OMG. You haven't heard? You haven't heard that the uber gossip blogger to end all uber gossip blogging maven Perez (Mario Lavandeira) Hilton allegedly had his clock cleaned for being... well, being Perez? Where the hell have you been? Oh, I forgot. Some people have real lives.
Perez Hilton claimed early today that he'd been - and this a direct quote from Hilton's Twitter acccount - "assaulted by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and his security guards." [Emphasis mine.]
I think all the bullshit drama really began here:
Screencap of Perez Hilton's tweet about Fergie
Sometime on the evening of June 20, Perez had an encounter with Fergie of Black Eyed Peas fame. It did not, by Hilton's own account, go well. [Insert that cool Law & Order sound effect here.]
Will.i.am picks up the thread here:
Okay, so are you kids keeping score? Will.i.am stated that he was upset with Hilton for whatever Hilton said during his "moment" with Fergie and he called Hilton out for it. Then, by his own admission, Perez Hilton loudly called Will.i.am a "faggot." Hilton later confirmed this in an interview with the Associated Press.
Then someone unloaded on the blogger. That someone may have actually been Black Eyed Peas tour manager Polo Molina. Molina has been charged with hitting Hilton and will be back in court on August 5.
So, essentially, Perez Hilton was being... Perez Hilton, and a celebrity called him on it. Hilton didn't like that and responded pretty much as you'd expect, if you've ever read his site. He used a gay slur in the process, which I guess he thought was just fine since he's openly, famously gay. Anyway, one of the celebrity's people may have gotten in on the action, and that was where a crime was allegedly committed.
No one came out smelling like a rose, in the end. It seemed a little small of Will.I.am, a musician whose overall public profile is positive, to even bother with talking to a gossip blogger, even one as famous as Perez Hilton. But Hilton's tweeting of the aftermath struck many as just bizarre. And by many, I mean the unfiltered masses on Twitter. Today "Perez Hilton" has been top trending topic on Twitter, alongside subjects of actual import, such as the unfolding events in Iran.
Will.i.am looked a little petty for bothering, Perez Hilton looked like he was in it for the drama, Polo Molina looked at the desk sergeant and said he was turning himself in. No one wins in this conflict. No one.
CBS report about Markoff's arrest, containing the inexplicably ubiquitous 'profiler' Pat Brown, to boot!
I think the only way I'm going to keep crime blogging and keep my sanity - what's left of it - is if I just write what I'm thinking. I haven't always done that on my crime blogs. I've certainly done it elsewhere, but the overall subject matter here is so serious - and I am frequently not very serious - that I've worked hard to keep a line between my inner dialogue and what I actually publish here. I've done this so as not to seem disrespectful of the subject matter, for the most part.
That's too much work.
So here goes - I'm updating you about Phil Markoff, the guy who apparently owns the term "Craigslist killer," even though he hasn't been convicted of anything, but I will be very frank: I fucking hate this story. If I never had to write another word about Markoff, it would be too soon. It's the seedy underbelly of it all that gets to me, I guess.
But I covered the story heavily when he was first arrested, complete with exclusives, so I feel duty-bound to report to you that ABC reported that Markoff, looking every inch the yuppie med student he was prior to his arrested, "SHOUTED" his not guilty plea in a Massachusetts courtroom yesterday. Because shouting shows that you really, really mean it, I guess.
What do I think of Markoff? I have no idea. I know I uncovered plenty of evidence that he might be leading a decidedly creepy double-life, but double lives do not a killer make. Still, the evidence so far is pretty compelling (surveillance video, etc), and it just doesn't look good for choirboy/med student sex addict Markoff.
Facebook pages, as we all know, will one day save the world and all the innocent baby seals, etc. If Markoff is convicted, expect a "Phil Markoff was Railroaded and it's all Obama's Fault" Facebook page to go up post-haste, as well.
Have you ever watched those shiny, happy folks on your local morning newscasts and wondered what's really going on between them? Affairs, perhaps, or at least some enmity? Well, I certainly have, but then again, I'm kind of geared to ask such questions. That's why the unfolding story of the morning team at WXOW in La Crosse, WI is interesting, to me.
Zach Brown
It's not even clear that morning meteorologist Zach Brown actually did anything criminal. But he damn sure is being accused of doing something creepy, to the degree that his AM broadcasting partner, Amy Dupont, has reportedly filed a restraining order against the weather dude. From La Crosse talk radio station WIZM:
Channel 19 morning news anchor Amy Dupont has been receiving nasty emails for about a year now. Never threatening, but harassing, with comments derogatory about her, and her on-air work. After putting up with the nasty comments for awhile, she searched the name of the person who signed them. And the name was that of a registered sex offender. That was when Dupont got the police involved. They subpoenaed the IP address of the computer from where the mean-spirited emails originated. And they discovered the source of those emails was not a registered sex offender, but in fact came from an internet address registered to her partner on WXOW's morning news program, Zach Brown.
It's almost like the e-mails were 'coming from inside THE HOUSE.'
WIZM reports that there will be a hearing on June 23 over Dupont seeking a restraining order against Brown. The radio station also reported that WXOW's website no longer contained any trace of Brown having worked there, but that's not exactly true, at least at the moment. Brown did, however, have a Twitter account that has apparently been deleted. His last tweet was on June 11, and directed at Al Roker - he apparently had some questions about surgery Roker had some 7 years ago (is that when Roker had gastric bypass?).
It may be that because the e-mails didn't contain directly threatening text that Brown won't face any kind criminal charges. Still - if he really did send the messages in question and deliberately chose the name of a registered sex offender to do it, how freaking creepy is that?
Next time you tilt back your morning cup as you're watching your own local newsfolks bantering playfully on the flatscreen in the breakfast nook, ask yourself which one of those smiley people seems most likely to one day just lose it. Or don't. I don't actually wish my method of waking each day on anyone.
The Ted Bundy to felines in the Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay neighborhoods around Miami, FL may have been arrested. The Miami-Dade States Attorney told local media that Tyler Weinman, age 18, was arrested Sunday and charged with 19 counts of animal cruelty and 19 counts of improperly disposing of an animal body. The cherry on top of Weinman's crap Sunday was 4 counts of burglary.
Investigators have been looking for the psycho who killed nearly 30 cats in Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay for the past month or so. The killer wasn't just content with slaying the animals he caught - he sometimes used a sharp instrument to flay them as well, doing odd things such as removing the cat's fur.
There was a reward out for the killer in Palmetto Bay, but it's too early to tell if a friend may have ratted Weinman out to the cops for the money.
Tyler Weinman/MySpace
Just as you'd expect, Tyler Weinman had a MySpace page or two. One was for music, but he'd not used it much. The other was his personal profile and he hadn't signed in since May. It'd be nice to tell you either page portrayed a raving psycho in the making, but that's not the case. Photos and comments gave the impression he thought he was a self-conscious clown, but you could probably say that about a million teenage boys.
That's what so scary, if the police are right about Tyler Weinman. He may have seemed like a pretty normal kid.
Based on some comments I read on the AP article linked at the beginning of this post, it seems like some folks don't get why the terror caused by these cat killings and mutilations was serious.
The cat killings indicated someone without a conscience and possessed of a bloodlust was at work in those South Florida neighborhoods. It's a psychological truism: anyone who can kill a pet without compunction is a good candidate to move on to humans, eventually. Behavioral profiling long ago identified three key, aberrant behaviors in youth that may predict a serial killer: bedwetting, arson, and cruelty to animals.
I don't know if Tyler Weinman had the other two, but if he is indeed the guy who went around slicing up the beloved pets of Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay over the last month or more, he is potentially a very dangerous person.
Here's the rub: if convicted of these crimes, Weinman may not face that much prison time. Animal cruelty is a 3rd degree fine, punishable by a 4-figure fine and at most, 5 years in prison. Burglary charges may, in the end, put him away for a longer period of time.
Just in case someone takes Weinman's MySpace offline, here's a link to a copy on Scribd.com.
Fascinating unedited FBI video of Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller interview.
Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, known to many Americans as Clark Rockefeller, has been found guilty in a Boston courtroom of kidnapping his daughter. From the AP/MSNBC:
Rockefeller, whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, snatched his daughter during a supervised visit last July. He also was charged with two assaults on a social worker and with giving a false name to police. The jury found him guilty of one of the assault counts, but acquitted him on the other and on a charge of giving a false name to police.
Gerhartsreiter could face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced later today.
But we're not done with "Rockefeller" yet. Los Angeles authorities would still like to know about his relationship with Jon and Linda Sohus, a young couple who vanished in the 80s after taking Gerhartsreiter on as a boarder in their Southern California guest house.
WHY DON'T WE SEE ONE WORD OF THIS IN ANY OF THE MEDIA?
Love him or hate him, we all remember how the press went to great lengths to find out every move that President Bush made ... finally unable to come up with anything factual, so they created it! When their accusations were proven empty, they refused to retract one word of the fraud they perpetrated on the American people.
Dan Rather lost his job over fraudulent documents, because common people like you & me reached out and ripped CBS to pieces. They couldn't stand the loss of sponsors OR viewers!
The same Media went to great lengths to scandalize & destroy Sarah Palin. She maintains a 91% approval rating among voters from all parties, thanks to the Internet and investigative journalists who don't work for the mainstream media.
NOW ------- The Supreme Court has scheduled a Conference for Dec 5th about Obama's
U. S. Citizenship. STILL, not a word about any of this from the Media. If it were not for the Internet and talk radio, American citizens would become the servants of a dishonest & conspiratorial Media.
THINK ABOUT IT. IT DIDN'T USED TO BE THIS WAY! How much longer are we going to sit on our hands & say not a word?
AND DON'T THINK THE MEDIA SIMPLY DOESN'T KNOW - THEY ARE GETTING POUNDED WITH EMAILS ABOUT IT!!!
Obama could not get a simple security clearance with the information the government has on him ---- NOBODY COULD!
NOW he is privy to every top secret America has!
What is going on??? WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY - ARE YOU OUT THERE???
Submitted by: James W. von Brunn
UPDATE
CNN is reporting that a guard struck by gunfire today at the Holocaust Museum has died. His name was Stephen Tyrone Johns.
Original Post
The following is from the Washington Post: "A security guard and two other people were shot today inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington, authorities said." Live reports on cable news indicate a sudden attack that drew an immediate response from museum security guards.
One witness interviewed on CNN described a guard shot in the back and bleeding on the floor. US Park Police Public Information Officer David Schlosser said in a press conference that a man entered the museum armed with a "long gun" around 10 minutes till 1. A security guard confronted the man and the armed man opened fire. Two other security guards returned fire. Both the guard and gunman are in the hospital, their conditions are unknown at this time.
The London Times has reported that the shooter was 89-year-old avowed white supremacist James W. Von Brunn. Von Brunn had connections to anti-government and hate groups and wrote quite a bit. Some work authored by Von Brunn about the "Jew Conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool" can be found at HolyWesternEmpire.org. From the beginning of Von Brunn's book promoted on that site, just a sample of his brand of hate:
The purpose of this book is to present to WHITE YOUTH factual information conventionally
James W. Von Brunn/ArsenalofHyprocrisy.com
suppressed or distorted by the mass media, and denied them by schools and universities -- which are forced to promulgate the Marxist line or lose their government subsidies. Appearing throughout the text are quotes from world authorities whose credentials appear in the bibliography. Upon reading TOB SHEBBE GOYIM HAROG! (KILL THE BEST GENTILES!) you will understand that -- despite loud protests of denial -- an age old CONSPIRACY does exist to destroyWestern Civilization. At this moment we are engaged in a deadly war with the HISTORIC ENEMY to determine whether or not our Nation will endure. We are losing that war because an Iron Curtain of censorship has descended over the landscape abrogating the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Without Freedom of Speech our system of government cannot function. The hour is late. You and your family are in grave danger. We will present the FACTS then discuss what actions must be taken. Best wishes, James W. von Brunn Post Office Box 2821 Easton, Maryland 21601 8 June 1999 (Remember the U.S.S. Liberty.
Von Brunn was once called a "White Racialist Treasure" by posters on the white supremacist website Stormfront.org. According to several sources, Von Brunn wrote a great deal for ArsenalofHypocrisy.com. Check out his work here. A sample, from a post Von Brunn wrote in September, 2008:
JEWS ARE PROUD TO BE CALLED BIG GODDAMN LIARS.
JEWS profit extremely well within Aryan nations where LYING is considered DIShonorable. JEWS are no different than card-sharks playing poker at a PTA meeting,Edit Entry - True Crime Report | Movable Type Enterprise or with a Sunday-school class . Guess who ends up with all the chips.
YOU PLAY BY ONE SET OF RULES, JEWS BY ANOTHER. IN ALL THINGS.
And so on. He's pretty predictable.
Von Brunn was quite the Internet Troll, on the whole. Using the e-mail address vonbrunn@goeaston.net, he went after many targets, not just Jews alone. Google, for instance. Someone helpfully recorded some of Von Brunn's thoughts about the evils of Google at - where else? - Stormfront.org:
From: "James Von Brunn" <vonbrunn@goeaston.net>
Subject: GOOGLE Origins.
GOOGLE was thought up in 1995 as a research project Ph.D. candidates Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University. Brin was born in Moscow and came to the US at age six, along with the 800,000 other Russian Jews who flooded into the US under the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan, to University of Michigan Professors Carl and Gloria Page. Sergey's father Michael was a Professor at University of Maryland, and mother Eugenia also was a researcher there. All have a great sense of humor, as their web postings (above) reflect (click image for full picture) I ATTENDED a conference in San Francisco in 2000, on Web directories and search engines. One of the founders of Google was there, Sergey Brin (a Russian Jew). His partner Larry Page is also Jewish, I suspect. And they were funded by Jews. "The growth of Google Early investors also quickly saw the promise of this new search technology. After just 30 minutes of discussion and a brief demo, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and current vice president at Cisco Systems, wrote a check on the spot for $100,000."And, "By June 1999, Google had gained momentum as a viable startup, capturing headlines and attention in an already crowded industry. Venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital invested an additional $25 million." What is surprising is not their pro-Israel, anti-truth bias, but rather that it has taken so long for their true colours to be manifested.
This wasn't the first time Von Brunn went to DC to make some sort of statement through any means necessary. In 1981, the then-61-year-old Von Brunn was convicted in the District of Columbia Superior Court of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve.
We're moving into a dreadful new phase of American history - when the hate-filled lone wolves all begin charging out of the woodwork to make their own blood-soaked statements.
Sometimes it's not that hard to figure out the stories that may top the news tomorrow. This will likely be one of them.
As you can see in the KATU story above, two women met in Tigard, Oregon, possibly through Craigslist (countdown to this being referred to as another "Craigslist murder" begins now). One of the women, 21-year-old Heather Snively, was pregnant. The other, 27-year-old Korena Roberts, was not. But Roberts had been telling people she was.
When all was said and done, the very-preggers Heather was dead and stuffed in a crawlspace beneath Roberts's kitchen and her male child was dead at the hospital, where Korena Roberts tried to claim the baby as her own. Police have yet to detail how Roberts may have gotten the baby from the younger woman, but it's a little too easy to read between the lines.
This isn't the first story of its kind, but we all hope it is the last.
I can believe that the pair may have become acquainted via Craigslist. Heather Megan Snively, using her phone number and her Yahoo account, heathermpopp@yahoo.com, used Craigslist quite a bit. This Google search gives you some idea as to how often she posted items for sale, as well as free giveaways. Most of the postings have expired, but when they were crawled by Google, Heather Snively's posts showed up on Craigslist pages associated with cities in both Maryland and Oregon.
This appears to be Heather Snively's Photobucket account. Viewing it knowing her fate is incredibly sad. Some of her most recent photos were of baby clothes.
Other sites have snarked about Korena Roberts's weight and her utterly insane-looking mugshot, but there's no snark here. If Roberts is guilty of the crime alleged, she is either utterly insane, or a monster.
When you blog about crime, saying a story sounds like it could have been pulled out of a movie script becomes pretty cliche after a while. Then there are stories like the arrest of Los Angeles Detective Stephane Ilene Lazarus for a murder committed in 1986, which send people like me scrambling for new ways to say it sounds like something out of detective fiction. Because dammit, it just does.
From the LA Times:
Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, 49, was arrested this morning at 8 while working at Parker Center, the LAPD's downtown headquarters. Police allege that Lazarus beat and fatally shot Sherri Rae Rasmussen, a hospital nursing director, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Rasmussen's was one of those murders that simply had to wait for technology to catch up with it. Catch up it did. Police apparently had what they believed to be the DNA of Rasmussen's killer on file - and a DNA sample surreptitiously taken from Detective Lazarus matched that DNA.
According to the LAT, Lazarus worked a regular patrol beat in the San Fernando Valley for years before joining an LAPD unit tracking stolen art in 2006. Just last month, LA Weekly profiled Lazarus and her partner, Det. Don Hrycyk. The Weekly published a photo of the detectives in this post about Lazarus's arrest, which the Weekly aptly termed "a shocker."
There is no sign at the moment that Lazarus was ever anything but a good cop. She was a D.A.R.E. training officer in 1990, when she spoke to the Los Angeles Daily News while visiting her old junior high. Five years later Lazarus was the treasurer for Los Angeles Women Police Officer's Association and again received mention in the Daily News for her part in a fund-raising effort aimed at establishing reliable, 24-hour childcare for parents working in Los Angeles law enforcement.
Then in 2000, a Stephanie Lazarus-Young was interviewed by the Ventura County Star. She was a cop the same age as the detective arrested today, but also a private investigator and owner of Unique Investigations. Lazarus had decided to, in the words of Star reporter S.L. Salamone, "give back to the community" by offering free Child ID kits.
The Star article described Lazarus as "bubbly and vivacious" and quoted her saying she'd originally "wanted to be a lawyer." Lazarus became a cop instead, and Salamone wrote that "her life was forever changed."
You have to wonder, if the DNA match in this case holds true, how Stephanie Lazarus spent so many years after the murder of Sherri Rae Rasmussen dealing with what must have been going on inside of her. Moreover, did she see each new development in forensic science and wonder if this was the test that would finally put her on the other side of the bars?
The story of the arrest of Detective Lazarus isn't just disturbing and shocking, it also brings to mind a ton of questions the arrestee may never see fit to answer. It makes you wonder how people can box off parts of their minds, their souls and go on as if nothing happened. The kind of thing you'd wonder, yes, if you discovered this story on an episode of CSI instead of in the pages of the Los Angeles Times.
The story seems like a throwback to the Cold War era: an American couple arrested by federal authorities and accused of spying on the U.S. for a communist country. But the couple in question are in custody right now. U.S. officials believe Dr. Walter Kendall Myers Jr. and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been spying for the Cuban government for 3 decades.
The following are excerpts from the Dept. of Justice press release regarding the couples' arrest:
An indictment and criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charge Walter Kendall Myers, 72, a.k.a. "Agent 202," and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, a.k.a. "Agent 123," and "Agent E-634," with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. Each of the defendants is also charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Cuban government and with wire fraud.
The Myers, both residents of Washington, D.C., were arrested yesterday afternoon by FBI agents. They made their initial appearances today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Wire fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while serving as an illegal agent of a foreign government carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Whatever their motivations were, the Myerses seemed pretty committed to screwing their nation over, regardless of who was in the White House. Again, from the DOJ release:
[...] Kendall Myers traveled to Cuba in December 1978 after receiving an invitation from an official who served at the Cuban Mission to the United States in New York City. His guide while in Cuba was an official with Cuba's Foreign Service Institute. This trip provided the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS) with the opportunity to assess or develop Myers as a Cuban agent, according to the affidavit.
Approximately six months after the trip, the Myers were visited in South Dakota by the official from the Cuban Mission in New York and, according to the affidavit, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers agreed to serve as clandestine agents of the Cuban government. Afterwards, the CuIS directed Kendall Myers to pursue a job at either the State Department or the CIA. Kendall Myers, accompanied by his wife, then returned to Washington, D.C., where he resumed contract work at the State Department and later obtained a State Department position that required a Top Secret security clearance.
Their methods of communicating also hearkened back to the most intriguing aspects of Cold War spycraft:
the CuIS often communicated with its clandestine agents in the United States by broadcasting encrypted radio messages from Cuba on shortwave radio frequencies. Clandestine agents in the United States monitoring the frequency on shortwave radio could decode the messages using a decryption program provided by the CuIS. Such methods were employed by defendants previously convicted of espionage on behalf of Cuba. According to the affidavit, the Myers have an operable shortwave radio in their apartment and they told an FBI source that they have used it to receive messages from the CuIS.
Numbers stations, anyone? If you don't know what those are, here's a telling description from Wikipedia: "Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually women's, though sometimes men's or children's voices are used..."
W. Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were through an old-fashioned sting, tricked into giving up the ghost by "an undercover FBI source." They seemed rather guileless (or perhaps overconfident) for spies. The DOJ says they eventually told the undercover operative deep info such as their spy code names as well as Gwen Myers's preferred method for passing info via switched shopping carts, because that was "easy enough to do."
Not discussed in the DOJ press release were details as to how the couple was paid for what they did. While Kendall Myers probably did pretty well through his various positions both in the State Department and as an educator, he wasn't rolling in dough. Still, he and his wife found time to buy a nice little boat they named the "Helene." Gwen Myers even gave a testimony to the boat maker, which the manufacturer published online [PDF]: "It is 8:00 PM here; we are having a drink and are practically melting in our chairs while repeating to one another, 'we have the most beautiful boat.' Today the temperature was around 60 degrees and the wind from 4 to 8 knots. We sailed the good ship Helene on the Bay for 4 hours. Kendall sailed then napped for an hour on a pad behind the helm's seat. I used a finger to occasionally touch the wheel while the boat sailed herself. Clouds were mesmerizing..." [Copy]
Any encomiums in that statement to "peerless leader Fidel" were surely edited out.
W. Kendall Myers caused a bit of a crapstorm in 2006 when he made some decidedly out-of-school statements about the relationship between America and the United Kingdom. His words have an added subtext now. Myers stated that he was "ashamed" of then-president George Bush's treatment of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and that the US/UK relationship "was a done deal from the beginning, it was a onesided relationship that was entered into with open eyes . . . there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity."
Kendall Myers, by the way, was also an author. If the DOJ is correct about his and his wife's activities, he'd been spying for Cuba for more than a decade by the time he published An intelligent traveler's guide to Western Europe through the Foreign Service's School of Area Studies in 1993.
An intelligent traveler's guide to Cuba probably would have been just a little too obvious, I guess.
Cops in Ventura, CA don't know if they have a serial killer on their hands, but something strange is going on. On May 20, a mysterious, motorcycle-helmeted intruder entered the residence of Brock and Davina Husted and stabbed the couple to death. Fourteen days later, 9 miles from the Husted residence on Faria Rd, someone stabbed 61-year-old Wendy J. DiRodio to death inside the house she shared with her parents on Sailor Avenue in the Ventura Keys community. Sgt. Jack Richards of the Ventura police says no link has been found between the crimes, but sheriff's detectives are now on the case as well, "to see if there are any similarities with the Faria case." Police initially wondered if DiRodio had committed suicide, but they seemed to reject that possibility by Thursday.
These communities don't see much violent crime. They are all close to waterways. The Husted residence backed up to the ocean, and boats are docked in an inlet just across the street from where Wendy DiRodio was murdered. It is hard to not think something strange is afoot here, after all. True Crime Report commenters certainly seem to think so. A couple of comments even place the blame on a phantom from the past, the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, or EAR-ONS. Portions of some comments left on the entry about the murders of Brock and Davina Husted:
jon smith said:
This sounds like the original night stalker, Sacramento's "east area rapist" This man is responsible for at least 50 unsolved rapes, 12 unsolved murders, and he's never been caught! His last murders were in SoCal years ago, these murders definitely match his m.o. It seems like he is trying to revive the fear he created years ago for his numerous rapes and murders.
Posted 06/01/2009 at 11:45:06 AM
[...]
FoolsGold said:
Wouldn't the original night stalker be a geriatric case by now incapable of clibing up Mount Suribachi drive to get back to the highway area and return to his motorcycle?
Posted 06/01/2009 at 11:17:09 PM
Aardvark said:
The re-emergence of earons. . . Yes,that's one reason that LE is being circumspect in their statements. As to being geriatric,the earons has taken very good care of himself.When compared to what is already known(at least publicly)about earons' last 10 murders-in particular the M.O.-this is a sophisticated,more evolved M.O. Anyone familiar with the movie "Mr. Brooks"?He's back for one last time and relishing the moment,especially the public reaction which hasn't changed.See how they run. . . .
Posted 06/04/2009 at 07:54:42 PM
There's no guarantee that there is a multiple murderer at work here. Those of us who follow crime stories (I'm certainly guilty of this) are prone to see such patterns where they don't actually exist. As for EAR-ONS, his MO was quite complex. He sexually assaulted many of his female victims. EAR-ONS used elaborate knots to bind the people he victimized. He often killed couples, but not before piling household items on the male in the couple, so if the man moved while EAR-ONS was assaulting the woman, the killer would hear him.
The East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker was an intensely scary killer with a distinct method of operation. To say the most recent murders in Ventura are linked to him in any way is a big leap for many more reasons than just the killer's possible age - though he was young enough, according to witnesses, to certainly still be dangerous today.
That's not a connection I'm ready to make, personally. But the murders of the Husteds and now Wendy DiRodio are unusual enough to keep an eye on for now. They are also enough to terrify an entire community and make the rest of us wonder. Commenter "aardvark" has a point - if these murders were committed as part of a pattern and based on a compulsion more than aggression towards individual victims, the killer may very well be "relishing the moment."
Riverfront Times"The Unsolved Murder of Ernie Brasier: A Clayton attorney's death nearly two years ago continues to mystify police and colleagues" St. Louis Attorney Ernie Brasier was, according to his own mother-in-law, "cut out for the priesthood." Why would anyone want to kill him? Because that's what happened to Brasier on December 19, 2006. Two years on, his murder is still unsolved. The suspects? The attorney's former colleagues. By Kathleen McLaughlin Miami New Times"The People Under the Bridge" After tough new sex-offender laws closely proscribed where convicted felons could live, the State of Florida came up with a novel idea: parking them under a bridge. The result was a bizarre community of criminals, hard-core and otherwise, setting up camp in the middle of town. This story won first place in the prestigious Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) contest. By Isaiah Thompson Houston Press"Toxic Town" In the town of Somerville, Texas, years of pollution from a massive wood-treatment plant have led to contamination levels higher than those found at Love Canal--and rates of cancer and birth defects that officials say constitute a public-health emergency. By Todd Spivak Phoenix New Times"Target Practice" Only two journalists were arrested in the United States in 2007 for exercising their First Amendment rights. They happened to be the executive editor and chief executive officer of Village Voice Media. After Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio put Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin in jail for publishing a story revealing massive abuses of the grand jury process, the paper responded with a series of articles that demonstrated--yet again--how Arpaio and his cohort, county attorney Andrew Thomas, had routinely violated the constitution in the name of law and order. By New Times editorial staff Village Voice"Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11" Someone needed to give the tough-talking presidential candidate a reality check about what happened on that fateful day. We were happy to oblige. By Wayne Barrett Houston Press"Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose" Thinking about investing in rare coins to protect yourself against an unstable economy? Before you purchase so much as a penny, read this investigative effort, which revealed the wide variety of scams used by the industry to reel in customers. The story was named a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. By Todd Spivak Seattle Weekly"What If They Weren't Gay?" Newly declassified documents put the lie to the government's claim of a Cold War homosexual conspiracy. By Rick Anderson Phoenix New Times"Snake on a Plane" You won't believe what happened when the cops told the airline it had a murderer on board. By Paul Rubin Dallas Observer"House of Death" A dozen men were tortured, killed and buried in a small house in Juarez. Three years later, the U.S. government was still trying to cover it up. By Jesse Hyde Westword"Made For Each Other" Just when the sad saga of JonBenet Ramsey had faded from memory, Colorado authorities thrust the case back into the limelight by arresting a publicity seeker named John Mark Karr for her murder. It was left to Alan Prendergast to write the definitive story of how a university professor with an agenda--and a history of fingering the wrong suspects--led the Boulder DA to make such a colossal blunder. By Alan Prendergast
