Bath Salts and the Hannibal Lecter Syndrome

     At five in the evening on Saturday June 2, 2012, 21-year-old Brandon De Leon, accompanied by three other homeless men, walked into a Boston Market fast-food restaurant in North Miami Beach, Florida. High on marijuana, Xanax and a bath salt called Cloud 9, De Leon had also consumed a bottle of rum and an alcohol and caffeine-laced drink called Four Loko.

     The moment De Leon entered the restaurant he became belligerent. Cursing loudly he challenged one of his homeless companions to a fight. As it happened, two uniformed police officers were eating there. As the officers approached the manifestly intoxicated and unruly man he swore at them. De Leon was asking for trouble, and he got it.

     Although Mr. De Leon resisted, the officers hustled him out of the eating place and onto the ground outside. Once handcuffed behind his back and seated in the patrol car, De Leon began bashing his head against the glass divider between the back seat and the front interior of the police vehicle. As he slammed the glass with his head he yelled, "I'm going to eat you!"

     At the police station Mr. De Leon continued to behave like an animal intent on eating its prey by baring and gnashing his teeth. Several officers wrestled him to the floor, then carried the squirming, spitting, growling and snapping man to a holding cell where he tried to bite one of his captors in the hand as they put him in leg restraints. Once they had the prisoner physically under control officers slipped a Hannibal Lecter-type "bite-mask" over his head.

     Following drug testing procedures at Aventura Hospital, police officers transported the chained and masked De Leon to the Miami-Dade County Jail where he was held on $7,500 bond.

     Because of a recent rash of cases involving cannibalistic behavior, Brandon De Leon's Hannibal Lecter act became more than a local crime story. The intense interest in these type cases brought a gruesome homicide, committed in 2009 by a San Antonio woman named Otty Sanchez, back into the news. Sanchez was found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing and eating parts of her 3-week-old baby. The schizophrenic said the devil made her do it.

     In December 2010, Stephen Griffith, a Ph.D. student in England, murdered three women and ate the body parts of two of them. (He killed one of his victims with a crossbow.) In Russia, a chef, in August 2011 lured his victims to his apartment through a gay-dating website then killed them with a butcher-knife. He made meatballs and sausages from their corpses.

      Other murders of this nature included Miami's Rudy Eugene who chewed off the face of a homeless man and Alexander Kinyua, the Morgan State University student who allegedly ate a portion of his victim's heart and brain. In Sweden, a professor, in a fit of jealous rage, cut off and ate his wife's lips. He was charged with attempted murder and was later found legally insane.

     Perhaps the most disturbing cases involving cannibalistic behavior unfolded in Japan and Canada, countries not normally associated with violent crime. In May 2012 a man named Mao Sugiyama advertised a meal where five diners each paid 100,000 yen to eat Sugiyama's surgically removed genitals. Sugiyama and the five diners who ate his flesh were not charged with a crime. In Japan, consensual cannibalism is not illegal. The Canadian case involved Luka Magnotta, the porn star snuff-video maker who ate parts of his dismembered victim, then mailed four of Jun Lin's body parts to two addresses in Ottawa and two in Vancouver.

         Designer drugs were linked to the cases of 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, the Miami causeway flesh-eater and Brandon De Leon, the homeless man transported to the Miami-Dade County Jail in the Hannibal Lecter mask. In De Leon's case he was under the influence, among other substances, of the bath salt Cloud 9 (also called Ivory Wave), a synthetic form of cocaine. Once legal in the United States, Cloud 9 could be purchased online, in smoke shops, convenience stores and at gas stations. Cloud 9 came in 500mg packets containing instructions on how to add it to bath water for a soothing and relaxing soak. There was also a warning not to sniff or inject the product. 

     Cloud 9 users snort, smoke, and eat the bath salt. The drug produces a euphoric ecstasy-like sensation combined with an amphetamine-like high. Cloud 9 was known to produce violent and bizarre hallucinations, extreme paranoid delusions, acute agitation and thoughts of suicide. When the drug wears off users suffer painful hangovers.

     According to Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin in a 2011 Psychology Today article, "Most cannibals are extreme loners. They do not have friends, and they are bitter about it. Killing and eating a victim ensures that the offender is never alone." Jack Levin, author and co-director of the Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston, in discussing America's most infamous cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer, pointed out that Dahmer was a loner. Levin theorized that Dahmer, who killed and ate parts of 17 young men, consumed his victims out of "affection." According to Levin this was Dahmer's way of physically possessing the objects of his love.

     Cannibalism, although freakish and newsworthy, is still an extremely rare form of deviant behavior. 

Mayson Armando Ortiz-Vazuez's Meth-Crazed Rampage

     At six-ten in the morning of Friday, August 28, 2020 an ex-con from Orlando, Florida named Mayson Armando Ortiz-Vazquez was driving in Polk City, Florida with a female passenger in his car. He was in the town to buy drugs. For some reason Ortiz-Vazquez lost control of his vehicle, swerved and crashed into a chainlink fence.

    Not far from the accident, school bus driver Margie Yzaguirre had pulled over to pick up a student. Shortly after the youngster climbed into the bus Ortiz-Vazquez approached the vehicle and demanded to be let onboard. When the bus driver refused to let him in, the six-foot, 250 pound Ortiz-Vazquez, with his arm bloodied from the car accident, screamed and pounded on the bus door. Bus driver Yzaguirre drove off.

     Left behind by the school bus, Ortiz-Vazquez jumped on the hood of a passing car. After rolling off the vehicle he jumped onto another moving car, breaking its windshield. After growling at the shocked driver, Ortiz-Vazquez rolled off the car, got to his feet and walked to a dwelling on Old Polk City Road in nearby North Lakeland.

     At six-thirty that morning, Ortiz-Vazquez smashed a glass paneled front door and forcefully entered a dwelling occupied at the time by a 9-year-old boy, his parents and the boy's grandparents. The boy's father, when confronted in his living room by a crazed, bloodied intruder holding a shard of glass from the smashed front door, picked up a gun and shot him. Later that morning Mr. Ortiz-Vazquez was pronounced dead at the Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.

     According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Ortiz-Vazquez was a man "totally out of control." In  reference to Ortiz-Vazquez's behavior that morning, the sheriff told reporters the violent spree had "meth written all over it."

Jordan Lin Graham: Killer Bride

     Cody Lee Johnson and Jordan Lin Graham, residents of Kalispell, Montana, began dating in late 2011. The couple became engaged in December 2012 and on June 29, 2013 were married. While couples who indulge themselves with lavish weddings are just as likely to be divorced as people who get hitched in city hall, family members and guests who attended the Johnson extravaganza didn't expect this marriage to end so quickly--and so violently.

     As it turned out, Cody Johnson was just as clueless as his wedding guests. The 25-year-old groom had no idea that his 22-year-old bride wanted the wedding more than the marriage. Almost immediately after the big ceremony she confided to friends that she already regretted marrying Johnson. When she uttered the pledge "until death do us part" this bride, instead of thinking of spending the rest of her life with this man, may have been contemplating widowhood within a matter of days.

     On the morning of July 8, 2013, when Cody Johnson didn't show up for work, his parents reported him missing to the Kalispell Police Department. A local police officer questioned the missing man's wife of nine days. For a woman with a missing husband she seemed awfully calm and collected.

     According to Jordan, her husband stormed out of the house the previous night following their exchange of angry words. He rode off with unidentified friends in a dark-colored car bearing Washington state license plates. She had no idea where he went or what could have happened to him.

     On the night Cody Johnson supposedly left the house with the mysterious men, his wife, in a text message to a friend, said that prior to Cody's disappearance she planned to break the news to him regarding her second thoughts about their marriage. Three days later, in an email, Jordan informed another acquaintance that Cody went hiking in nearby Glacier National Park with friends. It was there he probably fell, and died.

     On July 11, 2013 the newlywed reported to Glacier National Park officials that she spotted Cody's body at the foot of a cliff in the Loop Trail area of the park. She went to that place in search of her husband because "it was a place he wanted to see before he died." Park officials considered this story absurd, and more than a little suspicious.

     The next day, operating on the wife's information, searchers located Cody Johnson's body in an area so steep and rugged a helicopter had to be employed to recover his corpse.

     Members of Cody Johnson's family who suspected Jordan of murdering her new husband called for an investigation of his death. Since he died in a national park the FBI took over the case.

     On July 16, 2013, while being questioned by Special Agent Steven Liss, Jordan admitted she lied to the local police about the circumstances of her husband's disappearance. He did not get into a car with friends that night. That evening, following a heated argument, Jordan and Cody drove to the park to cool-off. They continued fighting, however. While standing at the viewpoint above the cliff he grabbed her by the arm. Jordan said she removed his hand and gave him a shove which propelled him over the cliff. She admitted she pushed him in anger, but denied an intention to kill him. In other words, Cody Johnson's death was a tragic accident.

     Two months went by following Jordan's FBI interrogation without an arrest in the case. Members of Cody Johnson's family were wondering if this woman would get away with murder. But on September 9, 2013, FBI agents took Jordan Graham Johnson into custody on the federal charge of second-degree murder. A few days later, represented by a pair of federal public defenders, Jordan appeared before a U. S. Magistrate in Missoula. The judge denied her bail.

     If convicted as charged, Jordan faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. While the federal prosecutor had motive, opportunity and means for murder, the case against this defendant was circumstantial. It would be difficult, in the absence of an eyewitness or confession, for the prosecution to prove the defendant intended to commit murder.

     In March 2014 Jordan Graham Johnson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder following the closing arguments at her trial. The judge sentenced her to 30 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, in handing down his sentence, pointed out that the defendant had initially lied and changed her story about what happened to her husband. Moreover, she never apologized or showed remorse. After admitting her guilt, she claimed she felt "physically ill" at the prospect of having sex with her husband. She told a friend she was afraid of what he might expect her to do.

     Jordan Johnson, shortly after being sentenced, requested a new trial on the grounds that her plea agreement had been "illusory" and a "hollow formality." Judge Molloy denied her motion. 

The Slenderman Stabbing Case

     On Saturday morning May 31, 2014 a bicyclist in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, came upon a 12-year-old girl lying on the sidewalk. Payton Leutner was bleeding from wounds on her arms, legs and torso. "Please help me," she begged. "I've been stabbed."

     The bicyclist called 911 and Leutner was rushed to Waukesha Memorial Hospital where she was listed in stable condition. A team of surgeons performed laparoscopic surgery on injuries to the victim's liver, pancreas and stomach. According to doctors the victim had been stabbed nineteen times with a large knife.

     To detectives who questioned the victim at the hospital, she identified her attackers as two middle school classmates, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier.

     Two hours after the bicyclist came upon Payton Leutner on the sidewalk, police officers found Geyser and Weier walking near Interstate 94. The twelve-year-olds were still wearing their blood-stained clothing. In one of the girl's purses officers recovered a large, bloody kitchen knife.

     Interviewed at the Waukesha Police Department, Weier and Geyser confessed to stabbing their classmate in the wooded section of a park following a sleep-over at one of the suspect's house. Weier held the victim down while Leutner wielded the knife. They traded jabs by handing the knife back and forth between them. In response to the obvious question of why they had stabbed and almost killed one of their classmates, the girls mentioned a website they visited regularly called Creepypasta Wiki.

     The Internet site in question posted horror stories, gory videos and violent images that featured a fictitious character named Slenderman. A faceless man who wore a dark suit and a full-brim business hat, Slenderman haunted children and those who sought to unmask him. For a website devotee to "climb up to Slenderman's realm," the viewer had to kill someone. It was clear that this website had been the inspiration for the knife attack on Payton Leutner.

     According to Morgan Geyser and Annisa Weier, the stabbing was not a spontaneous assault. The girls had planned to murder Leutner in February 2014. Initially they intended to kill their classmate by placing duct tape over her mouth then stabbing her in the neck while she slept.

     Murder plan B consisted of stabbing the intended victim in a shower stall or bathtub where the victim's blood would flow down a drain. The plan the girls actually executed involved stabbing the victim in the park during a game of hide-and-seek--child's play with a macabre twist.

     On Monday, June 2, 2014, the arraignment judge informed the twelve-year-old suspects they had been charged, as adults with attempted first-degree murder. The judge set each suspect's bond at $500,000. Police officers booked Geyser and Weier into the Waukesha County Jail. Both girls said they regretted the premeditated, ritualistic stabbing of their classmate. They said they were sorry for almost killing her.

     In 2017 Morgan Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder. The judge sentenced her to 40 years in a mental institution. The same year Anissa Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder. The judge sentenced this defendant to 25 years in a mental health facility.

The Gavin Smith Murder Case

     A native of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, Gavin Smith in 1973 graduated from Van Nuys High where the six-foot-six basketball player caught the attention of UCLA's legendary coach John Wooden. Two years later Smith played on the UCLA team that won the NCAA college basketball championship.

     In 1994, following a lackluster career as a television and theatrical film actor, Gavin Smith became a film distribution executive for 20th Century Fox working out of an office in Calabasas, California. He resided with his wife Lisa and their three sons in the West Hills area of the San Fernando Valley.

     By 2010 Gavin Smith was plagued by financial and marital problems. His marriage had gone sour after Lisa became devoutly religious. Following her conversion Gavin began having affairs. He and Lisa purchased their West Hills home when the Los Angeles area real estate market was booming. After the 2008 recession the market value of the dwelling declined significantly. The Smiths ended up owing more on the house than it was worth. The couple wanted to sell the house but couldn't afford the loss.

     Because of the marital disharmony, Gavin, in the spring of 2012 lived with a friend in Oak Park, a community not far from his house in West Hills. At ten at night on May 1, 2012 he drove off in his black 2000 Mercedes-Benz 500E. He did not return.

     At the Oak Park residence Mr. Smith left behind his cellphone, credit cards, a shaving kit and other personal belongings. To investigators this indicated his intention to return to his friend's house. The next day when he didn't show up for work the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office opened a missing person investigation. As the days passed without a sign of Smith or his vehicle, volunteers began handing out flyers. Friends and family also posted a $20,000 reward. The Sheriff's office created a special hotline number for tipsters. None of these efforts bore fruit.

     Investigators learned that Smith had been having an affair with Chandrika Creech, the wife of convicted drug dealer John Creech. On June 8, 2012 deputies searched the Creech home and were seen leaving the dwelling carrying several boxes and a computer. A few days later, in an unrelated case, a judge sentenced John Creech to eight years in prison for selling drugs.

     On March 14, 2013, Lieutenant Dave Dolson of the Sheriff's Office Homicide Bureau held a press conference to announce that the authorities had located Smith's missing Mercedes. The vehicle had been found on February 21, 2013 at a storage facility in the Porter Ranch area of San Fernando Valley. The car contained traces of Mr. Smith's blood and other evidence of foul play. Detectives linked the storage place to a person with close ties to John Creech.

     At a press conference Lieutenant Dolson said, "We believe Gavin Smith was murdered." The detective also named John Creech as a person of interest in the case. Investigators were still looking for Gavin Smith's body.

     In May 2014, two years after Mr. Smith went missing, a Los Angeles County judge ruled him legally deceased.

     On Thursday November 6, 2014, Lieutenant Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles Coroner's Office confirmed that remains found by hikers on October 26 2014 belonged to Gavin Smith. The hikers stumbled across the decomposed body and pieces of clothing in a shallow grave in the desert 70 miles from Los Angeles in Antelope Valley not far from Palmdale, California.

     In January 2015 the police arrested John Creech for Gavin Smith's murder. Creech's attorney said that the two men got into a fight that led to the victim's accidental death.

     According to testimony from the May 2015 grand jury hearing on the case, John Creech ambushed the victim at a lover's lane rendezvous involving Smith and Creech's estranged wife Chandrika Cade. As Creech punched the pinned down Smith, he yelled at Chandrika that she would be next. She fled the scene and took refuge in a nearby house.

     After killing Gavin Smith, John Creech stored the victim's body in the garage of a bodybuilder he knew named Stan McQuary. A few day's later Creech returned to his friend's garage in a rented van used to transport Smith's body to the shallow grave in the desert.

     In September 2017 a jury in Los Angeles found John Creech guilty of voluntary manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to eleven years in prison.

Nathan Dunlap: Saving the Life of a Cold-Blooded Mass Murderer

     In December 1993 a supervisor employed by the Chuck E Cheese family eating place and entertainment center in the suburban city of Aurora, Colorado outside of Denver fired 19-year-old Nathan Dunlap for refusing to work extra hours. The pizza cook told his fellow workers that the boss made a fool of him and that he planned to get even.

     On December 14, 1993 Mr. Dunlap, while playing basketball with friends, said, in reference to his former place of employment that he was going to "kill them all and take the money." Later that day he walked into the Chuck E Cheese establishment and in cold blood shot five employees, killing four of them.

     A jury in 1996 found Nathan Dunlap guilty of four counts of murder. The judge sentenced the convicted killer to death. Three years later the Colorado Supreme Court upheld Dunlap's conviction.

     In early May 2013, after the U. S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dunlap's clemency appeal, an Arapahoe County judge scheduled Dunlap's execution for the week of August 18, 2013. Dunlap would be the first prisoner executed in the state in fifteen years. Friends and relatives of the murdered Chuck E Cheese employees were elated.

     Those who had been waiting twenty years for Dunlap's execution were crestfallen when Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, at a May 22, 2013 press conference, announced that he had granted "Offender No. 89148" a temporary reprieve. (During the news conference Governor Hickenlooper never mentioned Dunlap by name. When asked why, he said, "I don't think he needs any more notoriety.")

     The governor's reprieve guaranteed that Nathan Dunlap would live until January 15, 2015, the last day of Hickenlooper's first term. If he lost his bid for re-election the new governor could let the reprieve stand or go forward with the execution. Mr. Dunlap's fate became a gubernatorial campaign issue.

     In justifying his decision to spare Dunlap's life Hickenlooper rhetorically asked, "Is it just and moral to take this person's life? Is it a benefit to the world?" (A lot of people would answer, "Yes!")

     In reacting publicly to the governor's reprieve, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Braucher said, "There's going to be one person, one person in this system who goes to bed with a smile on his face tonight. And that's Nathan Dunlap. And he's got one person to thank for that smile. That's Governor Hickenlooper."

     The father of one of Dunlap's victims, in speaking to a reporter with the Denver Post, said, "The knife that's been in my back for twenty years was just turned by the governor."

      Governor Hickenlooper was elected to a second term. It was not clear what role the Dunlap reprieve played in that victory,

     In April 2017 a U.S. District Court judge denied the Dunlap legal team the right to lobby Governor Hickenlooper for permanent clemency. The death house defense team wanted to spend $750,000 in taxpayer money to present psychiatric evidence that Dunlap's murders were the result of a traumatic childhood.

    On November 20, 2017 Governor Hickenlooper denied clemency for Nathan Dunlap.

     Colorado governor Jared Polis, in March 2020, signed a bill abolishing the state's death penalty, thus saving Nathan Dunlap's life.

Jeremy Meeks: The Mugshot Model

     In our celebrity driven culture that puts a high premium on good looks, it's not surprising that a young good-looking convicted felon with street gang credentials attracted thousands of adoring fans. Beauty, as they say, is only skin deep. Nevertheless, a lot of beautiful, narcissistic celebrities end up on the pages of People Magazine, one of America's most popular and puerile publications. The overnight fame of a young criminal named Jeremy Ray Meeks is testimony to the power of good looks, the influence of social media and the shallowness of American popular culture.

     Jeremy Meeks could thank police officers in Stockton, California for his sudden fame. On Wednesday, June 18, 2014, pursuant to a joint law enforcement crackdown on street gang activity, officers pulled over Meek's car. A search of the vehicle resulted in the discovery of 9 mm ammunition, an unregistered .45-caliber pistol, a small quantity of marijuana and two handgun magazines. When taken into custody Mr. Meeks was accompanied by a 23-year-old man who, like himself, was on probation.

     A San Joaquin County prosecutor charged Jeremy Meeks with eleven felony counts related to firearms possession, gang membership and probation violations. When someone in the Stockton Police Department posted Meeks' mugshot, the accused gang member with the high cheek bones, chiseled face and striking blue eyes, became an instant media sensation. 

     At his arraignment, the judge posted Meeks' bail at $1 million. While the suspected street gangster cooled his heels in the San Joaquin slammer, someone on Facebook posted his mugshot and created a fan page in his honor. In a matter of days the Facebook page attracted 80,000 "likes," 21,000 comments and 9,500 "shares." Not only that, news outlets like USA Today, TMZ, "Inside Edition" and New York Magazine published his mugshot and featured his story. 

     Jeremy Meeks mother, Katherine Angier, taking advantage of the media frenzy surrounding her outlaw son, set up a fundraising website that featured photographs of him with his 3-year-old son. On the GoFundMe site she addressed the issue of his gang-related tattoos that included an inked teardrop beneath his left eye (a mark that honors a gang killing), the word "Crip" (Crips gang) on his arm and other prominent tattoos on his neck: "He has old tattoos which causes him to be stereotyped. He's my son and he is so sweet. Please help him get a fair trial or else he'll be railroaded."

     By June 21, 2014 Meeks mother had raised $2,000 for his defense.

     So, who was this sweet boy with the gang tattoos and fashion model's face? In 2004, Meeks left prison after serving two years for grand theft. A year later, in Spokane County, Washington, a prosecutor charged him with identify theft in the second-degree for impersonating his brother, Emery Meeks. That prosecutor also charged him with resisting arrest, a count that was later dismissed. When the dust settled in the Washington case he ended up on probation.

     Stockton police and the prosecutor in San Joaquin County, California expressed puzzlement over the Meeks media sensation. I guess these law enforcement practitioners didn't realize that a segment of the American public has always considered the good looking outlaw a romantic figure. 

     In February 2015, after San Joaquin County turned the Meeks case over to the federal authorities, Meeks pleaded guilty to several weapons charges. The federal judge sentenced him to 27 months in prison.

     In March 2016 Meeks was released from Mendota (California) Federal Prison after serving 13 months of his sentence. Over the next few years he became a successful model working for several large fashion houses. In 2017 he began dating Topshop heiress Chloe Green. The couple had a child in May 2018 then separated in August 2019. 

England's Pakistani Men Child Sex Scandal

     In Rotherham, a city of 250,000 in northern England, five men from the Pakistani community were convicted in 2010 of grooming teenage girls for rape. The victims were trafficked across northern England by crews made up of Asian men. The high-profile trials brought to light other child sex exploitation rings run by Pakistani men in the cities of Rochdale, Derby and Oxford.

     English authorities, responding to public pressure in the wake of the trials and accusations, asked Alexis Jay, the former chief social worker for the Scottish government, to investigate the scandal and publish a report on the depth and scope of the criminal operation. She released her report on August 25, 2014.

     Ms. Jay and her investigators determined that from 1997 to 2013, 1,400 girls, some as young as eleven, were sexually assaulted in the massive criminal enterprise. They were gang-raped, beaten and threatened. The author of the report wrote: "There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told someone."

     How could so many girls be exploited by so many men for so long? According to Alexis Jay, "Police regarded these child victims with contempt." Moreover, a good number of these children were known to child protection agencies. Police chiefs, detectives and council members chose to believe the sex was either consensual or the allegations of rape were false. These crime were, according to the report, "effectively suppressed."

     In some instances, parents who tried to rescue their children from the exploitation operators were themselves arrested. (Police bribery was rampant.) In the report, Alexis Jay wrote: "The collective failures of political and police leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual abuse exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham."

     Following the publication of Ms. Jay's shocking report, Roger Stone, the head of the Rotherham City Council resigned. Outraged parents and others called for the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire to step down as well. The commissioner told reporters he had no intention of resigning. No one else in the public sector took responsibility for the scandal, and not one law enforcement official was disciplined. 

     In May 2017, BBC One aired a three-part drama called "Three Girls" that featured three girls from the town of Rochdale who were repeatedly abused by nine Pakistani men who were tried and convicted on rape and related offenses. Their sentences ranged from 16 to 19 years in prison. Later in 2017, "Three Girls" was followed by a BBC documentary on the Rochdale case called "The Betrayed Girls."

     In January 2025 one of the Pakistani sex ring leaders was released from prison before serving his full sentence. 

Workplace Murder-Suicide: The Dangerous Employee

     During the past forty years hundreds of government and private sector employees have gone ballistic and murdered two or more of their fellow workers then killed themselves. While workplace shooting sprees have become relatively common they still produce local headlines and for a few days national television coverage.

     News accounts of these violent outbursts almost always feature the question of why. What motivated the employee to commit mass murder then take his own life? (About 85 percent of these killers are male.) Was the killer mainly motivated by the intent to murder or to commit suicide? If suicide, why the murders? If murder, why the suicide?

     Many workplace killers are disgruntled, revenge-seeking employees with emotional problems and histories of mental illness and violence. The frequency of these blood baths might reflect the deteriorating mental and emotional health of a nation devolving into a culture of violence, materialism and entitlement.

     Employers of these homicidal workers are often accused, after the fact, of lax job applicant screening procedures. This is unfair because under federal law employers are not allowed to ask job seekers all kinds of pertinent questions, including if they have histories of drug abuse, alcoholism or mental illness. Whether or not a job applicant has ever been arrested is, by law, none of the employer's business. All of this information, of course, is relevant to the question of the applicant's fitness and qualifications for employment.

     Employers in workplace shooting cases are usually sued for having failed to recognize and react to signs of future workplace violence. But to be fair, there is no sure-fire way to identify employees who will "go postal." Quite often, employees who have been fired for violent and threatening workplace behavior return to the job sites weeks, months and even years later with murderous and suicidal intentions. There is no way to predict or prevent this type of behavior. Police officers patrol the streets and are present in many public schools, but they are not in homes and places of employment where the real danger lies.

     Lawrence Jones of Fresno, California is a good example of someone an employer shouldn't hire. The 42-year-old, since his early 20s, had been in and out of prison for armed robbery, assault, auto theft and gun-related crimes. He spent most of  his adult life behind bars. In September 2011, three months after his last parole, Mr. Jones began working at Apple Valley Farms, a chicken processing plant in Fresno. He was hired because there aren't many people willing to work in such places. For fourteen months hr did his job, then something happened that set him off.

     At eight-thirty on the morning of November 6, 2012, four hours into his shift, Lawrence Jones walked up to 32-year-old Salvador Diaz who was working in the grinding room. Because of the sound of the machinery, and the fact employees wore noise-protection gear, no one heard Jones shoot Mr. Diaz in the back of the head with his 4-shot .357 Derringer pistol.

     After murdering Mr. Diaz execution-style, Jones entered the deboning room of the plant and executed Manual Verdin, 34. Jones then wounded 28-year-old Arnuflo Conrriguez and shot Fatima Lopez in the back as she fled the scene. Jones pressed the muzzle of his Derringer to the back of Estevan Catono's head and pulled the trigger. Fortunately for the 21-year-old intended victim the gun was out of rounds.

     After killing two of his fellow employees, and wounding two others, Jones walked out of the plant, re-loaded the handgun and fatally shot himself in the head.

     Investigators did not have a motive for the killings, nor did they know if these victims had been targeted. In all probability these workers were simply unlucky by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

     Fatima Lopez was treated at a local hospital and released. Arnuflo Conrriguez, for awhile in serious condition at Fresno's Community Regional Medical Center, recovered.

Murdered in Abu Dhabi

     In October 2014 the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Gulf Arab nation of United Arab Emerates (UAE), alerted Americans in the country to a posting on a jihadist web forum that called for "lone wolf" attacks on American teachers working in international schools. Abu Dhabi, an international business and banking hub that featured huge skyscrapers and glitzy shopping malls, had a low violent crime rate and was considered one of the safest big cities in the world.

     Ibolya Ryan, Hungarian-born and raised and educated in Romania as a kindergarten teacher, came to the United States in the 1990s. In 1997 while living with her husband in Denver, Colorado she took a job as a special needs teacher and enrolled in a course on how to teach English as a foreign language. In 2001 she returned to Hungary then later accepted a teaching position in Austria.

     In 2014 Ibolya Ryan was living in Abu Dhabi and teaching at a large international school 35 miles from the downtown section of the city. The 47-year-old mother of three had divorced her husband and was residing in the UAE with her twin 11-year-old sons.

     On Monday December 1, 2014, while shopping at a high-end mall on Reem Island, a newly developed area of the city that was home to thousands of Western expatriates, Ibolya Ryan entered the ladies restroom. Mall surveillance camera footage showed a person fully covered in a black full-length gown called an abaya and a headscarf or hijab following Ryan into the public restroom. This person was later seen leaving the mall in a hurry.

     Officers with the Criminal Investigation Department of the Abu Dhabi Police, when they responded to the shopping mall restroom, found a large bloody kitchen knife with a blue handle and a trail of blood leading to one of the stalls. That's where they found Ibolya Ryan, the victim of a vicious knifing.

     Shortly after being rushed to a nearby hospital Ryan died from her wounds. Her sons were placed in the care of Abu Dhabi officials until their father came from abroad to pick them up.

     On Thursday December 4, 2014 UAE police officers raided an apartment in Abu Dhabi and took an Emirati woman named Ala'a Badr Abdullah Al-Hashemi  into custody. The authorities believed this murder suspect had earlier planted a homemade bomb at the doorstep of an Egyptian-American physician. The doctor's son found the bomb and called the police. Bomb experts came to the scene and defused the device.

     The day following the suspect's arrest a spokesperson for the Abu Dhabi police said investigators believed Ryan's cold-blooded killing was an act of terrorism committed by a self-radicalized terrorist who acted alone.

     Ibolya Ryan's murder destroyed the sense of security expatriates in Abu Dhabi once enjoyed.

     The U.A.E. authorities moved quickly to try Ms. Hashemi. The prosecutor described the killing as an "Islamic extremism terror attack." In June 2015 the defendant was convicted as charged and sentenced to death. On July 13, 2015 Hashemi was executed by firing squad in Dubai, U.A.E.

     Attorneys for the executed woman said she suffered from chronic mental illness. Court-appointed doctors, however, determined she was fit to stand trial and be executed.