Ronald W. Brown: Child Porn Puppeteer Wants to Eat Children

     In 1992, puppeteer Ronald Wilson Brown started his entertainment enterprise, Puppets Plus. (It's the "plus" part of his act that turned out to be disturbing.) Since then, Brown has performed with his hand-puppets for thousands of kids at shopping malls, schools, churches, and birthday parties throughout the Tampa Bay area. (Serial killer John Wayne Gacy entertained children with his clown act.) During the past 15 years, through his so-called Kid Zone Ministry, Brown has hosted weekly gatherings at the Gulf Coast Church in his hometown of Largo, Florida. Ronald Brown also worked for the Christian Television Network, using his puppets to warn kids against viewing pornography. (Here's a simple rule: When some clown or guy with puppets wants to talk to your kid about pornography, even if it's in a church, get the hell out of there. If it's on TV, turn it off.)

     The outgoing puppeteer, a resident of the Whispering Pines mobile home park in Largo, regularly invited neighborhood boys and girls between the ages 5 and 12 to his trailer for pizza and candy. (Brown lived in an area populated by young families as evidenced by all the playgrounds near his home.)   He was also Facebook friends with several of the local kids who knew him as the "cotton candy man." This neighborhood comprised an excellent hunting ground for a pedophile. For a sexual predator hiding behind goofy puppets, it was paradise.

     In 1998, when a police officer pulled Brown over for a traffic violation, the cop noticed several pairs of boys' underwear in the car. When asked why he had children's undergarments in his vehicle, Brown explained that the clothing belonged to his puppets. (Puppets need underwear?) Whether or not the officer bought Brown's story, nothing came of the traffic cop's observation.

     In 2012, agents with the Department of Homeland Security were conducting an international child pornography investigation that had led to 40 arrests in six countries. The child pornography ring, headquartered in Massachusetts, centered around an online chat room where sexual degenerates from around the world could communicate with each other. Ronald Brown, the 57-year-old puppeteer from Largo, Florida, was a regular presence on the pedophile site.

     In one conversation with a man from Kansas named Michael Arnett, Brown wrote that he wanted to kidnap a child, tie him up, lock him in a closet, then eat him for Easter dinner. "I imagine him wiggling and then going still," he wrote. Brown also mentioned a female toddler he knew who made his mouth water, describing how human flesh tastes when prepared in various ways. Michael Arnett sent Brown a photograph of a strangled 3-year-old girl. Turned on by the sight of a dead toddler, Brown replied that this was how he'd "do" the young boy he wanted to kill and consume.

     On July 19, 2012, Homeland Security agents, pursuant to a search of the puppeteer's Largo mobile home, seized CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, micro disks, and VHS tapes containing images of nude children in bondage positions. Some of the youngsters had been posed as though they were dead.

     The day following the search, the federal officers took Ronald Brown into custody. When interrogated, he identified the boy he said he wanted to kidnap and eat as a 10-year-old he knew from church. Brown referred to his Internet musings as being "in the realm of fantasy." (Regarding Mr. Brown, I'm having a fantasy. Can you guess what it is?)

     On July 24, 2012, at Ronald Brown's arraignment, the assistant United States attorney informed the defendant he had been charged with conspiracy to kidnap a child, and possession of child pornography. The judge set a date in August for Brown's bond hearing. Two days later, federal agents and deputies with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office returned to Brown's mobile home where they removed more evidence from the dwelling. Agents and deputies were seen walking out of the place carrying seized boxes and bags containing who knows what.

     The investigation of Ronald Wilson Brown, a man who fits the textbook profile of a pedophile, is far from over. When all is said and done, parents of children who have come in contact with this degenerate are in for some bad news. It's difficult to understand how a predator this obvious hadn't aroused, over such an extended period, some suspicion. Only in a perfect world can you take people at face value, and the world is far from perfect. I'm surprised more parents don't know this. And I can't help wondering about the people in charge of the Gulf Coast Church, an institution that gave this man a veneer of legitimacy.

   

         

     

Aaron Schaffhausen: What Kind of Man Murders His Daughters?

     Jessica Schaffhausen and her three daughters, ages 5 to 11, lived in River Falls, Wisconsin, a town of 15,000 30 miles east of the twin cities of St. Paul-Minneapois, Minnesota. The 34-year-old mother had been single 6 months after she and her husband of 12 years, Aaron Schaffhausen, divorced in January 2012. In March, Jessica had called the police after Aaron threatened to harm one of the children. No arrest followed the complaint which was classified by the police as a "harassment incident."

     On July 5, 2012, Aaron Schaffhausen, a construction worker employed by a St. Paul company to work on projects in western North Dakota, was fired after he didn't show up for work. He was living in Minot, North Dakota.

     Just before noon on July 10, 2012, Aaron called Jessica, who worked in St. Paul for a nonprofit agency on aging, and asked if he could pay the girls a surprise visit. Amara, age 11, 8-year-old Sophie, and Cecilia who was 5, were at home in River Falls. Jessica agreed to the visit, but wanted Aaron out of the house before she got home from work.

     That afternoon, when Aaron Schaffhausen arrived at his former place of residence in the subdivision on the east side of town, the babysitter said goodbye to the girls and went home. Around four that afternoon, Aaron called his ex-wife and said, "You can come home now because I killed the kids."

     Jessica Schaffhausen, after receiving this horrific message, called the police. River Falls officers arrived at the scene about the time Jessica pulled up to the house. Upstairs, officers found the three girls dead, and tucked into their beds.

     As the officers were trying to understand what had happened to these children, Aaron showed up at the police department and turned himself in. When asked to describe what he had done, and why, the suspect refused to speak.

    The autopsies of the three victims revealed they had been murdered by what the forensic pathologist called "sharp force entry." They had been stabbed, and the 5-year-old had been strangled as well.

     On July 12, the St. Croix County district attorney charged Aaron Schaffhausen with three counts of first degree murder. Held on $2 million bond, the defendant faced a mandatory life sentence on each count. A few days after filing these charges, the district attorney appointed Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Gary Freyburg to take over the case as a special prosecutor.

     St. Croix County Circuit Judge Scott Needham, on July 24 at Schaffhausen's preliminary hearing, heard testimony from River Falls detective John Wilson who said he found a large pool of blood in one of the bedrooms where he believed the three girls had been stabbed. Wilson also noted that the walls were splattered in blood. The girls, lying on their backs with their eyes wide open, had been tucked into their beds. The woman at the police department who had taken Jessica Schaffhausen's call that afternoon, described the caller as "hysterical and hyperventilating." Following the 90-minute hearing, the judge bound the case over for trial.

     Since it's no mystery who murdered the three Schaffhausen girls, the question in this mass murder is why. What would drive a father to kill his three daughters, children who had been, according to the babysitter, so excited to see him on the day he took their lives? Had there been any indications that this man was capable of such an act? If not, how can the criminal justice system protect children from murderous parents? Is there something going on in middle class America that is turning college kids, mothers, fathers, and ordinary white collar employees into killing machines? If so, what is it, and can anything be done to correct it?

   

     

Geraldine Cherry: Natural Born Killer

     Born in 1962, Geraldine Cherry grew up in western New Jersey outside the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As a kid she was aggressive and bellicose, often frightening her siblings, and even her mother who felt the need to lock herself into her bedroom at night. In 1974, when Geraldine was 12, social workers broke the family up, sending the 15 children to various institutions and foster homes.

     Shortly after Geraldine turned 14, the authorities, following a series of assaults and disruptive behavior, sent her and one of her sisters to the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey. At one point, Geraldine threatened to choke her sister to death while she slept.

     In 1978, at age 18, after assaulting a woman, the judge sentenced Geraldine Cherry to two years at a juvenile detention institution in Burlington, County. While living at the medium security facility, Geraldine was accused of assaulting 72 inmates and correctional workers. (One would think, that after the 71st assault, someone in charge would isolate this woman from the rest of the inmates.)

     In August, shortly after her release from the juvenile detention facility, Cherry, while standing on a platform at the Voorhees, New Jersey train station, pushed a woman she didn't know onto the high-speed railway tracks. Following her conviction for assault in this case, the judge, before sentencing, had Geraldine evaluated at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. The doctor who conducted the examination diagnosed Cherry as having an antisocial personality disorder. This meant she wasn't mentally ill, just a cruel, violent person. People with rotten personalities like this can't be fixed with drugs or psychotherapy. Besides being aggressive and dangerous, these antisocial types (what a stupid name for this) tend to be serial liars who exploit the people who try to help them. The best way to deal with violent sociopaths is to isolate them.

     Although the train station victim only received scrapes and bruises, the judge gave Geraldine Cherry 10 years, the maximum sentence for the assault. She would serve her time at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in Camden County.

     While doing time at Clinton, Cherry was stabbed in both eyes with either a pencil or a shard of glass. Because she was a pathological liar, her account of what happened--a person guard had tried to gouge out her eyes in a fight--wasn't credible. The wounds were either self-inflicted, or the result of an altercation with another inmate. The matter remains unresolved.

     In May 1986, correctional authorities accused Geraldine of starting a fire in the prison. Because it was quickly extinguished, no one was hurt. Three years before completing her 10 year sentence, Geraldine Cherry, in 1988, walked out of prison. (She certainly didn't get out early on good behavior. Perhaps the arson hastened her departure.) During the next several years, Cherry lived in various group homes and institutions in Illinois and New Jersey.

     In 2012, Geraldine Cherry and a 70-year-old woman named Kathleen McEwan, shared living quarters at the Parker Place Apartments in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. McEwan, a former waitress who for years had struggled with schizophrenia, had suffered a series of strokes that had rendered her incapable of feeding or dressing herself. Both women were living under the care of the social services agency, Resources for Human Development.

     At six in the morning of June 10, 2012, fire rescue medics responding to an emergency call from the Parker Place Apartments, found Kathleen McEwan lying face up in her bed. She had died sometime during the night. Due to her age and medical condition, the medical examiner ruled that McEwan had died a natural death.

     Jeff Thompson, the mortician at the John J. Byers Funeral Home in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania who had the job of embalming McEwan, made a gruesome discovery. Someone had stuffed a 10 inch length of rope down the dead woman's throat. Because there hadn't been an autopsy in this death, the medical examiner had made a bad call. Thompson, instead of finishing his job, called the medical examiner's office.

     Kathleen McEwan's autopsy produced further evidence of foul play. The person who had inserted the rope into the woman, had stuffed other things down her throat that included a bottle of  hand lotion, a diaper fragment, and a quantity of Chex Party Mix. This time the medical examiner ruled McEwan's death homicide by suffocation. (Had Cherry smothered McEwan with a pillow, she would have gotten away with murder.)

     Shortly after being charged and arrested for murder, Geraldine Cherry suffered a series of seizures which required the 50-year-old's hospitalization. A judge has ordered another psychiatric evaluation. There is no reason to believe the upcoming diagnosis will contradict the earlier one. Although a shrink would never say this, Geraldine Cherry is a natural born killer. She should not have been living with another person, particularly one so helpless as Kathleen McEwan. The person who makes room assignments at Parker Place Apartments should be reassigned to kitchen duty.

     

Neil Prescott: The First Aurora Shooting Spree Copycat

     Less than a week following the July 20, 2012 mass murder in Aurora, Colorado, 28-year-old Neil E. Prescott, a disgruntled employee of a company doing contract work for the Pitney Bowles Corporation near Washington, D.C., phoned his supervisor, and calling himself a Joker, said, "I'm going to load my guns and blow everyone up."

     On Thursday night, July 26, officers with the Prince George's County Police Department arrested Prescott at his apartment in Crofton, Maryland, a town located between Washington, D.C. and Annapolis. A search of Prescott's apartment resulted in the seizure of 25 guns, several of which were assault rifles. The officers also found 400 rounds of ammunition.

     Prescott, a big man at six foot, seven inches tall and weighing 270 pounds, knew he was about to be fired from his job. The avid gun collector interested in electronics and computers, is currently being held at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis where he's undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

     In my opinion, one of the consequences of televised over-coverage of cases like the Aurora shootings includes encouraging copycats like Neil Prescott. (See: "Media Over-Coverage of the Aurora Movie Theater Shootings," July 24, 2012.) One doesn't need a crystal ball to predict there will be more terroristic threats and attempts inspired by the media attention lavished on James Holmes. The question is, how many more Jokers are still in the deck?

UPDATE

     On Sunday, July 29, 2012, Kent State University Police arrested 19-year-old William Koberna at his parents' home in Brunswick, Ohio. On July 25, Koberna had posted a message on Twitter saying that he planned to "shoot up" the campus. 

Roger Bowling: The Deadly House Guest

     Around the first of July 2012, Danielle Greenway's 39-year-old ex-boyfriend, Roger K. Bowling, asked if he could stay with her and her fiancee until he got back on his feet after a run of bad luck. The 32-year-old Greenway and Chris Hall, ten years her senior, lived on a well-kept, tree-shaded neighborhood in Allen Park, Michigan, a suburban working class community south of Detroit. She was employed by a cleaning service, and Hall was an electrician. Because Greenway and Bowling had broken up five years ago (he was the jealous, controlling type), she agreed to let the beefy and bald Bowling move into their basement.

     On Thursday, July 17, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer on routine patrol saw a body, missing its head, hands, and feet, floating in the Detroit River. A U.S. Coast Guard boat crew discovered a second nude body floating in the river off the east side of Detroit. The hands, feet, and head were missing from this corpse as well. Later in the day, a fisherman saw four hands, four feet, and two heads lying in the sand beneath two feet of water along the shore of an abandoned park. The fisherman also discovered a suitcase lying in the water near the body parts.

     The next day, Chris Hall's sister, who hadn't had contact with him and Greenway since July 14, went to their house in Allen Park and pounded on the front door. When she didn't get any response, she reported the couple missing.

     Later that day, officers with the Allen Park Police Department entered the house. Inside, detectives found evidence that someone had tried to clean-up large amounts of blood. In the garage, the police discovered two spent bullets, and a bullet fragment that had been fired from a .40-caliber pistol. They also recovered a .40-caliber Glock registered to Roger Bowling.

     The dismembered remains were those of Danielle Greenway and Chris Hall. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsies estimated they had been shot to death sometime between the 14th and 16th of July.

     The Wayne County District Attorney's office charged Roger Bowling with two counts of first degree murder, and two counts of mutilation of a body. On Tuesday night, July 24, 2012, Allen Park Police arrested Bowling at the Greenway/Hall residence. Two days later, officers recovered the couples' missing 2005 GMC Safari van they found parked a few blocks from the house. The vehicle contained physical evidence linking Bowling to the double murder.

     As officers escorted Bowling out of the Wayne County courtroom following his arraignment, Danielle Greenway's mother yelled, "burn in hell." If convicted as charged, Bowling will be sentenced to life without parole.

     If the defendant has confessed, this information has not been made public. As a result, the motive for the murders, and the events that led up to the killings, remain a mystery.

UPDATE

     At the defendant's preliminary hearing on August 20, 2012, Assistant Wayne County medical examiner Jeffrey Jentzen testified that Hall was shot six times, including twice in the head. Greenway had been shot once, through the mouth.

     Roger Slick, 35, who has known Roger Bowling since first grade, testified that Bowling was angry because Greenway was dating someone else. "We would talk about how we could get rid of our problems--get rid of our women," the witness said. "I talked about taking my wife to the swamp. We'd drink beer and talk about it. I didn't do it. I had the thoughts. I was very upset at that time in my life." This witness testified that when he heard about the deaths of Greenway and Hall, after thinking about it for a few days, he decided to tell the police about these conversations with Bowling. Slick said he believes Bowling used his father's boat to take the bodies to the east side canal. "That was the boat we used to go on. We talked about dropping bodies of in Lake Huron."

     Bowling's attorney, Mark L. Brown, pointed out that there are no eyewitnesses linking his client to the murders.

Savannah Dietrich Outs the Two Juveniles Who Raped Her

     In August 2011 in Louisville, Kentucky, 16-year-old Savannah Dietrich, while drinking with two teenage boys she knew, passed out drunk. The boys took advantage of her condition by having sex with her. This, in most states, including Kentucky, is rape. If that wasn't bad enough, the rapists photographed each other committing the crime, and put the photographs in the Internet.

     When Dietrich learned of the humiliating photographs, and the fact they had been published, she and her parents reported the crime to the Louisville Metro Police Department. The two minors were charged with first degree sexual abuse, a felony. Since the juveniles had photographed each other in the act, they had no choice to plead guilty. But for some reason, the prosecutor, in return for the pleas, promised a lenient sentence. (The exact terms of the plea bargain have not been made public because the offenders are juveniles. They will be sentenced next month. In all probability, the sentence they will receive is probation.)

     Following the defendant's June 26, 2012 plea hearing before Jefferson County District Judge Dee McDonald, Savannah Dietrich posted several tweets on her Twitter account in which she named the two boys who had pleaded guilty to her sexual assaults. By doing this, she had violated the judges's order not to reveal information about the case, especially the identities of the assaulting juveniles.

     The attorneys representing the two minors, asked Judge McDonald to hold Dietrich in contempt of court. If found in contempt, Dietrich could face up to 180 days in jail, and a $500 fine. (Probably much more time behind bars than the boys who had assaulted her would spend.)

     Dietrich, in speaking to a Louisville reporter with The Courier-Journal, said, "So many of my rights have been taken away by these boys. I'm at the the point that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it. If they really feel it's necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me--then I don't understand justice."

     On Monday, July 23, 2012, the lawyers representing the juveniles awaiting their sentences, withdrew their motion to have Dietrich held in contempt of court. In a single day, an online petition on change.org had brought 62,000 signatures in support of Dietrich's decision to publicize the identities of her assaulters. The guilty boys, so eager to subject their victim to public embarrassment and humiliation, deserved to be exposed by their victim. In my opinion, these boys got what they deserved.

   

     

Courtney Anthony Robinson: LA's Serial Stabber

     During the early morning hours of July 3, 17, and 19, 2012, someone in downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Hollywood, stabbed two homeless men and a women while they slept outdoors. The attacker fled the scenes leaving the wounded victims, all in their 50s, with large hunting knives stuck in their backs. None of the street people were robbed, and they all survived their wounds. Beyond the similar MOs, the assaults were linked by so-called "death warrant" notices left at each stabbing site. The typewritten documents were signed by a person using the name, David Ben Keyes.

     Los Angeles detectives found a Facebook entry under the above name which included a photograph of a black man in his mid-30s. Police officers distributed copies of this photograph around skid row neighborhoods where the homeless live. Street people were advised to spend their nights in shelters until the stabber himself was identified and taken off the street.

     At 8:40 in the evening of Friday, July 20, 2012, a man who identified himself as Courtney Anthony Robinson, called 911 and claimed responsibility for the three stabbings. The 37-year-old said he would surrender to the police at a Hong Kong Express eatery located in downtown Hollywood. When officers took Robinson into custody, they noticed that he matched the Facebook photograph of David Ben Keyes. When asked why he had stabbed the sleeping street people, the arrestee assured his captors that this information would "come out in the court proceedings." There was no indication that Robinson knew his victims.

     According to data presented on David Ben Keyes' Facebook page, he was a musician and writer from Santa Barbara, California. In his Facebook profile, laden with schizophrenic sounding nonsense about his intent to restructure the "Holy Roman Catholic Church and Empire," Keyes-Robinson claimed to be the CEO of a $250 billion Beverly Hills entertainment corporation. In reality, Robinson was homeless like the people he had stabbed.

     On the day of his Hollywood arrest, Robinson was charged with three counts of attempted murder. He is being held under $500,000 bond at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

     Most crimes against the homeless, as in this case, are committed by mentally ill street people off their anti-psychotic medication. Long ago, people like this were cared for in institutions. Thanks to do-gooders who fought to set them free, they now live on the streets. Some spend their nights in shelters, but many prefer to remain outdoors around the clock. These are the ones most vulnerable to crime.  

Aurora Theater Shootings: Who Can We Blame?

     When something really bad happens, we look for someone or some thing to blame. This is particularly true in the wake of high-profile tragedies like the massacre in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater. If we can assign blame, pinpoint the problem that caused the tragedy, we can prevent it from happening again.

     Every time some deviant sociopath armed with an assault rifle shoots enough people to grab national headlines, gun control advocates come out of the woodwork. The problem isn't that psychopathic killers like James Holmes exist, it's that people are allowed to own assault rifles. If we simply made it illegal to own these instruments of death, there would be fewer mass murders. Because making certain objects illegal to possess does not keep contraband out of the hands of criminals. Preventing crime through legislation doesn't work. If it did, we wouldn't have any crime in this country. To blame the instruments of crime for criminality is sophomoric, wrongheaded, and an example of wishful thinking.

     In the aftermath of tragedies such as the one in Aurora, ambulance chasing lawyers emerge from the proverbial woodwork. There is already talk about blaming--and holding civilly liable--owners of the movie theater for not providing adequate security against a diabolical mass murderer. This begs the question: who in their right mind would have predicted this first-of-its-kind criminal assault? And exactly how much security would have prevented it? Nothing short of airport level security will prevent a ticket-holder from entering a theater with a concealed weapon. And what will stop a theater employee from stashing weapons for later use by himself or someone else. If insurances companies require theater owners to make going to a flick as unpleasant as commercial flying, it will devastate the film industry. And it won't prevent another mass murder. Lax security should not be blamed for the Aurora atrocity.

     Following acts of senseless violence, we hear cries of anguish from people who blame this kind of behavior on violent movies and video games. (In reality, as films and video games become more violent, violent crime in the U.S. is declining.) Some are calling the Aurora mass murder the "Dark Knight Shooting." At one time, media scolds blamed comic books for all sorts of juvenile delinquency. While the violence embedded in our culture might in fact contribute to many social problems, it's beyond puerile to think that if we banned violent books, films, video games, and television, mass murderers like James Holmes would cease to exist. Life itself can be traumatic, and make some people violent. Others are just born that way.

     If we're looking for something to blame for what happened in Aurora, Colorado, we should blame the realities of life. And leave it at that. 

Punishing the Innocent at Penn State for Jerry Sandusky's Crimes

      While the NCAA sanctions against Penn State for covering up Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes are pretty severe, and erasing a football team's win-loss record seems pointless, what happened to the university is no different than what happens to companies when employees commit crimes, or do things than get their employers sued. Compared to the consequences of employee wrongdoing in the business world, the collateral damage at Penn State is light. So maybe it's time for students, alumni, and other Penn State supporters to stop complaining, and move on.

     When the criminal justice system finally caught up with Bernie Madoff for running a pyramid scheme, his company collapsed. Employees who had nothing to do with the swindle lost their jobs. Madoff's investors lost a lot of money. Bernie Madoff brought them all down, including his own son who committed suicide. It may not be fair, but that's how things work in the real world beyond the university campus.

     Good companies go bankrupt when employees commit torts that cost their employers millions of dollars. Innocent employee lose their jobs all the time because of the wrongdoing of others. Some retailers go broke because employees steal them blind. That's tough luck for the honest ones.

     Because of Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State officials who covered-up his sexual abuse of boys, the university, notwithstanding the future settlement of lawsuits, won't go bankrupt. Innocent university employees won't lose their jobs. Students will continue to attend class, and they still have football. Okay, Joe Paterno's Beaver Stadium shrine has been hauled off (I can see it standing 7-feet tall in some rich alumni's front yard), there are no bowl games in Penn State's near future, and the school's reputation has taken a hit. But compared to a similar catastrophe in the private sector, the collateral damage is minor.

      The real victims in the Penn State scandal are the boys Jerry Sandusky, with the help of Joe Paterno and others, sexually abused. These people have the right to complain. This is what the current Penn State story should be about.

     

Mayor Bloomberg's Proposed Police Strike over Gun Ban: Who Gave This Idiot a Third Term?

     On July 24, 2012, the mayor of New York City suggested that the 1 million plus police officers in the country walk off their jobs in protest until Congress passes a federal ban on assault rifles. This proposal, coming from America's nanny-in-chief, has got to be one of the stupidest things ever to come out of a politician's mouth. In reaction to the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting spree, Bloomberg wants to expose all Americans to people like James Holmes--criminals who possess the kind of weapon the mayor doesn't want the rest of us to have.

     How about this proposal: All Americans walk off their jobs until our over-militarized police forces get rid of their unneeded police tanks, and out-of-control SWAT units. Maybe all fat people should go hunger strikes until big soda drinks are banned nationwide. In fact, why limit this to sugary beverages, let's include pies, cakes, candy, ice cream, and other foods that make people overweight.

     Here's another idea: America's good public school teachers should go on strike until education administrators fire the bad teachers and the dead wood sitting around rubber-rooms.

     Mayor Bloomberg is a living example of why we desperately need term limits. Politicians enter office as sociopaths, become egomaniacs, then leave office as slobbering idiots. This guy has been in office too long. New Yorkers should go on strike until he resigns. 

Joe Paterno's Statue: Taking Down the Shrine

     At 5:00 in the morning on Sunday, July 22, 2012, construction workers barricaded the street in front of Beaver Stadium where Joe Paterno weighs 900 pounds and stands 7-feet tall. The men who had come to remove the Happy Valley shrine put up a temporary chain-link fence upon which they draped a blue tarp to spare the grieving onlookers from seeing what they were about to do one of the iconic symbols of Penn State University. (I suspect these Joe Paterno defilers were statue removers brought in from Columbus, Ohio. At Ohio State they're erecting a statue of Louis Freeh. Just kidding.)

     The pre-dawn abductors, using a jackhammer, freed the statue from its foundation, then with a forklift, picked it up and lowered it onto a flatbed truck. The 150 spectators looked on in horror and disbelief as the kidnap truck rolled off with the revered statue. To these fans, some of whom chanted "We are Penn State," it was like seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell being hauled off to a landfill.

     The likeness of Joe Paterno had been erected in 2001 in honor of the coach's 324th Division I football victory. On the day before the abduction, the coach's wife and two of his children paid homage at the foot of this Penn State monument to football greatness. They were joined by fans who hugged the figure, and had photographs of themselves taken in the presence of the great man. One worshiping fan said this to a reporter with the Associated Press, "This statute was a symbol of all the good things he's done for the university." (Yes, like all the good things Jerry Sandusky did through his youth organization, The Second Mile.)

     What kind of emotional basket-case would sob at the foot of a dead coach's statute? And why would a major university devoted to higher learning erect such a thing in the first place? How many professors are so immortalized outside of lecture halls? (I'm guessing none, and that's fine with me. As far as I'm concerned, very few people are statue-worthy.)

     At Penn State and other big universities, football is a religion with the head coach the god, and the football stadium the cathedral. With Joe Paterno's shrine no longer on display outside Beaver Stadium, where can worshipers go to pray for Penn State victory?

     Athletes come and go, but a winning coach can stick around long enough to be immortalized, and worshipped by sports fanatics who, if they didn't have football, might join a cult, or become emotionally attached to some celebrity. Perhaps they could join the idiots who walk on hot coals for one of those motivational hustlers.

     Since I'm not a big sports fan, the psychology of extreme jock-sniffing escapes me. Maybe there is something profoundly wrong with me, and they are the normal ones. Who knows?  

     

Media Over-Coverage of the Aurora Movie Theater Shootings

     Most people would probably take issue with the notion that the television media has over-covered the James Holmes's mass murder case in Aurora, Colorado. If television viewers didn't watch the minute-by-minute, day-after-day reporting of stories like this, we wouldn't have this kind of wall-to-wall, nonstop coverage. My opinion that this and other news events like it are over-covered is obviously the minority view. But regardless of whether or not the media has lost its perspective in reporting shooting spree cases, the coverage is intense, at times overwrought, and occasionally puerile. The consequences of  heavy media coverage of mass murder cases like this are not good.

     Because sadistic, sociopathic, narcissists like James Holmes are motivated, at least in part, by the pathological desire to call attention to themselves, the TV media plays into this need by making them famous. There is no better way of achieving instant, international fame than to commit a spectacular mass murder. Suddenly, James Holmes, an obscure college kid, while universally reviled, is an historic figure whose crime will affect the way the rest of us live. In a few years, people will be selling his art, letters, and other associative murderabilia online. His murder spree has already got us arguing about gun control, and before long we will be debating the death sentence. Who knows how many books, TV documentaries, and films his killing spree will inspire?

     By the conclusion of James Holmes' trial, there is very little we won't know about this homicidal sociopath. Every aspect of his life will be analyzed and discussed as though we are studying the life of Abraham Lincoln. More people have heard of Bonnie and Clyde than Marie and Louis Pasteur. While it may not be politically correct to say this, real-life crime is a form of entertainment.

     The intense media coverage of the mass murder of vulnerable victims may also encourage so-called copycat killers, other deadly psychopaths who crave recognition and fame. It might also tempt terrorists who have been obsessed with commercial aviation, to target places where people regularly gather such as theaters, schools, sporting events, and shopping malls. These venues present much softer targets.

     Intense media coverage of horrible crimes, particularly ones committed outside the inner city, spreads public fear that is out of proportion to the risk of becoming a victim. During the terrorist-like reign of the two Washington, D. C. area snipers, tens of thousands of citizens were afraid to drive to work, get gas, or go shopping, when in reality, a person's chance of being shot by one of these men was about the same as winning the lottery, or being struck by lightening on your birthday. This irrational fear of crime can be exploited by the police to further militarize law enforcement, and by politicians who are driven to pass costly, feel-good legislation that is useless. Moreover, as we have seen at the nation's airports, measures that have created a sense of false security have made flying a nightmare.

     Notwithstanding the fact that high schools and university campuses have beefed up security, since the Columbine killing spree in 1999, there have been more than 80 school and campus shootings. Armed theater guards will jack-up the price of  movie tickets without adding much protection.

     Regarding journalism itself, for news junkies interested in stories unrelated to crime, the intense television coverage of these mass murders diverts reporters from covering other news events. When O. J. Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her friend in 1995, dozens of reporters in Cuba covering the Pope's visit with Castro, climbed on planes to Los Angeles. Suddenly Castro and the Pope were alone. The biased and overblown media coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey case actually contributed to innocent parents being persecuted by malicious and incompetent investigators. For months the Ramsey case dominated the news on cable TV. After awhile, this one-note crime reporting becomes repetitive, tedious, and superficial. When the cable networks get geared-up for a big story, they don't know when to stop. Well, it's time to stop.
      

Is James Holmes Insane?

     Last week's shooting rampage in the suburban city of Aurora, Colorado marks the 21st mass murder involving six or more fatalities since Colorado's Columbine shootings in 1999. In the wake of these killing sprees, the worst being the 32 shot to death in 2007 at Virginia Tech, TV talking heads--psychiatrists, psychologists, and defense attorneys--try to explain why someone would do such a thing. Surely a college kid like James Holmes who murdered 12 and injured 70 people in a movie theater must be insane. No person in his right mind could commit such a cruel, cold-blooded crime.

     People who call James Holmes insane are equating deviant behavior with crazy behavior. Horrible crimes that cannot be rationally explained, or understood by a normal person, are not necessarily committed by individuals who are psychotic, and out of touch with reality. The old law school example of psychotic, homicidal behavior is the man, who while strangling his wife, thinks he's squeezing an orange. Indeed, to be legally insane, the killer must be so mentally impaired that he's incapable of appreciating the criminal nature and quality of his actions. The popular term for this legal standard of insanity is called the right-wrong test.

     To avoid criminal culpability for a criminal homicide on the grounds of insanity, the defendant has the burden of proving (people are presumed sane), by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was so mentally ill he didn't know right from wrong. For defendants raising the insanity defense there is a problem: in reality, even in cases where the defendant at the time of his crime was suffering from some form of schizophrenia, the killer was still aware of the consequences of his act, and that it was wrong. In other words, there is no such thing as a mental sickness that produces a state of mind that meets the legal definition of mental illness. The paranoid schizophrenic who strangles his wife not only knows he not squeezing an orange, he is aware is he killing his wife. And although the devil may have told him to do it, he knows it's wrong because the devil doesn't tell you to do good things.

     In mass murder shooting spree cases involving six or more victims, all of the killers, including James Holmes, carefully planned the attacks. Holmes had prepared for weeks before carrying out his military-style assault. This is not how seriously mentally ill people behave. James Holmes and the other killers, when they committed their mass murders, were sharply in touch with reality. They reveled in their crimes because they knew they were doing something so wrong it would shock the world. In essence, that is the motive for these atrocities, to shock and terrorize.

     James Holmes and his murderous counterparts are known as sociopaths. They are angry, sadistic, narcissists who have no empathy or feelings of guilt. While usually loners, they can be superficially charming, and are often, like James Holmes, extremely intelligent. They possess personality disorders that cannot be fixed through counseling or medication. They are probably born that way, but who knows? Because sociopaths don't walk around in baby-steps looking at the ceiling, talk to themselves or people who don't exist, they are hard to spot. The world is full of jerks. How do you know if one is a sociopath? This is what makes these people so dangerous. Moreover, we seem to be developing into a nation of sociopaths.

     Because criminologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and other helpists hate to admit there are people they can't rehabilitate, they don't buy into the notion that some people are just bad. But that's what they are, evil. And that's how the criminal justice system should deal with them. 

Father Jerold Lindner: Is Assaulting the Priest Who Molested You a Crime?

     More than 16,000 Americans have been known to have been sexually molested by Catholic clerics. These victims represent the tip of the iceberg of pedophilia in the Catholic Church. According to a study conducted by researchers at John Jay College in New York City, between 1950 and 2002, 4,392 Catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse. What follows is the story of just one of the sexual predators protected by the church, and just one of his victims who took extreme measures to get revenge.

     Jerold Lindner, accepted into Jesuit training in June 1964, was, at 24, sent to the Sacred Heart novitiate in Los Gatos, California for two years of study. Six years later he was in San Francisco teaching English at St. Ignatius High School. In 1973, after sexually assaulting a number of boys at St. Ignatius, Lindner enrolled at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California.

     In the summer of 1975, while still at the Berkeley theology school, Lindner, as a "spiritual advisor" for the lay organization Christian Family Movement, accompanied a group of young boys on a church-sponsored camping trip to the Santa Cruz Mountains. During that weekend Lindner shared a tent with 7-year-old William Lynch and his 4-year-old brother Buddy. The spiritual advisor sodomized both boys, forced them to give him oral sex, then threatened to kill their sister if they told anyone what he had done to them. Lindner also promised the boys an eternity in hell if they squealed.

     By 1976, the year the 36-year-old was ordained as a Jesuit priest, Father Jerry, as he was called, had molested dozens of boys. That year Father Jerry returned to St. Ignatius High School where he continued his career as an English teacher and a practicing pedophile. In 1982, the Catholic Church transferred Father Lindner to Loyola High School, a private prep school near downtown Los Angeles. Ten years later, while teaching at Loyola and molesting more of his students, Lindner's mother, aware that her son was a pedophile, spoke to Father Jerry's supervisor at his order--the Society of Jesus--and told him that Lindner had been a child molester long before he entered Jesuit training in 1964. Mrs. Lindner informed the supervising priest that her son had molested several members of his family, including a younger sibling.

     In response to accusations of child molestation by the priest's own mother, the Jesuits took Father Lindner out of the classroom and sent him to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. Whatever the results of that psychiatric analysis, the Jesuit brass declared that Mrs. Lindner's allegations were not credible, and sent their pedophile teacher back into the classroom where he could continue preying on vulnerable victims. (This would not be the first time the Jesuits would have Father Jerry psychiatrically tested, then declared suitable for classroom work.)

     In 1995, twenty years after the weekend of sexual abuse in the spiritual advisor's tent on the Santa Cruz Mountain camping trip, William Lynch's younger brother, for the first time since their ordeal, revealed their secret. (He had been sworn to secret by William.) He told his parents what happened to them in Father Lindner's tent. Two years later, the Lynch brothers sued Lindner and the Society of Jesus. (Criminal prosecution, because of the statute of limitations, was no longer an option. The 6-year-stautue of limitations in California had protected Lindner from being criminally charged by dozens of his victims.) To avoid an embarrassing and revealing civil trial, the Jesuits settled the lawsuit for $625,000. (After legal costs, William and his brother ended up with $187,000 a piece.) Following the settlement, the Society of Jesus removed the 58-year-old priest from active ministry. But Lindner still had access to children, and the complaints kept rolling in.

     In September 2002, the Jesuits at the Society of Jesus sent Father Lindner to a Catholic retirement home and medical center for priests in Los Gatos called the Scared Heart Jesuit Center. Several of the priests in this place had been sent there because they were known pedophiles. Father Lindner was one of the residents placed on the institution's child molester register. However, he still had access to young people, and continued to offend.

     It was not surprising, that in a facility where pedophiles are housed, there was a sex scandal. In 2002, it came to light that two developmentally disabled men who lived at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center for 30 years had been regularly molested by priests they considered their friends. Two years after the scandal broke, a priest at the Los Gatos facility committed suicide after being raped by a gang of Jesuits. The order avoided an even bigger scandal by paying off several civil suit plaintiffs with million dollar settlement.

     William Lynch, the man Father Lindner had molested and traumatized as a 7-year-old in 1975, had not gotten over his ordeal. As a fourth grader in Los Altos, California, Lynch started smoking marijuana. By the seventh grade he was dealing in pot, and drinking heavily. At age 15, Lynch tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists, and as a adult, the victim of Father Lindner's sexual assault suffered severe depression. In his thirties, Lynch once again attempted suicide. Aware that the man who had ruined his life back in 1975 continued to abuse children under the protection of the church, Lynch could barely control his frustration and rage. By 2010, at age 42, Lynch decided to turn the tables on Father Jerry by becoming the predator.

     On May 10, 2010, William Lynch used a false name and the pretense of notifying Father Lindner of a death in the priest's family, to meet with him in the guest parlor at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos. When the two men came fact-to-face after all of these years, Lynch told the 65-year-old to take off his glasses. As he punched the priest in the head and body, Lynch asked him, "Do you recognize me?" After the beating which included several attempts to kick Lindner in the groin, Lynch said, "Turn yourself in or I'll come back and kill you."

     After the attack, William Lynch made no attempt to conceal what he had done. The Santa Clara County prosecutor had no choice but to charge him with one count of assault, and one count of elder abuse. If convicted of both felonies, Lynch faced up to four years in prison.

     After turning down a plea bargain in which he would serve no more than a year in jail, Lynch told reporters that "I want to take responsibility for what I've done. I don't think I'm above the law like the church and Father Jerry." Lynch said he looked forward to a trial in which the pedophile priest would be publicly exposed for what he was.

     William Lynch's assault trial got under way on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 in the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose. Prosecutor Vicki Genetti, in her opening statement to the jury of 9 men and 3 women, said she was prosecuting this defendant under the assumption that Father Jerold Lindner, the victim in the assault case, had in fact sexually molested Lindner and his brother back in 1975. And in an even more unusual remark for a prosecutor to make about one of her own witnesses, Genetti warned jurors that Father Lindner, in denying the allegations, would be not be telling the truth. The prosecutor labeled the assault in this case a "revenge attack." Defendant Lynch, Genetti said, had acted like a "vigilante."

     On the first day of the trial, following the opening statements, Genetti put the prosecution's chief witness, Father Jerold Lindner, on the stand. As expected, the 67-year-old priest, overweight and wearing old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses, denied sexually molesting the defendant and his brother. The witness said he had done nothing in 1975 to justify his beating at the hands of Mr. Lynch.

     After the jurors were dismissed for the day, William Lynch's attorney, Pat Harris, said this to Judge David A. Cena: "He [Father Lindner] has chosen to perjure himself. He should be advised of his right to counsel." The judge said he would take the request under advisement.

     The next day, before the defense attorney's cross-examination of Lindner, the priest took the Fifth, and refused to testify further. At this point attorney Harris moved for a mistrial on the grounds he had been denied his right to question his client's accuser. Judge Cena denied the motion, and the trial continued. Judge Cena also ruled that the jury would not hear from three witnesses prepared to testify that as children, they too had been molested by Jerold Lindner. The judge ordered the jury to disregard Lindner's testimony altogether.

     The next day, prosecutor Genetti put a Sacred Heart Jesuit Center health care worker on the stand who had witnessed the assault. Mary Eden testified that she heard William Lynch scream that Lindner had raped him and his brother, and had ruined their lives. When it came time for the defense to present its case, William Lynch took the stand, and in great detail, told the jurors what the priest had done to him and his brother, and how the sexual assaults had affected their lives. According to the defendant, when he went to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center that day, his intention was to get Lindner to take responsibility for what he had done by signing a written confession. When Lindner refused, and looked as though he might become aggressive, Lynch resorted to violence. (With this testimony, the defense was giving the jurors an opportunity, an excuse if you will, to nullify the evidence, and find Lynch not guilty.)

     Following William Lynch's compelling testimony, the defense rested its case. Prosecutor Genetti, in her closing remarks to the jury, said that what Lindner had done to the defendant and his brother 37 years ago did not legally justify the assault. The prosecutor also accused the defense of encouraging the jurors to return a "nullified" verdict, one that ignored the evidence against the defendant.

     On Thursday, July 5, the jury, in this difficult and unusal case, found William Lynch not guilty of felony assault and elder abuse. By this verdict, the jury sent a clear message to priests who get away with molesting boys. If as adults their victims hunt them down and beat them up, tough luck.   

Thomas Fritz: Death of a Killer in a West Virginia Cabin

     Thomas Fritz grew up in Sylvania, a suburb of Toledo, Ohio. In 1997, he joined the Ohio National Guard, and six years later, served a year in Iraq with a Guard military police unit. The 30-year-old graduated from suburban Toledo's Owens Community College in 2004 with an associates degree in criminal justice. His aspirations for a career in law enforcement came to an end in 2006 when, after having sexual intercourse with a woman who had passed out drunk, he pleaded guilty to sexual battery. The judge, who declared Fritz a "sexually oriented offender," sentenced him to one year in an Ohio prison.

     In December 2011, Thomas Fritz moved into a white, two-story house in Blissfield, Michigan, a small town in the southeastern part of the state 20 miles northwest of Toledo. The 38-year-old shared the dwelling with his girlfriend, 33-year-old Amy Merrill and her two son from a previous relationship. Fritz and Merrill also had a toddler of their own. In late June 2012, Merrill ended her relationship with Fritz who continued to reside in the Blissfield house with her and the children.

     Late Friday night, July 13, 2012, following some kind of altercation in the Blissfield house which at the time was occupied by Amy Merrill, her 24-year-old sister Lisa Gritzmaker, and their 52-year-old mother, Robin Lynn McCowan, Fritz opened fire on the family with a rifle. He killed the sisters and wounded their mother. Lisa Gritzmaker was 8-months pregnant.

     After Fritz fled the murder scene in his maroon 2002 Honda, the wounded Robin Lynn McCowan called 911. The Lenawee County prosecutor charged Fritz with two counts of open murder, and one count of assault with intent to commit murder.

     A man Thomas Fritz had worked for owned a remote cabin in Tyler County West Virginia 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fritz had stayed at this cabin before.  After murdering his wife and her sister, and wounding their mother, Fritz headed for West Virginia.

     The Tyler County cabin sat deep in the woods off Cow House Road three miles south of a wide spot in the highway called Sistersville, a village comprised of a store and one gas station. Someone who spotted Fritz driving through town called the sheriff's office. On Tuesday, July 17, a U.S. Marshal on the case saw Fritz, armed with a rifle, enter the cabin. By nightfall the place was surrounded by U.S. Marshals and Tyler County sheriff's deputies.

     On Tuesday night, officers heard a gunshot from inside the cabin. After firing teargas canisters into the hide-out, officers entered the structure where they found Thomas Fritz dead in a back bedroom with a bullet in his head. Inside the cabin, officers found two assault rifles, a shotgun, and a gas mask.    

Adaisha Miller's Mysterious Death

     On Detroit's west side, on July 8, 2012, 24-year-old Adaisha Miller attended a Saturday night fish fry hosted by Isaac Parrish and his wife. Miller, a certified massage therapist, came to the backyard party with a friend acquainted with the 38-year-old Detroit police officer throwing event. Isaac Parish, a beat patrolman for 16 years, did not know Miller before the get together.

     That night, Officer Parrish carried his department-issued Smith & Wesson M & P 40 semiautomatic pistol on his right side in a soft holster tucked inside his waistband covered by his shirt. In Detroit, officers have the option of carrying their firearms when off-duty. There are not, however, supposed to be armed if their blood-alcholol level is 0.02 percent or above. (In Michigan, the blood-alcohol threshold for a DUI conviction is 0.08 percent.) In essence, Detroit officers are prohibited from carrying their handguns if they consume alcohol, period.

     Thirty minutes after midnight on the night of the party, Adaisha Miller, while either hugging the officer, dancing with him side-by-side, or dancing on her knees behind him (I have a hard time picturing this), touched or tugged at his waist in a way that caused his firearm to discharge. The gun not only went off, the bullet entered Miller's chest, pierced a lung, hit her heart, and exited her lower back. She died later that day at a local hospital.

     According to Dr. Carl Schmidt, the Wayne County Medical Examiner, the path of the bullet through Miller's body did not reveal the victim's position relative to the gun's muzzle (end of the barrel) which was pointed toward the ground. Because the Smith & Wesson M & P 40 is designed for police and military use, it does not have a safety switch. However, the trigger must be pulled back all the way before the gun will fire.

     Because it's hard to construct a scenario, based on the facts at hand, that explains exactly how this accident occurred, Adaisha's death remains a mystery. Less than 24 hours after Miller's death, a lawyer surfaced in the case talking about a potential lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department. Attorney Gerald Thurswell, in speaking to a local reporter, said, "We believe 100 percent that this death was caused as a result of a negligent act of somebody. If somebody was negligent then someone's responsible for the injuries and death caused as a result of their negligent act." This lawyer has hired a private investigator to look into the shooting. In the practice of law, other people's tragedies can turn into paydays.

        

Brittany Killgore and the Sex Dungeon Murder Case

     After two years of marriage to Lance Corporal Cory Killgore, 22-year-old Brittany Killgore, on April 11, 2012, filed for divorce. The Marine is serving in Afghanistan. Brittany lived in Fallbrook, California, a San Diego County town of 38,000 not far from Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine base.

     At two in the afternoon on Saturday, April 14, 2012, one of Brittany Killgore's friends called the San Diego County Sheriff's Office to report her missing. The caller had last seen Killgore at 7 PM the day before when she stopped by the friend's apartment to borrow a dress. Killgore said she was going on a date with a 45-year-old Marine staff sergeant named Louis Ray Perez who was picking her up at in less than an hour. They were going into downtown San Diego.

     At 7:45 that Friday evening, the friend received a text message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Help." The friend texted back, "What? R U okay?" When Brittany didn't respond, the friend texted, "Brittany are U okay? I am freaking out here." At 8:05 PM the friend received another message from Killgore's cellphone that read, "Yes I love this party." The worried friend considered this text suspicious because Killgore always used the word "Yeah" instead of "yes" in her text messaging. That was the last the friend heard from Killgore's phone. (A transient in downtown San Diego later found Killgore's cellphone in the doorway of a Comfort Inn.)

     A detective with the San Diego Sheriff's Office called Sergeant Louis Perez (who didn't have a criminal record) and asked if he'd come in for questioning regarding the Killgore missing persons case. Perez said he would, and showed up at the sheriff's office shortly after the call.

     According to the 16-year veteran of the Marine Corps, he had gone to Killgore's apartment at four o'clock Friday afternoon to help her pack for her upcoming move to another place. He asked her if she'd like to go out on a dinner-dance boat that evening in downtown San Diego. Killgore declined, saying that she was tired. Soon after Perez left Killgore's apartment at 5:10 PM, she sent him a text saying she had changed her mind. Perez returned to her place at 7:30 for the date.

     According to the Marine's statement, he dropped Brittany off in downtown San Diego in front of a club called the Whisky Girl Night while he looked for a place to park. Fifteen minutes later, when he arrived at the club on foot, he couldn't find her. Perez looked around for 30 minutes, then headed home to the house he shared in Fallbrook with his girlfriend, 36-year-old Dorothy Grace Marie Maraglino and her friend, Jessica Lynn Lopez, 25.

     The deputy who interviewed Perez that afternoon asked if he could take a look inside the white Ford Explorer the Marine had driven to the sheriff's office. Perez said he had no problem with that.

     The first thing the detective noticed about Perez's car was the fresh mud caked on the underside of the vehicle and in its wheel wells. The Marine's shoes were also muddy. Perez told the officer that the car had gotten that way when he recently collected firewood near Camp Pendleton. The deputy took a plastic bag from inside the car which contained a pair of blue latex gloves that appeared to be blood-stained. (A presumptive luminal test confirmed it was blood, and later DNA analysis identified the blood as Brittany Killgore's.) Perez also possessed a stungun that had a human hair follicle attached to it. At this moment, Sergeant Perez became a suspect in Brittany Killgore's disappearance, and possible murder. The deputy, after recovering a stolen AR 15 assault rifle from Perez's Ford Explorer, arrested him on a charge of theft. The "person of interest" in the Killgore case was taken to jail where he was incarcerated under $500,000 bond.

     From Perez's cellphone, investigators collected messages sent from his phone to Killgore's. The first message, sent at 9:20 PM on Friday, April 13, almost two hours after Killgore's "help" text, read, "Your friends are calling me worried." Later that evening, at a time investigators believe Killgore was dead, Perez had texted, "Now I am worried too."

     When the San Diego detectives questioned the suspect's housemate, Dorothy Maraglino, she said Perez had returned home Friday night sometime between 10 PM and midnight. He remained in the Fallbrook house until he left for San Diego the next day in response to the call from the sheriff's office.

     On April 15, San Diego deputies searched the Perez/Maraglino/Lopez house in Fallbrook where they suspected Brittany Killgore had been murdered. The searchers discovered that one of the rooms in the dwelling had been set up as a "sex dungeon" equipped with a variety of "sex apparatuses, toys, and tools" such as handcuffs, whips, leather restraints, and chain shackles. When asked about this sadomasochistic playroom, Dorothy Maraglino and Jessica Lopez explained that they participated in erotic master-servant and master-slave role-playing. Dorothy identified herself as the dominatrix, and said that Louis Perez enjoyed spanking women.

     The Killgore missing persons/murder investigation took an even more bizarre turn on April 16 when investigators learned that master Dorothy and her slave Jessica had checked into the Ramada Inn located in the Point Loma section of San Diego. Deputies showed up at room 105 at 9:30 that morning. Lopez, in a drowsy voice, told the officers she was too exhausted to come to the door to let them in. When a deputy cracked the door open as far as the interior door chain would allow, the officer saw blood on the floor. Another officer kicked the door open and the police stormed into the motel room.

     The sheriff's deputies found Jessica Lopez, naked from the waist up and covered in blood from self-inflicted superficial knife wounds on her neck and wrists. (Maraglino had left the motel.) A message in lipstick scrawled on the mirror above the dressing table read: "PIGS READ THIS." Below this message lay a 7-page, handwritten murder confession signed by Jessica Lopez.

     In the confession, Lopez admitted using a ligature, in the sex dungeon in the Fallbrook house, to strangle Brittany Killgore to death. She killed the victim out of fear Louis Perez would be seduced by her. After half-hearted attempts to dismember Killgore's body, Lopez doused the naked body with bleach to destroy evidence. Lopez wrote that she "hid the body of that whore in almost plain sight" near Lake Skinner, noting that the police would find handcuff marks on the victim's wrists. Lopez said she had deposited the knife she had used in her attempts to "chop her up" in a beach restroom in Oceanside. The police would also find a pair of handcuffs with the knife. In her statement/suicide note, Lopez said she was taking full responsibility for Killgore's murder.

     At 2:30 that afternoon, searchers located Killgore's naked remains lying in the brush along the side of a road near Riverside County's Lake Skinner, 23 miles north of Fallbrook. When autopsied, the forensic pathologist found wounds on the victim's neck consistent with being strangled with a ligature. There were also indications that someone had tried to dismember the body.

     The police arrested Jessica Lopez on April 17 on the charge of murder. Louis Perez, already in custody on the gun theft case, was charged with murder as well. Dorothy Maraglino was taken into custody on May 10, 2012. All three suspects are being held on $3 million bond each. They have all pleaded not guilty, and no date has been set for their murder trials.

   

   

   

     

Nathan Van Wilkins and the Tuscaloosa Shooting Spree

     At 11:30 Monday night, July 16, 2012, 44-year-old Nathan Van Wilkins, a resident of Northport, Alabama, a town 30 miles north of Tuscaloosa, went to a house in Northport and knocked on the door. When the 30-year-old man who lived there saw that Van Wilkins was armed with an assault rifle, he ran back into the dwelling. Van Wilkins fired off six shots, hitting the man once in the back. (The victim is expected to survive his bullet wound.)

     From Northport, Van Wilkins drove to the Copper Top bar in downtown Tuscaloosa. Armed with an AK style assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine, he stood outside the bar, located about a mile from the University of Alabama, and watched the 80 plus patrons, mostly 20 and 30-year-olds, drinking and shooting pool. Thirty minutes after midnight, Van Wilkins opened fire, his bullets ripping through a large, glass window. As the panicked drinkers rushed outside, he shot at them from the parking lot.

     Van Wilkins, who never entered the bar, left the scene when he ran out of ammunition. Seventeen people had been injured by glass and brick shrapnel, bullets, bullet fragments, and from being stomped in the stampede out of the place. (By noon the following day, 12 of the hospitalized victims had been treated and released.)

     From Tuscaloosa, Van Wilkins drove to the nearby town of Brookwood, Alabama where he allegedly set fire to three trucks and an oil rig owned by his former employer, Capstone Oilfield Services and Supply Company. (On March 30, 2012, Van Wilkins and a co-worker got into a fistfight. Both men were fired. The termination angered Van Wilkins who tried to file assault charges against the other man.)

     On Tuesday, July 17 at 10:30 in the morning, Van Wilkins walked into a FedEx store in Jasper, a town an hour's drive north of Tuscaloosa, and said, "I'm the one they are looking for that shot the 17 people in Tuscaloosa." Van Wilkins told the fearful employee that at the time of the shooting spree, he had been high on drugs. Shortly thereafter, officers from the Jasper Police Department took Van Wilkins into custody. To the arresting officers, Van Wilkins said he had wanted the police in Tuscaloosa to kill him.

     Charged with 18 counts of attempted murder (Van Wilkins has been linked to the Northport shooting through a shell casing match with the ballistics evidence at the Tuscaloosa site), the suspect is incarcerated in the Tuscaloosa County Jail under $2 million bond.

     The obvious question in shooting sprees like this is why, and what kind of person would kill or try to kill strangers. While Van Wilkins' motive is still unknown, based on his criminal background, marital history, and financial woes, it appears his shooting rampage was the product of drug-crazed anger rather than a mental illness such as schizophrenia.

     In 1988, Van Wilkins pleaded guilty to breaking into a body shop and stealing a Mercedes Benz. The Tuscaloosa judge sentenced him to 4 months probation. In 2002, he spent 10 days in jail for criminal trespass. His wife of 16 years, claiming that he beat her and threatened her life, divorced him in March 2005. The judge ordered Van Wilkins to pay $1,300 a month in child support. They have two children.

     In 2011, Van Wilkins, for the third time, filed for bankruptcy. He was $25,000 in debt. His bankruptcy hearing had been set for August 12. As of this writing, the man Van Wilkins shot in Northport has not been identified. If Van Wilkins had tried to kill a specific person in the Copper Top bar, that information has not been released.

       

Clifford D. Miller and the Meth-Crazed Murders of Sisters Britny Haarup and Ashley Key

     Sisters Britny Haarup, 19, and Ashley Key 22, lived together in a house in Edgerton, Missouri, 35 miles north of Kansas City. Ashley Key, the mother of a 4-year-old girl, had been running with a bad crowd, and had sought her sister's help in  turning her life around. On Friday afternoon, July 13, 2012, Britny Haarup's fiancee, Matt Meyers, stopped by the house and found the sisters missing, and Haarup's 6 month and and 18-month-old daughters alone in the same crib. Because Haarup would never leave the infants alone in the house, Meyers suspected foul play. She had left her cellphone and purse behind, and in the living room Meyers found Ashley's handbag and a pair of her shoes. And most troubling of all, a comforter on the couch contained blood stains. (Police later learned that several guns had been taken from the house.)

     On the afternoon of the disappearances, deputies with the Platte County Sheriff's Office spoke to witnesses who had seen a white, 2002 Dodge Ram pickup truck parked near the sister's house at 9:30 that morning. The next day, a deputy found a truck meeting that description several miles from the sister's house parked near the Platte-Clay County line. The vehicle, registered to a Clifford D. Miller, bore no evidence of a crime, inside or out.

     On Sunday morning, July 15, Platte County detectives questioned Clifford D. Miller, "a person of interest," at his girlfriend's house in Parksville, a suburb of Kansas City. Miller, from Trimble, Missouri in southwest Clinton County, confessed to murdering Haarup and Key, and agreed to lead the police to the field where he had dumped their bodies. Following the confession, the officers took Miller into custody.

     The sisters' bodies were recovered that Sunday, and transported to the Medical Examiner's Office in Jackson County for identification and autopsy.

     When interrogated at his girlfriend's house, Miller said he had been smoking methamphetamine on Friday, July 13. With the intent of having sex with Britny Haarup, (they knew each other but had not engaged in sex) he drove his 2002 Dodge pickup to her house in Edgerton. When he walked into the dwelling through the unlocked front door, Ashley Key, asleep on the sofa, woke up and confronted him. Miller punched her several times, struck her in the head with a hard object from the coffee table, then smothered her with the comforter on the couch.

     Still thinking about having sex with Haarup, Miller walked into her bedroom. When Britny screamed, he hit her with a blunt object, then smothered her with a pillow.

     After murdering the sisters in their own home, Clifford Miller hung around and smoked more meth. High on the drug, he wrapped his victims' bodies in bedsheets and carried them to his pickup truck. After depositing the murdered women in a field several miles from their house, he abandoned his vehicle and called his girlfriend in Parksville.

     The Platte County prosecutor charged Clifford Miller with two counts of first degree murder. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life without parole, or to death. He is currently incarcerated in the Platte County Jail under $500,000 cash-only bond. 

Michael Curry Murder Case: The Power of Circumstantial Evidence

     At 5:30 in the evening on August 29, 1985, Michael L. Curry called the Columbus, Georgia Police Department and reported that someone had entered his home while he was at work, and murdered his pregnant wife and his two children.

     At the gory murder scene, police discovered that 26-year-old Ann Curry, her 4-year-old daughter Erika, and 20-month-old Ryan had been bludgeoned to death with a brush axe. The murder weapon, taken from its place of storage in the family garage, was lying next to Ann Curry's body. Detectives noticed that Michael Curry didn't have any of the crime scene blood on him, which suggested he hadn't checked to see if any of his family members were still alive. Investigators also found it unusual that Curry had called the police department directly instead of 911.

     Other features of the murder scene bothered investigators. Someone had broken a small glass window near a back door secured by an interior deadbolt lock. The broken window was consistent with an intruder reaching in and unlocking the door. But the window had been smashed from the inside of the house, and the door was still locked. If the Curry family had been murdered by an intruder or intruders, how did they get in, and what was their motive? Nothing had been stolen from the house, drawers and closets had not been rifled through, and Ann Curry had not been sexually assaulted. If intruders had come to the dwelling to kill Ann Curry and her children, why hadn't they brought their own murder weapons? (Later, crime lab personnel found no blood or bloody fingerprints on the axe. The killer had obviously sanitized the weapon.) Was this mass murder a crime of passion, or a planned, cold-blooded execution?

      When questioned by the police, Michael Curry said he had left his place of employment at 9:40 that morning to buy a small fan for his office. At 12:55 (according to the retail receipt) he purchased the item at a K-Mart store before returning to his office at 1:10 in the afternoon. He remained in his office until quitting time, then drove home, arriving at his house shortly before 5:30.

     In tracing the activities of Mrs. Curry and the children on the day of their deaths, investigators learned they had shopped that morning at a Sears store. After visiting her parents in Columbus, Ann headed home, arriving there at 12:37 PM. If Michael Curry had slaughtered his family, he had committed the murders between 12:37 and 12:55 PM, an 18-minute window of opportunity.

     Looking into Michael Curry's recent history, investigators learned he was having an affair, and spending nights drinking at bars with friends. Witnesses told detectives that Michael felt trapped by a growing family he couldn't afford. He longed for a bachelor's lifestyle, but couldn't afford a divorce and the resultant child support responsibilities.

     Because the forensic pathologist who performed the victim's autopsies couldn't pinpoint their times of death either within or without the 18 minutes of opportunity, Michael Curry didn't have an airtight alibi. But that also meant that a prosecutor couldn't prove the killings took place during the 18-minute timeframe.

     Following a murder inquest held in February 1986, the Muscogee County District Attorney, with no confession, eyewitnesses, or physical evidence linking Michael Curry to the murder scene, decided not to pursue the matter further. Since investigators had no other suspects, the case remained in limbo until January 2009 when a new district attorney, Julia Slater, took office. The Curry murder case came back to life as a cold case homicide investigation.

     Prosecutor Slater theorized that on the day of the murders, Michael Curry, when shopping for a desk fan, saw his family at Sears. Realizing this was his opportunity to free himself of his family burden, he drove home to lay in wait. To protect himself from what he knew would be a bloody massacre, he either put on a jumpsuit or a pair of coveralls. He next smashed the window next to the backdoor to stage an intrusion. When his wife and his two children entered the house at 12:37, he attacked them with the brush axe. After disposing of his blood-spattered coveralls, he rushed to the K-Mart store where he purchased the fan. (When he returned to his office at 1:10 that afternoon, fellow employees noticed he was drenched in sweat.)

     On May 20, 2009, after a Muscogee Grand Jury indicted Michael Curry for murdering his pregnant wife and their two children, detectives arrested him at his home in Dalton, Georgia. He went on trial in April 2011 at the Muscogee County Superior Court in Columbus. Public defender Bob Wadkins argued that his client had an alibi, and that the state's case, based solely on circumstantial evidence, didn't rise to the level of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Wadkins chose not to put the defendant on the stand to testify on his own behalf.

     On April 27, 2011, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Judge John Allen sentenced the 54-year-old Michael Curry to three consecutive life sentences. The convicted killer would be eligible for parole after serving 30 years behind bars. The best he could hope for was to be set free at age 84.

     Attorney Bob Wadkins appealed Murry's conviction on grounds his client had been found guilty on insufficient evidence. On June 9, 2012, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously upheld the jury's verdict.        

Peter Lizon: The Hillbilly Husband From Hell

     Peter Lizon, a 37-year-old native of the Czech Republic, lived with his wife Stephanie and their one-year-old son along a rural road in Leroy, West Virginia not far from Charleston in the western part of the state. The front yard to the rundown house featured a pair of signs that read: "No Trespassing," and "Guard Dog on Duty." The couple raised chickens and goats.

     On June 18, 2012, 43-year-old Stephanie and her husband were in Parkersburg, West Virginia about 50 miles south of Leroy. Peter had come to town to return a rototiller he had rented from the Bosley Rental & Supply Company. After Peter returned the item, Stephanie came back to the store alone. Walking with a pronounced limp, she said she wanted to get away from her husband, and asked if she could hide in the building until he left town. She did not want anyone in the store to call the police.

     When she came out of hiding, an employee of the rental store gave Stephanie the address of a local domestic violence shelter, and money for cab fare. Again, the obviously battered woman asked that no one call the authorities.

        At the domestic violence shelter, Stephanie, using a false name, informed her hosts that her husband had kept her in chains for ten years during which time he tortured her with hot clothing irons and frying pans. He had hobbled her by smashing her feet with a hay bailer, and periodically stomped her feet to keep them mutilated and swollen. With her ankles in shackles, she had given birth to a fully developed stillborn child whose corpse had been buried on their property. Her one-year-old son had been born at home with her in shackles. The child had never been seen by a physician.

     An employee of the shelter took 45 photographs of Stephanie's scars and bruises that included burns on her back and breasts. After being examined in the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital, the women at the shelter purchased Stephanie a bus ticket to her parent's home in Alexandria, Virginia. She refused the ticket because she didn't want to abandon her son who was home with his father. Someone at the shelter called the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.

     On July 5, after sheriff's deputies searched the house in Leroy, and seized, among other things, a Sunbeam iron, they arrested Peter Lizon on the charge of malicious wounding. Incarcerated in the South Central Regional Jail under $300,000 bond, Lizon denied physically abusing his wife.

     Lizon's attorney, Shawn Bayliss, told local reporters that the allegations against his client were the "fabrications of a fertile imagination or a feeble mind, one of two." The attorney (I presume court appointed) didn't stop there. "My client's spouse," he said, "has never even filed a petition seeking a domestic violence protection order. She would say, and he [Peter Lizon] would agree, domestic violence has not been part of his history." Attorney Bayliss, advertising himself as the man to see if your wife accuses you of assault, in explaining away the evidence of abuse on Stephanie Lizon's body, said, "But in the most common terms, not every injury is intentional. Not every bruise is the result of some violent act. The point of all that is, don't rush to judgement until you know all the facts." The attorney's remarks infuriated domestic violence protection advocates who worried that such statements discouraged battered women from coming forward.

     On the morning of Friday, July 13, Peter Lizon appeared in the Jackson County Magistrate Court in Ripley, West Virginia for his preliminary hearing. He sat at the defense table with two attorneys. An obviously frightened Stephanie Lizon took the stand, and in response to prosecutor Katie Castro's questions, denied that her husband had physically abused her. She explained checking into the domestic violence center under a false name as simply a ploy to avoid arguing with her husband that day in front of their one-year-old son. When asked how she had acquired the burn scars on her back and breasts, the witness said they were the result of accidents. And what about her swollen and mutilated feet? And the shackle scars on her ankles? Were these from accidents as well? Yes, answered the witness.

     Following the testimony of witnesses from the rental store and the domestic violence shelter, and the introduction of the 45 photographs depicting Stephanie's scars and bruises, the magistrate bound the case over for trial. Jackson County prosecutor Katie Castro would have to make her case through third-party witnesses, and the physical evidence of abuse. It's hard to image any jury acquitting this defendant. The fact his wife is afraid to testify against him is part of the overwhelming evidence supporting a guilty verdict in this case.

      

Joe Paterno: The Godfather

     In 1999, Joe Paterno's longtime friend and defensive coach, Jerry Sandusky, retired from Penn State following credible allegations that a year before he had inappropriately touched a 10-year-old boy in the school's locker room showers. While university investigators wanted Sandusky prosecuted, the Centre County District Attorney, Ray Gricar, declined to pursue the matter. Joe Paterno surely knew of the molestation accusation against his colleague. It would be interesting to know just how much pressure the Godfather of Penn State had put on Gricar to drop the case.

     Notwithstanding the 1998 allegations, Sandusky, a made-man in the Penn State football family who benefited from a code of silence a Mafia don would have admired, kept his office in the football building as well as his access to all of the university's sports facilities. Using his youth organization, The Second Mile, to attract and groom his young victims, Sandusky continued to sexually molest boys under the noses of Paterno and others in the football family. Instead of reporting a serial pedophile operating in their midst, Paterno asked Sandusky to stop bringing his young "guests" on campus. In other words, do your molesting somewhere else, where, if caught, it won't be so hard to cover up.

     In 2000, when a Penn State janitor was told by a fellow employee that he (the fellow worker) had seen Jerry Sandusky in the showers raping a boy, the janitor didn't report it. (This came to light in 2012 when investigators working with former FBI Director Louis Freeh questioned the janitor. According to the Freeh Report, the janitor, in explaining why he hadn't reported Sandusky to someone in authority, said, "It would have been like going against the President of the United States. I knew Paterno had so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone.")

     On February 26, 2001, a graduate assistant in the Penn State football organization named Mike McQueary presented the Godfather with a problem that if not handled carefully, threatened the family. McQueary had witnessed, firsthand, Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers. The threat to Paterno's football organization intensified when the athletic director and a vice president contemplated, to Paterno's horror, reporting Sandusky to the authorities. The Godfather ordered his "superiors" to clam-up, and the matter remained a family secret. The football program had to be protected--at all costs.

     In 2004, the president of Penn State, and the head of the board of trustees, two ostensibly powerful university figures, went to Paterno's office to inform the 80-year-old don it was time to step down. What were these men thinking? Godfathers don't retire voluntarily. They have to be taken out, and these lightweights didn't have the muscle. Paterno threw the pathetic emissaries out of his office. They were lucky Paterno didn't fire them on the spot.

     On April 15, 2005, Ray Gricar, the longtime Centre County District Attorney who in 1998 had given Jerry Sandusky a prosecutorial pass, took a drive in his mini-Cooper and didn't return. The 59-year-old's car turned up in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in an antique mall parking lot. Three months later, someone found the prosecutor's county-issued laptop on the edge of the Susquehanna River not far from where he, or someone else, had left his car. In October 2005, Gricar's hard-drive turned up in the same river not far where the laptop had been found. Gricar himself has not turned up. (What's really strange  about Gricar's disappearance is how poorly it was investigated. The FBI had declined to get involved.) If Ray Gricar didn't kill himself, someone else did, but without his body, this unexplained and uninvestigated death will remain a mystery. It is not unreasonable to wonder if Gricar's disappearance is related to Jerry Sandusky, and the Paterno lead cover-up of his pedophilia.        

     In January 2011, 13 years after Ray Gricar decided not to charge Jerry Sandusky with sexually touching the 10-year-old boy in the Penn State locker room showers, Joe Paterno's worst fears were coming true. Jerry Sandusky, his longtime friend, and lifetime member of the football family, after years of sexually molesting boys within the inner sanctum of Penn State football, was once again under investigation. And this time, investigators were seriously out to get Mr. Sandusky, and anyone who had helped facilitate his crimes. The Godfather must have been shocked when he was summoned to appear before the Centre County Grand Jury looking into the case.  

     Having been sworn to tell the truth, Paterno made his appearance before the grand jury that January. It was then he was asked the dreaded question regarding what he knew, and when he knew it. Did he know of any sexual abuse allegations made against Jerry Sandusky before the February 2001 episode? To that question, Paterno said, "I do not know of anything else that Jerry would have been involved in of that nature, no." That was a lie. But what choice did he have? The future of Penn State football was at stake, not to mention the coach's legacy as a hero.

     With sex scandal storm clouds on the horizon, the Godfather made his move. He entered into secret contract negotiations with the president of the university to sweeten his compensation/retirement package. In return for the enhanced contract, Paterno promised to quit at the end of the 2011 football season. In August 2011, without the knowledge of the board of trustees, the president of Penn State agreed to pay Paterno $3 million for his last year. Pursuant to the overall deal, $350,000 in interest-free loans given to the coach would be forgiven by the university (and Pennsylvania taxpayers). In addition to various incentive bonuses, the university would give Paterno and his family access to the Penn State corporate jet, and reserve a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for the coach and his family--for the next 25 years.

     While the president of the university had finally managed to loosen the Godfather's grip around Penn State's neck, it had come at a high cost, and without the knowledge of the board of trustees.

     The wheels came off Joe Paterno's sex abuse cover-up on November 5, 2011 when officers with the Pennsylvania State Police arrested Jerry Sandusky on several counts of sexual molestation. To football fans across the country, Jerry Sandusky was a household name. In Sandusky's hometown, Washington, Pennsylvania, people were shocked and distraught. Along with the former football coach, the police arrested the school's athletic director and a university vice president on charges they had failed to report Sandusky's alleged crimes. Penn State fans considered Joe Paterno, the man most responsible for allowing Sandusky to molest dozens of boys, an innocent victim in the growing scandal. Poor Joe, he didn't deserve to have his football legacy tarnished by that bastard Sandusky.

     Although the Godfather had already negotiated a secret deal carrying him through the 2011 football year, he offered, ingenuously, to step down at the end of the football year. The board of trustees, eager to use the opportunity to take out the Godfather, fired him 5 days later. On November 20, Paterno's family announced, for the first time, that Paterno had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

     The firing of Coach Joe Paterno, as one might expect, didn't go down well with football fans in Happy Valley and across the country. This man was more than a coach, he had come to symbolize everything that was good and great about Penn State University. (How pathetic is that?) Students went to the streets, and according to opinion polls taken after the icon's dismissal, more than half the citizens of Pennsylvania still had a favorable opinion of the coach.

     Following Joe Paterno's death on January 22, 2012 at the age of 85, his family demanded that the university live up to the secret $5.5 million deal the coach had extracted from the president. Rather than go against the Paterno family, and incur the wrath of their supporters, the school gave in. (The family did not get the luxury box and use of the corporate jet, but Mrs. Paterno did maintain access to the athletic department's hydrotherapy facilities.)

     The public hadn't been told of Joe Paterno's lung cancer diagnosis until 15 days after Jerry Sandusky's arrest. How long had that information been kept secret?

     A statue of Joe Paterno stands outside Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. In light of the Godfather's role in protecting Jerry Sandusky at the expense of the boys this pedophile had molested over the years, that statue should be torn down. But, according to the powers that be, it will remain standing for now. People who look at that statue will see different things. It will remind many that Joe Paterno was a wonderful man and coaching hero who did more for Penn State than anyone in history. To others, the statue will represent what can happen when an institution allows one man to have too much power. That what it means to me.

     

Eric Koula Double Murder Trial: A Defendant's Testimony

     Eric Koula, a 41-year-old day trader who lived in West Salem, Wisconsin with his wife and teenage son, called 911 on May 24, 2010 from his parent's house in nearby Barre to report that someone had shot and killed Dennis and Merna Koula. Homicide detectives would determine that the couple had been murdered three days earlier with a .22-caliber rifle, a weapon never identified.

     After the LaCrosse County prosecutor, Tim Gruenke charged Eric Koula on July 29, 2010 with two counts of first degree murder, police took him into custody. According to the prosecutor, Koula, in financial trouble, murdered his parents in order to inherit their estate. While the prosecutor had motive, means, and opportunity supporting this theory, it was what the state didn't have that made acquiring a conviction unlikely. What the prosecutor didn't have included a confession, an eyewitness, physical evidence pointing to Koula's guilt, or the murder weapon.

     Eric Koula, represented by Jim Kolby and Keith Belzer, went on trial on June 6, 2012. In his opening remarks to the jury of 5 men and 7 women, prosecutor Gruenke stated the defendant executed his mother as she sat at her office computer, then shot his father when he walked into the room. Eric Koula's attorneys, on the other hand, assured the jury their client had an airtight alibi, and pointed out the obvious weakness of the prosecution's case. According to the defense theory of the murders, the victims had been killed by professional hitmen who entered the wrong house. (That doesn't sound too professional to me.) The defense didn't elaborate on who had masterminded the contract killing, or why.   

     According to a forensic accountant who testified on behalf of the state, the defendant had only $3,000 in the bank, and owed the IRS and several credit card companies $150,000. Shortly after his parent's violent deaths, Koula had deposited into his bank a $50,000 check drawn on his father's account. 

     Investigators took the stand and testified that the defendant had planted evidence  to make himself look innocent. He had written "fixed you" on a piece of paper and put it into his mailbox. The defendant hoped the note would make it look as though the killer was trying to frame him for the murders. Koula eventually confessed to fabricating this evidence.

     After the state rested its case on June 14, the defense put their own forensic accountant on the stand who testified that Koula's assets exceeded his liabilities. (To me, the term "forensic accountant" is an oxymoron. Accounting is as much a science as economics. While I realize that the word "forensic" pertains to a formal argument like a structured debate or a trial, it still doesn't sound right.) 

     On June 16, Eric Koula took the stand on his own behalf. (This fact alone makes this murder trial somewhat unusual.) Questioned on direct examination by attorney Keith Belzer, the defendant said that in 1994 he, his cousin, and his father purchased a Ford dealership. Eric became president of the company, but in 2006 his father sold the business. Although his father owed him $1million from the sale of the car dealership, the defendant only received $500,000. After the sale of the company, Eric began his day trading enterprise. In 2007 he made $300,000 in profits, but the following year he lost $661,000.

     In 2009, Eric's father gave him $100,000, and in May 2010 his parents promised him another $50,000. On May 20, the defendant went to his parent's home to pickup the $50,000 check. His father handed him a black check, and told him to fill it in himself. That's why he signed his father's name on the check, and tried to make the signature look like his father's handwriting. This was the last time the defendant saw his parent's alive. 

     On Friday, May 21, 2010, the day Dennis and Merna Koula were gunned down, the defendant detailed his activities in a way that established an airtight alibi. The next day, he deposited the $50,000 check bearing his father's fake signature. 

     On Monday, Mary 24, someone at the school where Mrs. Koula taught, called Eric to inform him his mother had not shown up for work, and that no one at her house was picking up the phone. Eric drove to Barre to check on his parents, and became alarmed when he saw their cars parked in the garage. Inside the house he found his father lying dead on the home office floor, and his mother at her desk slumped over the computer. After calling 911, he phoned his wife and his pastor who rushed to the scene to give him support. 

     LaCrosse County deputies took the defendant to the sheriff's office for questioning. In his statement, he forgot to mention the $50,000 check he had deposited containing his father's phony signature. A week later, investigators came to his house to speak to him about the whereabouts of his son Dexter on the day of the murders. The detectives also wanted to know if the boy had access to a .22-caliber rifle. Worried that the police were going to arrest his son for the murder of his grandparents, the defendant wrote the "fixed you" note and placed it in his mailbox. He testified that he had fabricated this evidence to protect his son. 

     On July 29, 2010, the defendant met with detectives for the third and last time. Following a 3-hour interrogation, during which time he denied signing the $50.000 check, and didn't reveal that he had written the "fixed you" note, the deputies arrested him for the murder of his parents. 

     On cross-examination, prosecutor Gary Freyburg pressed the defendant regarding his financial troubles. The prosecutor reminded him about the forged $50,000 check, and the planted evidence. The cross-examiner pointed out that in Koula's 911 call, the defendant started out by explaining why he was at his parent's house. Once he justified his presence at the murder scene, he reported his emergency. 

     The testimony phase of the trial came to a close on June 26, 2012. The outcome of the case depended entirely on whether the jurors believed the defendant's testimony. After deliberating less than a day, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. By Wisconsin law, the judge had to impose a sentence of life. The judge could, however, decide to make Koula eligible for parole after serving 40 years behind bars. So, the best Koula could hope for was to walk free at age 83.