The Senseless Murder of Melissa Jenkins

     St. Johnsbury, Vermont is a town of 6,200 in the northeast part of the state 40 miles south of the Canadian border. It is home to St. Johnsbury Academy, the prestigious prep and boarding school established in the 1840s. Until recently, this was not a place where people got murdered.

     Melissa Jenkins had been a science teacher and the girl's basketball coach at St. Johnsbury Academy since 2004. The 33-year-old single mother, who was completing her Masters Degree in Education, also worked part time as a waitress at Creamery Restaurant in nearby Danville. She had been working there 12 years.

     On Sunday evening, March 25, 2012, 30-year-old Allen Prue and his wife Patricia, a couple from Waterford, Vermont, were riding about in their car. Allen made his living driving around the area delivering the local newspaper. In the winter, he plowed driveways. Two years ago, he had plowed Melissa Jenkins' driveway, but after he had asked her out a couple of times, she discontinued his service. In the fall of 2011, Prue had showed up at her house drunk, and asked if he could resume plowing her driveway. She declined his offer.

     As Prue and his 33-year-old wife drove around that evening, he got the idea "to get a girl." The girl he had in mind was Melissa Jenkins. To lure the intended victim out of her home, Patricia Prue called Jenkins and said that she and her husband had broken down near her house. Could she give them a lift?

     Before Jenkins left her house to help people she barely knew, she called her former boyfriend to report she had just received a "weird call from a girl and guy who used to plow her driveway." In case something happened to her, Jenkins wanted someone to know where she had gone. After speaking to her ex-boyfriend, Jenkins put her 2-year-old son Ty in the car, and drove off to help the Prues.

     The moment Jenkins climbed out of her car, Allen Prue, with the school teacher's boy looking on, grabbed and started strangling her. He pushed the stunned woman into his vehicle where, as he drove to his house in Waterford, Patricia Prue continued choking the victim "to make sure she wasn't breathing." The Prues left the boy, unharmed, behind in his abducted mother's car.

     The Prues carried Jenkins (she may have been alive but unconscious) into their house where they removed her clothing, repeatedly stomped on her, then laid her badly bruised corpse onto a tarp. After pouring bleach on her body, the Prues carried the tarp-wrapped victim back to their vehicle, then drove to a spot along the Connecticut River near Barnet, Vermont. At the river's edge, in a wooded area, they tossed Jenkins' body, tied to cinder blocks to hold it down, into shallow water.

     Back in Waterford, the murderers burned the tarp, Jenkins' clothing, and the garments they had been wearing.

     Melissa Jenkins' former boyfriend, two hours after she had notified him about the "weird call" she had just received, tried but failed to get back in touch with her by phone. He drove to her house, and nearby, found Jenkins's idling SUV with her 2-year-old boy asleep inside. Next to her car, he found one of Jenkins's shoes. Fearing foul play, he called the police.

     An investigator with the Vermont State Police traced the "weird call" Jenkins had received back to the Prues. Confronted by the authorities, Allen Prue confessed.

     On Monday afternoon, the day after the murder, the police found Jenkins' body along the river about ten miles from her house. At the scene, officers recovered condoms and condom wrappers. The victim's feet had been tied with a length of white rope. Bruising of her face, neck, torso, arms, and legs suggested that the Prues had given Jenkins a severe beating. (Some or all of these wounds may have been postmortem.)

     Charged with second degree murder, the Prues are being held without bond at the Northeast Correctional Facility in St. Johnsbury. They have pleaded not guilty. The medical examiner has ruled the cause and manner of death as "homicide by strangulation."

     Melissa Jenkins was the victim of a senseless, premeditated murder committed by a pair of lowlifes she barely knew. It is crimes like this that scare the hell out of people. If a totally innocent, small town person can be suddenly murdered while trying to help someone, no one is safe. That's the frightening part.   

Ferdinand Waldo Demara: The Great Impostor

     While most people aren't con artists, charlatans, and swindlers, many are, in various degrees, cheats and pretenders. Men without military experience impersonate war heroes, politicians pretend to lead, bureaucrats impersonate competent employees, and job applicants falsely claim qualifications and work histories. It's not uncommon for young men to break the law by impersonating cops and FBI agents. Because most law enforcement impostors are inept, they are quickly caught.

Matthew Sceidt

     When he was 15, Matthew Sceidt, equipped with a fake badge, a taser gun, handcuffs, and a stolen police radio, went around Florida impersonating an Osceola County sheriff's deputy. He actually pulled people over, and on at least one occasion, handcuffed a motorist. At the time, Sceidt belonged to an Explorer Scout program run by the Osceola Sheriff's Office. His first brush with the law came two years earlier when he impersonated a nurse at St. Cloud Regional Hospital near his home.

     On October 11, 2011, the authorities in Kissimme, Florida, charged Sceidt with impersonating a physician's assistant, and practicing medicine without a license. He had allegedly treated patients, worked in an emergency room, and administered CPR on a patient. Sceidt turned himself in, made bond, and was released. He faces six felony counts for allegedly practicing medicine without a license. On January 19, 2012, police arrested the 18-year-old for impersonating a Miami cop, and for carrying a concealed firearm. Again, he made bail and was released.

     On March 6, Sceidt's private attorney withdrew from the case. Sceidt asked the judge for a trial postponement, and applied for a public defender.

The Great Impostor

     In 1937, 16-year-old Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. ran away from his home in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He took up residence with Cistercian monks in Rhode Island, then in 1941, joined the U. S. Army. A year later, Demara went AWOL. Under the name Anthony Ignolia, he lived in another monastery before signing up with the Navy. Demara next faked his suicide, adopted the name Robert Lincoln French, and began playing the role of a religiously oriented psychologist. This led to a teaching position in a college psychology department.

     Bored with teaching, Demara worked as an orderly is a Los Angeles sanitarium, then moved to Washington State where he taught at St. Martin's College. The FBI interrupted his impersonation career by arresting him for desertion. That resulted in an 18-month stretch in a federal prison.

     Following his release from the federal penitentiary, Demara joined the Brothers of Christian Instruction order in Maine. There, Demara became friends with a young physician which led to the impostor becoming a trauma surgeon aboard a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer during the Korean War. Demara actually operated on 16 South Korean soldiers wounded in combat. He managed this by speed-reading surgical textbooks. All of his patients survived Although later exposed as a phony physician, the Canadian Navy did not press charges.

     In 1951, as Brother John Payne of the Christian Brothers of Instruction, Demara founded a college called La Mennais College of Alfred Maine. He left the state shortly thereafter. (In 1959, the college moved to Canton, Ohio, and in 1960, changed its name to Walsh College.)

     In the early 1960s, Demara worked as a prison administrator in Huntsville, Texas, and as a counselor at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. In 1967, at age 46, he received a Graduate Certificate in Bible from Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon. In the late 1970s, Demara became a chaplain at a hospital in Anaheim, California. He became ill in 1980, and on June 7, 1982, died at the age of 62.

     Demara had become famous in the late 1950s after he sold his story to Life Magazine. In 1961, Tony Curtis played him in a popular movie called "The Great Impostor." Demara credited his impostor success to his high IQ, his photographic memory, and his understanding of institutional politics. (It also helps to more around a lot.) 

Majoring in Stupid: Ridiculous College Courses

     Recent polls indicate that most Americans believe that acquiring a higher education isn't worth the time or the money. Having a college degree once meant something, and provided the graduate with at least the opportunity to get a decent job. Modern employers are not so impressed. The job market is flooded with degree holders who are unfit for the higher paying positions. That people with bachelor degrees are smarter than people who haven't graduated from a four-year college is no longer a safe assumption.

     On average, students in public supported colleges and universities spend $20,000 a year. (This includes room and board.) Private schools cost twice as much. This means that a college education costs between $80,000 and $160,000. How many parents with more than one child can afford this? Not many. The average college graduate enters the job market owing, for his or her education alone, $24,000. They also have to pay off credit card debt, and car loans. No wonder they are so disappointed when they can't land the high-paying jobs. With the cost of higher education so high, and so many graduates unemployed or under-employed, it's no longer a given that a college education, as a business proposition, is a wise investment. 

       Studies have shown that college and university services are less geared for student needs than for the needs of administrators and professors. Too many college courses reflect the interests of the people who teach them rather than the interests of the students who take them. Many courses are products of the professors' pet interests, or are designed, not for the teaching of useful and demanding subjects, but to draw students. For example, one way to fill up a classroom is to create a course about sex. This is one subject college graduates are well versed in. If the professor is a historian, he can offer a course called The History of Sex. There's also the Sociology of Sex, The Philosophy of Sex, The Physiology of Sex, the Psychology of Sex, and The Politics of Sex. Some actual course titles include: Sex in Ancient Rome, The Adultery Novel, Those Sexy Victorians, The Phallus, Sex, Rugs, Salt, & Coal (I have no idea what this one is about.), Purity and Porn is America, FemSex, and Dirty Pictures. There are entire academic departments devoted to gay studies. 

     Look through any college catalogue and you'll find courses on UFO's, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and witchcraft. College kids can enroll in courses devoted to the study of people such as David Becham, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Tupac, and dozens of other sports and entertainment "icons." College students today take courses called The Art of Walking, Tree Climbing, Whitewater Skills, Golf, Knitting for Noobs, Finding Dates Worth Keeping, Getting Dressed, and my favorite--Underwater Basket Weaving. (In the old days, if you were weaving baskets, you were in a mental institution. Now, you are in college.)

     Several universities, including Georgetown, offer courses featuring the old TV series "Star Trek." Physics students at Frostburg University can study the magic featured in Harry Potter books. Inquiring minds at Occidental College can earn credits by taking a course called, The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie. At Alfred University, some professor teaches a course called Nip, Tuck, Perm, Pierce, and Tattoo: Adventures with Embodied Culture. According to the course description: "Students are encouraged to think about teeth whitening, tanning, shaving, and hair-dying." Since kids think about this stuff anyway, perhaps this professor could encourage students to think about things that are at least academic. But wait--there's more: class projects include a visit to a tattoo-and-piercing studio. (Maybe owned by the professor's spouse.)

     At the University of Minnesota, if you're a numbskull who's worried about satisfying the physical science requirement, there is a course for you. It's called Geology and Cinema (Professors use the word "cinema" instead of "movie" because "cinema" sounds so academic.) where students sit in class and watch movies that feature geological subject matter as in "Tremors," and "Journey to the Center of the Earth." (If I were this professor, I'd include a field trip to Disneyworld.) For Ohio State students who don't know how to watch a football game, there's a course called Sport For The Spectator. (Again, notice the word "Spectator." How many people who attend sporting events think of themselves as "spectators?") Hopefully this professor gives several lectures that deal with the technique, and meaning, of face-painting, or "facial art." For pre-law students at the University of California at Berkeley, there's Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular "Logic" on TV Judge Shows. This course is of particular value to students who would rather play a judge on television than be one in real life. For students who want to be TV lawyers, I recommend the Perry Mason series. There is probably a college course around called: The Jurisprudence of Perry Mason.

     Students lucky enough to attend the University of Wisconsin at Madison, can avail themselves of Theatrical Fencing. This offering from the Department of Kinesiology provides the student with this pearl of wisdom: "Good theatrical fencing is distinct from the art of sword craft, and is worthy of study." Indeed. What value is an academic program without at least one course on theatrical sword craft? And finally, at New York University, students can earn four college credits by taking a course called D J History, Culture, and Technique. (The technique part suggests a big lab fee.) Many college graduates don't know what came first, World War I or World War II, but they all know the history of the D J. 

     It's no wonder that if you throw a stick in your local shopping mall it'll hit nine retail employees with college degrees. And all of them are in debt.  

     

       

Cops Shooting Cops

Santa Monica, California

     Albert Covarrabias, Jr., a high school graduate, joined the Santa Maria Police Department in 2007. The Santa Barbara County town of 100,000, 170 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is home to 70,000 hispanics. In 2011, Covarrabias' wife committed suicide. The 29-year-old  patrolman, in mid-January of this year, married again.

     A couple of weeks following his wedding, officer Covarrabias learned that members of his own department were investigating him for having sexual relations with a minor. (In California, the age of consent is 18, unless the parties are within 3 years of each other in age.) The alleged victim, a 17-year-old girl, was a member of the police department's Explorer program. (A police cadet.)

     On January 27, 2012, after intercepting and recording a 15 minute phone conversation between Covarrabias and the 17-year-old, Santa Maria investigators decided to take their fellow officer into custody. According to police accounts of the intercepted conversation, Covarrabias told the girl to deny their relationship, and to implicate someone else. He said he'd kill himself before he went to jail, and threatened her if she revealed their secret.

     At one o'clock the next morning, as officer Covarrabias was dismantling a DUI check-point in anticipation of going off duty, he was approached by his cousin Chris Nartatez, a Santa Maria sergeant, and officer Matt Kline, his best-friend on the force who had been his best man at the January wedding. When informed he was under arrest in connection with his alleged sexual relationship with the minor, Covarrabias backed away and reached for  his gun.

     The arresting officers charged Covarrabias, and as they wrestled on the ground, the arrestee managed to draw his weapon and fire four shots. Officer Kline pulled his gun and shot Covarrabias in the chest. The wounded officer died a few  hours later while undergoing emergency surgery.

     Santa Maria police chief Danny Macagni placed officers Kline and Nartatez on paid administrative leave as investigators with the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office looked into the case.

     The fatal shooting of officer Covarrabias by one of his own, outraged a large segment of the community. Santa Maria police officers have received death threats, and critics of the shooting have called for the chief of police to step down. On February 15, the Santa Maria Officers Association (a police union), called for a "vote of no confidence" against Chief Macagni who has insisted that the actions of officers Kline and Nartatez were morally, administratively, and legally justified. (These officers were not welcome at Covarrabias' funeral.)

     The results of the no confidence vote have, as of this writing, not been made public. If a chief of police loses the support and confidence of the rank and file, he cannot effectively run the department. Based upon what has been reported in the media, the shooting of officer Covarrabias seems perfectly justified. However, if the chief loses support of his department and the community, he will have to go. At this point, the Covarrabia shooting case seems more about identity politics than the use of deadly force.

Long Beach, California

     The Los Angeles area's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office is housed on the 7th floor of the federal building in Long Beach, a town 20 miles south of Los Angeles. As one of the federal agencies that make up the Department of Homeland Security, ICE came into existence in 2003 when two existing organizations--the Department of Justice's Immigrations and Naturalization Service (INS), and the Treasury Department's Customs Bureau--merged. Agents in the combined agencies had to be cross-trained to do the other bureaus' work. Agents, however, remained loyal to their old bureaus, and this has created internal rivalries and resentments that have been difficult to resolve. Administratively speaking, it has not been a good marriage.

     Late Thursday afternoon, February 16, 2012, 51-year-old Kevin Kozak, the Deputy Special Agent in charge of ICE's Los Angeles office, a former Customs Bureau agent, was meeting with 45-year-old special agent Ezequiel Garcia. The purpose of the meeting involved the former INS agent's job performance. Kozak had earlier denied Garcia's request for an office transfer which had created animosity on his part. (In 2005, Garcia and another ICE agent had sued the Los Angeles Police Department after they had been roughed-up when working undercover. The plaintiffs lost the suit.)

     The office job performance meeting, at 5:30 PM, turned violent when Agent Garcia pulled his service weapon. Agent Kozak grabbed the gun, and as the two men struggled for control of the weapon, Kozak was shot in the upper torso, legs, and hands--six times in all. Agent Perry Woo, who happened to be in the vicinity, shot and killed Ezequiel Garcia. Paramedics rushed Kevin Kozak, severely wounded but alive, to a nearby hospital where, as of this writing, he remains in stable condition.

     T. J. Bonner, a retired U.S. Border Patrol Agent who has worked with ICE, has described the agency's formation as a hostile takeover. Since its creation, the agency has seen several scandals involving agents arrested for drug dealing, obstruction of justice, embezzlement, and other crimes. ICE agents have also been accused of having improper sexual relations with informants.

     

Susan Cole: Prospective Juror to Perjury Defendant

     More than 90 percent of the criminal cases in American are not tried before a jury. Bargained guilty pleas have essentially replaced the cumbersome and costly trial process. Still, tens of millions of Americans receive jury duty summonses every year. (Our criminal justice system would collapse if just 20 percent of defendants demanded a jury trial. The entire system is set up for guilty pleas based on negotiated sentencing deals. Legislators make maximum sentences for even minor crimes extremely high to give prosecutors more bargaining power.)

     In high-profile criminal trials, the outcome of the case is pretty much determined by which side does the best job of jury selection. O. J. Simpson got off because his attorneys won the jury selection battle. To a certain degree, these trials are over before the first witness takes the stand. Wealthy defendants often hire juror picking consultants who help design a defense-friendly jury. These psychological profilers match jurors to defendants by analyzing such factors as body language, hair styles, clothing, gender, marital status, age, race, education, and occupation. In high-profile cases, the jury selection process, called voir dire, can go on for months.

     Juries, in general, do not represent a cross-section of American society. Entire categories of people never see the jury box. For various reasons, juries rarely include professors, cops, physicians, nurses, small business owners, employees of small companies, college students, young mothers, and lawyers. Most juries are made up of retirees, government workers, employees of large corporations, and people who are unemployed. As a law graduate, criminal justice professor, small business owner, and former FBI agent, I couldn't buy my way onto a jury. I've never made it from the big room full of prospective jurors to the courtroom where lawyers from each side choose the final twelve.

     There are all kinds of reasons and ways for a prospective juror to get out of jury duty. People can be excused for poor health, a criminal record, an upcoming wedding, family demands, mental illness, various economic hardships, and the stated inability to render an unbiased decision. In Michigan, lawmakers recently approved a bill that exempts breast-feeding mothers from jury duty. While prospective jurors are not above telling lies to get out of sitting on a jury, prosecutions for this form of lying under oath are extremely rare. That makes the following case so unusual.

Susan Cole

     In June 2011, Susan Cole, a 57-year-old beautician and Mary Kay Cosmetics saleswoman, received a summons for jury duty. She arrived at the court house in Denver with her hair in curlers, and dressed according to her idea of how mentally ill people present themselves. She wore too much lipstick, reindeer socks (I have no idea what they are), and mismatched sneakers. She had put on a tee-shirt that read: "Ask Me About My Bestseller." (In 2007 Cole, under the pen name Char Cole, had self-published a relationship, self-help book/memoir  called "Seven Institutions With El-Way Secrets." My advice to this author: next time you publish a book, select a title that makes sense.)

     When Judge Anne Mansfield asked Cole if she had a history of mental illness, the prospective juror said, "Yeah, I have some mental issues....I broke out of domestic violence in the military [after her divorce she joined the Army] and have a lot of repercussions. I get very confused in the morning when I try to get ready." (Like forgetting to take out her curlers.) The prospective juror said that as a result of the domestic violence, she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Cole also told the judge she was homeless, and living on the street. Judge Mansfield asked if anyone objected to the dismissal of this woman. No one did, and Cole went home.

     On October 17, 2011, on Denver's "Dave Logan Show," a radio call-in program, callers were telling stories about how they had avoided jury duty. Susan Cole joined in the fun by calling the show and telling how she had recently gotten out of jury duty by impersonating a mentally ill person. Obviously aware that she was admitting to a crime, Cole called in under her pen name, Char.

     In justifying her jury avoiding ploy, Cole told the radio audience that she was simply too busy for jury duty. Rather than being ashamed of having lied under oath to avoid a basic civic responsibility, Cole seemed quite proud of herself: "I put black eyebrows on. I put red lipstick on. I left my hair in my curlers, and I put on a tee-shirt that said, 'Ask Me About My Bestseller.' [When did mentally ill homeless women start putting up their hair?] For about two weeks after, when my roommate and I would think about it, or I would tell my clients about it, we would cry we would laugh so hard."

     One of the "Dave Logan Show" listeners, Anne Mansfield, the judge Susan Cole had lied to, didn't find her story so funny. The judge knew exactly who this caller was, and notified the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor initiated a criminal investigation.

     Detectives looking into the case found no mention of spousal abuse, or PTSD, in Cole's divorce records. Moreover, her military file contained no documentation supporting such a diagnosis. On March 22, 2012, police arrested Cole on charges of first degree perjury, and attempt to influence a public servant (the judge). If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 6 years in prison, on each count.

     Before being hauled off to jail, Cole told detectives that the military had lost her medical records. And the only person who had diagnosed her with PTSD, a Jefferson County court counselor, has since died. Cole said that in her book, she writes of being imprisoned five days in a military mental institution. She also claimed that on the night before her jury duty appearance, she had been traumatized by news that her cousin had been killed in a motorcycle accident. As it turned out, her cousin hadn't been involved in the crash. Assuming this is not a load of crap, how does this explain why she had prepared for jury duty by dressing up like a mentally ill person? Why would a "traumatized" person go to such lengths?

     If Cole's perjury case goes to trial, her story will be considered by people who didn't try to get out of jury duty. My advice to this defendant: cop a plea.

     

The Jorelys Rivera Murder Case: The Polygraph as an Interrogation Tool

     Several years ago, a story went around about an ingenious small town cop who hooked a young thief up to a copy machine the kid thought was a lie detector. When the suspect gave an answer the interrogator didn't like, he hit the print button causing a sheet of paper to come out of the copier that read, "Not True." The suspect, convinced he had been caught by a sophisticated lie detection instrument, confessed. Whenever I told this story in class, I said it happened in West Virginia, and that the judge, offended by the cop's clever dishonesty, threw the confession out.

     The copy machine-as-polygraph story probably didn't happen in West Virginia, or anywhere else. But it illustrates an important point about scientific lie detection, and how the polygraph technique can be used by examiners to coax confessions out of guilty suspects. The debate over polygraph accuracy, in this context, is not relevant. What does matter is this: most criminal suspects who happen to be guilty, believe the polygraph works. In the right hands, it can be an effective interrogation tool. Recently, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made public a video-tape of a murder suspect's polygraph examination and follow-up interrogation. The transcript of this session reveals how a professional polygraph examiner/interrogator can acquire a confession.  

The Jorelys Rivera Murder Case

     On Friday, December 2, 2010, 7-year-old Jorelys Rivera, a resident of the River Ridge Apartment complex in Canton, Georgia outside of Atlanta, went missing. Three days later, police found her body in a dumpster not far from where she had been abducted. Ryan Brunn, a 20-year-old newly hired maintenance man had lured the girl into a vacant apartment where he had raped and murdered her.

     On the day following the discovery of the murdered girl's body, Keith Sitton, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, gave the suspect a polygraph test. What follows is the word-for-word account of that session:

SITTON: Regarding that girl, do you intend to answer the [polygraph] questions truthfully?

BRUNN: Yes.

SITTON: Did you participate in any way in causing the death of that girl?

BRUNN: No.

SITTON: Do you know for sure who caused the death of that girl?

BRUNN: No.

     In discussing the results of the polygraph test with Brunn, Sitton said, "I can see you're not doing good on this test. Those [last two] questions are really bothering me."

     "I promise you. I'll take the test again," Brunn replied. His voice was weak, and he was obviously nervous.

     "There's something on this that you're not telling us. Something that you're keeping to yourself. What is it you're holding back? Because we're going to solve this thing. It's just written all over you. Something's bothering you."

     "I'm not bothered at all."

     "You haven't told the complete truth about everything."

     "I have," Brunn replied.

     The GBI agent asked Brunn about having been accused of sexually fondling a young girl in Virginia: "You know what I'm talking about," he said.

     "I don't."

     "Remember, I said you had to be 100 percent truthful. I asked you [on the polygraph] if anyone made accusations. So what you have done is told me a lie.

     "They put things in that child's head. I'm a good person. I didn't do nothing to that little spanish girl, and I didn't do nothing to the other girl [the one in Virginia].

     The next day, Sutton questioned Brunn again. He informed the suspect that according to the polygraph he had lied. To this, Brunn said, "I should have told the truth straight up. But I didn't. I was scared." At this point, Brunn made a full confession. He said he had raped the girl, cut her throat, wrapped her in a garbage bag, and dumped her body in the trash compactor.

     On January 17, 2011, Ryan Brunn pleaded guilty to murdering Jorelys Rivera. The judge sentenced him to life without parole. A year later, while serving his time at the Georgia State Prison, Brunn used his sweatshirt to hang himself.

     

The Politician From Hell: The Steve Nunn Murder Case

     If you think all, or even most, politicians are above average spouses and parents, think again. Although they pretend to be better than the rest of us, some of these hypocrites and thieves turn out to be dangerous criminals. Take Steve Nunn, a state legislator from Kentucky who was a lousy husband, a raging hypocrite, and dangerous. His story should remind us that the people we vote into office, regardless of how good they look on the surface, can be rotten to the core. (Since political hacks write their speeches, you never know what they really stand for until it's too late. Every once in awhile a politician will go off script and accidentally tell the truth. Political talking heads call these moments of political clarity "gaffs.")

     Steven Nunn was 15 when his father, Louie B. Nunn, became Kentucky's 52nd governor in 1967. A Republican, Nunn was re-elected to a second term, but in 1973, lost his bid for a seat in the U. S. Senate. Six years later, he ran for governor again, but lost. His career in elected politics was over.

     In 1974, Steve, hoping to follow in his father's footsteps, enrolled in law school, but dropped out. (Like Al Gore.) He got married, and over the next five years, had three children. In 1990, at age 38, Nunn ran for the Kentucky state house of representatives, and won.

     Steve's father, a hard-driven narcissist and BS artist who enjoyed subjecting his kid to ridicule, refused to be impressed with his son's election to state office. Like his father, Steve was a lousy husband who regularly cheated on his wife. In 1994 she divorced him. (In state politics, being a rotten husband is not a liability because most people have no idea who represents them locally.) Two years later, Steve's mother Beula, after 42 years of marriage to Louie B., sought a restraining order against the abusive ex-governor. Steve confronted his father over this, and the two men came to blows. After that, they stopped speaking to each other. Beula divorced Louie B. shortly thereafter.

     Steve Nunn, in his third term as a state legislator, married Tracey Damron, a former flight attendant and daughter of a wealthy Kentucky coal magnate. A social butterfly who sparkled at fundraisers and social balls, Tracey became the perfect politician's wife. Two years later, in 1998, Steve co-sponsored a bill that imposed the death sentence on a convicted killer who murders a woman who has taken out a restraining order against him. The bill became Kentucky law.  

       In 2002, after Tracey Nunn engineered a father-son reconciliation, she and Steve moved into the ex-governor's Pin Oak Farms mansion near Versailles, Kentucky. But a year later, the 51-year-old's political career took a bad turn. In a bid for the governorship, Steve lost badly in the Republican primary. And on January 29, 2004, his father, at age 81, died of an heart attack. Although Steve didn't have a healthy relationship with his father, the old man's death devastated him. The wheels of Steve's political career came off in 2006 when he lost his legislative seat to an unknown challenger.

     Following the death of his father, Steve starting drinking heavily, patronizing prostitutes, and behaving irrationally. He also became, like his father, an abusive husband. Tracey divorced him in 2006. The following year, the 55-year-old political has-been met 20-year-old Amanda Ross, the daughter of a recently deceased public financier. After two months of dating, Steve moved into her Lexington, Kentucky apartment. In 2008, they were engaged to be married.

     Through his engagement to Amanda Ross, Steve landed the cabinet-level job of heading up a state agency that oversaw a variety of welfare programs, include those dealing with spousal abuse. (Ex drug users get jobs as drug counselors, why not hire ex-wife abusers to oversee spousal abuse?) Amanda Ross held a high-level state position as well.

     Although Steve was back on his feet career-wise, he was still emotionally unstable, and drinking too much. His paranoia led him to suspect that Amanda was cheating on him. On February 17, 2009, in the midst of an argument in Ross' apartment, Steve, true to form, hit her. The next day, she petitioned the court for an emergency protection order, which a judge quickly granted. Under the restraining order, Nunn could have no contact with Ross for a period of a year. Within 48 hours of the judge's ruling, Nunn had no choice but to resign his cushy, high-paid government job.

     Convinced that Ross had intentionally sabotaged his career, Nunn became obsessed with revenge. To embarrass and humiliate his former fiancee, he showed his friends nude photographs he had taken of her. He then began to stalk her.

     On September 11, 2009, as Amanda Ross left her apartment on her way to work, Nunn shot her to death. While no one witnessed the murder, homicide investigators had an obvious suspect--Steve Nunn. Later that day, police found him hiding in a cemetery. He had scratched his wrists in a phony suicide attempt. (Nothing this guy did was on the level.)

     Charged with first degree murder, Nunn, to avoid the death penalty mandated by his own legislation, pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.   

Tameikia Johnson: Killer Cop or Abused Wife?

     Off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Tomeikia Johnson and her husband Marcus Lemons stated arguing while having drinks on February 21, 2009 at the T.G.I Friday bar in Compton, California. At 11PM, after the 32-year-old cop paid the bill, she and Lemons, a barber and locally known amateur bowler, left the restaurant with the CHP officer behind the wheel. About an hour later, Johnson pulled up to her parents' Compton home with her husband's dead body in the BMW. Lemons had been shot point-blank in the head with his wife's handgun. Johnson's mother called 911.

     Pending the results of the homicide investigation conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, the CHP re-assigned Johnson to desk duty. She told investigators that she and her husband, after they left the bar, continued to fight. When she pulled the car off the road, he became physical. As they struggled for control of the gun, it went off and killed him. According to her account of the shooting, she was defending herself against an abusive husband.

     Detectives looking into the shooting believed that Johnson had pulled the car off the road, reached into her purse, took out her gun, and shot Lemons in the head. The Los Angeles County deputy district attorney handling the case also believed that Lemons had been murdered by his wife. In January 2011, sheriff's deputies arrested Tomeikia Johnson on the charge of first degree murder as she sat at her CHP desk. (From the beginning, the CHP had cooperated with the investigation.) Initially held in the county jail on $2 million bond, Johnson made her bail and was released.

     In January 2012, with the defendant's family seated on one side of the courtroom, and her dead husband's relatives gathered in the other half of the gallery, the Johnson trial got underway in downtown Los Angeles. In her opening statement to the jury, Deputy District Attorney Natalie Adomian laid out the prosecution's theory of the shooting. According to the prosecutor, after Johnson pulled the BMW off the road, she pulled out her gun, pressed the muzzle against his head, and pulled the trigger.

     Over the next several days, Adomian, to support the prosecution's assertion that the killing had been intentional, put a blood spatter interpretation analyst, and a gunshot residue expert, on the stand. The experts testified that the pattern and location of the blood and powder staining did not support the defendant's account of the shooting. The forensic scientists were followed by a series of witnesses who portrayed the defendant as having an aggressive personality, and a drinking problem. These witnessed characterized Marcus Lemons as a peaceful, nonviolent husband who had taken a lot of abuse from his wife. Since Johnson hadn't confessed, and there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial.

     To establish that his client had been an abused wife, and that the shooting had occurred during a life and death struggle for the gun, attorney Darryl Stallworth put the defendant on the stand, realizing that the outcome of the case depended upon Tomeikia Johnson's credibility. Stallworth, to make the case for his client's innocence, had to put Marcus Lemons on trial. He had to attack a dead man, always a risky move in a murder trial.

     According to the defendant, a week before her husband died while trying to kill her, he had given her reason to fear for her life. They had gotten into an argument while driving back to Los Angeles from a bowling tournament in Las Vegas. She told him to stop the car, and when he pulled off the road, she ran to a nearby truck stop and called 911 and reported that her husband had gotten possession of her gun, and wanted to kill her. (No charges were filed against Lemons.) Johnson also testified that in 2008, Lemons had attacked her in a Las Vegas hotel room, injuring her neck. No charges were filed in that case either.

     After giving testimony intended to establish Marcus Lemons as the abuser in the marriage, Johnson provided her account of how he had died: After leaving the T.G.I. Friday bar in Compton, she and Lemons continued to argue. He became so angry, he reached over and started choking her, forcing her to pull off the highway. He grabbed the keys out of the ignition, and told her to walk home. She climbed out of the BMW and started running, then, worried that he would take the gun out of her purse (left behind in the car) and shoot her, she returned to the vehicle. As she and her husband reached for the gun, it fell to the ground. When she picked it up, the pistol went off, killing him.

     "Did you want to fire that weapon?" asked the attorney.

     "No."

     "Did you want to kill your husband?"

      "No," the defendant replied.

     The defense rested, and following the closing arguments, and the judge's legal instructions, the case went to the jury. If jurors believed Johnson's account of the shooting, they would acquit her. If not, she would not be walking out of the courthouse a free person.

     On January 23, 2012, the jury, after deliberating slightly more than a day, found Tomeikia Johnson guilty of first degree murder. She fainted, paramedics rushed to the defense table, and wheeled her out of the courtroom on a gurney.

     At Johnson's March 9 sentencing hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry, her attorney asked the judge to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. Judge Perry denied the request, and sentenced Johnson to 50 years to life. Apparently the judge didn't buy her story either. As Johnson wept, her mother yelled "I love you Tomiekia!" This set off a raucous back and forth in the gallery between the opposing families.

     Johnson's attorney announced that he would appeal the conviction.

     

     

The Frye Case in the History of the Polygraph

     The prototype of the modern polygraph instrument was invented in 1921 by a graduate physiology student at the University of California at Berkeley named John Larson. While attending the university, Larson worked as a "college cop" at the Berkeley Police Department under the progressive police chief, August Vollmer. It was Vollmer who asked Larson to invent a device that could determine if a criminal suspect was telling the truth or lying. In researching the work of others who had tried to find a method of scientific lie detection, Larson read an article by a lawyer named William Marston who believed that when people lie they come under stress, which raises their blood pressure. (Marston, oddly enough, was also the creator of the comic superhero, Wonder Woman.)

     Polygraph test results, because of questions of scientific reliability, have never been admitted in a criminal court as proof of a defendant's guilt. Ironically, the case most frequently cited as precedent for polygraph exclusion, is United States v. Frye, a federal appeals court decision that arose out of a murder case that had involved William Marston's lie detection methodology. At the time, John Larson's polygraph, a significantly more sophisticated instrument, had not been fully developed.

The Frye Case

     On November 25, 1920, almost a year after John Larson had joined the Berkeley Police Department, and a few months before he had read William Marston's article on blood pressure and scientific lie detection, a black man named James Frye shot and killed a wealthy physician, also black, in Washington, D.C. Frye had murdered Dr. Robert W. Brown in his office at 8:45 in the evening. Another physician witnessed the shooting, and ran after Frye as he fled the building. The chase came to an abrupt end when Frye took a shot at his pursuer. The eyewitness did not know Frye, so all the police had was a general description of the killer.

     On August 21, 1921, seven months after the murder, the police arrested Frye on a robbery case, and while being grilled on that matter, he confessed to killing Dr. Brown. Over the years, the facts of this case have become more myth than reality. Dr. James E. Starrs, a forensic science scholar, and professor of law at George Washington University, set the record straight in 1981. In a paper Dr. Starrs presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences that year, Starrs presents the Frye case myth as follows: James Frye admitted to killing Dr. Brown because a friend told him that if he did so, he would receive part of the reward money that had been put up by the victim's family. When Frye realized that as the killer, he was not eligible for the reward, he repudiated his confession. It was at this point Frye's attorney hired William Marston to test his client's honesty.

     According to the Frye case myth, Marston's lie detection test confirmed that the defendant was telling the truth when he denied committing the murder. But because the trial judge refused to allow Marston to take the stand on the defendant's behalf, the jury found Frye guilty. The judge sentenced him to life in prison. According to this version of the case, the friend who had talked Frye into confessing, admitted killing the doctor. As a result, after serving three years in prison, Frye walked free.

     The above version of the Frye case makes a good story, and sheds favorable light on scientific lie detection. If the trial judge had been more open minded, an innocent man would not have been convicted. According to Professor Starrs, however, the above account of the Frye case is grossly inaccurate. In reality, the defendant had withdrawn his confession on the advice of his attorney, Richard V. Mattingly. By the time the case went to trial, Frye had concocted an alibi. He claimed that at the time of the murder, he had been visiting a woman named Essie Watson.

     In his 1938 book, The Lie Detector Test, William Marston writes that he had been called into the case by Mattingly a few weeks before the trial because the defense attorney couldn't find any witnesses to support his client's alibi. Marston, on June 10, 1922, gave Frye his systolic blood pressure test, a primitive method that involved nothing more than a standard blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope. After each question put to Frye, Marston simply took his blood pressure. Compared to John Larson's polygraph, Marston's technique was crude, and unreliable. Larson was a scientist, Marston was an attorney.

     After Marston administered his lie detection exam, he announced that James Frye had told the truth when he denied committing the murder. In his book, he wrote, "No one could have been more surprised than myself to find that Frye's final story of innocence was entirely truthful! His confession to the Brown murder was a lie from start to finish."

     James Frye went on trial for the murder of Dr. Brown on July 17, 1922 in Washington, D.C. before Judge William McCoy. Defense attorney Mattingly's case was based entirely on William Marston's lie detection results. When he tried to put Marston on the stand as an expert lie detection witness, the prosecutor objected on the grounds that scientific lie detection was not reliable. The judge agreed. Without the lie detection evidence, Mattingly had no choice but to put his client on the stand. This did not turn out well for the defense.

     The jury, after deliberating three hours, found the defendant guilty of second degree murder, a verdict that spared Frye the death sentence. Having been in court during the argument over the reliability of Marston's lie detection technique, the jurors decided not to send Frye to his death. As Marston put it in his book, "As far as James Frye was concerned, the [lie detection] test undoubtedly saved his life. No jury could help being influenced by the knowledge that Frye's story had been proved truthful by the lie detector."

     Richard Mattingly appealed Fry's conviction on the grounds Judge McCoy had erred in excluding William Marston's lie detection test results. In 1993, the circuit court of appeals in the District of Columbia upheld Judge McCoy's exclusion. Judge Van Orsdel wrote the appellate court's opinion that established the test used today for the admission of expert testimony based upon new scientific principles. Judge Van Orsdel wrote: "Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrative stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this twilight zone the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs."

     Although Judge Van Orsdel set the general standard for the admission of new scientific evidence, his opinion doesn't indicate exactly what he objected to in Marston's lie detection procedure. It is not clear whether the judge questioned the underlying principle that lying causes measurable changes in a person's blood pressure, or if he objected to Marston's systolic blood pressure test as a method of gathering and recording this data for interpretation. The judge may have rejected both the scientific principle behind Marston's test, and the technique itself.

     If the Frye court's rejection primarily involved the lie detection technique rather than the scientific principle behind it, then it was Marston's systolic blood pressure evidence, not John Larson's polygraph, that was being ruled inadmissible in the Frye case. If this is true, then it could be argued that the Frye decision has been inappropriately cited all of these years as precedent for the court exclusion of polygraph evidence.

     As for James Frye, he was paroled from the District of Columbia Prison at Lorton, Virginia on June 17, 1939. He had served 18 years behind bars, and died in 1953 at age 58. If it hadn't been for William Marston's unsophisticated and unreliable lie detection test, he would have died a lot sooner.    

The "Black Madam" Butt-Injection Case

     Born in 1970, Padge Victoria Windslowe didn't become a woman until she had a sex change operation in 2006. The aspiring hip-hop singer who bills herself as the "Black Madam" (presumably because she's black), has also gone under the names Victoria Forrest Gordon, and Genevieve D'Gordoni. (I don't know her pre-female name.) The multi-named Windslowe also has a pair of social security numbers, and lives in two places--with her mother and stepfather in west Philadelphia, and in an apartment in Narberth, Pennsylvania.

     Although Windslowe has no medical training, the Black Madam has injected silicone into the hips and buttocks of young women who have attended her "pumping parties" to acquire larger butts. Windslowe's client/victims have paid between $700 and $2,000 for these cosmetic enhancement procedures carried out in Philadelphia area homes and hotel rooms.

     Melissa Lisath, a 27-year-old account manager for a construction company in the Bronx, New York, attended a September 2008 pumping party hosted by the Black Madam in a Red Roof Inn in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Lisath, one of several women in the motel room, paid $1,800 for the procedure. Windslowe identified herself as a plastic surgeon's assistant named Lillia.

     Six hours after receiving the painful silicone injections, Lisath, back in the Bronx, started having trouble breathing. She began to sweat profusely, then threw up blood. Rushed to the hospital, she slipped into a coma. The chemicals Windslowe had injected into her body had migrated into her bloodstream, then into her lungs. Three months after the pumping party, Lisath came out of her coma. She weighed 80 pounds, couldn't walk, and had a bone condition. Two years would pass before she was well enough to take care of herself.

     No criminal charges were filed against Windslowe in connection with Melissa Lisath's nearly fatal reaction to the Mount Laurel pumping party injections. The Black Madam continued to inject silicone into women who gathered in area homes and motels for the toxic cosmetic procedures.

     In December 2011, Claudia Seye Aderotimi, a 20-year-old college student from London, England, flew to Philadelphia, where, in a hotel room near the airport, Windslowe administered the butt enlargement shots. Within hours of the injections, Aderotimi complained of chest pains, suffered a heart attack, then died suddenly of liver failure. (As reported in the U. K., Aderotimi was an exotic dancer.)

     The Delaware County (Pennsylvania) Medical Examiner's Office is currently in the process of determining if the Black Madam's injections led directly to Aderotimi's death. The authorities are awaiting the results of the toxicological analysis of the injected substances. If the buttock enhancement injections killed the English woman, Windslowe could be charged with, among other crimes, voluntary manslaughter.

     On February 19, 2012, Windslowe injected a 23-year-old exotic dancer at a pumping party held in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The needle hit a blood vessel which carried the toxic chemicals to the unidentified woman's lungs. Treated for a blocked lung artery, the victim, after seven days in the hospital, went home. She still requires extra oxygen to breathe. As a result of this woman's medical reaction to the Black Madam's injections, the local prosecutor charged Windslowe with aggravated assault, simple assault, and deceptive practices. Instead of taking Windslowe into custody, the Philadelphia police placed her under surveillance.

     Ten days after the Black Madam had injected the 23-year-old exotic dancer, the police raided a pumping party, attended by five women, in another Germantown home. They took Windslowe into custody, and seized her equipment which included syringes, needles, chemicals, and other butt enlarging paraphernalia such as cotton balls and Super Glue. A magistrate set Windslowe's bail at $10 million, but a judge lowered it to $750,000. The Black Madam is currently confined, under house arrest, at the west Philadelphia home occupied by her mother and stepfather.

     Investigators have linked the Black Madam to 14 pumping parties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The defendant's preliminary hearing is set for May 16.

UPDATE

     On July 23, 2012, the District Attorney's office in Philadelphia charged Padge Windslowe with third degree murder in the death of London tourist Claudia Aderotimi. The Black Madam had been arrested and is in custody. 

Rutgers Spycam Case: Hating Hate Crimes

Federalization of Hate Crime Legislation

     In 1969, congress made criminal homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and the destruction of property federal crimes if the offender's motivation was hatred of the victim's race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. The law applied to victims attending federally funded public schools, or participating in other federally protected activities. Critics of the legislation considered it redundant and excessive. Moreover, it created a preferred class of victim, and criminalized motive and thought. Others criticized this hate crime legislation for not going far enough, for not including gay people.

     The House of Representatives, in 2007, passed the Matthew Shepard Act, legislation named after the gay Wyoming college student who was murdered in 1998. The act expanded hate crime protection to gender, sexual orientation, gender identification, and disability bias. It also dropped the prerequisite that victims be engaged in federally protected activity. The U. S. Senate pass a similar bill, but it did not become law.

     In October 2009, the House of Representatives passed another measure, this one attached to the $681-billion military policy bill of 2010 which mirrored the Matthew Shepard Act. The military appropriation, and the attached hate crime legislation, was taken up by the Senate, which passed its own version of the bill. Under this new legislation, signed by President Obama, the U.S. Department of Justice will also allocate $5 million a year to help local authorities prosecute hate crimes.

     It's comforting to know that the politicians in Washington not only want to wipe out crime, they intend to eliminate hate as well.

State Hate Crime Laws

     Today, 45 states have laws making certain crimes more serious if the perpetrators were motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious bias. So, to assault a person out of personal anger, or simply to steal his wallet, is one thing. To assault him because he's a certain race or religion, makes the crime, for that reason alone, more serious. It's the thought behind the crime that makes the difference. These laws criminalize thought and belief. In 30 states, the hate crime legislation also covers people who are gay. (Advice to white muggers: to avoid enhanced prison sentences, only rob white heterosexuals. If you make a mistake and accidentally assault a gay person, you may have to commit perjury on the issue of your sexual orientation beliefs. I say, lie through your teeth, you have nothing to lose.)

     In 2010, according to the FBI, 1,528 people in the United States were victims of anti-gay hate crime. These gay related offenses made up 20 percent of all reported hate crimes that year. That figure seems low. Either hatred for gays isn't as bad as the politicians think it is, or we need to add more thought police. This is where more polygraph examiners would come in handy. Question: Are you principally a mugger, or a bigot?

Rutgers Spycam Case

     On March 17, 2012, a jury in New Brunswick, New Jersey, found former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi guilty of anti-gay intimidation for using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate's sexual activity. The 18-year-old student Ravi spied on, committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. Because Tyler Clementi killed himself, the 20-year-old defendant faces up to ten years in prison.

         What is Dharun Ravi being punished for? The suicide? The cruel invasion of his roommate's privacy? The humiliation of a fellow student? Atrocious student conduct? Ravi isn't going to prison for any of these acts. He didn't kill Tyler Clementi. He didn't invade his privacy and humiliate him with the intent of causing his suicide. Although the prosecution didn't present any solid evidence that the defendant's behavior was motivated by a hatred of gays, Ravi is being punished for anti-gay motivated behavior. He's being punished for thoughts, and a motive he may or may not have had. If the facts of this case were identical except that the roommate was having sex with a woman, would Ravi be facing a prison sentence? Of course not.

     Hate crime law is not just redundant, feel-good legislation passed by thoughtless, pandering politicians, it's dangerous thought crime that is unconstitutional and un-American. The Rutgers Spycam case illustrates this perfectly.

Killing Bald Eagles: Native Americans Can, The Rest of Us Can't

The Illegal Possession of Feathers

     Because, in the early 20 century, birds were slaughtered to feather women's hats, congress, in 1918, passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) to protect every bird in America except the house sparrow, feral pigeon, common starling, and non-migratory game birds such as pheasants, gray partridges, and the sage grouse. The MBTA prohibits the hunting, capture or killing of the protected birds. Moreover, one cannot legally purchase, sell, or even possess any feather, body part, nest, or egg of any bird covered by the act. (The  MBTA covers 83 percent of all birds that live in the United States.)

Chuck Smith and the Federal Bird Cops

     Chuck Smith (not his real name), is a friend who, in the early 1990s, innocently got caught up in a petty MBTA case that scared the hell out of him. Chuck, a respected and popular high school anthropology teacher specializing in the history of the American Indian, answered a bargain bulletin ad placed by a man selling Indian relics. From this seller, a man named Phil (not really), Chuck purchased a 1920s era white, buckskin outfit that had been worn ceremonially by members of the Blackfoot tribe. He paid $1,500 for the full-dress, beaded, Indian outfit. Two days after the sale, Phil called and offered to give Chuck the headdress that went with the buckskin apparel. The war bonnet contained 25 white, dark-tipped feathers from a bald eagle. Chuck accepted the offer. He planned to exhibit these items as teaching aids, and had no idea that by accepting the eagle-feathered Blackfoot headdress, he had broken a federal law. Had Chuck known it was against the law to possess bald eagle feathers, he would not have taken the bonnet home. (A vast majority of Americans have no idea that most bird feathers are federal contraband.)

     Not long after Chuck made the Blackfoot buckskin purchase, and accepted the bonnet as a gift, a pair of undercover agents with the Department of Interior visited the seller, Phil. The agents said they were responding to Phil's Indian relics ad. After buying an Indian neckless made of eagle claws, the feds flashed their badges and arrested Phil for violation of the MBTA. When the agents asked Phil if he had sold items containing feathers to anyone else, he told them about Chuck's Blackfoot headdress.

     Phil's information brought the federal agents, unannounced, to Chuck's house. They identified themselves, then asked if he still possessed the eagle feathered bonnet. Chuck said yes, it had been a gift from Phil. The agents informed Chuck that he had committed a federal crime under the MBTA, an offense that could cost him ten of thousands of dollars in fines, and even some time in prison. Terrified, and worried that the fines and a prison stretch would bankrupt him, and ruin his career as a high school teacher, Chuck volunteered the information that he possessed other Indian artifacts that contained bird feathers.

     The shaken school teacher led the federal agents to an upstairs bedroom where they seized a rawhide Indian shield bearing a clump of crow feathers, and a shaman's rattle with screech owl feathers. In his garage, Chuck turned over two owl feathers he had found along a road after the bird had been hit by a car. In addition to the general MBTA fine, Chuck could be fined an extra $500 for each feather type he had possessed. The additional fines would add up to $2,000. Before leaving Chuck's house that day, the agents said they would tell the assistant United States attorney (AUSA) handling the case that he had been very cooperative. This did not ease Chuck's anxiety. He envisioned himself in prison stripes.

     The next several weeks Chuck went through hell as he waited to find out what would happen to him. Finally, one of the agents called him with the news that the AUSA was so thrilled to be handling a case that did not involve drugs, she was giving him a huge break. If he paid a fine of just $500, the case would be history. Chuck mailed in the money, and went on with his life. But memories of his ordeal lingered for years.

Bald Eagles: A License to Kill

     In 1995, the federal government classified the bald eagle an endangered species. Twelve years later, the bird was re-classified as a threatened species. Even so, the bald eagle has remained under the protection of the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Under this law it is a crime, without a government permit, to capture, kill, and/or possess a bald or golden eagle, or any part of the bird. Violators face a maximum fine of $100,000, and two years in prison.

     In 2011, the 9,600-member Arapaho tribe on the Wind River Indian reservation in west-central Wyoming, after being refused a permit to kill two bald eagles for religious purposes, filed a federal lawsuit. (Native Americans can legally acquire eagle feathers and carcasses from a federal repository of such items.) On March 9, 2012, the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service granted the permit.

     The reaction to the permit decision from the National Audobon Society, conservation groups, and animal rights activists, has been muted. Because they are afraid to criticize Native Americans, politicians have also been quiet. Over the years, dozens of non-Native Americans have gone to prison for killing bald and golden eagles. My friend Chuck could have gone to prison for merely possessing eagle feathers. He's not happy with the decision to allow members of the Arapaho tribe to kill a pair of these protected birds. But like most people, he would prefer to keep this opinion to himself. Perhaps Chuck is worried that criticizing Native Americans might be a federal crime. The retired high school teacher is not taking any chances when it comes to Native Americans, and eagles.  

Forensic Hypnosis: Investigative Tool or Junk Science?

     Advocates of forensic hypnosis claim that crime victims and witnesses, under an hypnotic state, can remember events they have forgotten, and sharpen memories that are still with them. Forensic hypnotists are often brought into cases to help, for example, a witness or victim recall a license plate number, or an odometer reading. Investigators also use the technique to retrieve more detailed descriptions of suspects. Supporters of forensic hypnosis point to cases where its use has solve crimes. Detractors (myself included) can point to instances where hypnotically induced information turned out to be inaccurate, and even harmful.

     In the 1970s I was tangentially involved in an arson-murder case where a forensically hypnotized witness/victim identified an innocent man as the fire setter. In one of my own cold case murder investigations, a witness I had someone forensically hypnotize, produced information that led me on a wild goose chase. In Pennsylvania and several other states, hypnotically induced testimony, because it is unreliable, is inadmissible in court.

     A lot can go wrong when a victim or a witness is questioned while in an hypnotic state. The hypnotist can unwittingly suggest information to the subject that taints the results. Under hypnosis, the personal beliefs and prejudices of the interviewee can seep into remembered accounts and descriptions. Researchers have found that people under hypnosis are fully capable of lying, and the process can bring to the surface a subject's false beliefs. Because of these and other problems with this investigative technique, I am not a fan of forensic hypnosis, particularly when practiced by psychologists who make their livings putting clients under to help them stop smoking, lose weight, stop taking drugs, or get off booze. In my opinion, composite sketches based on the memories of hypnotized eyewitnesses are, at best, useless. In the practice of criminal investigation, I place forensic hypnotists in the same category as fortune tellers, astrologists, and psychic detectives.  

Shoot/Don't Shoot: Shooting Kids

January 4, 2011

Chicago, Illinois

     Officers patrolling a west side neighborhood for gang and drug activity, spotted a car that matched the description of a vehicle believed to be carrying guns and narcotics. As one of the officers approached the pulled-over car, the driver put it in reverse and rammed the police cruiser. The officer behind the wheel fired his gun as the suspect lurched forward and brushed the other officer. When the passenger in the suspect car pulled a gun, the officer on foot shot him and the driver.

     The wounded suspects turned out to be a pair of 15-year-old boys. After a couple of days in the hospital, the teenagers were charged with aggravated battery and sent to a juvenile detention center. Given the circumstances of the case, no one objected when the authorities ruled this police involved shooting justified.  

March 14, 2011

Lansing, Michigan

     When the intrusion alarm at the Bank of America went off at 3:30 in the morning, five police officers responded to the scene. After discovering the place where the burglar had broken into the the building, three of the officers entered the bank. Two of the officers encountered the intruder hiding in a small storage room. The cornered bank burglar turned out to be 17-year-old Derrinesh Clay. The five foot four, 120 pound girl, wearing a black winter coat with a fur-trimmed hood, black sweatpants over jeans, and a multicolored backpack, brandished a pair of scissors. 

     Lansing police officer Brian Rendon ordered Clay to drop the weapon. When she didn't, he grabbed her by the wrist. The girl put up a fight, and she, Rendon, and another officer ended up on the floor. As the officers tried to handcuff the burglar, she pulled out a serrated steak knife and took a swipe at Rendon, cutting the front of his coat. From a foot away, Rendon pulled his .45-caliber Glock and fired twice, hitting the black girl in the head and stomach as she knelt in front of him. The girl died at the scene. 

     In 2005, Officer Rendon had shot and killed a pit bull, and three years later, shot and wounded a man who came at him with a knife. He was cleared on both shootings. Investigators with the Michigan State Police found that in the Clay shooting, Officer Rendon's deadly force was a "justifiable act of self-defense." The prosecutor's office agreed, therefore no criminal charges have been filed against Officer Rendon. 

     Derrinesha Clay had been in trouble with the law before. Police had recently arrested her for committing a pair of home invasions. She had also been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and may have been bipolar. 

     Critics of the police shooting, and there are many, believe that the girl's death could have been avoided. The officer, they say, could have backed off without risking his life. Why didn't he use a taser gun to subdue her. In September 2011, the dead girl's mother, Mary Rush, filed a federal lawsuit in the U. S. District Court in Grand Rapids against Officer Rendon and the city of Lansing. The plaintiff accuses the defendants of gross negligence, battery, and civil rights violations. Regardless of the outcome of this case, the incident has strained relations between the police department and the city's minority community. 

January 4, 2012

Brownsville, Texas

     At eight in the morning, a school administrator at the Cummings Middle School, spotted a student who possessed what looked like a handgun partially concealed under his shirt. The boy stood in the hallway outside of the main office. A few days earlier, 15-year-old Jaime Gonzales had been in a fight with another boy. The concerned school official called 911.

     Gonzales, when approached by several police officers, drew his gun. One of the officers yelled, "Take him out!" When the kid refused to lower his weapon, the police, armed with automatic rifles, shot him in the chest and in the back of the head, killing him instantly. 

     The weapon Gonzales pointed at the police turned out to be a pellet gun that looked like the real thing. The dead student's parents have protested the shooting, and have called for an independent investigation. But in the light of school shootings that have resulted in the deaths of so many students and teachers, it's hard to fault the police in this case. Hindsight is one thing, but these officers had to make a split shoot/don't shoot decision. Based on news reportage of this case, it seems justified even though the boy was fifteen, and armed with a pellet gun.  

     

John Mallett: The Columbus Shooting Spree

     One week after John Shick shot six people in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, another mentally disturbed man, in Columbus, Ohio, went on a stabbing spree that wounded four. One of Shick's victims died in the assault. The police shot both of the attackers, killing Shick. While these violent rampages defy rational explanation, and were not predictable, they were, in hindsight, not out of the blue. The Pittsburgh shooter was white, and the knife wielding man in Columbus is black. Neither assailant knew his victims.  Both cases shocked the community, and left people feeling vulnerable. In America, crimes of this nature have become commonplace. (Just last night, five teenagers in Indianapolis were shot in some kind of shooting spree.)

John W. Mallett

     As a teenager growing up in New York City, John Mallett spent time in the juvenile wing of the jail on Rikers Island. He had stabbed a boy in a fight over a girl. As a young adult, Mallett, a paranoid schizophrenic, continued to have problems with the law. He served three years in prison for robbery. Mallett's family tried to get him help through the courts and public health, but were ignored. The criminal justice system is of no help to the family of a violent, mentally ill person until that person commits a heinous crime. Then it's too late.

     In 2002, Mallett moved to Nashville, Tennessee where his mental illness continued to lead him into trouble. In March of that year, he was convicted of resisting arrest, and in July 2010, for criminal trespass. In February 2011, just before moving to Columbus, the authorities in Nashville charged Mallett with the unlawful possession of a weapon. (That charge was later dismissed.)

     In Columbus, Mallett moved in with his aunt. He became such a problem for her, she asked him to move out. This may have placed him under considerable stress. A few days later, while in downtown Columbus a few blocks from the state capitol, Mallett entered the 25-story Continental Centre carrying three knives, one of which he had taken from his aunt's kitchen. The office building housed, on the first floor, a for-profit trade school (criminal justice, security, investigation, and court reporting) called Miami-Jacobs Career College. The school, owned by the Delta Career Education Corporation headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, consists of 37 campuses and 16,000 students around the country.

     In the trade school's admissions office, Mallett, carrying a knife in each hand, repeatedly stabbed two employees and a criminal justice student. Back outside, he knifed an attorney who works for the state attorney general's office that is housed in the building. As several bystanders tried, but failed to disarm Mallett, a witness called 911.

      Within minutes of the 911 call, Columbus patrol officer Deborah Ayers pulled up to the building. The 15-year veteran of the force confronted Mallett near the building's entrance. "Sir," she yelled, "you need to put the knife down. Sir, please put the knife down!" Instead of complying with the officer's command, Mallet lunged toward her with a knife. Ayers fired 11 shots at Mallet, hitting him several times. Before he collapsed to the pavement, a second officer shocked him with a stun gun. (In police involved shootings, the shooter is almost always a male officer, and if a taser is used, it precedes the gunfire.)

     Mallett and his four victims were rushed to the hospital. The next day, all but one of the patients were in critical condition. One of the stabbed school employees was listed in stable condition. Mallett's lunge at officer Ayers suggests a suicide-by-cop attempt. Most armed subjects who attack police officers end up dead.

     On Thursday, March 15, the day after the rampage, the local prosecutor charged John Mallett with four counts of felonious assault. 

The Hemy Neuman Murder Case

     In the late 1980s, Hemy Neuman, a young American engineer living and working in Israel, met his future wife Ariela, an Israeli-born school teacher. In 2010, the 47-year-old engineer and his stay-at-home wife were separated. Hemy had moved out of their lavish home in Cobb County, Georgia in August of that year. While Neuman had a high-paying job as a project manager with GE Energy, he was in financial trouble. His expensive lifestyle--the big house, luxury cars, expensive restaurants, and elaborate vacations--had caught up with him. His three children were also attending college. Now his wife was filing for divorce.

     Ariela Neuman had kicked Hemy out of the house because she believed he was having an affair with a 36-year-old woman he had hired at GE. Neuman and Andrea Schneiderman, his suspected lover, denied the accusation. Andrea's husband, Russell "Rusty" Schneiderman, although he had a MBA from Harvard, was out of work. The couple had two young children.

     On the morning of November 18, 2010, Rusty Schneiderman dropped off his 2-year-old son at the Dunwoody Prep nursery school 15 miles north of Atlanta. As the father returned to his car, Hemy Neuman walked up behind him, and with a .40-caliber Bersa handgun, shot him several times. Schneiderman fell dead at the scene. Neuman climbed into a rented Kia minivan and drove off.

     A week before the murder, Neuman, wearing a fake beard, had crept up to Schneiderman's house with the intent of shooting him there. Hemy's plan fell apart when his intended target came out of the house to check on a gas leak and saw this bearded man lying in his yard. Neuman jumped to his feet and ran off.

     When Neuman's wife Ariela learned of Rusty Schneiderman's murder in front of the Dunwoody nursery school, she knew that Hemy had killed him over Andrea. She called the police, and filled them in on her estranged husband's affair with the dead man's wife. Ariela described Hemy Neuman as a risk-taking control freak obsessed with money and his career.

     Several weeks after the police arrested him on January 4, 2011, Neuman admitted that he had murdered Rusty Schneiderman. He claimed, however, that at the time of the shooting, he was so insane he didn't comprehend the nature and quality of his act. In other words, he was so crazy he didn't know right from wrong. After the killing, Hemy regained his sanity, but when he pulled the trigger in front of the nursery school, he was nuts. That was his defense, legal insanity. Investigators didn't buy it, and neither did the prosecutor. If Neuman was crazy, he was crazy like a fox.

     In February 2012, charged with malice murder (other states call it first degree murder or capital murder) and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, Hemy Neuman went on trial in a De Kalb County court in Decatur, Georgia.

     The prosecutor played, for the jury of 9 man and 3 women, a video-taped, jailhouse interview of the defendant by psychiatrist Dr. Pamela Crawford. During the interview, Neuman told Dr. Crawford that he had initially considered stabbing Rusty Schneiderman to death. But he changed his mind because it would be too messy. The defendant thought about poisoning his victim, but rejected that idea as too complicated, and unreliable. Staging a fatal accident had also crossed Neuman's mind, but in the end he settled on shooting the man to death at close range. He preferred this method because it was simple, and sure-fire.

     Following the video, Dr. Crawford testified that a truly delusional, psychotic person would not have gone through the above thought process. A really crazy person would have acted impulsively, without all of this thinking and planning. The defendant, in her expert opinion, wasn't crazy. The entire insanity defense was a sham.

     For the defense, Dr. Andriana Flores, a forensic psychologist (I believe psychologists should be barred from the courtroom) testified that Neuman suffered from an undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder accompanied by psychosis. (In other words, he had no history of mental illness.) According to the psychologist, Neuman suffered from delusions, and a condition called erotomania. As an erotomania sufferer, the defendant only thought he was having an affair with the wife of the man he shot to death. (Too bad he had only thought he had murdered Scneiderman.) And it gets better: Before the killing, Hemy Neuman, according to Dr. Flores, had been visited by an angel with Oliva Newton-John's voice who informed him that Schneiderman's children were actually his. This revelation was reinforced by a message from a second angel who sounded like Barry White! Good heavens.

     On March 14, after two days of deliberation, the jury, presented with three possible verdicts--guilty; not guilty by virtue of insanity; or guilty but mentally ill--found Hemy Neuman guilty but mentally ill. That meant that while he would receive mental health treatment, he'd get it while serving his time in prison. The next day, the judge, in Clint Eastwood's voice (just kidding) sentenced Neuman to life behind bars with no chance of parole.

UPDATE

     On Thursday, August 2, 2012, Andrea Sneiderman, the wife of the man Hemy Neuman murdered, was charged with malice murder, criminal attempt to commit murder, racketeering, two counts of perjury, and two counts of insurance fraud. According the Andrea Sneiderman's indictment, she and the convicted killer were having an affair. The couple conspired to kill Rusty Sniederman with the intent of "acquiring property, money, and life insurance proceeds." The murdered man's wife had received a $2 million life insurance payment as well as $960,000 in various bank accounts.

       

Governor Haley Barbour: A Murderer's Best Friend

     Earlier this year, in his last days in office, Haley Barbour, the two-term Republican governor of Mississippi, granted pardons to 208 prisoners. Among those released were inmates who had been convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, and aggravated assault. Forty-one of those pardoned were behind bars because they had killed someone. Five of the freed men had been working at the governor's mansion as trusties. Two of them had murdered their wives, and another had killed a man during a robbery. These were not white collar criminals, they were dangerous men. And none of them had been pardoned because they had been wrongfully tried, or were innocent.

     News of Barbour's puzzling and disturbing show of clemency to so many violent criminals stunned the families of the people these inmates had victimized. That shock has turned to outrage. People are asking why convicted murderers were working at the governor's home in the first place, and why Barbour felt compelled to set so many of them free. Didn't he have any regard for the nature of their crimes, and the feelings of their victims? Southern conservatives are supposed to be tough on criminals. Did this politician lose his mind? Mississippi legislators are now looking into restricting the governor's pardoning powers. (See: "Haley 'Hacksaw' Barbour and the Great Prison Escape," January 13, 2012.)

     One of the inmates Barbour pardoned, David Glenn Gatlin, had good reason to believe he would never walk free. In 1994, a jury found Gatlin, then 23, guilty of murder, aggravated assault, and burglary. Gatlin had walked into the home of his estranged wife and shot her in the head as she held their 6-week-old child. She died on the spot. Gatlin then turned his gun on Randy Walker, and shot him in the head. Walker survived the assault, but is still dealing with the consequences of the head wound.

     The trial judge, who obviously wanted Gatlin to spend the rest of his life behind bars (and not working a cushy job at the governor's house), sentenced him to life on the murder verdict, plus 20 years for aggravated assault on Randy Walker. The judge added another 10 years for the burglary. Had Randy Walker died from the bullet Gatlin had fired into his head, Gatlin would have been eligible for the death sentence. Modern medicine, and a skilled emergency room surgeon, had saved Gatlin from death row, and a future lethal injection.

     David Gatlin not only didn't feel bad about murdering his wife and trying to kill Randy Walker, he promised, if he ever got out of prison, to finish the job on Walker. Now, thanks to Governor Haley Barbour, he will get the chance. If he carries out his promise, Governor Barbour should be sent to prison to finish out Gatlin's sentence. Maybe Barbour will end up back at the mansion where, instead of pardoning dangerous killers, he'll be trimming the shrubbery, and cutting the grass.

     This week, after the release of documents from the Mississippi Attorney General's Office, it became clear that Governor Haley Barbour had done more than just release killers back into society. He and his wife Marsha had made sure that two of them, David Gatlin and another mansion trusty, could drive away from prison in their own cars.

     On the morning of January 6, 2012, two days before Gatlin and a trusty named Charles Hooker were scheduled for release, Marsha Barbour called a nearby car dealership to arrange the purchase of two used cars for the inmates. A member of the governor's staff had already helped the men acquire their driver's licenses. That afternoon, a staff member drove Gatlin and Hooker, in a state car, to the lot where Hooker purchased a 2007 Ford Focus, and Gatlin a Chevrolet HHR. The inmates used certified checks drawn on Bank Plus to purchase the vehicles. Two days later, the inmates' cars were delivered to the governor's mansion.

     The newly released documents pertaining to the preferential treatment of these murderers do not reveal how these men obtained their bank accounts. Moreover, there are no documents showing who actually paid for the cars. Governor Barbour and his wife, as well as members of the former governor's staff, are not talking, except to say that no laws were broken. That is comforting. If Mississippi taxpayers had picked up the tab for these pardon getaway cars, Governor Barbour has some additional explaining to do.  

     

Was Coach Joe Paterno a Hero?

     America is a nation of heroes. There are tens of thousands of them. On TV, news readers  often refer to all military personnel, law enforcement officers, and firefighters as heroes. There are, of course, true war heroes, brave cops, and heroic firefighters. But all of them? If everybody is a hero, then no one is. In the fields of education, literature, law, science, business, and medicine, there are real heroes, but we seldom hear of them. I guess there are even political heroes, but I can't think of any.

     Most of our "heroes" come out of the entertainment industry--where they are also called icons--and the world of sports. I once knew a successful lawyer who had served in the special forces in Vietnam. Guess who he idolized? John Wayne, a Hollywood actor who played a war hero. Really. How can an actor, even a great one, be a hero?

     Hundreds, if not thousands, of amateur and professional athletes become big heroes, and even legends like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. At least DiMaggio was married to Marylyn Monroe, a film icon who had an affair with a political hero, John F. Kennedy. I don't understand what it is about great athletes that makes them heroes. I understand the fame and the wealth, even fan adulation. But heroes?

     In America, even coaches can become heroes. In a town near my home, a high school football coach who was in his 90s recently died. His life story dominated the local newspaper for at least three days. You'd think he had cured cancer, or had saved the world from Hitler. He was a high school football coach.

     Penn State football Coach Joe Paterno was a super-hero to millions of sports fans. His supporters liked to point out that he had donated a lot of money to the university library, and other good causes.  Plenty of rich people give their money away, but they are not considered heroes. They are just paying their fair share. Joe Paterno was not hero because he made a huge salary and was generous. He was a hero because his teams won a lot of football games, and brought glory to Penn State. He was supposedly a leader of men.

     Coach Joe Paterno died last January, and before his death, experienced something few Penn State fans could ever have imagined--he got fired! Why? Because the board of trustees didn't think he had showed leadership and courage in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. About half of the Penn State fandom is still furious over this black mark on Paterno's legend.

     Simply doing the right thing doesn't make one a hero. But if Joe Paterno hadn't turned a blind eye to sexual molestation going on under his nose, children may have been protected, his career wouldn't have ended in disgrace, and his fans would have an untarnished hero.

UPDATE

     A poll released on Friday, March 16, shows that 46 percent of the 1,300 Pennsylvanians questioned favor renaming Beaver Stadium Joe Paterno Stadium. The survey also found 40 percent opposed to the idea. The name change was more strongly supported by people who described themselves "very or somewhat interested" in college football." The proposal was also backed by people over 65. 

Golf as a Contact Sport

     Is golf a game or a sport? I don't know, but if chess and poker can be called sports, so can golf. While it is not a contact sport, being a golfer can be dangerous--just ask Tiger Woods.

May 2011
Granite Falls, North Carolina

     While playing a round of golf at the Granada Farms County Club, a fox ran out of the woods and bit a 76-year-old golfer in the leg. The wounded man's partners beat the fox to death with their clubs. Animal control people determined that the fox had rabies. This was not good news for the injured golfer who had to undergo treatment for the disease. His defenders had dispatched the poor animal with a minimum of strokes, however. Just kidding.

May 2011
Haslingden, England

     On a Saturday afternoon, a 32-year-old man, walking to his brand new silver Audi A4 after a round of golf, was set upon by a pair of masked car thieves who had been hiding in the bushes. One of the assailants struck the golfer in the back of the neck with a crowbar. The victim cried out, and tossed his car keys into a patch high grass near the parking lot. Players from the 18th green heard the victim's cry for help and ran to the scene. The attackers escaped in a white Renault Clio. After being treated for his neck injury, the embattled golfer drove home in his new car.

August 2011
Barrie, Canada

     On August 13, 2011, 42-year-old Bradley Hubbard, while golfing at an indoor mini-putt course with his girlfriend and his daughters, aged 4 and 7, confronted three rowdy teenagers. The boys became violent, and one of them stabbed Hubbard in the neck with a broken putter. The victim died later that night.

     Matthew and Justin Spring, and their friend Jake Workman, have been charged with second degree murder. Released on bail, they are awaiting their first pre-trial hearing set for April 5, 2012.

February 2012
Fort Worth, Texas

     Clay Carpenter, an avid skier who has run four marathons, was playing with two of his friends at the Resort on Eagle Mountain Lake. At the 13th hole, the course marshal (I've heard of air marshals and U. S. Marshals, but didn't know there were golf marshals) told Carpenter and the other two to play through the foursome ahead of them. After they took their shots, a 48-year-old golfer with the other group, apparently infuriated that the threesome was moving through, charged toward Carpenter. The yelling, cursing, out-of-control golfer swung his putter at Carpenter's head. The attacked man raised his hand to protect himself, and in so doing, had his thumb broken. The next thing Carpenter knew, his shoe was filling up with blood. The enraged golfer had stabbed him in the right leg with his broken putter. Rushed to the hospital with a punctured femoral artery, Carpenter would survive the attack. But there is a good chance he will eventually lose his leg.

     The putter attacking man has not been named, or charged with a crime. Why? According to the authorities in Tarrant County, they aren't sure if the stabbing was intentional. Huh? How can one golfer accidentally stab another golfer with a broken putter? And what about the broken thumb? I'm guessing that the putter-wielding golfer is someone important. Otherwise, he'd be charged with aggravated assault. And we would know who he is.
   

Celebrity Crime Update: The O. J. Simpson Case

     In America, the combination of celebrity worship, and the fascination with violent crime, has produced a dozen or so "crimes of the century." Obscure people, by virtue of their willingness to commit outrageous mayhem, can become instant celebrities. In the 20th century, unknown people like Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Mark Chapman, David Berkowitz, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Kaczinski, because of who or how many people they murdered, propelled themselves into the history books. Assassins Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan committed acts of violence that changed the direction of history.

     In Kansas, the 1959 Clutter family killers, Richard Hickok and Perry Smith, destined to remain relatively obscure despite their mass murder, were immortalized by celebrity author Truman Capote whose book In Cold Blood became a bestseller, a movie, and as a "nonfiction novel," a literary classic. Charles Manson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, Ted Bundy, and other convicted killers of the 20th Century, were regularly seen on TV as celebrity criminals being interviewed by celebrity reporters.

     In my opinion, the 20th century saw three "crimes of the century:" The Lindbergh Kidnapping; The John F. Kennedy Assassination; and the O. J. Simpson case. Charles A. Lindbergh was brought down by an unemployed illegal alien who abducted and murdered his 20-month-old son; President Kennedy by a deranged lone wolf; and O. J. Simpson by himself. These three cases rose above the rest because they involved two famous victims, and a famous defendant, all of whom were heroes to millions of people.

     There have been dozens of books written about the Lindbergh and Simpson crimes, and more than 500 books on the Kennedy assassination. In the Lindbergh and Kennedy cases, many of these works feature revisionist history by crime writing hacks. To my knowledge, no author has been stupid enough to make a literary case for O. J. Simpson's innocence.

O. J. Simpson Update

     From the June 1994 day in Los Angeles when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were viciously stabbed and slashed to death outside of O. J. Simpson's ex-wife's condo, to Simpson's October 1995 murder acquittal, the O. J. Simpson case dominated the news in the United States and abroad. In February 1997, a civil jury found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of his ex-wife and her friend, awarding the plaintiffs $8.5 million in compensatory damages. The civil court judge also ordered Simpson to turn over his 1968 Heisman Trophy, an Andy Warhol painting, his golf clubs, and other personal assets.

     In September 2007, O. J. and a group of his associates entered a room at the Palace Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas where they stole, at gunpoint, sports memorabilia from a dealer in that kind of stuff. O. J.'s accomplices, upon arrest, quickly agreed to plead guilty, and testify against Simpson. A year later, after being found guilty of robbery, assault, and kidnapping, Simpson was on his way to prison where he would have to serve at least nine years before being eligible for parole. He is now 65, and serving his time at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada.

     The O. J. Simpson case, involving DNA analysis, blood spatter interpretation, shoe print identification, and forensic pathology, popularized forensic science. The not guilty verdict also introduced the public to the concept of jury nullification.

     The infamous double murder turned police detectives, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and the trial judge into instant celebrities. Several of the major players in the case cashed-in with lucrative book deals. A few became television personalities. The case put CNN on the map, and elevated the careers of more than a few talking-heads. In that respect, the effects of the Simpson case are still visible.

The Post-Conviction Lives of Key Simpson Figures

     The chief prosecutor, Marcia Clark, left the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in 1997 just before the publication of her book (with Teresa Carpenter) Without a Doubt. Clark received a publisher's advance of $4.2 million. (An insane amount for a true crime book, and a much better deal for Clark than the publisher.) Clark, although criticized by many legal scholars and commentators for her handling of the case, parlayed it into a media career. A special correspondent for "Entertainment Tonight," Clark more recently commented on the Casey Anthony trial for Headline News. She is 58.

     Johnny Cochran, the chief defense attorney, was already known as a celebrity trial attorney before taking on O. J. Simpson as a client. In 1993, he had defended Michael Jackson against accusations of child molestation. At the Simpson trial, regarding the bloody crime scene glove, Cochran issued the now famous quote: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." He retired from his legal practice in 2002, and on March 29, 2005, died of an inoperable brain tumor. He was 67.

     Judge Lance Ito, the man who presided over the 9-month trial, has been criticized by legal scholars for letting the proceeding degenerate into a media circus and television soap opera. In his book, Outrage, Vincent Bugliosi, the man who prosecuted Charles Manson and his crew (Helter Skelter), accuses Ito of judicial incompetence in the case. Ito, now 61, is still a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.

     After the Simpson trial, Marcia Clark's assistant, Christopher Darden, worked as a legal commentator for CNN, Court TV, and NBC. His book on the case is called In Contempt. Darden has since written three other books, including a crime thriller with writer Dick Lochte. He is 55 and still practicing law in southern California.

     If the Simpson case produced a law enforcement villain, it was Mark Fuhrman. The Los Angeles police detective was accused of planting the bloody crime scene glove. Convicted of perjury, Fuhrman was sentenced to three years probation. (There was never solid proof that Detective Fuhrman planted any evidence in the case.) The former Marine, in the years since the Simpson trial, has rehabilitated his image by becoming a successful author of nonfiction crime books. In addition to his book on the Simpson case, Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman has written Murder in Greenwich, a bestseller about the Martha Moxley case. He is also a regular crime commentator on Fox News. He is 59.