Thornton P. Knowles On His One Childhood Vacation

When I grew up, very few lower middle-class people in West Virginia went places on vacation. When I was twelve, three years before my father went out to our barn to hang himself, we drove up to Niagara Falls, New York. We spent one night on the American side in a five-bucks-a-day place called Al's Cozy Cabins. No TV, no air conditioning, and no shower. Not too cozy. Rather than stand around looking at a lot of water falling off a cliff, I wanted to go to the local wax museum. My father said no, we needed that money for gas. I don't know what I expected to see up there, but found the whole experience tedious. That trip was our families' first and last, and I'm still not a vacations person. I guess I never learned how to relax away from home.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On Wiseguy Nicknames

In the heyday of the Mafia, a lot of wiseguys were given colorful nicknames. For example, there was Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo, Al "Scarface" Capone, Tony "Three Fingers" Rizzocascio, George "Butterass" DeCicco, Peter "Horseface" Licavoli, and Sam "The Plumber" DeCavalconte. If it ever becomes custom to nickname the wiseguys of academia, we might get: Professor Monty "Man Bun" Lawrence, Dean Gibson "Gobbledygook" Sinclair, Associate Professor Peter "Power Point" Lucas, Dr. Henry "Hypothesis" Higgins, Assistant Professor "I Want Tenure" Thomas, and Chancellor Miles "Mission Statement" Barnes.

Thornton P. Knowles

Pedophilia: America's Hidden Crime Wave

     Anyone who follows the news regularly comes across stories about boys who have been repeatedly sexually molested by relatives, neighbors, mothers' boyfriends, teachers, priests, ministers, Boy Scout leaders, coaches, and youth counselors. These accounts tend to have the same narrative arc: following years of suspicious behavior and rumors of molestation, someone finally comes forward to report the crimes. After a plea bargained sentence, families of the victims sue the pedophile's school, church or institution, and if the offender is a public employee, the city or the state. Following this, local politicians and others call for measures that will protect future victims. But it never stops. Why?

     While we are familiar with the general profile of the adult male who preys on boys under thirteen, we have no idea how many of them are out there working in our schools, juvenile facilities, churches, and daycare centers. Dr. Gene Abel, an expert in this field, has estimated that between 1 and 5 percent of our adult population sexually molests children. If this is true, there are hundreds of thousands of them among us victimizing millions of youngsters. Because pedophiles are serial offenders who cannot be cured or rehabilitated, the victimization rates for this type of offense are through the roof. According to studies, before being caught for the first time, the average pedophile assaults 120 boys. Once released from prison, a vast majority of them reoffend. Since only a small percentage of pedophiles end up in prison, who knows how many children are victimized during the sex life of just one of these criminals?

     Although conscientious parents teach their children to be wary of strangers, most cases of pedophilia involve preditors who are either related to or acquainted with the boy. The most vulnerable targets are "at-risk" youths from dysfunctional families.

     Pedophiles flourish in our society because, in matters of criminal justice, we are taught to be careful with our accusations. No one wants to be part of a "witch hunt." Moreover, if you make a false accusation, you can be sued. Besides pedophiles, America is home to a lot of lawyers. According to the FBI, only between 1 to 5 percent of child molestation crimes are reported to the police. I believe it's more like one percent. According to one study of 255 cases involving students sexually molested by their teachers, in only one percent of these cases did the school district superintendent attempt to revoke the offenders' teaching licenses.

     Pedophilia is a crime of stealth, single-minded and clever offenders, frightened victims, and, on the part of people who should intercede on the child's behalf, denial. Pedophiles are often charming, hard-working employees who have ingratiated themselves into the community. Notwithstanding the increased awareness of this crisis, it will not go away. Unfortunately, there are certain social problems that cannot be fixed by a criminal justice system.

Thornton P. Knowles On How To Get Your Name On A College Or University Building

Yearly donations to America's cash-greedy colleges and universities is in the tens of billions. So, what do the big donors get in return for their money? They acquire paid-for immortality until even bigger donors knock their names off the dorms, lecture halls, cafeterias, football fields, gyms, classrooms, and research labs. The more prestigious the institution, the more money a rich narcissist has to fork out. There have been colleges and universities willing, for the right price, to change the name of the entire institution. In a small town, a local resident who had made it into major league baseball might get a street named after him. While getting a street in your name may not be a big deal, at least it's free and based on achievement beyond being wealthy. I can foresee the day when colleges and universities are so desperate for money, they will offer to name campus trees after people. The bigger the tree, the bigger the donation. So where is all this mortality-for-sale going? Here's a guess: The day will come when most college degrees are so devalued, rich donors will start paying to get their names off campus structures and trees. When that happens, maybe the names of rich narcissists will start appearing on trade school buildings.

Thornton P. Knowles

Beware of the Naked Guy

     In recent years, dozens of naked men high on meth, PCP, synthetic marijuana, or bath salts violently assaulted, murdered, and in a few cases, ate part of their victims. These hallucinating assailants shed their clothing because the designer drugs caused their bodies to abnormally heat-up. Police officers, after their taser guns failed to bring these rampaging, drugged-up zombies under control, had to shoot a few of them.

Abraham Luna: The Nude Nutcase From Tarpon Springs

     Police officers in Tarpon Springs, a Florida town of 23,000 in Pinellas County not far from Tampa, received a strange call at 6:50 Monday morning, November 26, 2012. Residents of a neighborhood near the Tarpon Springs Golf Course had seen a man running about with nothing on but a pair of construction boots. (The nude man was later identified as 30-year-old Abraham Luna.) By the time patrol officers rolled into the area, Luna, a resident of Tarpon Springs, was gone.

     The following day, at 4:17 in the morning, a Tarpon Springs officer tried to pull over a nude man driving a white van at high rates of speed on U.S. Route 19. The officer discontinued his pursuit of Luna when the van crossed into Pasco County. As a result, Luna escaped arrest.

     Fifteen minutes after eluding arrest in Pinellas County, Abraham Luna pulled into a 7-Elven store along Route 19 in Holiday, Florida. The nude man walked into the store, and without provocation, started shoving, scratching, and punching a male employee. "What's wrong with you?" the clerk exclaimed.

     "You asked for it," Luna replied.

     When a second 7-Eleven employee told Luna to leave, the naked assailant strolled out of the store and climbed back into his van. But instead of pulling back onto the highway, Luna gunned the vehicle toward the store, stopping just before crashing into the building. He next got out of the van, and tried to open the door of a car that belonged to one of the store clerks. Unable to steal the employee's vehicle, Luna climbed back into his van and drove north in the southbound lane.

     The brief police pursuit of Luna on Route 19 ended when the van sideswiped a patrol car driven by a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy. Luma jumped out of the van and ran, but was quickly apprehended by a deputy who jolted him with a taser device.

     The Pinellas County prosecutor threw the book at Luna, charging him with aggravated assault, aggravated battery of a law enforcement officer, reckless driving, aggravated fleeing to elude arrest, driving with a revoked license, and violation of his probation.

     Luna, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2007, was incarcerated in the Pinellas County Jail in Land O' Lakes, Florida. After his arrest, Luna explained his nudity to reporters by saying it was a shock tactic that gave him an advantage in fights.  Fortunately, the tactic of being nude did not protect him against being shocked by the police.

Coco Bennett: Nude Man With Samurai Sword

     The San Jose police, on New Year's Day 2013 at eight in the morning, received a call regarding a man, later identified as 29-year-old Coco Bennett, carrying an assault rifle in a residential neighborhood. Bennett climbed into a pickup and drove out of the area before the police arrived.

     San Jose officers came upon Bennett's truck a few miles from where he had been seen with the assault rifle. As they approached his truck, the nude driver exited the vehicle carrying a large, samurai sword. "You're going to have to kill me," Bennett said.

     Instead of shooting Bennett, the officers at the scene called in San Jose's Crisis Intervention Team. Following a two-hour stand-off involving 32 police officers, the naked man ran toward a nearby fence. When he tried to climb the barrier, Bennett fell and dropped his sword. Officers took this opportunity to take him into custody. From Bennett's truck officers recovered his AR-15 assault rifle. Had he come out of his truck armed with the AR-15, Mr. Bennett would have been shot to death.

     After being treated at a local hospital for minor injuries, Bennett was taken to the Santa Clara County Jail.

The Naked Connecticut Church Intruder

     The day after Coco Bennett's arrest in San Jose, a nude Gary Pohronezny burst into the St. James Catholic Church in Killingly, Connecticut. The 41-year-old from Brooklyn, New York barged into the church at one-thirty in the afternoon, interrupting a religious service attended by adults and several school children. A member of the congregation called 911, and after a brief scuffle, officers took the naked man into custody.

     Charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with police, Pohronezny ended up in a hospital in Putnam, Connecticut where he underwent psychiatric evaluation.

The Naked Home Intruder

     A Miami homeowner, on January 3, 2013, was awakened at five o'clock in the morning by the sound of his barking dog. The man causing the commotion, a naked home invader named Jeffrey Delice, was choking the pet. When the 20-year-old intruder tried to bite and choke the resident of the home, the homeowner shot him in the foot. Delice, high on drugs, was charged with a variety of offenses including burglary, assault, and resisting arrest.

     Note: Since I couldn't find any news updates on any of these men, I assume these cases were handled outside of the criminal justice system.

Most Murder Cases Aren't That Interesting

Sherlock Holmes would have no interest whatever in most of the 22,076 murders reported in the United States in 1994. [That's double today's murder rate.] Only 20 cases involved poison or explosives. Only 22 were by narcotics overdose. Some 78 murders were classified as involving rape. Just 15 involved prostitution and commercialized vice. Sniper attacks make good television, but only two such homicides occurred in the United States in 1994. About 1.7 percent of the murders involved romantic triangles. Although 1,157 of the murders were classified as juvenile gang killings…the police often overdo their coding of gang involvement. Thus, if a store owner gets shot in a robbery and the offender seemed to be a gang member, many police departments count that incident as a gang murder rather than something more plain. Gang members may be highly criminal, but that does not mean that most of the crimes they commit are of, by, or for the gang itself. Members do most crime for themselves.

Marcus Felson, Crime & Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998

Thornton P. Knowles On Stag Flicks, Pornography, and The Speed Of Cultural Change

I remember when filmed pornography wasn't mainstream entertainment. Now they're called adult films. Back in the day, a short, beer-bellied guy with greasy hair and a neck tattoo would come to the party with his reel and projector. The grainy black and white film usually featured a middle-aged, paunchy woman having sex with a masked, hairy man. My first and last stag film viewing made me feel like a peeping Tom. Maybe that was because pornography itself was forbidden, clandestine and against the law. The way it was presented was also obscene. Perhaps the most shocking feature of the modern era is the speed and severity of cultural change. It's disturbing to think that what is now generally considered to be socially taboo could someday become mainstream, acceptable behavior.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On Small Town America

By choice, I've never lived in the city. I wouldn't like the noise, the smell, the cost, the traffic, the pollution, the crime and the inconvenience of urban living. I like the less hectic, slower pace of a small community and consider myself fortunate to have enjoyed the benefits of small town life while it still exists. The day will come when America's small towns will fall into decay or be consumed by suburban sprawl. I'm glad I won't be around for that.

Thornton P. Knowles

Dr. Marian Antoinette Patterson: The Employer From Hell

     In 2018, Dr. Marian Antoninette Patterson, a 1995 graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, practiced medicine at the Family Medical Practice in Valdosta, Georgia. In February 2018, the Georgia Composite Medical Board suspended Dr. Patterson after members of her staff complained of being threatened by her of physical violence.

     According to one of Dr. Patterson's employees, the doctor threatened to cut this employee from her throat to her private parts. Another member of the doctor's staff reported the doctor's threat to cut off her head and roll it down the hallway, but not before she brought the employee's children in to witness the beheading. When terrified employees said they were calling 911, Doctor Patterson allegedly promised that they would be dead before the arrival of the police.

     An employee of the Family Medical Practice alleged that Dr. Patterson kept her from leaving the office by grabbing her arm. Dr. Patterson was also accused of throwing a reflex hammer at an employee. The doctor also, according a complainant, pulled her medical diploma off the wall and stomped on it.

     On March 5, 2018, the Georgia Medical Board suspended Dr. Patterson's license to practice.

     Valdosta police officers, on April 25, 2018, booked Marian Antoinette Patterson into the Lowndes County Jail on three counts of terroristic threats and one count of false imprisonment. Shortly after being taken into custody, the suspect posted her bail and was released. 

The Dr. Michael J. Davidson Murder-Suicide Case

     Dr. Michael J. Davidson, the director of Endovascular Cardiac surgery at Boston's Brigham and Woman's Hospital, after graduating from Princeton University in 1992, earned his medical degree from Yale University. He interned at Duke University Medical Center and in 2006 joined the staff at Brigham. The 44-year-old cardiovascular surgeon also taught at the Harvard Medical School.

     The doctor and his wife Terri, a plastic surgeon, lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts with their three children. Dr. Davidson had celebrated his 40th birthday by running in the Boston Marathon.

     Stephen Pasceri, 55, lived in a two-story colonial style home in Millbury, Massachusetts with his 63-year-old wife Teresa. He worked for the Waters Corporation, a company in Milford that manufactured specialized laboratory equipment. Known in the community as the "Church Guy" because he regularly knocked on doors to raise money for the Millbury Federated Church, Mr. Pasceri was considered a friendly, happy-go-lucky man. He and his wife had raised four children.

     On November 15, 2014, Mr. Pasceri's mother, Marguerite E. Pasceri, passed away after being treated at Brigham and Woman's Hospital. According to reports, Mr. Pasceri blamed Dr. Davidson for her death.

     At eleven in the morning of Tuesday January 20, 2015, armed with a .40-caliber pistol he was licensed to carry, Mr. Pasceri walked into the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center located on the second floor of the building across the street from the hospital's main entrance. He asked a member of the staff if he could speak to Dr. Davidson.

     A few minutes after Mr. Pasceri entered the Cardiovascular Center, following a loud exchange of words, Stephen Pasceri pulled out his firearm and shot Dr. Davidson twice at close range. He then used the gun to end his own life.

     At ten-forty-five that night, Dr. Davidson, after undergoing emergency surgery, died from his wounds.

     Dr. Davidson's sudden, unexpected death at the hands of an unlikely killer sent shock waves through Boston's medical community and stunned people who knew Mr Pasceri. Because hospital shootings are relatively rare, the hospital's entrances do not feature metal detectors or security personnel to screen visitors and staff who might be armed.