotiations to end the Vietnam War. Kissinger’s betrayal of President Johnson’s trust helped secure the election for Nixon and resulted in the war dragging on to its ignominious end in 1975.

by Don Fulsom

The traitor question at the heart of the debate over the behavior of today’s top leaker of classified data—NSA contractor Edward Snowden—could, justifiably, also be asked about the clandestine1968 activities of Harvard professor Henry Kissinger.

The politically ambitious Kissinger—a protégé of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller—was then a trusted advisor to Democratic President Lyndon Johnson at the critical Vietnam peace negotiations in Paris. But the brilliant foreign policy expert actually had dual loyalties in that sensitive mission: He also served as a mole for Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon. 

From Paris, Kissinger regularly fed highly classified intelligence on the talks to Nixon, who used it in back-channel communications with South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu to prevent any pre-election progress toward peace by the Democrats.

A circumspect spy, the Harvard professor always used pay phones and spoke exclusively in German to his young Nixon campaign contact, Richard Allen (who spoke that language even better than the German-born Kissinger).  Allen recalls that Kissinger “offloaded almost every night what had happened that day in Paris.” 

These leaks of top-secret information were of immense assistance to Richard Nixon.  The paranoid GOP contender was eager to use any and all means—including Kissinger’s furtive reports and advice—to keep LBJ from pulling an “October Surprise” that could end the increasingly unpopular fighting on the faraway battlefields. (A half-million U.S. troops were on the ground in South Vietnam; and the war was going poorly.)

David Davidson, a delegate to the Paris talks says that, in using Kissinger for intel and guidance, the Nixon team had a highly professional and accurate source for inside information:  “Kissinger shared his analysis of what was happening with (the talks). And he was probably by far the most brilliant mind available to them, and the most sophisticated analyst.”

For Nixon, any meaningful move toward peace might end his longtime White House dreams.  The Republican nominee rightly feared that any Democratic breakthrough at Paris in October could well propel his opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, to victory in November.

At the turn of this century, without knowing the full story of Nixon’s anti-peace moves, Christopher Hitchens asserted that the Republican candidate’s “illegal and surreptitious conduct not only prolonged an awful war but also corrupted and subverted a crucial presidential election.  The combination,” he added, “must make it the most wicked action in American history.”

Henry Kissinger did not have to have his arm twisted to become Nixon’s 1968 Paris spymaster. Indeed, as Nixon-Kissinger go-between Richard Allen later observed, the esteemed academic had “on his own, volunteered information to us” on the negotiations.  This account jibes with that of Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose, who writes that Kissinger “approached John Mitchell … and said he was eager to pass on information to the Nixon camp, if his role could be kept confidential.” 

In his revised and updated Vietnam:  A History, Stanley Karnow agrees—stating that Kissinger “contacted the Republicans, offering to furnish them with covert information on Johnson’s moves … and Kissinger guided the Republicans secretly on the Vietnam issue for nearly two months—thus supplying Nixon with ammunition to blast Humphrey for ‘playing politics with war.’”

What did Allen do with the reams of unsolicited intelligence he got from Kissinger?  At first, he briefed Nixon personally at the candidate’s Manhattan apartment. He wound up summarizing each Kissinger phone call in writing to Nixon and John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign manager.

In his memos, Allen stressed the importance of keeping Kissinger’s involvement “absolutely confidential.”  Many years later, Allen ruefully conceded to Nixon biographer Walter Isaacson, “I became a handmaiden of Henry Kissinger’s drive for power.”  In a separate interview, Allen offered some backhanded praise for Kissinger’s courage: “It took some balls to give us those tips” because it was “a pretty dangerous thing for him to be screwing around with national security.”

Kissinger, of course, went on to become President Nixon’s national security advisor. As Kissinger’s top deputy, the new president chose Kissinger’s German-speaking co-conspirator in the anti-peace leaks from Paris.  Kissinger is now 90; Allen—who wound up as President Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor—is 77.

The first journalist to reveal Kissinger’s 1968 espionage was Seymour Hersh. “It is certain,” Hersh declared in his1983 book, The Price of Power, “that the Nixon campaign, alerted by Kissinger to the impending success of the peace talks, was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government (in Saigon) making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on the peace negotiations.”

 Kissinger denounced Hersh’s book as a pack of “slimy lies,” but he did not specifically deny being a spy for Nixon in Paris.

Hersh struck back in a 2002 TV interview: “Do I think (Kissinger) saw what he did as a betrayal of the peace process, or the move by Johnson to start the bombing halt?  Um.  I really think this guy doesn’t see it that way.  He saw it as a means to an end—which is why he’s such a good apparatchik.  He then was getting that job (as Nixon’s top national security advisor).

Just how did Nixon use the fruits of Kissinger’s 1968 duplicity?  Every time peace seemed to be at hand in Paris that fall, he pressed President Thieu not to send a delegation to the talks because his government would get a better deal under a Nixon presidency.  

The GOP nominee’s emissary to the South Vietnamese leader was a good friend of Thieu—Anna Chennault, a high-ranking Nixon campaigner.  Also known as the “Dragon Lady,” the beautiful Chinese-born widow of an American war hero usually got Nixon’s “don’t go” messages (through Mitchell) to Thieu by way of South Vietnam’s ambassador to Washington, Bui Diem.

In the waning days of the election campaign, when President Johnson got wind of this seamy arrangement, he blew up and ordered FBI wiretaps placed on Chennault’s phone and had her tailed.  Information from the taps—and from NSA intercepts and CIA eavesdropping—gave LBJ “smoking gun” evidence of Nixon’s treachery. 

Though he was evidently unaware of Kissinger’s role in the ultimately successful operation (South Vietnam refused to attend the talks, and Nixon edged out Humphrey in the voting), Johnson privately labeled the activity “treason” and said Nixon had “blood on his hands.”

President Johnson declined to blow the whistle on Nixon, however, because he didn’t want to endanger the talks; cripple Nixon’s presidency before it even began; or “rock the world” by disclosing U.S. intelligence “sources and methods.”

Secretary of State Dean Rusk provided Johnson with another reason:  “I do not believe that any President can make use of interceptions and telephone taps in any way that would involve politics. The moment we pass over that divide, we are in a different kind of society.” 

Only in recent years has the complete sordid saga of Nixon’s efforts to sabotage the 1968 peace talks trickled out. In fact, LBJ’s observation that the Nixon forces had committed “treason” was not learned of until the LBJ Library released a batch of audiotapes in 2008.

Treason, however, evidently was the appropriate word to use.  (The nation’s top elected Republican, Senator Everett Dirksen, agreed with Johnson’s description).

After all, the highest crime one can commit against his country is described in the Constitution as giving “aid and comfort” to the enemy.  And the subversion of negotiations with a foreign power in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy sure seems like something that could benefit an enemy. 

The top penalty for treason is death.  But a traitor could get off with as few as five years in prison, a fine of $10,000, “and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

What President Johnson called “treason” could also be considered a war crime. More than 20,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Indochinese died as a result of Nixon’s successful effort to steal the 1968 election.  The Vietnam fighting continued—and was even expanded to Laos and Cambodia—until 1975, when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon … and America lost its first war.

Nixon was never brought to justice for his Kissinger-aided 1968 anti-peace maneuvering—actions not covered by a 1974 pardon for his multitude of presidential sins.  That’s because the former President died in 1994—many years before most of the 1968 evidence against him was made public. So history will have to judge our 37^th president on that score.

Kissinger is still “at large,” however.  But, sadly, he’s still too highly admired as an international celebrity and legendary diplomat to realistically fear being punished for any crime at this late date.

July 11, 2013

Special to Crime Magazine: An excerpt taken from the introduction, summary and conclusion of Intergenerational Transmission of Criminal and Violent Behavior (published by Sidestone Press February, 2013).

by Sytske Besemer

Introduction

“She’s going to end up like me. I do not want her to live that life. I do not want her to be out there making money or using drugs or running in and out of jail.”

(Giordano, 2010, p. 152)

Children whose parents exhibit criminal behavior have an increased risk of becoming criminal themselves. Criminal or antisocial parents appear to be the strongest family factor predicting offending. Similarly with aggression, children of aggressive parents tend to become aggressive. Although many studies have shown the existence of this phenomenon, little research has focused on the mechanisms underlying this transmission. This dissertation investigates mechanisms that might explain intergenerational transmission of criminal and violent behavior.

Crime and violent behavior is widespread in our society: in the Netherlands as well as in England and Wales about 25 percent of the population become victims of a crime every year, and between 3 to 5 percent experience a violent offense. It is increasingly recognized that especially being victimized by a violent crime can have long-term physical, emotional, practical and financial consequences.

Because of these profound negative consequences for those who are often the most vulnerable members of society, such as children, it is important to design effective interventions to reduce violent and criminal behavior. To do this, a more comprehensive understanding of the aetiology of such behaviour is necessary. This study contributes to that effort by providing knowledge about the development of violent and criminal behavior and pointing to relevant factors and mechanisms that a prevention program could tackle.

In addition, most intervention programs are targeted at individual offenders. A greater understanding of the mechanisms that cause children of violent or criminal parents to become violent or criminal themselves would enable interventions that would operate not only at the level of the offender, but at his or her entire family system.

Intergenerational Transmission

Intergenerational transmission does not literally mean that something physical is transmitted, such as a car or money, but means that some characteristic or behavior is seen in both the parent and the child. Intergenerational transmission is also referred to as intergenerational continuity. Intergenerational transmission of behavior can be wide ranging, from socioeconomic status, education, mental health status, parenting behaviors, substance use, to criminal behavior.

In this study, I have investigated mechanisms that might explain why children with criminal parents have a higher risk of committing crime. Several explanations for this intergenerational transmission have been contrasted, such as social learning (imitation of behavior), official bias against certain families, and transmission of risk factors. I have investigated this in England as well as in the Netherlands.

Some of the questions answered in my study are: Does it matter when the parents committed crime in the child’s life? Do more persistent offenders transmit crime more than sporadic offenders? Do violent offenders specifically transmit violent behavior or general crime to their children? Might the police and courts be biased against certain families? Might continuity of a criminogenic environment explain why parents as well as children show criminal behavior? Does parental imprisonment pose an extra risk?

I find some support for social learning and strong support for the transmission of a criminogenic environment and official bias. It does not matter at what point in the offspring’s youth parents commit crime; the risk of transmission is similar at different ages. Contrary to predictions, persistent offenders do not necessarily have more criminally active children than sporadic offenders, but violent offenders do specifically transmit violent offending. Official agencies appear to target offenders’ children more and thereby these children have a higher risk of being convicted, regardless of their level of offending. Subsequently, these children appear to increase their offending after being convicted. Growing up in an environment with many risk factors for crime seems to be an important explanation for why children of criminals have a higher risk to commit crime. Finally, parental imprisonment increases offspring offending in England, but not in the Netherlands. This could possibly be explained by the fact that, comparatively, Dutch prisons and penal policy were much more humane and liberal in the period during which our subjects experienced parental imprisonment (1946-81

Implications for policy and politics

Criminological research is vital in informing policy makers and politicians about what we know about what works to reduce criminal behavior. The research in this dissertation provides a compelling case for the existence of intergenerational transmission and for the need to intervene in this cycle of violence and offending.

It is desirable to focus attention on the children of convicted parents to try and stop this intergenerational transmission. A first suggestion would be to provide family-based intervention programs, such as parent education and parent management training. These have been shown to be effective in reducing offspring offending behavior. Parent education involves educating parents about the health of their children, but also serves to improve parents’ and children’s well being. Parent management training involves training parents to alter their child’s behavior. The results from this study demonstrate that these prevention programs would be desirable for all offspring with convicted parents, but especially for offspring whose parents are convicted more often and whose parents have been sent to prison.

In the case of parental imprisonment, several specific issues could be improved. Policy makers could expand opportunities for contact between prisoners and their children, through special children’s visits, affordable phone calls, schemes to record and playback stories and messages. Special child-centred visits remove a great deal of the stress involved in visiting parents in prison. Searching methods for normal visits vary for every prison, but can be rigorous and stressful for children; they range from walking through an electronic portal, taking off shoes, to walking past a drug dog, and some prisons require fingerprinting for all visitors. During normal visits, children and parents need to stay seated in their own chairs. Family visits take place in rooms specifically fitted for leisure time, parents can move around freely, children can play, run around, and sit on their parent’s lap. Such visits can be used to build family bonds and create positive experiences for parents and children. Children also show preference for such visits: “I like it when he doesn’t have to wear the red vest because he is like my dad not like a prisoner” (Lösel et al., 2011, p. 54).

A specific prevention program focused on prisoners and their children is Betere Start - Better beginnings - which supports incarcerated mothers in the last three months of their detention and afterwards. The program, based on the internationally recognised training program Incredible Years (Webster- Stratton, 1992), focuses on parent training and education. Preliminary results from the randomized controlled trial in the Netherlands show that children of incarcerated mothers involved in the program show less problem behavior and score lower on risk factors for delinquent behavior compared with children of incarcerated mothers who were not involved in Betere Start(De Castro, October 2011). The final results of this randomized controlled trial will be published mid-2012, so conclusions are still preliminary, but such a program might be effective in decreasing the risk of future criminal involvement for prisoners’ offspring.

Furthermore, financial support for prisoners’ families could be offered. Social support organizations should particularly pay attention to older children and adolescents who experience parental imprisonment. Moreover, children who experience many and longer parental imprisonments should be specifically targeted for support.

This study also demonstrated that risk factors appear important in the intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior. Some of these risk factors, such as a large family or having a mother who was a teenager when her first child was born, are static and therefore harder to change. Others are dynamic and hence more open to change, such as low family income, poor housing, poor job record of father and low interest in education by parents.

Even though the current study was unable to examine whether these risk factors are causing the offspring’s criminal behavior, these factors likely add to the risk and might be an opportunity to intervene in the cycle of intergenerational transmission. For example, improving someone’s employability might not only decrease that person’s criminal behavior, but also their offspring’s future criminal behavior. Even the more static factors, such as teenage motherhood, are open to intervention through the use of programs to reduce teenage pregnancy. When trying to reduce or prevent criminal behavior, it is important to focus not only on this behavior itself, but also on areas of life that might interactively impact on each other. As Farrington (2011, p. 133) suggested, we should perceive intergenerational transmission as “a larger cycle of deprivation and antisocial behavior.” The results from this study provide justification for targeting interventions at this larger cycle of deprivation.

Furthermore, the results from this study suggest an impact of penal, police, and prison policies on offspring of offenders. It appears that offspring of convicted parents are more likely to be convicted. This is not necessarily because they commit more crime, but because their parents are known offenders and because they live in poorer social circumstances characterised by having a father with a poor job record, low family income and poor housing. These offspring also tend to commit more criminal behavior than offspring with unconvicted parents and offspring who do not grow up in these poorer social circumstances, but if we take this into account, these individuals still have a higher risk of getting convicted. This is a crucial finding, and at the same time ethically undesirable. This finding conflicts with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989). According to this convention, the state should protect children from discrimination or punishment based on the status or activities of the child’s parents. Moreover, the “the best interests of the child” should be the “primary consideration.” When children of convicted parents are disproportionally convicted, this clashes with the convention just quoted.

Official agencies might not be aware of their possible bias against these individuals. In social interaction and when perceiving information, people use schemas, or “cognitive frameworks for organising, interpreting, and recalling information” (R. A. Baron, Byrne & Johnson, 1998, p. 127). Prejudice and stereotypes help us to perceive the world around us, a world with often too much information to handle easily. Stereotypes conserve energy and save cognitive resources. The biasing variables are also risk factors for criminal behavior, so it is not surprising that police and other justice agencies might use these to focus their attention on. These stereotypes work, because people whose parents have been convicted and live in poor housing do have a higher risk to commit criminal behavior. However, it is vital that the police and courts are aware of this bias and that, in their decision-making, they try to reduce the impact of this bias. Furthermore, instead of convicting these people disproportionally often, it might be more fruitful to intervene on these poorer social circumstances. For example, housing or neighborhood improvement programs, and again improving someone’s employability would be ethically more appropriate and possibly also more effective interventions.

This study also demonstrated that offspring of convicted parents increased their offending behavior after they themselves had been convicted. Even though this study only found a significant effect for children of convicted parents and not for children of unconvicted parents, previous research has demonstrated evidence for this labelling effect as well. It is critical that politicians and policy makers are aware of this phenomenon. Penal policies aim to reduce criminal behavior, but by their actions, they actually increase the behavior that they want to decrease.

When comparing the impact of parental imprisonment in the Netherlands versus England, no additional impact of parental imprisonment was found in the Netherlands, but a strong impact was found in England. These results suggest that a country’s penal policy might impact on offenders’ children. Again, when trying to reduce criminal behavior, offending appears to increase in the next generation by these policies. By creating a less punitive penal atmosphere the impact of parental imprisonment on children might ease. This could be achieved by the earlier mentioned opportunities for child-friendly visits, but also by a more general shift towards prevention and rehabilitation instead of the emphasis on punishment. Instead of the current exclusion of offenders and their children (see also Garland, 2001; Micklewright, 2002; Murray, 2006; Young, 1999), we should strive to offer offenders opportunities out of crime and thereby also offer their offspring better opportunities. The message from this research would be that by developing and enforcing penal and prison policies the consequences for offenders’ children should be of vital importance. It is crucial that this knowledge is communicated to the general public and politicians, so they can design interventions for crime that might actually decrease criminal behaviour.

Conclusion

With the research in this study I have attempted to increase our knowledge of mechanisms of intergenerational continuity of offending and on the impact of sentencing of parents on offspring offending. Particularly the results on official bias and parental imprisonment are cause for concern, as they show that conviction of parents might actually increase offending behavior in the next generation. There is a clear need for replication studies to determine whether these findings are replicable, generalizable and whether parental conviction and imprisonment have a causal impact on offspring offending. This study also provides points of intervention in the cycle of intergenerational offending. It highlights how changes in research, practice, and policy could assist to reduce the part of intergenerational continuity that appears to originate in collateral consequences of parental conviction and imprisonment.

July 15, 2013

The evolution of forensic science is turning hopelessly unsolvable cold cases into convictions.

by Liz Porter

British armed robber Andrew Pearson probably never imagined he’d end up as the star of an anti-dandruff advertisement. He also probably never dreamed he’d get caught for the 1993 holdup in which he and two accomplices stole £38,000 from a caravan company in the Yorkshire city of Hull. After all, the masked and armed trio left an impressively clean crime scene behind them.

All that the police found afterwards was a stolen Vauxhall Cavalier, abandoned near the scene. Inside it were a few fingerprints, none of which produced a match to any prints already on file, and one small segment of black stocking – discarded, investigators assumed, after one of the robbers had used it as a mask. How could Pearson ever have thought that, 11 years on, DNA analysis of specks of dandruff on this mask would lead police straight to his door and earn him a 15-year prison sentence?

The storyline was so irresistible that the advertising copywriters for Head & Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo didn’t even need to sex it up. The half-page advertisement that appeared in papers across the UK simply reproduced a tear-out of an article about the 2004 court case, adding the slogan “Don’t get caught with dandruff.”

The robbery was brutal but effective. On a pay day in July 1993, the 29-year-old roofer was one of a gang of three masked men, two armed with guns and one with a baseball bat, who stormed into the Hull headquarters of Atlas Caravans. The trio expected to make off with the £250,000 due to be paid to the company’s staff. They missed the main wages delivery, but still got away with £38,000.

During the robbery, office workers were told to lie on the floor, or someone’s head would be blown off, while one man was left with head injuries caused by flying glass – the consequence of one of the robbers firing his gun through a window.

Eleven years later, the victims found themselves reliving the trauma of that experience when they gave evidence at Pearson’s trial. But they were all reportedly thrilled by the advertisement, declaring it the perfect light relief after the stress of the witness box.

By the time Pearson faced court, his accomplices had still not been found, and there was no way that he was ever going to rat on them. Detective Mike Reed, who was in charge of the re-opened investigation, believed that Pearson was the man holding the baseball bat, rather than one of the guns. But even that conclusion came from witnesses’ descriptions, not from the criminal’s own admission.

Pearson had previously been a temporary employee of the company and was a habitual offender, with 76 convictions dating back to the 1970s for offences including burglary, robbery and assault. Despite the many times he had been arrested, however, it seems that he had had few fears – until his arrest in 2003 – of being caught for the armed robbery. In fact, he had been so confident that he had been living in a mobile caravan on an estate five minutes’ drive from the caravan company’s headquarters.

He could have been forgiven for assuming that the 1993 robbery had been forgotten.

In 2001, there had been blanket media coverage of another armed robbery at the same site. On that occasion, another equally violent but less competent threesome had been caught within a day of its overnight raid on the company’s office, during which a security guard had been killed. Newspaper reports on that break-in did not mention the unsolved 1993 incident.

But Pearson hadn’t counted on the diligence of the crime scene police investigating the first robbery. They had collected the section of stocking, which contained only the toe and part of the leg, in the hope of finding blood, saliva or hair roots suitable for the DNA profiling that was available at the time. They found none. But, running a roller covered in special forensic sticky tape over the stocking, they recovered 25 skin flakes which, when examined under a microscope, were confirmed as dandruff. These samples were too small for 1993’s DNA technology, so the tape containing the flakes was placed on a clean sheet of plastic acetate and stored.

The 1998 invention of “low copy number DNA,” a technique enabling a genetic profile to be obtained from samples as small as 15 or 20 cells, was first used on long-unsolved murders. By 2003, police were keen to see if the new technology could help them find the perpetrators of other unsolved cases. The carefully preserved dandruff flakes from the 1993 armed robbery arrived at scientist Dr. Jonathan Whitaker’s Birmingham laboratory in July 2003. The DNA profile that the scientist extracted from them was run against the 2-million profiles on the UK national database. As a man with a string of convictions, Pearson’s profile had been on the database for some years. The profile from the dandruff matched it.

After arresting Pearson, police took a buccal swab of skin cells from the inside of his cheek. Whitaker extracted Pearson’s DNA profile from the sample; it was an exact match for the profile from the dandruff flakes.

In November 2004, Whitaker was in a witness box in the Hull Crown Court, explaining to the jury that the match he had found between Andrew Pearson’s DNA profile and the one extracted from the dandruff meant one of two things: either the skin flakes came from Pearson, or they came from a person with exactly the same profile as Pearson. The chance of obtaining that profile from a person chosen at random in the UK was about 1 in 1 billion.

Pearson worked hard to explain to the jury why his DNA might have ended up on the stocking. He admitted that he might have been in the robbers’ car. He could have been given a lift, leaving his DNA on the back seat. He might have used the piece of stocking as a rag to mop his head. Or he could even have touched the stocking without being in the car.

Unimpressed with any of these alternatives, the jury spent only 75 minutes deliberating before finding him guilty of the robbery. Sentencing Pearson to 12 years for the robbery and three years for the possession of a firearm, the judge, Michael Murphy QC, warned other criminals that they should learn a lesson from this case. “As detection methods become more effective and sophisticated, even criminal behavior for which they feel they have evaded responsibility is likely to catch up with them. Justice will be done in the end.”

Pearson’s conviction did not close the case, but it is unlikely that either of his co-offenders will be prosecuted for this crime. As Pearson was facing court, detective Mike Reed was still on the track of one of his gun-wielding accomplices. Advances in fingerprint technology had enabled police to find a match for one of the sets of prints found on the stolen Vauxhall: a notorious and formerly Liverpool-based armed robber. By the time Reed went looking for him, the man had been released from prison after serving time for another armed robbery, and had vanished. The UK’s National Criminal Intelligence Service, which targets organized crime, was also looking for the suspect, who had moved on from armed robbery to a career as a cocaine dealer.

Reed finally interviewed the man in prison after he had been convicted of serious drug importation charges and given an 11-year sentence. He admitted that his “business” in 1993 had been car stealing, which made it plausible that his prints might be on one of the many cars he stole from the Liverpool area and then sold on. But he denied having taken part in the armed robbery.

Reed was more inclined to believe that the inmate was the robber who had fired his gun during the incident, but he couldn’t prove it. Meanwhile, without a trace of forensic evidence to help police find him, it seems that the third robber will never be even identified, let alone convicted.

July 17, 2013

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden’s status as hero or traitor if of far less import than the awareness his whistle blowing has brought to just how pervasive and extensive the U.S. government’s spying on its own citizens and allies has become.

by Avi McClelland-Cohen

 “We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution."–John F. Kennedy

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

Having escaped the grasps of a hungry empire, the Founding Fathers and Mothers of the United States knew well about government overreach, and took care to include numerous protections in the Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom from self-incrimination, the right to peaceably assemble, and more. The Fourth Amendment in particular enshrines enumerated rights to be free from government abuse of search and seizure: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” For over a century, this Amendment protected Americans from warrantless searches and surveillance, including of the mail they sent via post and the thoughts they logged in their personal communiqués.

The national security era opened with the creation of the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952. NSA is responsible for code making, code breaking, and, of course, intelligence services for the Department of Defense, CIA, and other members of the U.S. intelligence community. The budget would grow to undisclosed billions over the next decades. In the 1980s, privatization began the expansion of private contractors and non-governmental employees working for the defense industry. Communication technology became more sophisticated, the mission of the NSA more complex and oversight more difficult.  Following September 11, 2001 and passage of the PatriotAct, NSA’s Orwellian mission solidified.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed by Congress in the late 1970s to ensure effective Congressional oversight of foreign intelligence agencies. The FISA Act, however, paradoxically expanded the powers to the Executive branch.  For example, the President could now authorize electronic surveillance without a warrant for a period of up to a year, providing there was no “substantial likelihood” that U.S. persons would be affected.

The most public impact of the FIAS Act was to create the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to oversee requests by federal police personnel for warrants related to foreign intelligence. To not compromise the methods and targets of the intelligence services, the FISA court would operate in secrecy.  Though the Chief Justice of the United States appoints the eleven judges to the FISA court, it has never come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court itself, and the constitutionality of the court remains in precarious legal limbo. Unlike other courts (though similar to a grand jury system), the FISA court hears arguments only from the government’s side, and its rulings—almost always in the government’s favor—are also strictly secret.

The rise of the Internet has been a game changer in many respects. Suddenly, information is open and available to anyone with a web connection.  Conversely, thoughts and communications are now routinely (and carelessly) shared online.  Communications that were once sacrosanct, including phone calls and written mail, were opened to intercept as the court’s oversight has not kept up with these changes. Government intrusion, largely unchallenged, resulted in a treasure trove of knowledge and data.

Because of this, the rise of the Internet led many to question how this new power would be harnessed. Wasn’t it vulnerable to abuse? In short, when the Internet Age dawned Americans were already privy to prior abuses of power. The majority of them, however, did not expect the massive, all-encompassing surveillance programs that solidified in the early years of the new millennium.

However, the game may have changed once more. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old intelligence analyst, gave up his comfortable home on Hawaii, left the physical borders of the United States, and rocketed to infamy as the most famous whistleblower in American history. Snowden had been employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology consulting firm, contracting with NSA. During the course of his work, Snowden gathered a stockpile of information on government surveillance programs.  With the assistance of The Guardian of London,a few valiant journalists and, of course, the awesome power of the Internet, Snowden has begun to release this information to the public. He is bolstered heavily by non-profit organizations ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to hacker-collective Wikileaks, the latter of which is pulling no punches in its assistance of Snowden, reportedly assisting in travel arrangements and providing legal counsel.[1]

PRISM

Similar to a prism, PRISM splits Internet traffic, routing the entire stream into at least two channels, the legitimate and the NSA channel.  Thanks to Snowden’s revelations, it is now public knowledge that NSA has direct access to the systems of the most popular Internet-based companies – including, but not limited to, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, names which have become synonymous with modern Internet use. This allows NSA to collect troves of data on millions of U.S. citizens – including metadata from virtually every online interaction (“metadata” records information such as the time stamp, who was involved, and locations of participants). But PRISM goes even further. Authorized by the FISA Court and renewed every 90 days (at least through 2011), the PRISM program allowed NSA officials to access information far beyond metadata, including search histories, email content, chat logs, and video.

This surveillance program includes all communications between persons outside the U.S., communications involving at least one person outside the U.S., and extends to some communications entirely within the U.S. without individual warrants or judicial review. This is in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment’s “search and seizure” provision requiring a specific warrant for the government to intrude.

Many Internet providers claim no knowledge of the program. This is plausible – the FISA Amendments Act (renewed in 2012) stipulates that Internet providers need not be informed – let alone consent – to these searches.

It is also possible the companies are lying. For example, Microsoft, one of the largest tech companies in the world, not only was aware of NSA’s action but actually cooperated with the agency at seemingly every turn. The supreme irony, of course, is that Microsoft’s most recent marketing campaign touts the tagline “Your privacy is our priority.”

Adding insult to injury, according to slides used to train NSA officials in the PRISM program and released by Snowden, the PRISM spying program costs American taxpayers $20 million annually. United States citizens are paying the government to spy on them.

Other Programs/NSA Expansion

Although PRISM may have been discontinued in 2011, other spy operations remain intact, in spite of assurances in 2008 that the “War on Terror” would be toned down – at least in regard to civil liberties abuses. Despite the outcome of that year’s election, documents made public by Snowden reveal now that any change that came as a result of Obama’s election was not reflected in NSA policies – in fact, government spying on citizens has clearly continued well into Obama’s tenure as President with, among other programs, the mass gathering of information from cell phone and tech giant Verizon. Snowden released a FISA Court order requiring Verizon to furnish NSA with copies of "all call detail records or 'telephone metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls." No specific persons were listed, nor were reasons provided why the entire customer base of one of the largest cell phone carriers in the country should be suspected of terrorist activities.

Another program, codenamed “Evil Olive,” allows NSA to direct over half of all Internet traffic (some reports suggest as much as 75 percent) through its servers for review. This program has recently celebrated its one-trillionth record processed (yes, that’s trillion with 12 zeroes).

These are not the only programs that Snowden’s whistle blowing has revealed, and more are being uncovered. The FISA Court, again secretly, has ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not apply when terrorism may be afoot. Invoking the “special needs” doctrine, which holds that in certain instances minor intrusion on private lives may be justified for the pressing need for public safety (this began as a justification for drug testing railroad workers), these classified decisions have undermined centuries of jurisprudence – not to mention the social contract of the United States’ founding: consent of the governed.

Downfall of Diplomacy

In addition to the massive expansion of these spying programs on individual persons, documents leaked by Snowden have revealed spying on foreign countries. Most (if not all) Latin American governments have been targeted, and even European nations – some of the U.S.’s closest allies – did not escape the massive spying game, including bugs placed in European Union buildings. Certainly, espionage is still common among modern governments, but the revelations do not bode well for United States diplomatic endeavors, particularly combined with the fact that foreign nationals’ online data receives no protections whatsoever under NSA programs.

Where in the World is America’s Whistleblower?

As more documents are released and diplomatic favors called in, Edward Snowden’s fate hangs in the balance. At the time of this writing, Snowden’s whereabouts and state of personal freedom are murky, though new developments take place every day.   As far as reporters know, Snowden left his safe house in Hong Kong on June 23, where he spent the days of the initial publications, to travel to Moscow, ultimate destination unknown. He checked in for a flight from Moscow to Cuba, but never boarded the flight and never left Moscow’s International Airport. On July 12, Snowden and representatives from several human rights groups held a conference in the airport, causing a flare-up of tensions between former Cold War enemies. Russian President Vladimir Putin commented that the United States has effectively trapped the whistleblower in the terminal, and he seems unwilling to cooperate with the United States in returning Snowden to America. Putin would not, however, answer whether or not his own nation would offer Snowden asylum.

On July 16, Snowden formally requested temporary – not political – asylum in Russia. This tactic appears designed to take the pressure off President Putin to intervene in the matter, a fact readily acknowledged by a spokesperson for Putin who told Russian news agencies, “If we are talking about temporary asylum, this is an issue not for the president but for the Federal Migration Service.” If the Migration Service grants Snowden temporary asylum, the fugitive will be allowed to live and work in Russia for one year, with the possibility of an extension after that.

The asylum application has the immediate benefit of allowing Snowden to leave the airport and take up residence in a shelter for refugees while he awaits a decision on his status. The Migration Service is expected to rule in within the next several weeks.

In his application for temporary asylum, Snowden stated he feared being tortured or sentence to death if he we were extradited to the United States.

Certain countries with historically rocky relationships with the U.S., such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia, have recently offered Snowden safe haven. Snowden told the Guardian that he does not expect to ever return home, where he left his girlfriend and his life; instead, he hopes for asylum in a nation such as Iceland, which has a strong history of legal protections for free speech, or one of the aforementioned South American countries which have accepted his applications for asylum.

Allies of the United States seem intent on returning Snowden to the U.S. to face prosecution under the Espionage Act, life imprisonment, and potentially the death penalty. For example, when rumors spread that Snowden might be aboard the private jet of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, the plane was diverted from its course by European nations who controlled the air space and forced to land. (Once it was apparent that Snowden was not on board, the plane was allowed to resume flight.) The United States, including Vice President Biden in particular, has lobbied numerous other countries not to grant asylum to Snowden. However, in the eyes of the international legal community, interference by the United States only makes Snowden’s case for asylum stronger.

This leaves Edward Snowden a man without a state – a violation of the human rights Americans hold dear. His life has taken on the eerie hue of an espionage thriller, but instead of the silver screen, this tale is unfolding in stark reality – and the ending is not yet written.

President Obama is attempting to write an end to government whistleblowers in the wake of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden’s massive leaks. Having prosecuted more whistleblowers than any prior administration, Obama is now cracking down by turning government employees on each other, creating a workplace fraught with suspicion.

As governments weigh in on the situation, they should remember that the whole world is watching – watching ardently as two stories unfold: first, the biography of whistleblower Edward Snowden, second, the saga of an empire.

What’s Next

In early July, less than a month after young Snowden’s whistle was first heard round the world, his father published an open letter to his son in which he likened the young man to Thomas Paine, the hero of the American Revolution. The letter, written with the assistance of counsel, read, in part: “Irrespective of life's vicissitudes, we will be unflagging in efforts to educate the American people about the impending ruination of the Constitution and the rule of law unless they abandon their complacency or indifference. Your actions are making our challenge easier.” (The full letter can be viewed here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/edward-snowden-father-open-letter.)

Ultimately, Edward Snowden’s role is that of a catalyst; it is not his actions but our response as a nation that will create reform, or fail to.  Recent polls show that over half of Americans want more oversight of the intelligence community and do not believe Congress provides a sufficient check to that community’s enormous, secret power. On Independence Day, July 4, thousands rallied across the country to “Restore the Fourth [Amendment],” and the Internet community joined in solidarity.

Edward Snowden’s status as hero or traitor is of far less import than the impetus he is providing for reflection on the role of government and for change. Regardless of his means or motives, Americans have been awakened to the all-encompassing spy programs watching over them. Will Americans demand reform and oversight when casting their ballots in upcoming elections? Will representatives in Congress hear the demands for a restoration of the Fourth Amendment right of the people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”? Or will we stand by as unelected functionaries expand their technology and oversight of all Americans? After years of unchecked growth of the Executive branch, does Congress have the power to change this – can this American democracy be salvaged, or has absolute power corrupted it absolutely, creating a criminal empire beyond salvation?

Americans can weigh in on these issues to their Congressional Representatives by calling the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. If you don’t know who your representative is, you can find out by entering your zip code here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/.

Many of the documents associated with this story are now available to the public online and the story will continue to unfold. The Guardian has a broad archive available to the public at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files.

Helpful Resources

Directory of all related articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files

 Articles on the NSA files:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-online-metadata-collection

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/13/nsa-surveillance-guardian-poll-oversight

Articles on Snowden:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-what-we-know-nsa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-profile

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/edward-snowden-father-open-letter

Other:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?hp&_r=2&

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/obamas-insider-threat-program-a-parody-of-liberal-faith-in-bureaucrats/277653/

July 22, 2013

A Polaroid photo found in a busy parking lot in Florida gave two families in New Mexico hope that their children were still alive.

by Paul Buchanan

On June 15, 1989, a woman in Port St. Joe, Florida pulled off Route 98 into the parking lot of a Junior Food Store. She parked next to a white Toyota cargo van and entered the air-conditioned market. Moments later, when she emerged, the white van was gone, but in the vacated space beside her car, she found what appeared to be a Polaroid photo lying face down on the asphalt. She picked it up, and turned it over. The image she found was harrowing.

In the photo, a young woman and a younger boy lie on their backs on a rumpled pile of mismatched sheets and pillows. Both look directly at the camera with expressions of tense resignation. Their mouths are covered with duct tape, and their postures suggest that their wrists are bound behind them. The space they occupy is cramped and poorly lit. The only source of light seems to come from behind the photographer. The photo could well have been taken in the back of a windowless van with its side door pulled open.

The woman who discovered the photo immediately notified local police. Roadblocks were hurriedly set up, but they failed to snare the van or the mustached man who had been in its driver’s seat.

The Disappearance of Tara Calico

Patty Doel and her new husband John first became aware of the Polaroid photo more than two months later, on August 23. Relatives called to say they’d just seen a photo broadcast on the television tabloid show “A Current Affair.” The image showed a boy and a girl who seemed to have been taken captive. Had they seen it? Could it have been Patty’s daughter, Tara Calico?

At the time she disappeared, 19-year-old Tara Calico was a sophomore at the Valencia campus of the University of New Mexico, a 15-minute commute from her family’s home in Belen, New Mexico. On the morning of September 20, 1988, Tara set out from home for a bike ride along Highway 47. The plan was to ride south 17 level miles to the railroad crossing and back again. Tara had a tennis date after lunch, so she told her mother to come looking for her if she wasn’t back by noon. She set out on her mother’s pink Huffy mountain bike (her own bike had a flat). She was listening to a Boston cassette on her Sony Walkman.

A little past noon, Tara’s mother went to look for her. Highway 47 cuts a razor-straight path through barren scrub-dotted clay east of the Rio Grande. There are few cross streets, fewer structures, and no trees. There was no trace of Tara or the pink bicycle she was riding. But her mother did find a Boston cassette on the highway’s dusty shoulder.

Later searches turned up the cracked cover of a Walkman nearly 20 miles east of Belen, close to the remote John F. Kennedy Campground. To her mother, it was as if Tara had been kidnapped and had dropped whatever she could from a moving car, hoping to leave a trail that might be traced to her. That trail dead-ended among the pinion pines and big-tooth maples that pepper the Manzano Mountains foothills.

Tara’s disappearance fell into a legal no-man’s-land of missing persons. As a legal adult, she had the right to vanish if she wanted to, and little could be done without evidence that indicated a crime had taken place. In the following days, investigators, aided by local volunteers, determined that Tara had last been seen at 11:45 a.m. on her return trip, a mere two miles east of her home. Witnesses saw a 1953 Ford pickup, equipped with a homemade camper shell, tailing her closely. Tara may have been unaware of the truck because of her Walkman’s earphones.

That Tara Calico might be the young woman in a Polaroid photo seemed a long shot at best. The photo was found 1,600 miles away from where Tara was last seen and some nine months later – but there were a few significant parallels. The young woman in the photo had the right hair color and complexion. A discolored patch on the young woman’s right calf corresponded to a scar Tara had received in a car accident. A tattered mass-market paperback lay on the rumpled bedding next to the girl. It was My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews, one of Tara’s favorite authors. The girl’s face looked more drawn and narrow than the most recent photos of Tara – the pictures on all the flyers and posters –but long months had passed, and she might have endured them under austere conditions.

Tara Calico

Allowing that her daughter had been missing the better part of a year and that the young woman in the photo wore no makeup, Patty Doel felt fairly certain the girl in the Polaroid was her daughter. “She used to keep herself fixed up, and had a permanent in her hair,” Mrs. Doel told the Associated Press. “Before the perm, without the makeup… I got out the old pictures, and it’s her.”

The Disappearance of Michael Henley

But more compelling than the girl’s similar appearance was the fact that the young boy in the photograph bore a striking resemblance to another child who had gone missing in New Mexico. Michael Henley had vanished a mere five months before Tara, just 45 miles southwest of Belen, in the Cibola National Park. This chilling link between the Polaroid and New Mexico only amplified the mystery surrounding Tara’s disappearance. Had some unknown person or person abducted both children?

On April 21, 1988, Michael Henley of Milan, New Mexico disappeared on a camping trip in the Oso Ridge area of the Zuni Mountains. Henley’s father and a family friend had brought the 9 year old with them to hunt wild turkey. About 20 minutes after their arrival at the campsite, while the adults were busy setting up, Henley vanished. It seemed likely he had wandered away from the campsite and got lost in the rough, craggy landscape.

Henley’s father quickly reported him missing, but the hunt was hamstrung by a sudden high-altitude storm. Snowfall made navigating the craggy and boulder-strewn landscape nearly impossible. To make the search yet more urgent, when last seen in the afternoon heat, young Henley had been wearing nothing more than a flannel shirt, pants and a pair of tennis shoes.

Four hundred volunteers, state police officers, and National Guardsmen clambered through the wilderness within a 10-mile radius of the campsite, scouring every inch. Civil Air Patrol volunteers crisscrossed the sky during daylight hours, coordinated by a cadre of local ham radio operators.

Tennis shoe tracks were found in the snow, but, as the Roswell Daily Record reported, “Several searchers in the area were wearing shoes with soles similar to the boy’s.” There was no way to know if trackers were closing in on the missing child, or wasting crucial time retracing areas that had been searched already.

Attempts to use bloodhounds were also stymied. There were “searchers walking over searchers in some areas,” Roger Robb, the search field coordinator, told reporters. “We have scent over scent over scent.” Rescuers posted signs along every stretch of asphalt in the vicinity—This way, Michael, stay on road—in hopes that they might point Henley to their base camp. The intensive search lasted more than a week but yielded no clues as to what had happened to the boy.

Months passed. The mystery of Henley’s disappearance gradually vanished from the news cycle. It seemed clear that the boy had wandered from camp, become disoriented, and died of exposure. In the final stages of severe hypothermia, incoherent victims often exhibit a behavior called “terminal burrowing,” in which they crawl into a tight, enclosed space for self-protection. This tendency to conceal oneself among boulders or under fallen logs can make the search for missing hikers – especially those in the deepest peril – nearly impossible. In the harsh and isolated terrain where Michael Henley was last seen, his remains might never be found.

But then, more than a year after he went missing, the Polaroid appeared. The boy in that image lies on his left side, in a powder-blue t-shirt, looking afraid. A swath of black duct tape masks his face from nose to chin. His eyes look at the camera plaintively.

 “It’s the best lead we’ve had in 16 months,” Cibola County Sheriff Ed Craig said of the TV segment. He showed a videotape of the episode to Michael’s parents.

“The majority of the family believe that that’s Michael,” the boy’s father said. “Michael’s best friend believes that’s Michael. His sister believes it’s Michael.” But Michael’s father, himself, felt unsure. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s just because I don’t want to see my son like that.”

Building Hope, Renewing the Search

Tara’s mother and both of Michael’s parents flew to Florida to speak with Port St. Joe police and examine the Polaroid first hand. After a couple of hours discussing the case with investigators and scrutinizing the Polaroid, all three came away convinced that the photo showed their children.

That conviction was both a solace and a torment. “He looks scared,” Michael’s mother said of the boy in the photo, “real scared, but he looks healthy and I’m grateful for that.”

Patty Doel was even more effusive: “Strange as it may seem, I would thank him for keeping her alive,” she told the Associated Press. “I would thank him for taking care of her, seeing that she’s fed, seeing that she’s clean. I hope he values her life as much as we do.”

Mrs. Doel and the Henleys returned home to New Mexico, reassured that their children were alive and that someone was at least feeding and clothing them. And, though the situation depicted in the Polaroid was clearly grim, Tara and Michael were together. At least they were not alone.

The Polaroid was forwarded to FBI crime labs to compare facial measurements with other photos of the missing pair. “It was inconclusive,” FBI Special Agent Doug Beldon of the Albuquerque field office told The New Mexican. “The lab was unable to say yes or no.” Similar authentication efforts were later run by Los Alamos National Laboratory, which concluded that Tara was not the girl in the photo, and by Scotland Yard, which concluded that she was. (“[T]hey gave us a definite ID that it was her,” Patty Doel said.)

Despite what might have been a major break in the case, the release of the photo and its frequent airing on “Unsolved Mysteries,” “America’s Most Wanted,” and even “Oprah” stirred up lots of commotion but no solid leads.

Both families organized volunteers, printed flyers, and tried to keep the story alive in the news. Patty Doel and her husband were sworn in as auxiliary deputies, which allowed them to contact other law enforcement offices under the auspices of the Valencia County Sheriff.

Over the following weeks, sightings of Tara were reported in different locations across the South, as if her captor were still drifting from town to town. Michael was reportedly sighted in Arkansas. Each new rumor rekindled the hope that Tara and Michael would someday – miraculously – be returned to their families. At some point, wouldn’t their captor slip up? Wouldn’t the pair of them seize some chance to make a break for it?

Michael Henley Was Not the Boy in the Polaroid

Then, in June 1990, the case took an abrupt and decisive turn. A rancher riding a fence line discovered a scattering of bones in a thick copse of junipers. The remains were those of a child, and they were six or seven miles from the campsite where Michael Henley had disappeared more than two years earlier.

Scraps of clothing found at the scene were consistent with what Michael was wearing when he vanished. Sheriff Craig informed the boy’s parents of his suspicions. “What makes it so hard to identify is he didn’t have enough medical records – broken bones, x-rays. He’d only been to the dentist twice.” One by one, other missing local children reports were accounted for. It took five days for the Cibola County Medical Examiner to make a positive identification: the remains were Michael’s, and his death had been a tragic accident. Michael’s father told reporters that it was no relief to know what had happened to his son.

Michael Henley was not the boy in the Polaroid.

The Henley family now knew what had become of their son, and they could settle into grieving, with a casket and a ceremony and a gravesite; but Patty Doel had no such closure. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Mrs. Doel faced a sort of choice.

Tara’s Mother Will Not Give Up

Once Michael Henley was taken out of the Polaroid equation, the identity of the young woman it showed became problematic. If the boy wasn’t Michael – the only solid link to New Mexico – what were the chances that the young girl was actually Tara? The girl in the Polaroid certainly looked younger than a woman of 20, and her face was narrower than the most recent photos of Tara. The mark on the girl’s right calf was far from distinct as a scar. Thousands of young women read the novels of V.C. Andrews.

Over the years Mrs. Doel’s conviction about the Polaroid was never shaken. In 1997, seven years after Michael Henley had been laid to rest, she weighed in on a website discussion board about the case:

I am Tara's mom and I would like to respond to questions that Crushed Velvet posed. Tara did not have any book with her when she disappeared. We can only guess that the abductor either gave the book to Tara because V.C. Andrews was one of many authors that Tara read. Another other possibility is that the book was placed in the photo because the ultimate subject of that book was brainwashing.

There is no hedging in Mrs. Doel’s language – no “if” or “perhaps” or “seems likely.”  In her mind, the beautiful young woman in the Polaroid was absolutely her daughter. Over the years, the hope that had come with the photo’s discovery hardened into a kind of certitude, and that seemed to leave Mrs. Doel in an impossible no-man’s-land as a parent coping with loss and with uncertainty and with hope.

Patty Doel’s search for Tara never lagged. She made television appearances, sent out hundreds of thousands of fliers, and never seemed to begrudge a press interview that might keep her daughter’s story alive.

Michele Doel, Tara’s younger sister, told me about coming across one of her mother’s old to-do lists recently:

Laundry

Vacuum

Dust

Write letter to FBI

“A moment or opportunity was never missed to find Tara by our mom and dad,” Michele told me. “It is impossible to describe in words – an indescribable emotion. Unfortunately only those who have gone through this can understand the emotions that change from year to year, month to month, day to day and minute by minute.”

Over those years, two other Polaroid photos were discovered, which may or may not be photos of Tara. Neither has been released to the public. The first, discovered at a Southern California construction site, is a blurry image of a girl’s face, her mouth covered with duct tape. The film used was not available until 1989, and the girl seems to be lying on a sheet similar to the blue-striped pillowcase in the original photo.

The final Polaroid shows a woman loosely bound and blindfolded in gauze, wearing large framed glasses. She seems to be riding on an Amtrak train next to an unidentified man. The image is on film that was not available until 1990.

“Mom believed they were Tara,” Michele Doel told me. “They had a striking, uncalming resemblance. As for me, I will not rule them out. But keep in mind our family has had to identify many other photographs and all but those three were ruled out.

Recent history provides us with just enough happy endings – Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, the trio on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland – to keep alive some ember of hope that Tara Calico might someday return, which is why Patty Doel’s situation, and that of the parent of any missing child, is so agonizing to contemplate.

The Toll of Grief

In the early days of psychotherapy, grief over the loss of a loved one was not considered a disorder; it was a normal, fitting reaction to loss. But, over recent decades, therapeutic trends have changed.

Leeat Granek, in Grief as Pathology, traces how, at least in clinical practice, grief has come to be treated as though it were a disorder. It was part of what Granek sees as a trend. What once might have been considered normal shyness is now often diagnosed and treated as social anxiety disorder. What might have been considered “mild malaise” could now be considered a major depressive disorder that demands medication and therapy. In the same way – for good or ill – grief has been “pathologized,” and is now often considered reason enough for professional intervention.

This common practice of conflating the normal with the pathological when it comes to grief has led some clinicians to call for a distinct set of diagnostic criteria for what has come to be called “complicated grief” – or a variety of grieving that is far from the typical.

The Mental Health Desk Reference describes such “pathological grief” as “the intensification of grief to the level where the person is overwhelmed, resorts to maladaptive behavior, or remains interminably in the state of grief without progression of the mourning process toward completion.” The entry goes on to list some of the causes of such grief:

Circumstances surrounding a loss may preclude or make completion of the grieving process difficult or impossible. Uncertainty of the loss, not knowing if a person is truly dead, precludes adequate grieving (e.g., missing children, a soldier who is listed MIA, or disaster victims where whose bodies are not recovered).

This seems to clearly describe Patty Doel’s tragic situation. The Polaroid photo offered her enough plausible evidence that she could never lay Tara to rest – nor could she disown the hope that her daughter was still alive somewhere.

Later in the same online post mentioned above, Mrs. Doel confessed, “In June of 1997 I literally lost what was left of my mind and have been recovering from acute depression, panic attacks, etc., since that time.”

The post is simply signed “Mom.”

In J.W. Worden’s book Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, one of the “clues” he lists that may indicate the presence of complicated mourning reads: “The person who has sustained the loss is unwilling to move material possessions belonging to the deceased. Someone who preserves the environment of the deceased just as it was when the death occurred may be harboring an unresolved grief reaction.”

This was certainly true of Mrs. Doel, who not only kept Tara’s room intact, but also added yearly Christmas and birthday presents to the pile on the girl’s empty bed.

In 2003, Mrs. Doel and her husband finally left New Mexico behind for a new life Port Charlotte, FL.

“Here, there’s not anything I can do that doesn't remind me of Tara,” Mrs. Doel told the Albuquerque Tribune as she was preparing for the move “It will be a good change for us.” But the move was not easy, and it did not represent any abandonment of hope. “It’s really hard to move,” she said. “If she were to come home I could not ever tell her we gave up on her.”

When they moved, Mrs. Doel took Tara’s bed, along with the gifts she still hoped her daughter would someday unwrap. “They,” she told the reporter, “will be the last things I pack."

“Patty Doel became a force of nature,” the Albuquerque Tribune said of her after her death, “hurling all her grit and passion into a heartbreaking search that her husband said eventually contributed to her failing health.” At the age of 64, Patty Doel succumbed after a series of strokes.

By the time Patty Doel passed away, on May 11, 2006, her husband had all but abandoned hope that Tara had survived whatever fate happened to her.

“Patty knew that I felt that way,” John Doel told the Valencia County News-Bulletin, “but she continued to hope to hear from her. We would discuss it frequently, and I would tell her my reasons that if she was able to, she would have contacted us. And being that so much time has gone by, I didn't think it was practical that she was still alive.”

Tara’s sister, though, still nurtures a conviction that the truth will someday be discovered. “We continue to remain suspended,” Michele Doel told me. “Hoping for good news, hoping for the best, keeping faith and not giving up, yet dreading the worst. To this point the worst has been the not knowing.”

It is hard to imagine Patty Doel’s lot as a parent, and harder still to imagine facing that lot with such fortitude and fiber. Even her newspaper obituary reflected her indomitable hope that her daughter was alive somewhere: “Patty is survived by her husband, John; four children; four grandchildren; nieces; and sisters.”

Tara Calico is one of those four children.

Note: In a cruel coda, in June 2009, almost exactly 20 years after the discovery of the original Polaroid photo, police in Port St. Joe, Florida received the first of two photocopied images of a young boy. In one of the images someone had used a marker to cover the child’s mouth with ink – like the duct tape bindings in the original photo. A similar image was sent to the local newspaper, The Star. None of the letters bore a return address. All were postmarked in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

July 29, 2013

Aaron Hernandez

Back in 2010, the button-downed New England Patriots discounted the scouting reports that said Aaron Hernandez scored at the bottom of the “social maturity” scale. In 2012, still smitten, the Patriots added $40 million to his contract. On the day Hernandez was arrested for the gangland style murder of Odin Lloyd, the Patriots pre-empted the justice process and disowned him.

by Denise Noe

Not long after a jogger discovered a bullet-ridden corpse in an industrial park in North Attleborough, Massachusetts at about 5:30 p.m. on June 17, 2013, the often troubled life of New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, a handsome and athletically gifted young man who only a year before had been given a $40 million contract extension, began tumbling down.

The murder victim was 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, a semipro football player and a friend of Hernandez who had been dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. The secluded industrial park where the gangland style execution took place in the early morning hours, was a half mile from Hernandez’s luxurious home. Inside one of Llyod’s pockets were the keys to a Nissan Altima rental car that turned out to be registered to Hernandez. Lloyd’s sister, Olivia Thibou, told detectives she had been visiting her brother on June 16 and had seen him get into a Nissan. 

Five hours after Lloyd’s body had been found, police arrived at Hernandez house to notify him of Lloyd’s death and to ask about the Nissan he had apparently rented for his friend. According to court documents released on July 9 by the Attleboro District Court at the request of various media organizations, Hernandez immediately became defensive and asked, “What’s with all the questions?” When asked when he had last seen Lloyd, Hernandez said he had been “up this way” the night before and if they had other questions they would need to speak with his attorney. According the court records, Hernandez then went back inside, slamming and locking the door only to emerge minutes later to hand police his lawyer’s business card.

Police then informed Hernandez that “this is a death investigation,” information that did not cause Hernandez to inquire who had died, only to retreat back into his house and slam and lock the door again. In a written statement of the encounter with Hernandez at his house, the police report stated, “Mr. Hernandez’s demeanor did not indicate any concern for the death of any person.”

A Massachusetts Medical Examiner ruled Lloyd’s death a homicide on June 19. He had been shot five times with a .45 caliber pistol. The murder weapon has not been recovered. Police were able to pin the time of death down to between 3-3:30 a.m. A worker at the industrial park was taking his regular nightly break during that time period when he said he heard three gunshots and a car door slam.

After consulting with his attorney, Michael Fee, Hernandez agreed to be interviewed further at the police station the next day and to allow police to search his house without a search warrant.

In searching his house, police found that the home’s internal security system had been damaged. When they requested his cellphone, Hernandez’s attorney turned it over in pieces. It also became known that Hernandez had hired a house-cleaning service only hours before the jogger discovered Lloyd’s body. When the police told reporters the next day that they had not ruled Hernandez out as a suspect in Lloyd’s murder, news helicopters began shadowing the sure-handed, highly tattooed tight end.

The walls were closing in on the former college All-America and NFL All Pro.  

As a result of the cloud over their star receiver, the Patriots asked him to avoid the team’s facilities. On that same day, CytoSport, manufacturer of Muscle Milk and other supplements for athletes or aspiring athletes, announced it was terminating its endorsement contract with Hernandez.

With a search warrant this time, detectives with specially trained search dogs entered the Hernandez home on June 22. They gathered and left with big bags filled with possible evidence. They also removed a safe that contained a scale and a plate, items frequently used by drug dealers.

At 8:45 a.m. on June 26, officers arrested Hernandez outside his home. Handcuffed, the soon-to-be former Patriot was taken in a police cruiser to a station and booked. At 2:45 p.m., Hernandez was formally charged in court with first-degree murder. He was also charged with five counts of illegal possession of firearms.

On the day of his arrest, but before any formal charges had been filed, the Patriots released him. In a news release the Patriots stated, “A young man was murdered last week, and we extend our sympathies to the family and friends who mourn his loss. Words cannot express the disappointment we feel knowing that one of our players was arrested as a result of this investigation. We realize that law enforcement investigations into this matter are ongoing. We support their efforts and respect the process. At this time, we believe this transaction is simply the right thing to do.”

The Patriots, an organization that prides itself on being more than just a cut above other National Football League franchises in terms of class and character, does not apparently subscribe to the notion that someone is innocent until proven guilty. It underscored this sentiment by taking the unprecedented step of offering to allow any fan who had purchased Hernandez’s jersey to redeem it for another Patriot jersey. During the weekend the offer was good, hundreds of fans lined up to rid themselves of jersey No. 81. 

The Arraignment

At Hernandez’s arraignment the afternoon of his arrest, with various national cable stations streaming the proceedings, Bristol County Assistant D.A. William McCauley told the district court that investigators had viewed surveillance camera videos that tracked Hernandez from his home in North Attleborough to Boston and back. They had also traced cellphone pings and text messages that provided a tight timeline that directly linked Hernandez to Lloyd’s murder. In addition, McCauley said there was evidence left in the Nissan rental car and collected in two searches of Hernandez’s house and surrounding areas that placed Hernandez with Lloyd for roughly an hour the morning he was killed, “right up to the minute Lloyd was executed.”

As McCauley presented the evidence against him in a packed courtroom, Hernandez, handcuffed, stood expressionless in a white t-shirt, his heavily tattooed arms visible. McCauley told District Court Judge Daniel J. O’Shea that Hernandez “drove the victim to that remote spot, and then he orchestrated” the murder.

McCauley said that Hernandez had texted two other men that night who were also involved in the murder. McCauley said their names had not yet been released. The prosecutor’s office had protected them from public identification by persuading a judge to impound records and McCauley did not say whether or not they would be charged. McCauley did not specify who actually pulled the trigger. However, the criminal complaint alleges that Hernandez “did assault and beat” Lloyd “with intent to murder such person, and by assault and beating did kill and murder such person.”

The prosecutor stated that the plot to murder might have started on June 14 when Lloyd and Hernandez visited a Boston nightclub. McCauley said Hernandez decided to murder his friend when he saw Lloyd talking with people Hernandez “had troubles with.” McCauley did not elaborate about what those “troubles” were and why merely conversing with those people would lead Hernandez to decide to kill Lloyd.

McCauley asserted that on June 16, Hernandez texted the other two men who met up with Hernandez. The three drove to Lloyd’s home and picked him up in front of his visiting sister, Olivia Thibou.

McCauley suggested Lloyd might have feared something ominous was in store judging from texts he sent his sister just before he got into the car with the trio. Lloyd text messaged his sister, “Did you see who I left with?” Thibou asked, “Who?” Lloyd texted, “NFL. Just so you know.”

According to McCauley, detectives tracked the rental car’s movements to a gas station, to Lloyd’s house, and then to the empty lot in the industrial park where Lloyd was slain. At the gas station, Hernandez purchased gum and that gum was found in the car. Forty-five caliber shell casings were also discovered in that vehicle. The prosecutor claimed that surveillance videos in the industrial park show the four men arriving in the rented Nissan. McCauley said night workers in the vicinity recall hearing gunshots between 3:23 a.m. and 3:27 a.m.

McCauley said surveillance video at Hernandez’s home shows him going through the house with a gun in his hand. When McCauley related this, Lloyd’s mother started weeping. Someone helped her out of the courtroom. Hernandez’s fiancée, with whom he has a 7-month-old daughter, also started crying and exited the courtroom. McCauley continued that surveillance footage from the six to eight hours after the murder was missing from Hernandez’s home security system and that the two weapons seen on the video have not been recovered.

Hernandez pled not guilty to all charges. Massachusetts has no death penalty. The maximum penalty for first-degree murder is life without possibility of parole.

Judge Daniel J. O’Shea ordered Hernandez held without bail. It could be months, perhaps more than a year, before Hernandez comes to trial. As of this writing, Hernandez’s next court date in connection with the Lloyd murder is a probable cause hearing scheduled for August 22, 2013.

Following the arraignment, Michael Fee, Hernandez’s attorney, described the prosecution case as “circumstantial” and “not strong.” Reporting for USA Today, Lindsay H. Jones wrote, “Hernandez is also represented by James Sultan and his partner Charles Rankin, who have a long track record of serving as defense attorneys in high-profile cases and for famous clients.” Rankin said Hernandez would be "exonerated" on the murder charge when he finally gets a chance to answer the accussations and that "a jury of his peers will find that he's not guilty and had no part in the killing of Odin Lloyd."

On June 27, 2013, a new hearing was held for Hernandez on the bail issue. Attorney James Sulton argued that Hernandez is a professional with a stable home life and should not be regarded as a flight risk. Sulton asserted, “Mr. Hernandez is not just a football player but is one of the best football players in the United States of America.” Sulton suggested house arrest and an electronic monitoring bracelet as possibilities.

Superior Court Judge Renee Dupuis denied bail. She observed, “He also has the means to flee and a bracelet just wouldn’t keep him here nor would $250,000.”

The Arrest of Ortiz and Wallace

From two sets of court documents obtained – one set by the Associated Press and the other by USA Today – in early July, the two men Hernandez summoned by text to accompany him to Llyod’s house in Boston the night of June 16 were Carlos Ortiz, 27, and Ernest Wallace, 41, friends of his from his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut. The documents reveal that surveillance video shows three men, who appear to be Hernandez, Wallace and Ortiz, leaving Hernandez’s home in a silver Nissan Altima at about 1:09 a.m. on June 17. The car is seen returning to Hernandez’s home at 3:26 a.m. with Hernandez at the wheel. Surveillance video from a camera at a home across the street from Lloyd’s house on Fayston Street in Boston show Lloyd getting into a silver Nissan at 2:33 a.m.

On June 26, 2013, Carlos Ortiz was arrested as a fugitive from justice; he was extradited from Connecticut to Massachusetts and he agreed to be held without bail on a gun charge.Wallace, of Miramar, Florida, was arraigned in North Attleboro District Court on July 8 and charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact in Lloyd’s case. His bond was set at $500,000.

In the court documents obtained by the AP, Ortiz told police that after the three of them picked up Lloyd at his home, they drove toward Hernandez’s home in North Attleborough, stopping at an industrial park not far from Hernandez’s home where Lloyd, Wallace and Hernandez got out of the car to urinate. As he sat in the car, Ortiz said he heard gunshots; not long after that Wallace and Hernandez got back in the car and sped away.

Ortiz also informed police that it was too dark for him to see who fired the shots but that Wallace later told him Hernandez fired the shots that killed Lloyd. He said that when they returned to Hernandez’s home, Wallace asked him to get a gun from under the driver’s seat. Ortiz said he handed the gun to Hernandez once they were inside the house. After spending the night at Hernandez’s house, Ortiz said he and Wallace accompanied Hernandez to return the Nissan. Hernandez rented a Chrysler to replace it. Ortiz and Wallace then went to the apartment that Hernandez and other football players used as a “flop house.” On their way back to Bristol later that day is when Wallace told him Hernandez had been the one to shoot Lloyd, Ortiz told the police.

It was Ortiz’s trip to the apartment in Franklin that led police to his door. While there his cellphone slipped between sofa cushions and was found while police were executing a warrant to search the apartment.

While searching the Franklin apartment, police also found several boxes of ammunition. Out in the parking lot, in a Hummer registered to Hernandez, police said they found a loaded .45 caliber Glock magazine in the console.

In addition, the court documents state that Massachusetts State Police ballistic experts determined that the five .45 caliber casings found near Lloyd’s body and the casings found in the Nissan rented by Hernandez were fired from the same handgun.

The release of such detailed court records casts an usually full light on the state’s case against Hernandez in the murder of Odin Lloyd. Normally, such detail would not be provided until a probable cause hearing and even then only in outline form. As the damning information in the court records circulates – particularly Ortiz’s account of Hernandez being the shooter of Lloyd – the chances of Hernandez getting a fair trial are under assault. The potential jury pool is being provided information that in every way points to Hernandez’s guilt before the jury is even empanelled. And as a national figure, the negative information about his guilt is being disseminated throughout the United States.

The University of Florida’s action toward Hernandez – like those of the New England Patriots – are indicative of the extreme bias Hernandez is up against as he sits in a segregated cell without the possibility of equal access to the media to tell his side of the story. On July 25, a spokesperson for the university announced a plan to excise any acknowledgement of Hernandez on the Gainesville campus. A statement issued by the university read, “We put together an immediate plan after the initial news broke to remove his [Hernandez’s] likeness and name in various private and public areas in the facility, such as the south end zone team area, locker room, football offices, Heavener Complex Kornblau Lobby and the brick display entrance to the football facility.” The brick display honors Florida players who won All-America awards.

Other Murders May Be Linked to Hernandez

In the immediate aftermath of news about Hernandez’s alleged role in Lloyd’s death, two other shooting incidents that might be tied to Hernandez surfaced.

Police are investigating Hernandez’s possible involvement in an unsolved July 2012 Boston double homicide. CNN.com reported that a source stated, “The Boston Police Department has located and impounded a silver SUV with Rhode Island registration that police have been trying to find for almost a year, which is linked to the scene of the double homicide.”

The source indicated that detectives believe Hernandez was renting that SUV at the time of the double homicide.

A CBS News article gives more specifics about the unsolved Boston crimes, stating, “The double homicide occurred in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012, in Boston’s South End. Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, 28, two Cape Verdean immigrants who lived in Dorchester, were killed when someone fired at the BMW they were in. A third person was wounded. At the time, police said there were two other people in the vehicle, but both ran off before officers arrived.”

Sources indicate it is possible the Boston homicides are linked to the Lloyd slaying because Lloyd – who also lived in Dorchester – may have had information about Hernandez’s possible involvement in the previous case. A law enforcement official told the BostonGlobe:“The case against Hernandez is strengthening” in the unsolved double-homicide matter. A grand jury is investigating Hernandez’s possible involvement in the double-homicide.

Another Shooting Brings a Civil Suit against Hernandez

In addition, Hernandez may face a lawsuit in a shooting case believed to be unrelated to either of the aforementioned murder cases. Four days before Lloyd’s death, a Connecticut man, Alexander S. Bradley, 30, filed a civil lawsuit in Florida contending that Hernandez shot him in the face in February 2013 while the two were in a vehicle after a night of partying at a Miami strip club called Tootsie’s Cabaret. Bradley’s attorneys say the bullet hit him in the arm and traveled until it struck his face and blew out an eyeball. The lawsuit seeks more than $100,000 in damages. The lawsuit was dismissed because paperwork was incorrectly filed. One of Bradley’s attorneys, David Jaroslawicz, states he does not “know why” no criminal charges were filed in the case but asserts that the civil lawsuit will be re-filed.

Police reports show that Bradley was found bleeding outside a John Deere store in Riviera Beach, Florida on the morning of February 13, 2013. The store’s manager said Bradley asked him to call 911, begging, “Tell them to hurry! I’m gonna bleed out.” The manager asked Bradley who shot him and the wounded man replied, “I’m done talking – it hurts too bad.”

Emergency responders found that Bradley was “rude” and refused to cooperate in describing how he had been wounded. Police say Bradley did not name the shooter or shooters but described “both Hispanic and black males” as having been part of the attack.

Hernandez’s Background

The brutal murder of Odin Lloyd and Hernandez’s possible involvement in it inevitably focused media attention on Hernandez’s background. He was born on November 6, 1989. His father, Dennis, was of Puerto Rican heritage; his mother, Terri, of Italian ethnicity. Aaron showed athletic promise early. By the eighth grade he was able to dunk a basketball.  

Aaron apparently inherited his considerable athletic talent from his father. USA Today reports, “As a prep star in Bristol, Conn., in the 1970s, Dennis Hernandez was nicknamed ‘The King.’ Generous and gregarious, he seemingly touched everyone he met.” Hernandez’s mother told USA Today that watching “his sons play sports was Dennis’s greatest joy.”

The major trauma of Hernandez’s youth occurred when his father died unexpectedly following routine hernia surgery. Aaron, then 16, had been especially close to his father and was devastated. His brother D.J, who is three years older, recalled Aaron’s grief when their father died: “It was tough. It was difficult for him.” He also said of Aaron, “He was just lost.”

D. J., who attended the University of Connecticut and starred on the football team as a quarterback and wide receiver, tried to become a surrogate father to Aaron. Aaron recalled, “I just followed my brother’s footsteps. I just tried to follow his work ethic because he did everything the right way. He was always successful.”

“It was a rough process, and I didn’t know what to do for him,” his mother said. “He would rebel. It was very, very hard and he was very, very angry. He wasn’t the same kid, the way he spoke to me. The shock of losing his dad – there was so much anger.”

Even though Hernandez began hanging around with a crowd of rough young men in Bristol, he continued to shine on the football field. As a junior at Bristol Central High School, he set a state record with 1,799 receiving yards. In his senior year in 2006, he scored 17 touchdowns and was named first team tight end on USA Today Sports’ All-USA team.  

Prior to his father’s death, Hernandez planned to attend the University of Connecticut, the alma mater of both his father and brother. After his father’s death, he decided to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville.

He was still 17 and in his freshman year when he was arrested for a fistfight with a bar bouncer. Charged as a juvenile, he received “deferred prosecution” which allowed the charges to be dropped.

Hernandez kept up the athletic achievement in college. He was a star tight end for the Florida Gators. Coach Urban Meyer sensed that the gifted athlete was troubled so Meyer took Hernandez under his wing. Early each morning, Hernandez would visit Meyer’s office. The two read the Bible together. They met once at noon in February when Hernandez was especially upset. Meyer remembered how haunted Hernandez was by the irreplaceable loss of the father to whom he had been so close. “When your guy, your idol, your soul is taken from you, how do you deal with that?” Meyer asks. “I think there’s a part of his life that was not there. He needed discipline. He needed someone to talk to.”

Nevertheless, Hernandez was suspended for the opening game of the 2008 season as punishment for testing positive for marijuana.

A grateful Hernandez recalled about college coach Meyer, “He helped me through a lot of that stuff. I would have horrible days and he taught me to put things aside and work through it.”

His mother believed a corner had been turned when Hernandez was 20. “He’s my Aaron again,” she said. “Just now everything’s getting better and it took him three years. I thought I lost him for good. He wasn’t the same kid. Now he’s back, the same fun loving Aaron.” With Tim Tebow at quarterback, Florida won the national championship in 2008. In the title game against Oklahoma, Hernandez caught five passes for 57 yards in the Gators’ 24-14 win. In 2009, Hernandez’s junior year, he caught 68 passes and won the Mackey Award as college’s football’s top tight end. He then declared for the 2010 NFL draft.

In 2010, Hernandez was selected in the fourth round of NFL draft, rather than the first, due to concerns about his marijuana use and character. The Boston Globe reported that Hernandez had failed multiple drug tests, maybe as many as six, while at the University of Florida.

In a July 3, 2013 article for WSJ.com, Jonathan Clegg reports, “Shortly before the 2012 NFL draft, a scouting service that prepares confidential psychological profiles of players for NFL teams found that Aaron Hernandez enjoyed ‘living on the edge of acceptable behavior’ and cautioned that he could become ‘a problem’ for his team.” Clegg elaborates that, on a personality test, Hernandez “received the lowest possible score, 1 out of 10, in the category of ‘social maturity.’”

The official NFL profile page praised Hernandez as “a savvy pass catcher with outstanding athleticism.” It elaborated, “He has natural hand-eye coordination and consistently reaches out to pluck the ball.” It also remarked, “Hernandez has impressive speed and athleticism” and that he possesses “very natural ball skills, catches away from his body, can bring in off-target throws and can go up for the jump ball.”

In his first year as a pro with the Patriots, Hernandez started out as the youngest active player in the NFL. He became Rookie of the Week during the season’s 15^th week. D.J. Hernandez commented, “He would have made his father proud.”

Aaron Hernandez’s love and respect for his dead father was reflected in the tattoos on both of his muscular arms. One of his father’s favorite sayings is on his left forearm: If it is to be, it is up to me. Another fatherly quote on the tight end’s arm is: The difference between the impossible and the possible lies on a person’s determination.

In 2012, the Patriots offered Hernandez a long-term contract extension that would pay him and additional $40 million through 2018. It included a $12.5 million signing bonus – the highest ever for a tight end. At a news conference announcing the offer, Hernandez wept with joy and gratitude. He immediately donated $50,000 to the Myra Kraft Foundation, a charity founded to honor the late wife of Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Myra Kraft died of cancer in 2011.

That contract, but not the signing bonus, was reduced to dust when the Patriots released Hernandez after his arrest.

Bibliography

“Aaron Hernandez Sued – NFL Star SHOT ME in the Face.” TMZ. http://www.tmz.com/2013/06/19/aaron-hernandez-new-england-patriots-lawsu....

“A Timeline of The Bizarre and Fast-Moving Aaron Hernandez Murder Case.” http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjkiebus/a-timeline-of-the-bizarre-and-fast-moving-aaron-hernandez-mu.

“Aaron Hernandez deal worth up to $40 million.” The Boston Globe. August 27, 2013.

“Bill Reynolds: Browns D.J. Hernandez serves as role model for Pats Aaron.” The Providence Journal. October 22, 2011.

“Boston police search Aaron Hernandez home.” CBSNews.com. June 28, 2013.

Buteau, Walt and Raia, Chris. “Report: Pats’ Hernandez shot man in eye back in February.” WPRI.com. June 21, 2013.

Clegg, Jonathan. “Aaron Hernandez: An Early Warning in 2010 NFL Draft Profile.” WSJ.com. July 3, 2013.

Florio, Mike. “Shooting someone in the face.” NBCSports.com. June 19, 2013.

Jones, Lindsay H. “Aaron Hernandez’s past troubles come into focus.” USA Today. June 24, 2013.

Jones, Lindsay H. “Aaron Hernandez, star legal team face long road ahead.” USA Today. June 27, 2013.

Jones, Lindsay H. “Patriots release Aaron Hernandez, take salary-cap hit.” USA Today. June 26, 2013.

Manahan, Kevin. “Aaron Hernandez charged with murder.” USA Today. June 27, 2013.

National Football League: NFL Draft 2012 – Aaron Hernandez.”

McIntyre, Brian. “Report: Police believe Aaron Hernandez destroyed surveillance system, cellphone.” Yahoo! Sports.

Price, Greg. “NFL Player Charged With Murder: Who Is Suspect Aaron Hernandez? Former New England Patriot Appears In Court, Pleads Not Guilty.” IBTimes.com. June 26, 2013.

Shoichet, Catherine E.; Levitt, Ross; and Castillo, Mariano. “Police are back at Hernandez home.” CNN.com. June 27, 2013.

“Timeline: Aaron Hernandez investigation.” The Associated Press. June 26, 2013.

Whiteside, Kelly. “Florida tight end Hernandez honors father’s memory.” USA Today. 10/11/2009.

Aug. 1, 2013

After an 11-day bender, Bob Wood, the co-creator of the infamous comic book Crime Does Not Pay, admits to beating his girlfriend to death in a whisky and blood-drenched hotel room. This rampage was only one step in the artist’s downfall, and the story of Wood is one of the more lurid true tales in American pulp history.

by Benjamin Welton

I. Origin Story

Around the groves of academe, the trajectory of American literature seems fairly static and contingent upon the socio-political history of our nation. Thus, the transition from detective to criminal begins with the creation of Prohibition and its flexible muscle known as the Volstead Act. Since the ban on intoxicating drinks turned a majority of Americans into either criminals or at the very least citizens in contempt of the law, the writers of the day responded to the cultural mood by replacing the Sherlock Holmes-like figure – a scientific, detached, and somewhat wealthy amateur sleuth with genteel hobbies – with that of the Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett’s short, stocky, and violent private eye who breaks as many bones as he does rules.

Also, according to the same historicist schema of American letters, the Continental Op and Raymond Chandler’s slightly more refined Philip Marlowe (he plays chess and is named after an Elizabethan era playwright, after all) act as transition figures who, while still wielding badges, or rather Photostats proving their right to poke their noses into rotten cases, point towards a darker era in American popular fiction. This particular era comes after the conclusion of the World War II, the great conflagration that engulfed entire civilizations into teeming pools of vengeance mania and genocidal unthinking. From 1945 until the late 1950s, American fiction and film became dominated by noir, a tough-talking sentimentality about history-haunted men and the femme fatales who were after their throats. Rarely does noir embrace the traditional detective figure, and when detectives do appear, they are less like Holmes and more like Inspector Donnelly, the lead investigator in Rudolph Maté’s Union Station, who tells his men to “Make it look accidental.”

There are three major problems with this linear understanding of American literature: 1) It cancels out the police procedural sub-genre which was concurrent with and arguably more popular than noir; 2) it neglects the detective novels of Mickey Spillane, one of the most widely read writers of the day who penned virulently anti-Communist and anti-criminal detective novels that argued for a reactionary and vigilante understanding of justice, and; 3) it completely overlooks the contribution made by comic books during this time period. Besides forgetting the fact that both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway had used criminals as protagonists in the 1920s (The Great Gatsby for the former, and “The Killers” in the case of the latter), the undervaluing of comic books is a truly egregious crime.

In particular, one comic book title not only stood out on the 10-cent shelves of 1940s and 1950s drug stores, but it’s proto-splatter punk ethos would help to pave the way for America’s further descent into exploitative culture. Crime Does Not Pay, a true crime comic book that began in 1942, gleefully filled its pages with the lurid tales of gangland thugs, psychotic juvenile delinquents, and a whole host of other anti-socialites. As America’s first comic book dedicated to presenting real cases of criminality, Crime Does Not Pay updated the older police gazette model, which had shocked readers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, for a postwar audience that had experienced firsthand the horrors of combat in such places as Bastogne and Iwo Jima. As such, by the time that Dr. Frederic Wertham began publicizing his book The Seduction of the Innocent (1954), a sociological and psychiatric study that reported to find a link between comic books and juvenile delinquency, Crime Does Not Pay was on the top of the list of main offenders for its graphic depictions of violence and its often frank references to adult sexuality.

Much like the violent video games of today, Crime Does Not Pay and its comic book brethren came under intense political scrutiny, especially by presidential hopeful Estes Kefauver, a Democrat representing the socially conservative state of Tennessee. In 1953, Kefauver led the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and had Dr. Wertham as a witness and as an apostle in the holy crusade against juvenile delinquency, one of the great fears of the immediate postwar years. Against these supposed pillars of law and order stood the comic book industry with its motley assortment of former conmen, perennial losers, Leftists, and Jews. These artists, writers, and publishers were the men responsible for such titles as The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, and, of course, Crime Does Not Pay.

In the case of Crime Does Not Pay, the three men responsible were Lev Gleason, a New York native and a publisher with a reputation as a dedicated Leftist, Charles Biro, the main writer and a relatively experienced scribbler known mostly for his superhero comics, and Bob Wood, an artist with a gift for creating action-packed scenes and a harmful addiction to liquor and gambling. These three men formed the triumvirate at the heart of Crime Does Not Pay, and despite their outcast status in polite society, only one of them could speak of transgressive behavior with any semblance of confidence.

II. Crime Pays

In the beginning, Biro and Wood were two struggling creators trying desperately to come up with something new in the nascent world of American comic books. By the early 1940s, the superhero craze was beginning to wane, thus opening the way for other types and genres to filter into the colorful pulp pages of the many comic book publications of the day. According to Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey’s The Comic Book History of Comics (2012), the idea of creating a true crime series came to Biro after a stranger offered him the chance to spend a night with a woman in his hotel room. The one stipulation of this offer was that the strange man would be allowed to watch. Biro ultimately said no, and later found out that the man, who was the heir to a margarine fortune, had been keeping the woman as a sex prisoner.

This brief encounter with debauchery deeply affected Biro, and he and Wood decided to create a comic book title that would deal with the depravity of such men. They combined this with a title taken from a 1930s documentary film series that profiled criminals, their deeds, and the abilities of G-men in finding and capturing them. While the documentary shorts strove for a glorification of law and order against the backdrop of Grand Guignol-esque crime, Crime Does Not Pay tacitly offered morality lessons, all the while relentlessly devoting pages of red ink to their amoral protagonists.

Readers apparently appreciated Biro and Wood’s rejection of didacticism, for Crime Does Not Pay flew off the shelves at previously unheard of rates. This popularity inspired imitators, and before long true crime was widely recognized as an economically viable comic book genre.

With visibility comes opportunity hunters with their eyes set on shooting down what they perceive as a social menace. Crime Does Not Pay was targeted by Kefauver, Wertham, and others, and beginning in the late 1940s, Crimes Does Not Pay began the process of forced sanitization. First, the mayor of Chicago, Martin Kennelly, a reformist-minded Democrat who represented the Irish working-class communities of the South Side, banned the circulation of Crime Does Not Pay within the city in 1947. As was feared by many in the press and in public offices, reports of salacious copycat crimes began filling newspapers across the country, thus helping to bolster the rising tide of anti-comic book attitudes throughout most American cities. This wasn’t just confined to the United States. either; Canada banned Crime Does Not Pay outright in 1949 (technically and legally speaking, crime comics are still banned in Canada).

More censorship restraints were put on Crime Does Not Pay throughout the 1950s, and despite Lev Gleason’s backtracking and increased focus on the disclaimers, Crime Does Not Pay, as well as many of other comic book titles, were forced to submit to an internal censorship organ known as the Comics Code Authority. Because Kefauver, Wertham, and other crusaders for American children had placed comic books in the harsh light of the public forum, the Comics Code Authority immediately tried to save the comic book industry by cleaning comics of true crime titles and horror titles. This bleaching helped to denude comics of their previous gritty glamor, and the reemergence of family-friendly superheroes helped to imprison comics in the ghetto of “kid’s stuff” until the British-led experiments in postmodern storytelling in the 1980s. When people speak of pre-code comics, it tends to have the same tantalizing mystique of the pre-code films of Hollywood.

Like a lot comic titles during this time, Crime Does Not Pay could not survive or thrive under this new atmosphere. When the series finally folded in 1955, Gleason, Biro, and Wood were suddenly put adrift in a society that no longer viewed them as economically viable or personally reputable. Gleason and his publishing house folded in 1956, leaving the man behind crime comics out-of-work. Biro would leave the comic book industry, too, but his career ended up on the more successful side. The tall, handsome New Yorker found work in the burgeoning medium of television as a graphic artist, eventually working for NBC. Biro was formally inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2002, his legacy firmly etched into the medium’s so-called “Golden Age.”

Biro’s partner Wood was noticeably less successful after the collapse of Crime Does Not Pay. Wood descended further into alcoholism after assignments started drying up.  From 1956 until his arrest 1958, Wood’s main source of income was drawing for sleazy, soft-core pornographic comics that often blended sex and violence with depictions of recreational drug use and junkie addicts. This was a world that Wood came to know well in the late ‘50s, and on August 27, 1958, the true scale of Wood’s descent became public knowledge.

III. The Final Page

In his masterful The Comic Book Makers (2007), comic book royalty Joe and Jim Simon describe the events surrounding Bob Wood as closely as did the New York Daily News almost 50 years before. According to testimony, a cab driver named Paul Feingold picked up a disheveled and obviously agitated Wood in New York’s swank Gramercy Park neighborhood. Wood helped himself into the back seat and told the driver: “I’m in terrible trouble; I’m going to get a couple of hours of sleep and jump in the river.” In an offhand way Feingold asked Wood if he’d killed anybody, and the former purveyor of uniquely American pulp replied: “Yes, I killed a woman who was giving me a bad time in Room 91 of the Irving Hotel. Why don’t you call someone at a newspaper and make yourself a few dollars.”

New York cab drivers are a hardened lot, and they usually treat such declarations with a modicum of disbelief. But there was something in Wood’s manner that convinced Feingold of his honesty. After dropping Wood off in Greenwich Village at the Regina Hotel, Feingold located a police officer operating out of the East 22nd Street Station. Then, Feingold and the officer questioned the manager of the Regina only to find out that Wood had signed under the false name of Roger Turner. The manager recalled how violently Wood’s hands had shook, and when the police found bloodied clothing in Wood/Turner’s room in the Regina, they no longer doubted the former comic book artist’s tale.

When they entered Room 91 of the Irving Hotel, they found not only a small army of empty whiskey bottles, but they also the battered body of a woman in a blood-drenched negligee. As Wood revealed more of his story, it was discovered that he and the woman, a divorcee who seemed to share Wood’s passion for amber-encased spirits, had spent an 11-day bender together at the Irving. The couple spent most of their time drinking, making love, and, fatefully, arguing. It was one such argument that led Wood to beat the woman to death with an electronic iron, a gruesome murder that would have fitted in nicely with any one of Wood’s illustrations for Crime Does Not Pay. This crime not only added a chilling new wrinkle to the often misogynist images of Biro and Wood’s defunct publication, but it also highlighted how sordid Bob Wood’s world actually was. Wood, a man known amongst comic book industry types for being a little reserved, now exposed his vices for tabloid fodder.

Incredibly, after pleading guilty, Wood was only charged with first-degree manslaughter. The presiding judge blamed alcohol for Wood’s crime, and thus spared the fallen artist from a life sentence. Unfortunately, this good luck would run out. After serving three years in prison, Wood’s murdered body was found on the New Jersey Turnpike the year after his release.

The cause of Wood’s death was due to Wood’s inability to pay back his former acquaintances in Sing-Sing, acquaintances who wanted Wood to pay up on his outstanding loans. Wood couldn’t deliver the dough, and wound up as road kill for all his trouble.

Thus ends the sad tale of Bob Wood. Now, especially since Dark Horse Comics has begun collecting and publishing old issues of Crime Does Not Pay as hardcover volumes, the title established all those many years ago by Biro and Wood has grown to become one of the most respected titles of the “Golden Age.” Modern day maestros of crime comics such as Brian Azzarello and Ed Brubaker openly acknowledge their debt to Crime Does Not Pay, but rarely do they mention the name Bob Wood. Partially because he wasn’t a great artist (a good one and a serviceable one, yes) and partially because he lived the same deviant lifestyle as his creations, both fictional and real, Wood is today only foggily recalled by comic book enthusiasts, and even when he is, it is usually only as a shocking set piece of geek trivia.

Aug. 5, 2013

The latest big thing in forensics is a technique called “stable isotope analysis,” a process that allows scientists to analyze a human body’s hair – or fingernails or bones – to find out where its owner has been living or travelling.             

by Liz Porter

In November 2006, a badly beaten man of Asian appearance was dumped at the accident and emergency section of a hospital in the Welsh county of Gwent, in the UK.  The victim died shortly afterwards, without ever speaking. So police were desperate to discover who he was – and why he had been attacked.

Frustratingly, none of the usual modern forensic methods could help. Neither the man’s fingerprints nor his DNA profile matched any UK records. If he had been a recent arrival, there should have been a record of him entering the country, but there wasn’t.

But police had one last forensic tool at its disposal: a 21^st century technique hailed as “the next big thing” after DNA and known as “stable isotope profiling” or “stable isotope ratio analysis.”

This technique involves scientists analyzing a human body’s hair – or fingernails or bones – to find out where its owner has been living or travelling. Often summarized as “you are what you eat and drink – and where you eat and drink,” stable isotope profiling is based on two key facts. The first is that our hair and bones show traces of the water we have ingested in food and drink. The second is that water sources from different geographical areas can be chemically distinguished from one another.

All water is the same in the sense that each molecule is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But different water sources contain subtly varying concentrations of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes (forms of the same chemical element with a different atomic weight). So the water from one area has a subtly different “isotope signature” from water sampled in another – and this “signature” can be detected in human hair, bones and fingernails.

A Gwent police crime scene investigator snipped 145 millimeters of hair from the mystery murder victim’s scalp: a length that represented 14 and half months of growth. She then took it the Stable Isotope Forensics laboratory at Dundee’s James Hutton Institute.  There, using an isotope ratio mass spectrometer – a $400,000 apparatus that records the ratios of particular isotopes in different samples of material, scientist Dr. Wolfram Meier-Augenstein was able to trace the dead man’s movements.

The dead man’s hair “told” the scientist that its owner had spent 2.5-3 months in the Ukraine, had moved to   Germany for 6 -7 months and then to Wales, where he spent the last 2.5 months of his life.

Germany proved to be the key clue because the German police’s fingerprint data base was able to provide a match for the dead man’s prints.  It identified him as Vietnamese-national Tran Nyugen, who had been transported illegally into the UK by a people- smuggling gang that had forced him to work as a cannabis farmer to pay off his travel debts of £30,000. Unfortunately, Tran Nyugen’s crop was stolen by a rival gang and the gang who smuggled him into the UK kidnapped and tortured him in an attempt to get information about its rivals. Three men were found guilty of his murder in 2008.

In 2005 Dr. Meier-Augenstein was able to use stable isotope profiling to help Dublin Police after the dismembered and headless body of a black man was found in Dublin's Royal Canal. Using stable isotope profiling on bones, hair and fingernails, the forensic scientist, then based in Belfast, was able to identify the Horn of Africa as the victim's most likely birthplace. He could also tell police that the man had entered Ireland about six years before his death. Inquiries in Dublin's African community yielded a possible identity, which was then confirmed by DNA. The dead man was Kenyan Farah Swaleh Noor, boyfriend of local woman Kathleen Mulhall. In 2006, Mulhall's daughters, Charlotte and Linda (dubbed the "Scissor Sisters"), were convicted, one of murder, the other of manslaughter, for bludgeoning Noor to death and cutting up his body.

Sadly, the first UK police investigation to use stable isotope profiling remains unsolved. This is the case of “baby Carrie,” the murdered newborn baby girl whose body was dumped in a black bin bag on the outskirts of the Northern Irish village of Carryduff in 2002.

After obtaining the mystery baby's profile, DNA testing 1,300 local girls and women and drawing a blank, local police turned to Dr. Meier-Augenstein. Measuring the ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in the baby's hair and bones, the scientist compared them to the corresponding ratios found in the water around Ireland and Europe. He was then able to tell the homicide detectives that the mother was not a local. In fact, she had been living in a different part of Europe altogether. He could even give police an estimate of her time of arrival in Northern Ireland. But the case stalled there, with police continuing to make appeals for fresh information every few years.

In late 2007, five years after the brutal murder of seamstress Heather Barnett in the UK city of Bournemouth, stable isotope profiling produced an intriguing clue. University of Reading archaeology lecturer Dr. Stuart Black analyzed cut hair that had been found in the victim’s hand. His work on the nine-centimeter strands revealed that the hair’s owner lived in Britain, but had visited either eastern Spain or southern France 11 weeks before the hair was cut, for up to six days. The person had also visited Tampa, Florida, for eight days, two and a half weeks before the hair was cut. This information never enabled police to trace its owner but it helped confirm the profile of the killer as a hair fetishist who had been known to covertly clipped the hair of women on buses in both Italy and the UK.

In 2008 researchers from the University of Utah had confirmed that hydrogen and isotope variations in people's hair could be used to trace their travels from state to state around the United States. Their work was then used to reconstruct the final two years in the life of an unidentified murder victim found near Salt Lake City in 2000.  The remains of the woman, then known as “Saltair Sally” had been found by duck hunters just near the Great Salk Lake.

The researchers determined that the woman had traveled in Idaho, Washington and Oregon in the last two years of her life: information that helped investigators sort through the many missing persons who matched the woman's description. Finally in August 2012, the woman was identified as Nikole Bakoles, 20, whose family had lost touch with her before 2000 and had not reported her missing until 2003.

Scientists also use isotope profiling to find the subtly different isotope signatures of different batches of illicit drugs, and of bomb ingredients sourced from different countries. Isotope analysis, along with the analysis of trace elements from soil, can also be used as a means of verifying the origins of foodstuffs and drugs.

Interestingly, while stable isotope ratio analysis has only been used by police in the 21^st century, it has been used by archaeologists since the early 1980s, with researchers analyzing the isotope ratios of different elements, including carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, within skeletons and mummies, and then drawing conclusions about the diets of ancient populations. In 2007, researchers analyzed hair samples from naturally preserved child mummies unearthed at an archaeological site in the Andes. Their results supported a theory that the children had been fattened up for sacrifice. The analysis indicated that the children had been raised on a vegetable diet, but, in the 12 months before their deaths, there was an indication of a change, to a diet enriched with foods regarded as “elite,” such as maize, and protein, possibly from charqui (dried llama meat). Stable isotope ratio analysis on hair may also one day be able to reveal whether ancient Egyptian mummies found together came from the same area.

Aug. 12, 2013

Colin Ireland

Colin Ireland was a nobody who wanted to become a somebody by becoming a serial killer. Like two serial killers before him, he trolled the Coleherne Pub in Earls Court for gay men to murder.

by Mark Pulham

Earls Court has been many things in its time. During the late 1800s, it was the Bohemian quarter of London, and in the 1940s, following World War II, it was inhabited by Polish immigrants, which led the area to be nicknamed “The Danzig Corridor.” In the 1960’s it was taken over by Australian and New Zealand travelers which led to a new nickname, “Kangaroo Valley.”

It was the home to many of the famous. Alfred Hitchcock lived in the area, as did Howard Carter, the man who discovered the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Hollywood film star Stewart Granger was born in Earls Court; lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, lived there; and probably most famously, Princess Diana had a flat there for a couple of years before she married Prince Charles.

Roman Polanski filmed the 1965 movie Repulsion in Earls Court, and the 1981 horror comedy An American Werewolf in London was also filmed there. And the 1941 novel by Patrick Hamilton, Hanover Square, was set in Earls Court.

The Coleherne Pub – a Notorious Gay Bar

But long before Soho and other places had made the claim, Earls Court was known as a gay district. And one establishment became notorious: The Coleherne Pub, located at 261 Old Brompton Road.

It began as a regular pub, although with a Bohemian clientele, in 1866, but by the 1930’s, it was featuring drag acts to entertain the crowd after a Sunday lunch. By the mid-1950’s, when homosexuality was still illegal, it was firmly established as a gay pub, though the bar was separated into a gay side and a straight side.

By the 1970’s, the pub had become a fully gay pub, and had transformed into a Leather bar. Behind the pubs blacked out windows, the sadists and the masochists mingled with each other, the color-coded handkerchiefs hanging from their pockets, displaying whether they were tops – the master or dominant partners, or whether they were bottoms – the slave or submissive partner. 

New friends would be made, anonymous and secretive, and the night would be spent in each others company.

The Coleherne Pub attracted the unwanted attention of the police, who found it an easy place to make arrests. The offenses were obstruction, importuning, and soliciting, even though all they were doing was standing in the street saying goodnight to each other. It did no good for those arrested to point out that the other pubs in the area that were not gay also had people standing outside saying goodnight.

The pub also attracted a well known clientele, such as Rupert Everett, Freddy Mercury, Rudolph Nureyev, and Anthony Perkins. Armistead Maupin, in his Tales of the City book, Babycakes mentions the pub, as did the group The Stranglers in its song “Hanging Around.”

But the group was not the only stranglers that are connected to the pub.

Between 1978 and 1983, the Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen strangled and drowned 15 young men whom he had met at various locations throughout the city. One of the locations he frequented on his hunt for victims was the Coleherne.

In 1986, Michael Lupo, an Italian living in London, murdered four men. Once again, he was a frequent visitor to the Coleherne.

One serial killer associated with the pub is unfortunate, two is a huge coincidence, but three is a pattern.

A New Year’s Resolution to Kill Someone

In 1993, a new killer came onto the scene. Like many others, on January 1 he had made a New Year’s resolution. While others resolved to change their lives, or lose weight, or become a better person, this man’s New Year’s resolution was that this year, he would kill a human being.

The man was a nobody, but he thought that this was the best way to become a somebody. For many killers, there are easy targets. Runaways, hitchhikers, prostitutes, all are potential victims for one reason or another. For this man, he chose homosexual men, easy victims because many lead double lives, anxious to conceal their sexual preference from family members, friends, and co-workers, who may not understand.

And this man chose his hunting ground well, a gay pub where no questions were asked, where the clientele moved in anonymity.

Although the resolution was made in the New Year, it wasn’t until the beginning of March that the man made his first move. On March 8, he entered the Coleherne Pub, using the side door as he knew that the front door was covered by a security camera. Even then, he was unsure of whether he would carry out his plan. He would later tell the police that if he had not been approached, he would probably would not have done anything.

Victim No. 1

The man indicated that he was a “top” and waited, and soon, a “bottom” came over, accidentally spilling his drink on the man. The bottom asked that he be punished. The two men began chatting.

Peter Walker was a 45-year old choreographer and former dancer, originally from Liverpool, who had only recently been hired to work in the West End on the musical City Of Angels. He regularly went to the Coleherne hoping to meet someone. Later, friends would say that Walker was a lonely man, whose only real companions were two dogs that he owned, Sammy, a white German shepherd, and Bessie, a black Labrador. They said that he didn’t want to go home to an empty flat.

Walker made it clear that he was a homosexual who was into S & M, and that he was the submissive partner in a sexual relationship. The invitation was clear, and the man took it.

They eventually left the Coleherne, using the side door, and caught a cab to Walker’s home in Battersea, South London, chatting happily to each other on the way, both men no doubt looking forward to the rest of the night, though Walker’s idea of how the night would go differed wildly from that of his new friend.

When they got back to the apartment, the man put the two dogs in another room and closed the door, while Walker got undressed. The man had brought a bag with him, and inside was his “murder kit” containing gloves, cord, handcuffs, and a complete change of clothing. If Walker saw what was in the bag, he wouldn’t think anything of it. It seemed like standard equipment for the S & M crowd.

The man got Walker onto the bed, a four poster, where he bound him with the cord and handcuffed him. The man then gagged him using tied up condoms. Walker was now helpless, but not worried. The man then began to beat Walker, using his fists, and then using a dog lead and a belt.

It’s likely that even at this stage that Walker was not concerned with what was happening, assuming it was part of the fantasy, part of the game. But soon, the violence became excessive, and Walker must have become worried. The man left Walker for a moment and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he had a plastic shopping bag with him.

He pulled the bag over Walker’s head and held it there for a short time, then removed it, taunting his victim and telling him how easy it would be for him to end Walker’s life. He would later tell the police that when Walker asked if he was going to die, the man told him that he was. He felt that Walker had resigned himself to his death, and that he had, in a sense, given up.

Finally, tired of the game, the man put the bag over Walker’s head for the last time and suffocated him. When it was over, the man burnt Walker’s pubic hair. He would explain to the police later that he was curious to know what it would smell like. The killer then did a search of the apartment, during which the killer found something that enraged him. Among the papers he rifled through was evidence that Walker was HIV positive and he had not told him, but was perfectly willing to engage in sex.

The man, angered, pushed a condom in Walker’s mouth and into a nostril, and then arranged two teddy bears in a 69 position on the bed.

The killer was an enthusiastic reader of true crime books and FBI manuals, and he knew how to clean up a crime scene. He wiped down any surface that he may have touched and changed his clothes, putting the ones he had on in the bag, along with the cord that he had used to bind Walker to the bed.

He then settled down to wait out the night, thinking that leaving at that time would cause suspicion. He watched television until he felt it was safe enough to leave.

Once the morning rush hour had started, the killer left, blending in with everyone else on their way to work. He threw away keys he had taken from the apartment into the Thames from Battersea Bridge as he headed across into Chelsea. Then, on a train heading home, he threw the murder kit out the window and into a canal.

There had been nothing in the newspapers about the murder the day after the killing, so the man called the Samaritans. He told the person who answered about the dogs, telling them they had been locked in the room a couple of days and that someone should go there. He explained that the owner was dead, and that he had killed him.

This was done not because of the killer’s concern over the plight of the dogs, but so that someone would go and discover the body.

Not content with one phone call, he made a second one, this time to The Sun newspaper. He told them of his New Year’s resolution to kill someone, and pointed them in the direction of Peter Walker, telling them that the victim was a homosexual that was into kinky sex, adding, “You like that stuff, don’t you?” This was a reference to the newspapers disreputable content.

But what the killer didn’t know was that the body had already been discovered, by the building caretaker. The police investigation, led by Detective Inspector Martin Finnegan, came to what seemed an obvious conclusion, that this was a sex game that had gone horribly wrong.

The police needed to know the identity of Walker’s sexual partner on the evening of his death. Finnegan went on television to appeal for the man to come forward, but to no avail. The police reached out to the gay community, and immediately hit a wall of resistance.

The police and the gay community had never had a good relationship, and the police had a reputation for not taking crimes against homosexuals seriously, even when they were assaulted, and were even hostile themselves toward members of the gay community.

If that wasn’t bad enough, on March 11, two days after the death of Peter Walker, the House of Lords ruled that it was an offense to cause bodily harm to someone while engaging in a sado-masochistic act, even if there was consent. Effectively, S & M was now illegal.

This, along with their past experiences, virtually guaranteed that there would be no co-operation with the police from the gay community, especially those who enjoyed rough sex who now feared they would be subject to prosecution. With no clues left at Walker’s apartment, no witnesses, and the lack of co-operation from the gay community, the police had no choice but to close the case as unsolved.

Two months passed. The killer was lying in wait, waiting for the police investigation to die down. By this time, any fears that were going through the gay community would have passed and they would feel safe. But by the end of May, the urge to take another victim had built up and needed to be satisfied.

Back to Prowl the Coleherne

On May 28, the killer travelled back to the Coleherne and hunted for another victim.

Christopher Dunn

Christopher Dunn was a 37-year-old librarian, a regular at the Coleherne, and like Peter Walker, a submissive partner. Dunn was precisely the type the killer was looking for. The two men started chatting in the pub, and Dunn revealed to the man that he liked to be dominated.

The two men left the pub, again by the side door, and went to Dunn’s home, a Victorian cottage in Wealdstone in North London. Once there, they spent some time together, having something to eat and watching an S & M film that belonged to Dunn. When it was over, the man told Dunn to go and get ready. Dunn left and went to the bedroom.

The man waited a short while, and then he too entered the bedroom. Dunn was naked, except for a studded belt and a black leather body harness. The man told Dunn to lie down on the bed on his stomach. He then handcuffed Dunn and tied his feet together. The man asked Dunn how he felt, and Dunn told him he felt scared but excited.

His excitement would soon pass, but the fear would increase. The man began to beat Dunn with his fists and a belt and started to demand his cash card and PIN. The violence was horrific, and Dunn gave him everything he wanted. But the man didn’t believe the PIN he gave him was real, of the four numbers, three consecutive numbers were identical.

The killer took his lighter and held the flame to Dunn’s testicles, and there was more beating. Satisfied that he had the right information, the killer took some pieces of cloth and jammed them into Dunn’s mouth, suffocating him.

Once again, the killer cleaned up the crime scene thoroughly, putting the plate and glass he had used earlier into his bag and wiping everything down, and even cleaning the batteries from his flashlight, something he had seen on a television program. His clothing and shoes had been changed and the discarded clothes placed in the bag to be disposed of by throwing them from the train.

As before, he stayed at the apartment until he deemed it was safe enough to leave. Later, he would tell the police that he believed staying in the apartments with the corpses affected him mentally, that sitting with them as they gradually became blotchy wasn’t something he could cope with.

It turned out that murdering men was a costly business, what with having to replace items in his murder kit and having to buy new clothes to make up for the ones he was throwing away. With this in mind, the man used Dunn’s cash card and PIN to withdraw £200 from his account.

On May 30, two days after his death, Dunn’s body was discovered by a friend who had come to call on him. The police who investigated believed, at first, that it was a sex game gone wrong, having been informed that Dunn was a gay man who went to bars and clubs, including the Coleherne, that catered to the homosexual community. But when they realized that money had been taken from Dunn’s bank account using his PIN, the theory was changed to a robbery and murder, and that he was tortured to reveal the PIN.

At the time of the killings, the Metropolitan Police were split into five different areas, and they didn’t normally consult each other on crimes that had taken place. As the police investigating the Dunn killing were from a different station than the Battersea police who were looking at the Walker killing, neither of the two murders was linked. Once again, there was no forensic evidence or any witnesses that could help with the investigation.

The Urge to Kill Sharpens

On June 4, 1993, the man was back in the Coleherne pub. It had been just six days since the murder of Christopher Dunn. The man’s urge to kill was escalating, and the gap between killings was becoming shorter. He was becoming frustrated by the fact that the killings had not been linked, and the craving he had for recognition had not been fulfilled.

Perry Bradley

Perry Bradley III was a tall and handsome blond man from Sulphur Springs, Texas, the International Sales Director for J-B Weld Co, an adhesives manufacturing company. Perry’s late father was Perry Bradley Jr., a U.S. Congressman and a Democratic Party fundraiser, and Perry himself, with success in both the real estate and construction businesses, was already quite wealthy.

Bradley had his fatal meeting at the Coleherne and the two men went back to Bradley’s apartment in Kensington. The 35-year-old Bradley took off his clothes and his new friend suggested that he tie him up as foreplay. But Bradley was not into S & M, and was reluctant to do so. However, the man told him that for him to get aroused, he needed the bondage foreplay. Bradley relented and soon, he was face down on the bed, hands cuffed behind his back and his feet tied together with cord. The man then placed a noose around Bradley’s neck.

To Bradley’s horror, the man then demanded Bradley’s cash card and PIN, and told him he was quite willing to kill him if he needed to. The man threatened to take his lighter and burn Bradley’s testicles if he wasn’t told what he wanted to know.

Bradley, frightened for his life, told the man where the card was and the PIN, and offered to go to the bank with him to withdraw the money. The man said that would not be necessary.

He then told Bradley that it was going to be a long night, and suggested that he get some sleep. As amazing as it seems, Bradley actually drifted off to sleep. According to his statement to the police, the killer sat around for a while and considered letting Bradley live, but then decided it was easier just to kill him.

As Bradley slept, the man began to tighten the noose. Bradley hardly struggled as the man took away his life. Once Bradley was dead, the man searched through the apartment, finding £100, which he stole. He then cleaned up thoroughly and spent the rest of the night relaxing, listening to the radio, until it was safe to leave. Before he left, the man placed a doll on Bradley’s body.

At the bank, the man used Bradley’s cash card to withdraw another £200, then headed back home, again throwing the murder kit from the train window.

This third killing was also not linked to the others, again because the police investigating the death were from a different area. It was also not linked because the others concerned the deaths of known homosexuals, and this was not a homosexual death. Perry Bradley III was not gay. At least, that’s what people thought. Bradley had kept his sexual preferences so secret that no one knew that he was a homosexual.

When people back in Sulphur Springs heard of his death and that there was a suggestion of homosexuality, they all dismissed it. One said that Bradley loved beautiful women, and suggested that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The police may have kept an open mind about Bradley’s sexual preferences, but likely went along with the heterosexual suggestion to protect the family.

However, the death of the son of a prominent political figure did make the headlines, though the killer was still angry that despite having killed three times, none of the deaths were linked, and therefore his wish to be recognized as a serial killer was still unfulfilled.

This time, the gap between killings became even shorter. On June 7, just three days after he killed Perry Bradley, the man was back at the Coleherne searching for yet another victim.

Victim No. 4

The man met and began chatting to 33-year-old Andrew Collier, who worked as a warden for a sheltered housing complex in Dalston, in North East London. They left the Coleherne and went back to Collier’s apartment where, just after they arrived, a disturbance took place and both men looked out of the window.

Whatever it was died down, and the two men returned to the reason they were there. As with the others, Collier allowed the man to handcuff him and tie him to the bed. A noose was then put around Collier’s neck.

Once again, the demands for the cash card and the PIN were made, but Collier refused to give them. Angry, the man began to torture Collier, and then started searching through the apartment. Among the items he found was notification that Collier was HIV positive.

The man’s anger increased, and he tortured Collier some more, using his lighter to burn parts of Collier’s body.

Then, to Collier’s horror, the man caught Collier’s pet cat, Millie. As Collier watched, the man hanged the cat by the neck from the door, killing it in front of Collier. No doubt at this point, Collier knew he was going to die, and he was right. The man tightened the noose around Collier’s neck and killed him, then stuffed condoms in his mouth.

But still angry, the man then decided to humiliate Collier even more. He placed a condom over Collier’s penis, and another one over the cat’s tail. He then positioned the cat on Collier’s body so that the cat’s mouth was around Collier’s penis, and the cat’s tail was in Collier’s mouth.

Once again, he cleaned the crime scene and waited until the streets were busier so he could blend into the crowd. He took with him £70 that he had found, and a mug that he had used.

When Collier was eventually found, it was a scene that the police had never encountered before. Once again, this was a different team investigating this death. Although, like the killings before, this could have been interpreted as a sex act that had gone too far, the fact that the cat had been killed and displayed in such a manner caused the detectives to think that this may be something more.

The investigating officers, led by Detective Chief Superintendant Albert Patrick, began to look at other deaths within the past few months to see if anything similar had occurred. Detective Sergeant Terry Webster called the team investigating the Bradley death, but was told that as Bradley was not homosexual, it wasn’t linked. With the Christopher Dunn death labeled as accidental, it was not surprising that none of them were linked. But when Webster saw the details of the Patrick Walker killing, he knew that he was on to something. The two teddy bears left in the 69 position were similar, in essence, to the position that the cat and Collier were left. Webster called the police in Battersea. Finally, two of the deaths were linked.

The police made an appeal to the gay community, but there were bridges that had to be built.

The killer still craved publicity, and on June 12, five days after murdering Andrew Collier, he called the Kensington police and gave details of the killing, and claimed that he had killed four men in total.

He also called the Battersea police. “Are you still interested in the death of Peter Walker?” he asked them. He also asked them if they had stopped the investigation into Walker’s death, and suggested that they were not interested in the death of a homosexual. He told them he dreamed of committing the perfect murder, and said that he will kill again.

The Last Victim

That night, the man went out once more, back to the Coleherne, hunting for another victim.

Emanuel Spiteri was 42 years old, originally from Malta, now a chef working in London. He was a short man who liked to dress in leather pants and wore motorcycle boots. He frequently went to many gay bars, but as one barmaid stated later, he was shy and retiring, a classic wallflower.

On June 12, he went to the Coleherne.

The killer met him there and they chatted for a while, but then Spiteri left. This could have been a lucky escape, but unfortunately, a while later, the killer bumped into him again at Earls Court Tube Station. They chatted again, and this time Spiteri invited him back to his apartment in Catford, South East London.

It took several trains to get there, but once in his apartment, the usual scene played out. Spiteri was handcuffed and tied to the bed, and a noose was placed around his neck. Once more, the killer demanded the cash card and PIN, but Spiteri refused to give it. The man tightened the noose, strangling Spiteri.

The man performed his usual clean up, removing any forensic evidence, and watched television until the morning before he left. But this time, he decided to add something new. He gathered papers and put them on the floor in the bedroom, then set them alight. He hoped the blaze would destroy the whole apartment block, and had even considered turning on the gas, though he then decided not to.

The next day, the man called the police and told them to look for his fifth victim at the scene of a fire in South London. What the man didn’t know was that just after he had left, the fire burned itself out, doing little damage.

While the police were searching through reports of fires, the police station got a call in the early evening of June 15. The woman was a landlady who reported that one of her tenants was dead, and that there was evidence of a fire in the bedroom. The police had found Emanuel Spiteri.

It was now clear that a serial killer was on the loose, targeting the homosexual population. Both Walker and Collier had been linked, and now Dunn, Bradley, and Spiteri had been added to the list of victims.

The police called a midnight press conference. Detective Chief Superintendant Ken John, heading the inquiry, said that the five murders were linked both “pathologically and forensically” and were the work of the same man. John made an appeal to the gay community, asking them to be careful, and recommended that if they were going off with anyone they didn’t know to inform a friend exactly where they were going. Albert Patrick added “I am extremely frightened that this man will strike again. There may well be other victims we don't yet know about, and heterosexuals may also be at risk.”

Patrick also added what may be the motives for the murders. “It is possible that the killer has AIDS and is taking revenge for his own HIV infection. I have a gut feeling that the men were lured for sex and then things went badly wrong.”

On June 17, another press conference was called, this time allowing Ken John to make a direct appeal for the killer to give himself up. “Speak to me, I am willing to speak to you. I need to speak to you. This is something we can talk about. Enough is enough. Enough pain, enough anxiety, enough tragedy. Give yourself up – whatever terms, whatever you dictate, whatever the time, to me or my colleagues.”

He then explained to the press that a man had been calling the police and telling them that he had committed the murders, giving details of the killings, but that now the calls had stopped. John believed the calls were a cry for help.

Two days after the last press conference, London’s Gay Pride Festival was held. It was attended by more than 50,000 homosexuals, and the police were present to hand out leaflets giving details of the murders of the five victims, and asking for anyone to come forward if they had information, and warned the homosexual community to be careful in any encounters with people they meet casually.

“The Gay Slayer”

The news of the killer, now given the nickname “The Gay Slayer,” chilled and horrified the city, though the least shocked seemed to be the gay community itself. As one put it, “Gay people take a lot of risks anyway, and it just seems like another one to look out for.” In fact, within the gay community, he began to be jokingly referred to as the “queerial killer.”

This may have seemed like an odd reaction, but as the publisher of London’s Capital Gay newspaper, Michael Mason, said, “After living 10 years under the shadow of AIDS, suddenly people are wondering if we're quaking with fear because five people have been murdered, as terrible as that is.”

Profilers Weigh In

The police asked psychologist Dr. Mike Berry to draw up a profile of the killer. Berry advised them that the killer was driven by violent fantasies, but each killing didn’t live up to the fantasy that he had in his head, causing him to have to recreate the killing with a new victim. He also said that he believed the killer is not HIV positive and therefore not taking revenge on the homosexual community.

Another psychologist, Dr. Jonas Rappeport, agreed with Berry, and went on to suggest that the killer was possibly not even homosexual, but just pretending to be one to attract the victims to him, giving them a false sense of security.

Criminal psychologist Paul Britton also gave advice, as did Dick Walter, a psychologist from Michigan, and famed FBI profiler Robert Ressler, who happened to be in England on a book tour.

One Fingerprint Left Behind

Despite the cynicism of the gay community regarding the police and their distrust, one gay man came forward. It happened that this man was on the same train from Charing Cross to Hither Green as Spiteri and his killer on the night that he was murdered, and got a clear view of the man Spiteri was with. He gave the police a description, which was released on June 24. The man with Spiteri was a white male aged between 30 to 40 years old, over six feet tall, and clean shaven. He had a full face and had short dark hair. The police, based on this description, created an E-FIT, an Electronic Facial Identification Technique, of the suspect, and issued it to the press.

As the witness said he was on the train from Charing Cross, the police contacted the station and asked for their security camera tapes for the night in question, hoping that they were lucky enough to have captured the killer on tape. Charing Cross Station sent them almost 500 hours of videotape which they had to go through.

Still from CCTV camera

Finally, the officers’ viewing paid off, the man with Spiteri had been caught on tape. Taking a still from the videotape, the police released it to the public on July 2 and asked for information. By the next day, the police had received more than 40 telephone calls, many of them from men claiming that they had seen or even talked to the man in the Coleherne Pub.

On July 19, a 39-year-old man walked into the office of his solicitor in Southend-on-Sea, a coastal resort town in Essex, some 40 miles from London. He had seen the video still that had been released and had recognized the man with Spiteri. He was that man.

His name was Colin Ireland, and he explained to the solicitor that the man in the video was him, but he had not killed Spiteri. He said he had met Spiteri and had agreed to go home with him, but when they arrived, there was another man there, and Ireland didn’t want any part of that, so he left.

By this time, the police had already identified the man in the video as Colin Ireland, and were on their way to see him in Southend. The solicitor called the police, and they went to the solicitor’s office to await the arrival of Colin Ireland.

When Ireland arrived, he handed them a written statement, telling the story that he had told the solicitor. The police immediately placed him under arrest and took him back to London. At Islington police station, Ireland’s fingerprints were taken, and he was interviewed, but Ireland had decided not to talk.

Anatomy of a Serial Killer

The police looked into his background. Colin Ireland’s mother was a young news agent’s assistant when, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son at the West Hill Hospital, in Dartford, Kent. It was March 16, 1954. The pregnancy was unplanned, and, no surprise to her, the father wanted nothing to do with it. He vanished from the scene, and the young mother left his name off the birth certificate.  She was unable to cope with being a mother on her own, and with barely enough money coming in for herself, let alone a newborn, she moved in with her grandparents at Myrtle Road, Dartford.

They stayed there for the next few years until more relations from abroad came to stay. At this point, now 22 years old, she decided to move with her 5 year old, and become more independent. They moved to Birch Road in Gravesend, but things were more difficult, with her trying to balance looking after a small child, and trying to earn enough money from part-time and unskilled work. Eventually, when it became too much, they moved back into the house at Myrtle Road until 1960, when she had saved some money.

This time, they moved to Sidcup in Kent, but later that same year moved again, this time to Westmalling in Maidstone, Kent.

Westmalling was a camp for homeless women and their children, almost like a prisoner of war camp than a home. The day she arrived there, the young Colin remembered her bursting into tears. She was able to stand it for three months, but no more than that. She returned to Myrtle Road.

By the following year, things had improved. She had met a man, and the three of them moved to Farnol Road, Dartford. There they would remain for three years, after getting married, and changing Colin’s last name from Ireland to his new stepfather’s name of Saker.

Colin liked his new father, but though he was an electrician by trade, he only worked once in a while, and was completely irresponsible when it came to money. With the constant moving around, Colin’s school life suffered, constantly being the “new boy” with its subsequent taunts. Tall and thin, Colin just never seemed to fit in. Between the ages of five and 10, Colin went to six different primary schools, with a move causing him to leave just as he was getting used to it.

Colin became a loner and withdrawn, standing on the sidelines watching rather than joining in.

In 1964, the family was evicted from Farnol Road for non-payment of rent. Colin and his mother ended up back at the women’s camp at Westmalling, with his stepfather having to find somewhere else to stay as the camp was for women and children only.

That same year, Colin’s mother discovered that she was pregnant. It was clear that the emotional and financial strain could not take the addition of a new baby, but Colin’s mother wanted the child. They decided that Colin would go into foster care until the financial situation improved.

Colin stayed with a family in Wainscott, Kent, until his family was able to take him back. When he was returned, his mother, stepfather, and a baby brother were living in West Kingsdown.

Still poverty stricken, his mother would sacrifice for her children, often going hungry so the kids would have enough to eat. Colin bonded with his mother, and although poor, things seemed to be going right. But then what little stability they had was torn apart when Colin’s stepfather abandoned them.

The marriage had been going downhill for quite a while, and before her husband had even left, she had already met another man. The couple married fairly soon after, but Colin, angry and resentful to all adults, refused to take the new stepfathers name, reverting back to the name of Ireland.

The new stepfather was stable and good hearted, and in 1965 the family moved to Clyde Street in Sheerness, Kent. They would stay in this house for the next five years.

By this time, Colin was 12 and beginning to get interested in sex. He started masturbating at this age, his fantasies fueled at that time by the usual stuff, mildly erotic magazines and the underwear sections of shopping catalogues, the same things that most boys used as fantasies at that time.

But there were other sexual experiences that were not so normal. On four occasions, elderly men approached him in the hopes of enticing him somewhere for sex. In each case, nothing happened, Colin refused to go with the men, but the attempts made him angry, and for a boy with an already diminished confidence, it made him feel that he was destined to be a victim.

In 1970, Colin turned to crime. The 16 year old stole £4.00 and planned to run away to London with the money. But the plan failed. He was caught and made the subject of a “fit person order” and sent to Finchton Manor School in Kent. There he was bullied by other boys who made fun of his accent and also made fun of the fact that the council was paying for his stay there, whereas the other boys were being paid for by their parents.

In revenge, he went to the room he shared with two boys and set fire to his belongings.

The fire brigade put the fire out, and Colin was taken away by a social worker. No charges were brought against Colin for the incident.

Fires seemed to have played a great part in Colin’s mind. He had recurring nightmares that revolved around fire, and read books about the fire brigade. It’s likely that this was the reason he set fire to Spiteri’s room.

Now free of Finchton, Colin ran away to London and began hanging around Playland, an amusement arcade where pedophiles would often pick up young runaways. Although Colin was never abused, he saw others sell their bodies for a place to sleep.

Colin had no money, and nowhere to sleep, and inevitably, he found himself in trouble again, committing minor offenses which led to a sentence at Hollesly Bay Borstal. The security was so light that Colin escaped. His freedom was short lived, however, as he was picked up by the police and sent back to Borstal, this time the tighter institutions at Rochester and Grendon.

He was there in 1971 and 1972, and then, at the age of 18 he was released. It was around this time that he began his first relationship with a woman, but which was not a happy period of his life. The relationship faltered.

When he was 21 years old, in December 1975, he was captured after stealing a car, damaging property and committing two counts of burglary. No longer a minor, he was sentenced to 18 months, though he only served 12.

Shortly after he was released, he moved in with a woman and began his first sexual relationship, losing his virginity at the age of 22. This relationship lasted a few months before Colin left.

Over the next few years, Colin went back and forth between prison for crimes such as demanding with menaces, robbery, and attempted deception, interspersed with jobs such as a volunteer fireman, a volunteer in a homeless shelter, and a bouncer at a number of bars, including a gay bar.

When he was 27, he was working as a chef when he met a woman named Virginia Zammitt at a lecture on survivalism. She was 36 years old, nine years older than Colin, confined to a wheelchair after being paralyzed in a road accident when she was 24, and she had a 5-year-old daughter. Nevertheless, they hit it off, and the following year, 1982, they married.

Colin loved Virginia and her daughter, but he was becoming more unstable, and eventually, the marriage failed as Colin was becoming increasingly aggressive and getting into more trouble and finding himself imprisoned. When Colin had an affair in 1987, the marriage ended.

Two years passed, and in 1989, Colin met the landlady at the Globe pub in Buckfast, Devon. Janet Young fell in love with Colin, and within the space of a week, he moved in with her and her two children, aged 11 and 13. Three months later, they were married.

Four months into the marriage, Colin drove Janet and her children to her mother’s house. Nothing seemed wrong. But Colin then disappeared, taking with him everything from the house, emptying Janet’s bank account, stealing money from the pub, and taking the car.

With the collapse of this marriage, Colin moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex. There, he got a job working in a shelter for the homeless. The manager, Richard Higgs, said that he was liked by the guests as he had similar problems and could empathize with them. But, by December, 1992, many unfounded allegations were made against Colin, forcing him to resign. Colin went to an adult training center, where he found himself breaking up wooden pallets. To Colin, it was demeaning work, and he was becoming frustrated. He realized in this life he was a nobody, and he wanted to be a somebody. His solution was to become a serial killer.

Colin had been an avid reader of crime books and knew that to be classed as a serial killer, according to one book, he had to murder five people. He also knew about the relatively new theory of geographical profiling, and that the serial killers home range was, in England, seven miles. Killers operate within this seven mile radius, and with this knowledge, Colin chose to trick the police by consciously killing outside that seven-mile limit.

To further confuse the police, he would throw the murder kit from the window of the train, but always within that seven mile radius.

And on March 8, 1993 his plan became reality.

After his capture, Ireland maintained his silence through two days of interrogation, revealing no emotions. Instead, he just stared at the officers. But Ireland was shocked for a moment when the police revealed one thing. As much as Ireland’s story of leaving Spiteri with the other man at his home was plausible, they had one piece of evidence that proved he was lying: a fingerprint. And it had been found not in Spiteri’s home, but in the apartment of Andrew Collier.

The Collier Crime Scene

That night at Collier’s home, the disturbance outside which caused them to look out of the window resulted in Ireland accidentally touching the inside of a bar that was across the window. Ireland had completely forgotten that he touched it, and so didn’t wipe it when he cleaned up. After the initial shock of the fingerprint evidence was over, Ireland went back to silence.

On July 21, the police charged him with the murder of Andrew Collier, and two days later, with the murder of Emanuel Spiteri.

The Confession

Ireland was remanded in custody, and for the next four weeks continued to be silent, until August 19, when he suddenly decided to make a confession. He was the man responsible for the five deaths. Once he started, he gave detailed descriptions of what he did, showing no emotions. The next day, he was also charged with the murders of Walker, Dunn, and Bradley.

Ireland told the police that he felt he needed to be removed from society, adding that he knew the murderous side of his personality could only be controlled if he was in prison. He pointed out that he himself was not gay, and had no particular grudge against homosexuals. He just picked them because they were easy targets. According to him, it could just as easily have been women he targeted.

Colin Ireland had confessed to all five murders, and so there was no need for a trial, just a sentencing. By confessing, Colin had ended the chance of becoming as famous as previous serial killers.

On December 20, at the Old Bailey’s Number One Court, Colin Ireland was sentenced by the judge, Mr Justice Sachs, who said, “"By any standards you are an exceptionally frightening and dangerous man. In cold blood and with great deliberation you have killed five of your fellow human beings. You killed them in grotesque and cruel fashion. The fear, brutality and indignity to which you subjected your victims are almost unspeakable. To take one human life is an outrage, to take five is carnage. You expressed the desire to be regarded as a serial killer. That must be matched by your detention for life.”

And life it was. While walking in the yard at Wakefield Prison, Ireland, then 57 years old, slipped and fractured his hip. Ten days later, on February 21, 2012, Colin Ireland died from pulmonary fibrosis and the fractured hip.

 Aug. 19, 2013

William Rouse

In an affluent suburban Chicago mansion, 15-year-old Billy Rouse murdered his mother and father in their master bedroom. Fifteen years later, after squandering his $1 million inheritance, he was convicted of their murders.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

The Rouse family had long, established roots in Libertyville, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago. Bruce Rouse, 44, often spoke of his family that had settled in the area in the 1880s and were prominent in business and social circles.

In 1957, at the age of 21, Bruce inherited his father’s gas station and within a few years had acquired a chain of gas stations, had invested in real estate, a Ready-Mix-concrete business and a partnership in a cable television station. He met and fell in love with Darlene and they were married after she graduated from High School in 1959. Almost immediately Darlene became pregnant and gave birth to her first son, Kurt, when she was just 18. Within a few years two more children followed, daughter Robin and another son, William, called Billy.

Bruce Rouse

With the success of Bruce’s business, the family moved to a 13-room mansionand it seemed they were living the “American Dream.” However, financial success came at a very high price and meant Bruce was spending more and more time away from home. Darlene struggled to raise three children almost single-handedly and by the time the boys reached their teens they were drinking, using drugs and had meagre respect for authority at home or at school.

By 1980 both boys were extremely troublesome but it was 15-year-old Billy who seemed the more disturbed. He had frequent outbursts of rage, was expelled from school after going on a vandalism spree and setting off the school fire alarm. His use of alcohol and drugs escalated. Twenty-year-old Kurt was also causing havoc in the Rouse household, was barred from the main house and went to live in separate guest quarters at the rear of the residence.

Darlene Rouse

On June 5, 1980 Bruce left for work bringing Billy with him to help in theinstallation of a car spray painting booth at one of the gas stations. That eveningBruce went to a Rotary Club meeting and Billy returned home where he proceeded todrink and use hashish.

Darlene had spent the evening with friends for dinner and playing bridge. When she got home she got into an altercation with Billy about his alcohol and drug useand threatened to send him to a military school. When Bruce arrived home, aswas his usual behavior, he chose not to become involved in the argument. Kurt was in the guest quarters with a girlfriend and Robin was in her bedroom. The home settled down for the night.

Murder

The next morning, at 8:30 a.m. Robin was surprised that her father was not up and ready to leave for work as usual. She went to her parents’ bedroom and was horrified to find them, lifeless, under a bed sheet. It was a ghastly scene: the top of Darlene’s head had been shot off and Bruce’s lower jaw was shattered. A hysterical Robin called 911 and then rushed to wake her brother, Billy. Within minutes police arrived at the home and were met by Robin and Billy. They went to the rear of the home to wake Kurt.

All three children told detectives that they had heard nothing during the night as there had been a thunder storm which must have muffled the gunshots. The police were immediately suspicious of the siblings. In distress, Robin told a detective that one of her brothers was responsible. She didn’t say which one.

The crime scene was horrific. The killer had entered the master bedroom and shotDarlene with a 16-gauge shotgun, killing her instantly. Bruce was then shot in the lower face at point blank range. Apparently, as he was still showing signs of life, the killer then bashed his head with the butt of the gun and finished by stabbing him through the heart with a kitchen knife. The shotgun and knife were never recovered.

Detectives had very strong opinions that one of the children, or all three, wereinvolved but were unable to produce enough evidence to bring charges. Wealthyrelatives formed a protective cordon of lawyers around the children and all threerefused to appear before a grand jury or attend the coroner’s inquest. The motivecould most certainly have been financial as, between Darlene and Bruce, there wereassets of around $2 million. However, without concrete evidence, or aconfession, the police were unable to link the crime to any of the children

The Children Move On

Kurt, Robin and Billy split up and went to live with relatives in different states. In1983 tragedy struck once again when 20-year-old Robin was killed in an unrelated car accident.

The boys inherited their parent’s estate. Kurt married and moved to California. Billy went to live in Key West, Florida, where he continued his drug use, squandered his share of the estate, married, divorced and was almost homeless. He had spent six months in jail in Florida for his involvement in a stabbing and in October 1995 was again arrested on suspicion of attempted bank robbery.

The police, in Florida, aware of Billy’s background and the suspicion surroundingthe deaths of his parents, notified the police in Lake County of his arrest. Detectivesimmediately flew to Florida to question Billy in the faint hope that he would beremorseful and finally talk about his parents’ murders. They videotaped the interviewand were both shocked and pleased when Billy described, in brutal detail, the murderof his parents in 1980 when he was 15 years old, after using alcohol, marijuana andpsychedelic mushrooms. Billy Rouse was arrested, escorted back to Lake County, Illinois, and charged with the murder of his parents.

The Trial

The trial began in August 1996 and David Brodsky, for the defense, objected to theuse of the videotaped confession. Judge Victoria A. Rossetti ruled that the tapeadmissible. The defense tried to paint a picture of the Rouse home as a place poisoned by infidelity, domestic violence and substance abuse. Thedefense also tried to point to Kurt Rouse, the defendant’s brother, as being the killer.

The prosecution’s case was based mainly on the taped confession and Billy washeard, clearly, describing how he was covered with his parents’ blood and brainmatter. “The f--- I had to deal with then was gone” he said. The court was aghast.

Billy Rouse did not take the witness stand in his own defense and satmotionless during the two-week trial. The jury of eight women and four men tookeight hours deliberating and again viewed the taped confession before reaching averdict of guilty.

On October 5, 1996, Judge Rosetti opened the sentencing procedure bysaying she felt “disgusted” that the law, at the time of the crime, did not allow her tosentence Billy Rouse to life and passed two consecutive 40-year sentences. She closed her comments by saying, “That is the injustice that I have to live with.

They gave you life and brought you into this world… they gave you everyopportunity for a future. You did the most hatefully shocking thing when you tookthat shotgun and, at close range, shot your mother who brought you into this world…and then shot your father. You not only took their lives, but you took your own.”

The sentence was the maximum allowed under the law because harsher punishmentfor juvenile offenders was not enacted until shortly after the murders in 1980.

An emotionless Billy Rouse did not speak at his sentencing. He could be eligible forparole in 2035. He is incarcerated in the Pontiac Correctional Centre, Pontiac, Illinois.

Aug. 22, 2013

Sharp family

Cold Case: The most brutal murders in Plumas County history occurred on April 11, 1981 in Keddie, California, a down on its heels resort town that time had passed by. No one was ever charged with the crime.

by Jeni Johnson

Keddie is a small town in the mountains of Northern California, about 87 miles from Reno, Nevada. It was once a thriving resort community that drew people for its natural beauty and the convenience of the railway that transported people between Salt Lake City and Oakland, California. Made up of log cabins, the town was an ideal place to raise a family.

In 1981, Keddie was a tight-knit community where everyone looked after each other’s children and residents never bothered to lock their doors at night. By this time, the town had drastically gone downhill since its formation in 1910 when a hotel and lodge were built for those traveling through Keddie.

By the 1980s, the owner of the resort, Gary Mollath, had no option but to rent his cabins to mostly low-income families. It was also rumored that there was some drug use in the area that consisted mostly of marijuana and hashish. Nevertheless, residents still considered it a decent place to raise a family with minimal earnings. Unfortunately, the murders of four people shocked the residents of Keddie and changed all of that in a matter of hours.

On April 11, 1981 Glenna “Sue” Sharp, a 36-year-old mother of five, was at her home in Cabin 28. She had agreed to let a neighborhood child and friend of her children, Justin, spend the night with her sons Ricky, 10 and Greg, 5. Her 12-year-old daughter, Tina, was also home at the time. Sue’s oldest daughter, 14-year-old Sheila, was just a few feet away staying the night at a neighbor’s house. Sue’s oldest son, 15-year-old Johnny and his friend Dana Wingate, 17, who was known as somewhat of a trouble maker, were in the nearby town of Quincy hanging out with friends for most of the evening. It all seemed to be an ordinary and relaxing night for the Sharp family. But by the next morning news of the murders would rip through Plumas County.

No one knows exactly why or how the murders took place. It is highly believed that Johnny and Dana hitchhiked home and either led the killers to the house or walked in on the killers attacking Sue. What is known is on that night Sue Sharp, Johnny Sharp and Dana Wingate were brutally murdered, Tina Sharp was kidnapped and murdered, and their killers have gone unpunished for over three decades.

Most Vicious Crime in Plumas County History

The crime was the most vicious attack in Plumas County history. The police found stab marks in the walls of the cabin and a large amount of blood on the living room floor. The autopsy reports showed all three victims were tied at the hands and feet, with Sue’s bindings being especially tight. Sue and Johnny were bludgeoned with a hammer and stabbed repeatedly. Dana was strangled to death and also stabbed.

Because the attacks were overkill and seemed personal in nature, many believed that the Sharp family knew their killers. The police concluded that Tina was taken from the house that night. While processing the scene they found a small amount of blood on the sheet of her bed. They also found a bloody fingerprint on a wooden post outside in the backyard. In 1984, three years after she was abducted, Tina's skull was found in Feather Falls at Camp 18, about 29 miles from Keddie, officially making this a quadruple murder. Examination of the skull showed Tina was likely killed the night or soon after she was kidnapped. The manner in which she died is unknown.

When Sheila Sharp came home the next morning she opened the front door and found the gruesome sight of her mother’s body lying under a yellow blanket. She also saw the lifeless bodies of Johnny and Dana lying close to Sue. The boys were tied together at their feet with tape and electrical cord.  Sheila noticed what she thought to be a pocket knife lying near the bodies. It was later determined to be a steak knife that was used to kill the victims. The attacks were so savage that the force from the stabbings bent the blade backward approximately 25 degrees.

Sheila ran from the house and yelled at the neighbors to call the police. Incredibly, Justin, Ricky and Greg were unharmed during the vicious attack. Sheila returned to the cabin to help Justin and her brothers climb through the bedroom window. When interviewed, Ricky and Greg claimed to have slept through the ordeal while Justin's statements about that have been inconsistent through the years. At times, he has claimed to have seen the killers, but other times he says he only had a dream about seeing the murders take place. In this dream he said he covered Sue up with a blanket and tried to stop the bleeding by placing a cloth on her chest. In another story, he has claimed to have seen nothing at all that night. Police did believe Justin touched at least one of the bodies because blood was found on the outside doorknob of the boy’s room. The bedroom door of the boy's room was also partially open when the Plumas County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene.

A Person of Interest

The Plumas County Sheriff's Office interviewed a number of people and this did produce a person of interest, Martin Smartt. Marty, his wife Marilyn and her two sons (one of the boys being Justin) lived in Cabin 26 just down the road from Cabin 28. Marty also had a friend staying with the family named Severin John "Bo" Boubede, whom Marty had met a few weeks earlier at the VA hospital where he was being treated for PTSD. It is known that Bo, Marty and Marilyn stopped by Sue’s cabin on their way to the local bar earlier in the evening.

Marilyn claimed to have asked Sue to go for drinks with them but Sue declined the invitation. At the bar Marty became angry over the music that was playing and spoke to the manager about it. The three left with Marty still upset and returned to their cabin. Marilyn claimed to have watched TV and then went to bed. Marty said he made a phone call to the bar to complain about the music once again and then he and Bo went back to the bar.

Soon after the investigation started, the Plumas County Sheriff's Office called in the Department of Justice, which was based in Sacramento, California. Detectives for the Department of Justice questioned all three of them and concluded that they were not involved despite the fact that during the interview Marilyn told the investigators that she left Marty the day after the murders. She also mentioned Marty had a violent temper and often abused her, both emotionally and physically. The Department of Justice administered a polygraph to Marty Smartt on April 17, which he is said to have passed. 

The interviews of Marty and Bo, however, reveal a half-hearted attempt by the DOJ detectives, Harry Bradley and P.A. Crim Jr., to examine the two in any depth, asking each of them a series of easy, leading questions and not following up when discrepancies did arise.  During the interview with Bo, Detective Crim mentioned that Bo was a retired police officer – something he never was. This false assumption seemed to lead the detectives to treat Bo with undue deference.

At the start of the interview, Bo indicated he knew which one of the cabins was the one where the murders were committed, but toward the middle of the interview, he said he did not know. Detective Bradley just said "Oh, I thought you'd know. Well, we'll point it out to you on the way back." For reasons unknown, Bo lied and said Marilyn was his niece when, in fact, they are not related in any manner. Bo told the detectives he had lived in Keddie a month when in fact he’d only been around for 12 days. When Bo claimed Marilyn was awake when he and Marty returned from the bar the second time, the detectives said nothing about Marilyn saying she was asleep when they returned. Bo also lied when he said he had never met Sue Sharp.  In Marilyn Smartt's interview she stated she and the two men had gone to the Sharp house on the night of the murders.

Additionally, Bo stated they arrived at the bar between 9:30- 10 p.m. but later changed this time to 12 a.m. to fit his alibi.

During Marty’s interview with the DOJ detectives, the careless, lackadaisical questioning continued. Marty told the investigators that Sue’s son, Justin, could have seen something the night of the murders "...without me detecting him..." This remark gravely implicated Marty in the murders, but the detectives made nothing of it. Marty followed that incriminating comment up by adding that he had heard a hammer was used to beat the victims before they were stabbed to death.  Then, without prompting, he voluntarily told Crim and Bradley his hammer had "gone missing" before the murders. Marty talks a lot about the victims deaths being overkill. He goes on to describe how he would have killed them fast and gotten out of the house as quickly as possible. Crim and Bradley never questioned him further on this either.

After interviewing Marty and Bo, the DOJ investigators did not do any follow-up interviews and they let Marty – a prime suspect – move out of town and relocate in Klamath, California. Bo went back to the Reno VA hospital. In July, Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas announced his resignation for unknown reasons. In 1976, Thomas became an insurance salesman and a part-time instructor at Feather River College in Quincy, Ca.

The month after the Keddie murders, Marty called a therapist and told the doctor he was being blamed for the killings. Ten years after Marty’s death in 2000, his therapist came forward and told the Plumas County Sheriff's Office that Marty had confessed to killing Sue Sharp. He also told the police that Marty was a friend of Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas and that Marty once let Thomas live with him. The therapist admitted that Marty told him that beating the polygraph was easy. Additionally, Marty said the reason he killed Sue was because she was trying to talk Marilyn into divorcing him. According the therapist, Martin Smartt did not confess to killing Dana, Johnny or Tina and he never said who was responsible for their murders.

The revelations by the therapist caused the sheriff’s office to take another look at solving the case, but with Martin Smartt long dead and Bo having died of natural causes in 1988 nothing came of this.

A Botched Investigation

After the murders of their mother and siblings, the surviving Sharp children went to live with their father. The chatter eventually stopped about the murders and soon no one thought much of the brutal slayings. That is until 2002 when a filmmaker Josh Hancock took on the challenge of making a documentary about what happened in the small town of Keddie. The film included interviews with members of the Sharp family and Wingate family, with Marilyn and Justin and with various members of Plumas County law enforcement. Hancock said his motive for making the documentary was to train a spotlight on a cold case that was apparently swept under the rug. By doing that he hoped to bring justice to the victims and their families. Hancock believes that the Plumas County Sherriff's Office did careless work regarding the investigation of the crime. On his website it states, "Exposing the truth, one liar at a time. Hold Plumas County Sheriff's Office accountable!"

Many questions and rumors abound regarding this murder case. Only one person reported hearing a scream coming from the area of the cabin; yet, all of the cabins in Keddie sat literally feet away from one another.  Why didn't anyone else hear a struggle or screams coming from Cabin 28? Furthermore, how could the children in the house sleep when three people were being brutally tortured and murdered right in the next room? Why was Tina the only one taken that night? Why were the three younger boys left unharmed?

The crime scene was substantially botched. The sheriff's office did not properly secure the scene and failing to call the Department of Justice immediately upon arriving. What may be most damning of all is the Plumas County Sheriff's Office did not realize Tina had even existed or had been kidnapped. Arriving officers refused to listen to Justin even after he told the sheriff's office Tina was taken from her bed on the night of the murders. Because of this discrepancy, the sheriff's office wasted precious hours which should have been spent searching for Tina.

Some believe the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office was too inexperienced for a crime of this magnitude. Others believe the sheriff’s department intentionally bungled and hid information to protect the assailants’ identities.  This belief was bolstered in 2010 when Martin Smartt’s therapist revealed that Marty had once allowed Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas to live with him for a while.

To this day the sheriff’s department refuses to discuss the case and will not look into it further. The sheriff’s department also will not accept assistance from other law enforcement agencies. Regrettably, much of the evidence collected was either lost by law enforcement or destroyed due to a leak in the roof at the sheriff’s office. Furthermore, after three decades nothing has been done with the bloody fingerprint that was collected from the scene. Lastly, many wonder why the sheriff’s department let Marty and Bo go.

Postscript

After the murders, Marilyn married and then divorced Marty's best friend. Reportedly she is still living in Plumas County.

If you were to ask most people, they would probably say they have never heard of Keddie, the small town in Plumas County, California. After the murders, the community lived in shock and fear. The atmosphere had changed. The once quiet and peaceful Keddie was all but abandoned by most.  Cabin 28 became a horror house of sorts. Although at least one family lived in the cabin after the murders, locals say the house sat abandoned for years. In 2004 Cabin 28 was bulldozed to the ground. Today there are only a handful of residents that call Keddie Resort home.

The tragedy of these murders was compounded by the botched investigation that allowed the murderers to escape justice and for the case to grow so cold it will most likely never be solved.

Aug. 26, 2013

Vice-President Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon

Former Vice President Spiro Agnew was told by President Nixon’s chief of staff to resign, to “go quietly…or else.”

by David Robb

It’s not every President of the United States who plots to assassinate his own Vice President, but that’s what Richard Nixon did, according to Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s own Vice President. Agnew even wrote a book about it. It’s called Go Quietly…Or Else.  

Most people have never even heard of it.

In the book, Agnew wrote that President Nixon – acting through Alexander Haig, the President’s chief of staff – threatened to have him assassinated if he didn’t resign – thus the title of the book.

The threat on his life, Agnew wrote, came in early October 1973. The Watergate Scandal was growing larger every day, threatening to take down the Nixon presidency. But Agnew had more immediate concerns. An investigation had uncovered credible evidence that he’d taken bribes while governor of Maryland, and pressure was building for him to resign.

Nixon, worried about his own skin, decided to throw Agnew to the wolves.

Agnew, however, insisted that he was innocent and refused to go quietly…that is, until Alexander Haig made it clear what would happen if he didn’t.

“I received an indirect threat from the White House that made me fear for my life,” Agnew wrote.  “I did not know what might happen to me. But I don’t mind admitting I was frightened. This directive was aimed at me like a gun at my head. That is the only way I can describe it. I was told, ‘Go quietly – or else.’”

“I feared for my life,” he wrote. “If a decision had been made to eliminate me – through an automobile accident, a fake suicide, or whatever – the order would not have been traced back to the White House. I was just a pawn on the chess board to be played in whatever way would help Nixon survive.”

According to Agnew, Nixon was worried that if he didn’t resign, the House of Representatives would start impeachment proceedings against Agnew, and that “there were plenty of people around who would want to make it a doubleheader.”

But Agnew, who the Democrats in Congress hated even more than Nixon, quite astutely saw himself as Nixon’s only hope of not being impeached.

“Mr. Nixon did not seem to realize that I was his insurance policy against his own ouster,” he wrote. “The left-wingers who despised us both would never push him out of the White House until they were certain I would not be around to take his place.”

But Nixon panicked and pushed him out anyway.

A week after receiving the threat, Agnew resigned – the first Vice President of the United States to leave office in disgrace.

Ten months later, Nixon resigned – the first President of the United States to leave office in disgrace.

Sept. 2, 2013

An edited extract from Cold Case Files: Past crimes solved by new forensic science– winner of Australia’s 2012 Davitt Award for best true crime book and available for Kindle in the United States on amazon.com. Hard copies available at www.panmacillan.com.au

by Liz Porter

What are the chances of revisiting a crime scene, more than 11 years after a murder – and several years after it has been renovated and repainted – and finding the blood stain that will finally crack the case?

British crime scene expert Andrew Barclay and forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop would both describe the odds of success in such a case as “very low.”

But during 1999 and 2000, the duo was able to revisit a 1988 crime, where most of the blood stains had already been destroyed by earlier testing, and find the stain that would eventually lead them to a killer.

The Murder of Lynette White

By 1999, the murder of sex worker Lynette White, stabbed to death in 1988 in Cardiff, was beginning to look like one of those cases that are doomed to remain “cold” forever.

In December 1988 local police had arrested a group of local men, one of them the boyfriend of the victim. Late in 1990 three of the men, soon known as “the Cardiff Three” were convicted.  But by 1992 all three had been freed after an appeal court found that their convictions had been based on statements and confessions that had been bullied out of witnesses and one of the defendants. Fortunately, the original forensic testing done at Miss White’s apartment, in the dockside area of Butetown, was police work of a far better quality.

The first police on the scene had documented copious blood stains, most of them bloodied fingerprints left on the apartment’s walls. The blood grouping tests in use at the time had alerted investigators to the presence of blood that did not belong to the victim.  But 1988 was the very beginning of the era of DNA testing, and the main police focus had been on extracting useful fingerprints from the stains: a process that rendered the stains useless for future DNA testing.

By 1999, newer DNA techniques had evolved, and scientists were able to produce results from tiny amounts of blood. But new blood samples, undamaged by previous testing, were required.

To find any such untested material, Barclay and Gallop needed to work out exactly where the killer had been in the flat, so they could find places where he might have shed blood that had not yet been found.

The 1988 police had done a relatively thorough job of recording their findings. This enabled Barclay to map the crime scene and locate each of the recovered fingermarks in the position in which it had been found. He could also identify the positions of these prints on some of the flat’s original wallpaper: paper from the hallway wall had spent the intervening decade folded up in a storage cupboard at a police station in Cardiff. Unfortunately the paper from the murder room had been lost, although color crime-scene photos offered a detailed record of the blood stains on the wall.

The crime scene map and photos – and the wallpaper – revealed the existence of several interesting blood stains that had been more or less ignored in 1988, because the investigators had been focused on the fingerprints.

The 1988 investigators had quickly realized why there were so many bloodied finger marks on the walls: there had been no coins in the flat’s pay-as-you-go electricity meter (then a common arrangement for gas and electricity in low-rent accommodation). The room in which White was murdered would have been illuminated at the time by the street light outside the window, but the rest of the flat would have been pitch-black. So after committing the murder, the killer had to feel his way out of the flat. Outside the room was a narrow corridor, which immediately took an unexpected turn towards the flat’s front door. The light in the building’s communal hall was also out, meaning the murderer had to find his way down the staircase by touch, before reaching the door that opened onto the street.

Barclay and Gallop began looking at the bloodied finger marks from the hall and bedroom walls. One of the forensic scientists on the case in 1988 had been certain that the killer had cut himself during the attack, and he had identified some of the wall stains as cast-off blood – drops shed from the murderer’s bleeding hand.

This phenomenon is not unusual in knife murders involving multiple stab wounds: the handle of the knife becomes so slippery with blood that the killer’s own hand slides along it and onto the sharp cutting edge, making cuts – possibly severe ones – on his palm. The crime-scene photos reinforced this theory, with the smears of blood left by the killer becoming more intense as he felt his way along the wall towards the exit, suggesting that his own blood was still flowing as he left the flat. If the blood had been the victim’s alone, the smears would have become fainter.

Back in 1988, the gentrification of the dockside area had only just begun and was temporarily halted by the aftermath of the murder. But by 1999 it was long complete and the murder flat, by then exquisitely repainted and redecorated, bore no resemblance to the slum dwelling in the crime-scene photos. Fortunately, its owner was willing to allow both Gallop and Barclay to visit and inspect it.

Bringing the Murder Narrative Alive

Late on a dark November night in 1999, Dave Barclay made his way up to the flat. He wanted to walk in the killer’s shoes and to do so in conditions as close as possible to the winter dark that would have shrouded the flat in February 1988.

Starting in the pitch black of the murder room, Barclay closed his eyes and took his first steps. Unable to prevent himself from opening his eyes, he wedged a handkerchief behind his glasses and began feeling his way out of the main room. Taking the sharp left turn into the narrow corridor that led towards the flat’s front door, he tried to match his fingers to the places where the killer had been seen to touch the wall. The aim of the exercise was three-fold: to calculate the killer’s height – an estimated 183 cm, some 5 cm shorter than Barclay; to gauge the manner of his exit – most probably a panicked rush; and most importantly, to identify new places where the assailant might have left bloody traces.

Meanwhile Angela Gallop had been supervising the reconstruction of the flat’s main room and passageway in the lab at Culham, just outside Oxford. The salvaged hall wallpaper was mounted on panels representing the passageway. The mocked- up crime scene brought the murder narrative alive, with the blood stain patterns on the wallpaper mapping the movements of someone running down the corridor with blood on his or her hands. A vivid slap mark on the wall opposite the murder room door showed how the killer had rushed out, in darkness, into a corridor with an abrupt left turn. The stain even revealed blood squirting out from underneath the palm. Along the wall, successive smears at hand height documented the murderer’s path along the passageway. A crime-scene photo showed a diagonal smear across the front door, near the catch, deposited as the killer fumbled to find a way to open it and leave the premises.

Gallop also worked through the vast volume of material that the 1988 crime scene officers had collected.  There was a cache of condoms, matches and coins from a cardboard box on a windowsill, along with rubbish from the floor, including biscuit or cake packaging and a piece of trampled cellophane from the cover of a cigarette packet. With the housekeeping standards of the flat, it was impossible to tell whether the cellophane had been dropped by the killer or had been lying on the floor for months. Gallop noticed some smeared blood on it, and, more interestingly, one tiny discrete blood spot. It looked like blood that had been airborne; she’d seen blood spots exactly like it at other scenes involving a frenzied knife attack. Spotting can happen in many ways, one of which occurs when a killer, his or her hand bearing the palm cuts common in such cases, continues to wield the knife, flicking small drops of blood around the room. The cellophane was sent for processing and produced a clear DNA profile. It wasn’t the victim’s. And it was male.

“Cellophane Man”

The scientific team christened this unknown person ‘Cellophane Man.’ All they knew about him was his DNA profile. The sample did not necessarily tie him to the murder; in principle, the blood could have been shed weeks earlier. But if they could find the same blood in the marks on the walls and on White’s clothing, they would know it belonged to the killer. Gallop retested White’s jeans and one blood-stained sock. She could obtain only partial profiles; as far as they went, however, they matched the cellophane sample. But the scientist wanted to try a spread of blood samples that had been taken from White’s body and as close as possible to it, in the hope of getting better results.

Testing blood from cardboard boxes that had been stacked against the wall near to where White’s head had been, Gallop found a partial profile of Cellophane Man. But once again, she needed more. Returning to the crime-scene photos, she studied the blood stains on the walls. One drop of cast-off blood under a window was so large that it had run down the wall. The 1988 tests had shown that it wasn’t White’s. Might some of it have trickled right down behind the skirting board? Although the flat had been renovated, might the painters have merely slapped on a new coat of color over the old without sanding down the surface first? It was a long shot, but worth a try.

At Gallop’s request, police crime-scene officers removed an almost meter-long section of skirting board directly below the spot where the cast-off foreign blood had been identified. They also removed the front door in the hope of unearthing the diagonal smear of blood left as the killer groped for the catch in the darkness and shown in a crime scene photo.

Back at the lab, Gallop’s assistant scraped away at the skirting board paint under the microscope. It was a difficult, delicate procedure: go in too cautiously and you miss what might be there; scrape too deeply and you go through all the layers of paint and miss the hidden forensic treasure altogether. The lab technician got it just right, uncovering blood stains which later yielded profiles of both Cellophane Man and his victim. More cast-off blood was found behind the skirting board; it contained a full profile of Cellophane Man.

The scraping back of paint from the front door revealed no visible blood staining, but the scientists were able to chemically detect blood traces which produced a mixed profile. Its components were from Cellophane Man and Lynette White.

The killer’s cut hands had been on the walls and the door – and in contact with White’s blood. It was time to return to the victim’s clothing yet again and look for Cellophane Man there.

When White’s body was discovered, her jacket and sweatshirt had been soaked with her own blood and twisted around her body in a strange way, possibly as a result of the killer manhandling her into the spot on the floor where she was found. Gallop spent several hours working out precisely how the clothing had shifted during this process and trying to calculate the places where the killer was most likely to have placed his hands while moving the body. She took five samples and found Cellophane Man’s DNA on both the jacket and the sweatshirt.

Gallop had also discovered some crime-scene swabs collected during the original investigation but not analyzed. They were samples of stains from the wall outside the door of the murder room, from the wall opposite that room and from a wall near the entrance. They yielded full or partial profiles of Cellophane Man. In one place, there was a mixture of Cellophane Man’s and White’s blood – the same result as that from the recently tested front door and skirting board.

The same foreign blood had now been found on the victim’s body and at different spots along the killer’s exit route from the flat. Put together, these results spelled out the narrative of the murder.

By January 2002, South Wales Police were ready to go public with the news that they had DNA samples from the scene, including the killer’s. All the original suspects, including those acquitted, had volunteered for DNA testing. The police also began intelligence-led screening: an analysis of the database of 5,000 names that had come up in the original investigation, in order to reduce it to a shorter list of suspects who could be eliminated through DNA testing. In the meantime they were hoping for a tip-off from the public that might help them to give Cellophane Man a name.

The investigators had been repeatedly running Cellophane Man’s profile against the more than 1.5 million profiles on the UK’s national database. New profiles were being added every week, with more than 560,000 added in the 2001–02 financial year. Three hundred samples taken in 1988 were also tested. But there were no matches with either the database or any other suspects identified in the review.

Familial DNA Matching

It was time to consider familial DNA matching: a search of the DNA database for a profile that is a match close enough to the one already found to mean that it belongs to a sibling or close relative of the person sought.

The technique of familial matching had only just been devised, and was still so new that it had to be done manually. To make the search feasible, the scientists looking for Cellophane Man’s relatives narrowed their field to Cardiff, making the slightly risky assumption, given that the murder happened in the area of the docks, that the killer had been local, with a local family.

One of the alleles out of the 20 in the man’s DNA profile was relatively rare, occurring in about one in every 100 people. The scientists used it as a starting point, which enabled them to whittle a list of thousands down to 600. They then looked for profiles that had seven or more alleles in common with the killer’s. That reduced the pool to 70. The scientists looked at all the matching components in the profiles, checked their individual rarity and calculated the relative frequency of the different combinations found in the list.

One profile stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of its similarity to Cellophane Man’s. But it belonged to a 14-year-old boy, who hadn’t even been born at the time of the murder but had been DNA tested after committing a minor crime.

The boy’s father, the police surmised, could be the killer; he was certainly of an appropriate age. Initially, the boy’s mother was DNA tested so the scientists could subtract the parts of the boy’s DNA that came from her and see whether the relevant components were still left. They were. The father was then tested. But, while his profile was very similar to Cellophane Man’s, it wasn’t a match. The man’s brother was tested: again, the result was similar but not a match.

A Lifetime Loser

Questioned again, the family revealed there was another brother. According to his siblings, Jeffrey Gafoor was a lifetime loner who had always had difficulty making friends. In 1990, he had suddenly gone to Germany for a short period. His departure, it could now be seen, had coincided with the conviction of the Cardiff Three, but his family had had no reason to make that link. Three years later, when he moved away from Cardiff and cut himself off from his family, his siblings had assumed that the impetus for his retreat had been the death of their mother. They weren’t to know that his self-imposed exile had followed the Cardiff Three’s successful appeal against their conviction. Around this time, Gafoor had come to the attention of police for the first and, until 2003, only time in his life. After hitting a work colleague over the head with a house brick during an argument, he had been sentenced to 80 hours’ community service. But he was not DNA tested because he was convicted in 1992 – two years before the passing of the legislation that set out procedures for the DNA testing of people convicted and even suspected of criminal offences.

In 2003, Gafoor, then 38, was living half an hour out of Cardiff, working nights as a security guard, rarely leaving his home during the day and avoiding most human contact. His landlord’s front door was only three  meters away from his own, but, rather than pay his rent in person and have to speak to the man, each month he would drive almost two kilometers to the nearest mail box and post his rent check.

On 28 February 2003, police visited Gafoor at work and took a DNA sample from him. They were not going to arrest him until they had the DNA results, but they kept him under surveillance, in case he decided to run. That surveillance saved his life: curious about a series of visits he had made to chemist’s shops, police broke into their quarry’s flat and discovered him in the process of swallowing the 64 paracetamol tablets he had bought. They rushed him to hospital, obtaining a partial confession on the way, in which he reportedly said: ‘Just for the record, I did kill Lynette White. I have been waiting for this for 15 years. I sincerely hope to die.’ Before he recovered, the DNA profile results were in. Jeffrey Gafoor was Cellophane Man.

On 4 July, 2003, Gafoor stood in the Cardiff Crown Court dock and pleaded guilty to murdering Lynette White. Through his barrister, he apologized to his victim’s family, claiming that the murder had happened after he changed his mind about wanting to have sex and White refused to return the £30 he had paid her. According to the barrister, Gafoor had not committed a premeditated sexual killing; rather, he had been carrying a knife because he had been robbed three months earlier in Butetown. During his argument with White, he had threatened her with the knife. She had then grabbed the weapon and a struggle had ensued. ‘He doesn’t know why what followed, followed,’ the barrister told the court. ‘There was shame, panic, and there was a frenzied attack with a knife.’

Sept. 5, 2013

The tunnel started in leather goods shop Le Sac and ended inside the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank.

After taking almost three months to tunnel under a branch of Lloyds Bank on Baker Street, on September 1, 1971, three robbers forced open more than 260 safety-deposit boxes and walked away with loot valued at more than £3 million. None of the stolen valuables was ever recovered.

By Robert Walsh

“We’ve got about £400,000. We’ll let you know when we’re coming out…” – Part of the intercepted radio chatter between gang members during the robbery.

September 1, 1971. In Wimpole Street, London, amateur CB radio hobbyist Robert Rowlands is tuning his set at around 1a.m., trying to tune in popular European station Radio Luxembourg. Radio Luxembourg doesn’t come through his speakers, but what does provides both him and Scotland Yard detectives with something that none of them have run across before. Rowlands has unwittingly picked up walkie-talkies operating ordinary public frequencies and the conversation is all about a bank robbery in progress. But which bank and where?

Rowlands, once he’d heard enough to know what he’d stumbled upon, called the police. The officer he spoke to, given that it was 1a.m. on a Saturday morning, assumed it was yet another hoaxer who’d perhaps taken one drink too many. He politely suggested that if Rowlands heard any more suspicious chatter he should record it and then ended the call.

Rowlands picked up a small tape recorder, recorded every time the unknown crooks started talking and then dialled the police a second time. This time he was absolutely insistent that a major robbery was still in progress and this time Scotland Yard detectives were sent to his home to talk it through and listen to the tape. What they heard caused a major alert and search operation. It was clear from the tape that a major robbery was still in progress and, if they moved quickly enough, police stood a good chance of finding exactly which bank was being robbed and maybe of catching the robbers red-handed.

What followed was a successful heist, a huge score for the robbers, a serious blunder by Scotland Yard, stiff sentences for the robbers and a crime that lent a seemingly baseless conspiracy aspect to the 2008 feature film The Bank Job. The film alleges (on scanty, limited and sometimes dubious evidence) that it was masterminded by the British Security Service (MI5) to recover compromising photographs of senior public figures including Princess Margaret which were being used by a London criminal to blackmail authorities into letting him continue operating. The film took mere allegations and presented them as though they were hard fact. As far as can be reliably confirmed, they weren’t.

The entertainment business deciding to take a perfectly good story and add fictional, often unnecessary spice is nothing new, that’s been happening for decades. Even some of the earliest feature films marketed as first-hand film of real events were actually shot in some back lot studio somewhere. But, like so many films based on real events, the Baker Street Robbery never really needed spicing up in the first place.

An Elaborate Plan

Like most criminal enterprises it was, theoretically at least, simple. Thieves targeted a branch of Lloyds Bank (one of Britain’s best-known banks) intending to break into the safety-deposit vault, force open as many deposit boxes as possible in the time available and escape with whatever they found worth taking. Safe-deposit vaults are sometimes considered a tempting target for robbery because, as a rule, only high-value items such as jewellery, bearer bonds, securities, uncut gems and large amounts of cash tend to be kept in them and, once robbers breach the vault, whatever they find is likely to be worth the time, effort and expense of breaking in. In the United States, robbing such vaults isn’t unusual and gangs specialising in the higher end of breaking-and-entering (often known as “B&E crews”) are regularly active across the country. A B&E crew operating in the UK had never taken such a huge haul before the Baker Street robbery and none have managed it since.

The theory was simple, the practice wasn’t. Simply to reach the vault the robbers had to choose a nearby shop (leased by an accomplice), break through the floor to a depth of 5 feet, tunnel 40 feet under the Chicken Inn fast food shop between its base and the bank itself (which meant digging through around eight tons of earth and rubble), then tunnel 15 feet back up (owing to sloping ground), break through three feet of reinforced concrete forming the vault floor, break open hundreds of deposit boxes, sort through them for anything worth taking and then escape back through the tunnel with the loot. All this had to be done without tripping any of the vault’s security devices or arousing any public attention while digging the tunnel and robbing the vault. To succeed the plan needed time, patience, significant funding, technical expertise with explosives and a thermic lance (both needed to breach the concrete floor), thorough planning, a willingness by the robbers to risk their lives during the tunnelling and break-in and no small amount of luck. Such a robbery, on such a scale, was simply unheard-of in the UK in 1971. Given the technical difficulties and obvious physical risks it’s not hard to see why.

The gang chose to tunnel under the vault because the walls and ceiling were protected by vibration alarms, trembler switches that would sense unusual vibrations or shockwaves and automatically trigger an alarm summoning police. The vault door was protected by a standard alarm that would be triggered by the door either being opened or directly attacked. Through a contact at the local security company protecting the bank the gang knew that the tremblers in the vault floor were turned off due to false alarms caused by work on nearby roads, a major security lapse. It was essentially a safecracker’s logic applied to an entire bank vault (bank vaults are essentially large safes, after all). A safecracker will often ignore a safe door and try forcing either the base, sides, top or back of an ordinary safe because the door is usually the strongest, best-protected part of it. Bank vaults can often be attacked along similar lines, albeit on a larger scale.

Police estimated that the gang took almost three months to lease the nearest available ground-floor property (a leather goods store named Le Sac just two doors down from the bank), assemble the equipment, dig the tunnel, breach the vault floor and rob its contents. It was a highly-specialised robbery needing considerable technical expertise which makes it unusual that the gang themselves weren’t high-level experts as much as journeyman crooks making an unusually complex entry into the big leagues.

The Robbers

The Baker Street robbery involved four principal players, none of whom had a record or reputation for the higher leagues of crime. Desmond Wolfe leased the store used as the tunnel entrance (something that would come back to bite him later on). Anthony Gavin, Thomas Stephens and Reginald Tucker did the tunnelling and the robbery itself. All these men were known to the police, but none was thought to have the skills for something as complex and difficult as this. Police suspected (but were never able to prove) that the crime was actually masterminded by another London criminal whose identity was never established and the robbers themselves never gave anything to the police to confirm those suspicions.

The gang only dug during weekends, minimizing the risk of anyone noticing unusual noise or visitors going to and from their hideout and explaining the time taken to dig the tunnel. The debris and rubble were stored inside the leased shop which had its windows painted white and a sign placed on the door stating that it was closed for refurbishment. To any passing pedestrian it was just another empty store and the noise inside would easily be put down to the interior being remodelled before re-opening under new management. Having passed under the Chicken Inn between its base and the bank they were faced with another obstacle: There were three feet of reinforced concrete floor between them and the inside of the vault.

They originally chose a thermic lance or “burn bar” to cut through the vault floor, but eventually had to blow a breach using explosives. The burn bar was taking too long and creating dense, toxic fumes in the tunnel itself making it impossible for the robbers to finish the job without blasting. Having partially burnt through the floor and blasted the rest of the way, leaving enough concrete to avoid bank staff noticing any cracks or putting their feet through the weakened section they were in position to wait  to make their move. In 1971 British banks were usually closed from Friday afternoons until Monday mornings, giving them the maximum time between burgling the vault and the crime being discovered when the bank re-opened. All they had left to do was break through the remaining concrete, enter the vault and break into as many deposit boxes as possible overnight. Or so they thought, anyway.

The robbers were smart enough to keep one of their number as a look-out on a nearby rooftop and stay in touch via walkie-talkies. The walkie-talkies operated on the Citizen’s Band public frequencies where anyone could intercept the conversations and listen in, which wasn’t very secure. The likelihood of their chatter being intercepted was fairly small, though. Although amateur radio enthusiasts were growing in numbers, CB radios were still technically illegal to use in 1971 and expensive to buy, few people had them and so it’s unlikely the gang thought too much about whether they were providing a play-by-play for anybody who (accidentally or otherwise)  found the right frequency. Robert Rowlands did. The chase was now on to figure out the gang’s exact location and hopefully catch them in the act. It didn’t quite work out as Scotland Yard, would have liked.

Having had to make not one phone call, but two before the police would send officers to visit him, Rowlands made a point of telling the police that the range of walkie-talkies at the time was quite short, especially in urban areas with tall buildings, thick concrete and stone walls, electrical interference and varying weather conditions all affecting a signal’s strength. He told the officers that if his ordinary set was picking up walkie-talkie chatter then that meant the robbers and their target couldn’t be more than a mile or two from Wimpole Street. Baker Street is within two miles of Wimpole Street. If it had been acted on Rowlands’s information about the radios’ range would certainly have narrowed the search area hugely, making it far more likely that the gang would have been caught red-handed. But it wasn’t acted on. The gang escaped from the crime scene taking over £3,000,000 of assorted swag that would be worth around £36,000,000 at current values.

Scotland Yard Diddles

Instead of using Rowlands’s radio knowledge to concentrate its search the police decided to visit every bank within 10 miles of his home, some 750 addresses in all, and check all of them as quickly as possible. Given the gang’s use of CB radios police also tried mobilizing radio-detection vehicles from the Post Office. Prior to privatizing national utilities during the 1980’s, pinpointing unlicensed radio transmissions came under Post Office jurisdiction. Unfortunately, like banks, the Post Office worked conventional hours as well. They didn’t have any detection vehicle crews on duty at 1a.m. on a Saturday morning. The police, aside from the sheer number of banks they had to check, could only enter private property without a warrant when there was cause to believe a crime was actually in progress inside that property. In order to work through the list of possible targets they had to identify, the police had to contact and transport the managers of all the banks listed so they could open their premises and check their vaults. The police couldn’t simply force entry to any private address on the off-chance of raiding the right one.

Of course, all this took time to arrange. Enough time for the robbers to breach the floor, enter the vault, open over 260 deposit boxes, rifle their contents and escape with whatever swag they wanted. It wasn’t until the Monday morning that the manager of the Baker Street branch of Lloyds, which had been checked at the time without anything unusual being spotted, entered the bank, opened the safe-deposit vault and was greeted by piles of discarded high-value property, hundreds of smashed deposit boxes and a man-sized hole in the middle of the vault floor. What the manager said isn’t on record (which is probably just as well, considering what he’d found), but he immediately called the police. Scotland Yard was faced with considerable public embarrassment. Investigators also now had a vast amount of evidence to sift through even before they could start to identify and catch the gang responsible for what was at the time one of the biggest robberies in British criminal history.

The amount of evidence was huge, time was short and London’s banking community (not forgetting over 260 less-than-happy customers) was in a state of shock. The owners of every box forced open had to be identified, informed and asked exactly what they had deposited which, for any depositor with anything either highly embarrassing or outright illegal in their box, could have caused serious problems. Every one of the hundreds of pieces of swag left behind had to be catalogued and photographed, the tunnel had to be made safe to enter before being traced back to its source, evidence left in the tunnel and the leather goods store had to be catalogued and examined and then the police could actually start hunting for the gang themselves. They needed every lucky break they could get and, for the first time in the case, they actually got one.

One Little Detail Breaks the Case

It was a small break but, as with so many successfully solved crimes, it proved to be absolutely vital. Desmond Wolfe was in the leather goods trade when not breaking the law and it was Wolfe who leased the shop the gang used as a base. Unfortunately for him (and the rest of the gang) Wolfe provided lasting proof of his not being a criminal genius by leasing it under his own name. Once the police identified the source of the tunnel they went looking for whoever owned or leased the shop and it wasn’t long before Wolfe was safely under lock and key to answer a few questions.

With one gang member under arrest, the police looked for Wolfe’s known criminal associates, especially associates who didn’t have alibis, did have records for burglaries and similar crimes and weren’t already in jail for unrelated offences. Soon, Anthony Gavin, Thomas Stephens and Reginald Tucker were all under arrest and being questioned by Scotland Yard detectives. True to the “criminal code,” none of the four men offered any information or offered to give evidence in return for lighter sentences when the case came to trial. In January 1973 all four men were convicted. Wolfe received only eight years due to his age (he was 64 at the time) while Gavin, Stephens and Tucker all received stiff penalties of 12 years each. Two other men were tried for allegedly handling stolen money from the robbery and were acquitted. Not a single item of stolen property from the Baker Street robbery has ever been recovered.

Unanswered Questions

There have always been unanswered questions about the robbery. First, it was highly unusual for relatively low-level criminals to tackle something needing such special skills and equipment. Using a thermic lance isn’t for novices and whoever set the explosives managed to blow a hole in the vault floor without setting off any of the other security devices protecting the vault itself. That suggests a higher level of technical skill than the gang members themselves were known to possess, raising the possibility that there were others involved who managed to evade detection even today. The sheer scale of the tunnel is also  far bigger and more complex than any job any of the robbers had tackled before, suggesting either an unusual degree of criminal ambition or that perhaps more outside help than they ever admitted to. Not one of them cracked under questioning, none of them cut a deal in return for lighter sentences and, so far, none of them has opted for a book deal or made any public comment about either the crime or the fact that none of the swag has ever been found. And that too makes me wonder whether or not somebody somewhere has had far more luck (and made far more money) than anybody involved in the actual robbery itself.

As far as can be confirmed, the film’s theory about MI5 setting up the robbery to recover blackmail material is a theory and nothing more. The theory goes that a London criminal known as “Michael X” (real name Michael de Freitas and originally from Trinidad) possessed incriminating photographs of Princess Margaret, and used them to force Scotland Yard to turn a reluctant blind eye to his long-term criminal operations. Having been forced to leave London when police attention became too serious to stay there “Michael X” resurfaced in Trinidad where he was later tried, convicted and hanged for ordering a murder. The film’s makers suggest that the robbery deprived him of his lifeline against prosecution, forcing him to leave Britain.

The suggestion is that there was a media blackout after the robbery, something disproved by widespread reporting of the robbery in the press. The police did impose a blackout while the robbery was in progress, hoping to catch the gang red-handed, but once the gang had committed the crime and escaped with the loot there was no need or point in continuing to suppress the story. Just the opposite, in fact, as media attention can often generate witnesses and jog their memories into offering vital clues.

Rowlands states he was told a so-called “D Notice” was issued to suppress the story which, again, is at best extremely unlikely. What was then known as a “D Notice” (Defence Notice) could be issued by a government department concerned with preserving national security by advising the press to avoid discussing certain matters such as intelligence operations or the current activities of Special Forces troops. A “D Notice” however was (and still is) not legally enforceable in itself, amounting only to the government advising the media to keep something quiet. Then as now the press is not obliged to obey one even when its modern-day equivalent (the “Defence Advisory Notice”) is issued. Second, there are neither records logging any request for a “D Notice” nor for one having been issued and there certainly would be records if it had been done.

Second, “Michael X” was a professional criminal, a freelance felon whose main employment was as a slum landlord, pimp and sometime enforcer. If MI5 was so desperate to see him silenced then a relatively simple killing would have been easier to arrange. There’s nothing especially unusual about gangland feuds and related violence in London and just another dead mid-level gangster is unlikely to have caused either much comment or unwelcome curiosity. After all, it was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (ironically himself the victim of a contract killer) who coined the famous criminal line that gangsters only kill each other. Mounting a major deniable “black bag” operation under the noses of Scotland Yard yet using easily-intercepted radio equipment is hardly the action of a professional intelligence organization and in the 42 years since the robbery only Rowlands suggests there was a “D Notice” for unidentified “reasons of national security” and the Royal Family angle is only really touted by George McIndoe who also happened to be involved with the 2008 film The Bank Job.

To sum up, the Baker Street robbery was an unusual moment in British crime, but not nearly as unusual as some people might believe or others might like them to. At the time it was one of the largest robberies in British history, the method was highly unusual and the gang members themselves not the type of robbers anybody expected to tackle something so technically complex. There’s also a question mark over whether or not a so-far-undiscovered “Mr. Big” actually put the job together, whether or not all those involved were actually caught and where all the stolen cash and property finally ended up. Somebody must have arranged its onward sale and disposal of the proceeds, but nobody was ever convicted for having done so.

But the evidence supporting the suggestion that this was really arranged by some shadowy spymasters to protect the high and mighty is limited and (so far) entirely unconfirmed. There’s almost nothing to suggest that this was a conspiracy cooked up in the corridors of power, but there’s plenty to suggest that, while it was a huge score and unusually difficult to pull off, it was simply another case of a gang of crooks robbing a bank because, to quote legendary New York bandit Willie ‘King of the Bank Robbers’ Sutton:”That’s where the money is.”