Divorce And Alimony - Deadly Occurrences

Last statement sent to Sentinel from self-immolation victim

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 12:19:00 +0000

Police, other emergency personnel and the state medical examiner are seen outside the Cheshire County Superior Courthouse in downtown Keene Wednesday where a man was discovered on fire. The man was pronounced dead at the scene but has yet to be identified.

Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2011

Editor's note: On Thursday morning, June 16, The Sentinel received a "last statement" via mail from a man who insinuated that he planned to set himself on fire in front of the Cheshire County Court House, and an explanation of why he intended to do so. Through further reporting, The Sentinel is confident this is from the victim of Wednesday afternoon's fire, although police have not yet received confirmation of his identity. The 15-page statement is printed in full, except for two redacted items: The names of the man's mother and his three children. Details will be posted as they become available.

Last Statement

by Tom Ball

A man walks up to the main door of the Keene N.H. County Courthouse, douses himself with gasoline and lights a match. And everyone wants to know why.

Apparently the old general was right. Death is not the worst of evil.

I am due in court the end of the month. The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support. The amount ranges from $2,200. to $3,000. depending on who you ask. Not big money after being separated over ten years and unemployed for the last two. But I do owe it. If I show up for court without the money and the lawyer say jail, then the judge will have the bailiff take me into custody. There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.

There are two kinds of bureaucrats you need to know; the ones that say and the ones that do. The bridge between them is something I call The Second Set of Books. I have some figures of the success of their labors. You and I are in these numbers, as well as our spouses and children. But first let me tell you how I ended up in this rabbit hole.

My story starts with the infamous slapping incident of April 2001. While putting my four year old daughter to bed, she began licking my hand. After giving her three verbal warnings I slapped her. She got a cut lip. My wife asked me to leave to calm things down.

When I returned hours later, my wife said the police were by and said I could not stay there that night. The next day the police came by my work and arrested me, booked me, and then returned me to work. Later on Peter, the parts manager, asked me if I and the old lady would be able to work this out. I told him no. I could not figure out why she had called the police. And bail condition prevented me from asking her. So I no longer trusted her judgment.

After six months of me not lifting a finger to save this marriage, she filed for divorce. Almost two years after the incident, I was talking with her on the phone. She told me that night she had called a mental health provider we had for one of the kids. Wendy, the counselor told my then wife that if she did not call the police on me, then she too would be arrested.

Suddenly, everything made sense. She is the type that believes that people in authority actually know what they are talking about. If both she and I were arrested, what would happen to our three children, ages 7,4 and 1? They would end up in State custody. So my wife called the police on her husband to protect the children. And who was she protecting the kids from? Not her husband, the father of these children. She was protecting them from the State of New Hampshire.

This country is run by idiots.

The police sergeant Freyer screwed this up from the get go. When I got the Court Complaint form the box was checked that said Domestic Violence Related. I could not believe that slapping your child was domestic violence. So I looked up the law. Minor custodial children are exempted. Apparently, 93% of American parents still spank, slap or pinch their children. To this day I still wonder if Freyer would have made this arrest if it had been the mother that had slapped the child.

Labeling someone's action as domestic violence in American in the 21st century is akin to labeling someone a Jew in Germany in the 1930's. The entire legal weight of the state is coming down on him. But I consider myself lucky. My family was destroyed. But that poor bastard in Germany had his family literally annihilated.

Arrests are mandatory for the police in New Hampshire for domestic violence. That is not law. That is police department policy. Laws come from the Legislature and the Governor's office together. God only knows where these policies come from. The State's Attorney General also has a mandatory arrest protocol for domestic violence. I call these policies, procedures and protocols The Second Set of Books. You never cover the Second Set of Books your junior year in high school. That because we are not suppose to have a Second Set of Books. This is America-we have the rule of law.

I am a regular guy, a coffee and cheeseburger type of fellow. As remarkable as my life has been, I figure that what happens to me must be happening to others as well. I was 48 years old when I got arrested here for my first time. So I went looking for the arrest numbers for domestic violence, this new group that I had unwilling joined. I could not find anything. So I wrote the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Washington. They wrote back that they did not keep track of domestic violence arrests. The FBI keeps track of all other crimes. How come not domestic violence? I thought some low level clerk was blowing me off.

At the time, I had mailing addresses in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. So I wrote to all six Congressional offices, the two Senators from each state and the two Congressman. They like doing favors for constituents hoping you will favorably remember their name in the voting booth. All six offices reported back the same thing. They do not know how many arrests for domestic violence have been made. I immediately knew something was wrong. And I also knew this was not going to be good.

Improvise, adapt and overcome. The Army teaches that to every soldier it trains. They say that no battle plan survives the first five minutes of combat. So your people on the ground had better be able to think for themselves. Taking casualties in war is just an occupational hazard. Taking casualties and not accomplishing your mission is a disaster. After 21 years of Army service, I am pretty good at improvising.

The first thing I found was a study not of domestic violence arrests but of domestic violence injuries for 18 unnamed states and the D.C. in the year 2000. In the study 51% of the injuries were 'no injuries'. So I knew I had a study of police reports. Who else but a police officer would record no injuries? I populated that out to the 50 states and came up with 874,000 arrest in the year 2000.

I had originally populated the number back to 1994 when the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was enacted into law. I would later find out these arrests stated with the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force of Domestic Violence ten years earlier in 1984. As individual states data became available for various years and states, I would incorporated in to my informal study. The number I have now in 2011 is 36 million adults have been arrested for domestic violence. I have a gut feeling this number could be as high as 55 million. But I only have data to 36 million. So 36 million it stays. And there is a really cool trick you can do once you have this number. You can find out how many American men. women and children ended up homeless because of these arrests.

Most of the domestic violence statistics I have seen break down with 75% male and 25% female being arrested. So I am going to used the male pronoun for the one arrested spouse and the female pronoun for the victim spouse. That should make the domestic violence feminists ecstatic-man bad, woman good. But that is okay because that is probably the last nice thing I am going to do for them today.

When then a man is arrested for domestic violence, one of two things can happen. If they are only dating and have separate apartments, then he can head home. But if they are living together, then this fellow has a real problem. Bail conditions and then a possible protective or restraining order prevent him from being with her. So he needs to find a new place to live, at least until the charges are resolved. The King of his Castle is no longer allowed into his castle. A feminist name Pence who wrote that was absolutely giddy at that outcome. So he can get his own place if he has enough money. Or he can move in with his mother, his sister or another relative. He might have a girl friend who would let him stay with her. And if none of this is possible, well then I guess he is sleeping in his car down by the river.

If he has minor children, money will soon turn into an issue. Most men I know do not mind paying child support. They want their kids to have food on their plates, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads. But it does stress that man's finances. Child support is usually 33% of the man's gross income. Withholding for taxes, social security and health insurance can range up to 28% of his gross paycheck. So a man making $500 a week gross has only $825 monthly left over after withholding and child support. That is not enough money for an apartment here in Central Massachusetts. That does not include other expenses like heating, electric, gas, groceries, telephone, cable, car payment and car insurance. So he is in a financial hole. Estimates of homeless men run 82% to 94%. I am going to round that down to 80%.

After the King has left his castle, his wife runs into a problem. She was use to getting his whole paycheck for the household. Now she get a third for child support. Figure they both work and made the same money, her budget went from 100% down to 66%. If she was running the house on $3,045. a month when the King was home, now without him she only has $2,220. Most households in America cannot withstand a 27% hit on the household account. She'll juggle the bills but eventually most wives figure out that they can pay all the smaller bills if they just does not pay the big bill. That would be the rent or the mortgage. So six to nine months after the King is out of the castle, the Queen, the Princes and the Princesses are also on the street. Domestic violence feminists state that 50% of victim spouses of domestic violence end up homeless at some time in their lives.

The last group of homeless from these arrests are children. The domestic violence feminists state that 70% of domestic violence couple have children. So 50% female times 70% children equals 35%. But children is plural. So we will double to 70%. (Odd isn't it? They know that 50% of victim spouses end up homeless and that 70% of them have children. How can they know the percentages when they do not know how many total arrests were made? Those people at the U.S. Justice Dept. cannot even pull off a credible cover-up. )

Men are 0.8, women are 0.5, and children are 0.7 for a grand total of 2.0 homeless Americans for every domestic violence arrest. Multiply that by 36 million and you get 72 million men, women and children ending up homeless at some point in their lives over the last 25 years because of these domestic violence arrests.

That is a really large number even by Washington standards. That is almost 25% of the entire population of the U.S. using 2010 census figures. Which begs the question did these homeless people contribute to this latest economic meltdown, or did they cause it? Because if they did cause it then the recovery will not be measure in months or years but in decades.

Some of the boys in the Father's Movement think Congress might have shot themselves in the foot over this one. Personally, I think they shot themselves some place anatomically higher. No wonder the Speaker of the House is always crying. The Dummies on the Potomac.

Twenty-five years ago the federal government start pushing these arrests on state's legal systems. Now, we have an economy on the rope. They have thrown a huge amount of money at banks, big business and local and states government. And we are still in the mud. But no economist either at the Treasury Dept., Federal Reserve, universities or think tanks are even looking at the impact of all these broken families. If that 36 million arrest is correct, then 72 million men and women, have been throw out of the middle class into subsistence living. Or is the number 55 million and 110 million? No one knows and no one is even looking. But why should look? According to the Attorney General, we do not know how many arrests we have made.

And if the Tea Party is any indication, insurrection is brewing in the land. Just a coincident? Not likely. This is what happens when the government wipes out the middle class.

The idea for these arrests came from something called the Minneapolis Police Experiment (MPE) of 1981-82. In the experiment police offices were given pads with one of three words written on them; counsel, send or arrest. Counsel meant the officer was to try to mediate the couple's spat. Send was to send one of the spouses out of the house for eight hours as a cooling off period. Arrest was arrest one of the two spouses. The officer was to do as the top paper on the pad said to do. The experiment was set up by the Police Foundation and Lawrence W. Sherman was the lead researcher. The results show counseling resulted in a future assault in 24% cases, send was 19%, and the arrest option resulted in a future assault in only 10% of the cases. Perhaps a cheap way of cutting down future domestic violence.

In 1984 The U. S. Attorney General's Task Force of Domestic Violence recommended arrest as the primary weapon in domestic violence assault. Lawrence W. Sherman recommend not using the arrests because the MPE was just one study and it could be wrong. They ignored him. And by 1992, 93% of the police departments in the nation had adopted some form of mandatory arrest in domestic violence cases.

But by 1992 five more addition studies similar to the MPE became available. Lawrence W. Sherman reviewed all five studies. Then once again he wrote that the police should not use arrest. In two of the five studies, they found the same result as they did in the MPE, that an arrest cut down the odds of a future assault. But in the other three studies an arrest actually increase the odds of a future assault. So arresting someone in a domestic violence situation to cut down on future assaults did not work any better than just flipping a coin. I do not know if Lawrence W. Sherman is still alive. But fortunately he wrote a book call Policing Domestic Violence that was published in 1992.

So we have 800,000 American police officers arresting one in every six adults in the country and throwing 25% of the men, women and children out on the streets in an effort to enforce a policy that they knew did not work back in1992. And I had always assumed that you needed a man to really screw something up. Oh well, there goes another glass ceiling.

Why would they push an arrest policy that does not work? There are two schools of thought on the reason why. The first comes from Lawrence W. Sherman. He calls it the Law of Just Desserts. Revenge for slights and offenses, real or imagined. I am sure there are some that would argue that women are not vengeful. But what is that old saying? Hell hath no fury.....

The second idea comes from the mother of the second wave of feminism. I do speak of the brilliant Betty Friedan. In the Epilogue Chapter of the 20th Anniversary Edition of her book The Feminine Mystique, Betty relayed why she resigned as the first president of the National Organization of Women in 1970. Betty wrote that she, "was unable to openly fight the man haters and unwilling to front for them any more..." So man hating bigots no only existed 40 years ago, they were also grabbing power. Now Washington is funding them. Makes you wonder what bigots they will fund next. Maybe the Klan?

Feminists had always claimed that when women took over, we would have a kinder, gentler, more nurturing world. After 36 million arrests and 72 million evictions what we got was Joe Stalin.

The third wave of feminists do not like to call themselves feminists. The word feminist could be perceived as gender oppression. These third wave of whatever-we-call-you got that right The treachery of our legal system over the last 25 years may end up giving all feminists a bad name. Which would make us as bigoted as the man-hating feminists who got us into this mess to begin with.

So let us talk about those bureaucrats that do. These are the ones that actually carry out the evil deeds. I like call them the do-bies.

Any one swept up into legal mess is usually astonished at what they see. They cannot believe what the police, prosecutors and judges are doing. It is so blatantly wrong. Well, I can assure you that everything they do is logical and by the book. The confusion you have with them is you both are using different sets of books. You are using the old First Set of Books- the Constitution, the general laws or statutes and the court ruling sometime call Common Law. They are using the newer Second Set of Books. That is the collection of the policy, procedures and protocols. Once you know what set of books everyone is using, then everything they do looks logical and upright. And do not bother trying to argue with me that there is no Second Set of Books. I have my own copies at home. Or at least a good hunk of the important part of it.

I got my Second Set of Books when I sued the Jaffrey NH police department. Under the discovery rule, I write them with the material I wanted and it would arrive in the mail a few weeks later. I got the Police Academy Training Manual. I got the Department's Policy and Procedure Manual. I got the no-drop protocol that the attorney general sent to all his or her prosecutors. I even got the domestic violence protocols for the court system, one hundred pages worth. Once you read it the material, then you will know what the police, prosecutors and judges will do. They are completely predictable once you know what set of books they are using.

The police academy training manual states that an arrest in a domestic violence call is the preferred response. They cite the Minneapolis Police Experiment (MPE) as its justification. But the author of the MPE, Lawrence Sherman, said do not use arrest because five follow up studies show that it did not work. The would be a violation of the 4th Amendment in the First Set of Books against unreasonable search and seizure. Then there is that whole issue of whether the police have the right to arrest for any reason other than they believe a crime was committed.

The Jaffrey Police Department Policy and Procedures Manual states that if a wife says she does not want her husband arrested, the police are to ignore her, arrest the husband, and get with the prosecutor to see what they can work out. In other words, make the arrest and then see if you can Mickey Mouse it. The wife is eligible for spousal immunity. If she invokes it, then no statement she mades, written or oral, are admissible because she cannot be cross examined about it under oath. ( Did you say that? What did you mean when you said that?) With no statements the police have no probable cause in most cases to make an arrest. Also a violation of the 4th amendment in the First Set of Books.

The actor Nickolas Cage was drunk in New Orleans with his wife. Everyone else is drunk in New Orleans, so why should Nick be any different. He and his wife were arguing over which house the rented for their stay. Nick grab his wife's arm and started to lead her to his house. The police arrested Nick for domestic violence. His wife was stunned. That was not domestic violence. "Nothing we can do," the police explained to her. "Just following orders."

That is an accurate explanation for victims, even if they do not think of themselves as victims. The police have a zero tolerance towards any physical contact. Things might get worse in the future is the feminist logical for this present iron fist approach to domestic relations. I would have to agree with them. After all the arrests, poverty, homelessness and misery, I can assure you-things are going to get worse.

But that nothing we can do, just following orders the officers explain always sounds so timid and lame. The police need to punch their explanation up a bit, make it more authoritarian. And there is a quick, low cost way of doing it. The police officers only need to say it in its original German.

The state Constitution in NH said the prosecutors job is to promote justice. The Attorney Generals protocols said that domestic violence case are no-drop cases. (Unless, of course, they take the Deal. Continue the case for a year, go to counseling, and everything falls off the books after the year. They did after all find some way of getting rid of all these cases.)

The Attorney General can hire, fire, layoff, promote, demote, commend or award bonuses. The constitution is some old, quaint, dusty document up in the Statehouse some where. So which one do you think is going to get obeyed?

Prosecutors are funny. Some, maybe most, have egos the size of Cape Cod. But of the three, police, prosecutor and judges, prosecutors have the least protection. Micheal Nifong, the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, was fired, disbarred, convicted of a crime, and actually jailed for trying to enforce the no-drop prosecution protocol for sexual assault in the Duke case.

The prosecutor in my criminal case fared a little better. I filed a complaint with his boss for summoning my two daughters, ages 7 and 4, to court. I had already conceded that the facts were not in dispute. The trial would be about the law. No witness were need much less a couple of toddlers. He still summoned them. (The Second Set of Books tells the prosecutors to get a sympathetic face in front of the judge or jury. What's more sympathetic than toddlers.) The prosecutor could not refute my allegation because I enclosed a copy of the trial transcript. I had to pay for the transcript. When the prosecutor read it, he gave his two weeks notice and then blew town. That transcript was the best $46 I had ever spent in this life.

There is a name for what happens when a bureaucrat is destroyed by the First Set of Books for attempting to enforce the Second Set of Books. It is called the Abu Ghraib Syndrome. The people within the law enforcement community no longer seem to know the difference between the law, with its checks and balances, and the policies, procedure and protocols that constitute The Second Set of Books. In some cases you do not even know who wrote the policy, procedure or protocol. It could have been the local high school gym teacher for all anyone knows. Many of these bureaucrats are eventually going to learn the different between the First and the Second Set of Books. And my guess is that many of them are going to learn it the hard way. Because the only checks and balances in The Second Set of Books is The First Set of Books.

Judges routinely use our children as bargaining chips. Get the adult into counseling, continue the case for a year, and then drop it. This will open up the docket for the new arrests coming in next week. These judges that use our children are not honorable. Which is why I never use the term 'Your Honor' any more. I just call them judge.

Alex Baldwin, the actor, wrote that you have never seen a coward until you have seen a Los Angeles County judge. I call my judges-Sullivan, Arnold and even Runyon-cowards, too. When I first started observing them, nothing made sense. Arnold was completely infuriated when he was maneuvered into ruling not guilty. He verbally went up and down me so many times I lost count. What was the big deal? If I was not guilty just say and then we could all go home. But that was back in the days before I knew about The Second Set of Books.

I lost visitation with my two daughters when I got arrested. One was the victim-the other was the witness. After a not guilty, I expected to get visitation with my girls. But the divorce judge, Sullivan, decreed that counseling was in order and they would decide when we would reunite. I told the judge that the decision on whether these two girls had a father or a fatherless childhood was not leaving this courthouse. There would be a couple of reason for that decision.

First, by then I knew of the Second Set of Books. As much as I had prayed for the return of my children, I knew that this counseling might get thrown in the way. Judges are addicted to counseling like a meth-head is addict to crystal meth. Sullivan wrote in the divorce decree that he envision only one or two meetings with the counselor. There is no counseling done in the first meeting or two. It is intake-who's the players and what are the issues. But Sullivan was not interested in counseling. He merely wanted to unload the decision out of habit. And if we do not shut them down now, they will be doing it to our kids in twenty years from now when they have little ones running around the house.

Second, just exactly where does the buck stop with our legal system? Police have to make an arrest. The prosecutor has to pursue the case. Judges now also walk a away without rendering a verdict, and passing the buck does not constitute a decision. Can those mental health counselors slide the decision over to someone else? Just where does this end? Who is responsible? Who is accountable?

The mental health crowd is the third reason I said no. Some people think they are geniuses with their Masters and PH D's. Others think they are so wacky that they call them fruit loops. Well, I have a third name for them. Suckers. They did not get hired for their medical ability. They got these because they were willing to take these cases off the judge's hands. Which has done nothing for the credibility for their profession. We are not here to help-we are here to unload. And they created a liability that did not previously existed. If a judge releases a defendant and he goes kills someone, that judge or the judiciary cannot be sued. But a mental health worker, and their employer certainly can be held liable. Our judiciary is now using the mental health field like a ten dollar whore.

I sued Monadnock Family Services to make them go away. I told their lawyer Byron that they were a legitimate target for men. We settled for no money. They would have nothing to do with this reconciliation. The counselor was released. And they would no longer get involved in any domestic violence cases.

Every time we ended back in court over whatever squabbles, I would ask Judge Sullivan for my children back. The decision belong to the counselors he would tell me. But he knew he had screwed up. I could see it in his face. But he would not fix it. He would not step out of that box those domestic violence/sexual assault advocates had built for him. After five years, he retired to a part time position at the Littleton courthouse 120 miles away.

So when guys like Alex Baldwin and I call judges cowards, we have legitimate reasons for doing so. It is not good for judges to be called coward. It is unlikely that it is good for the rest of us.

I do not claim to have all The Second Set of Book. I know of one book that I do not have. And I would have love to read that one. That would be the seminar that the domestic violence and sexual assault advocates put on periodically for legal personnel including judges. These advocates are camped outside every state, not federal, courthouse in America. The U.S. Dept of Justice provides 50-100% of their funding depending on the program. They have three day seminars at resorts where everything is paid for except the liquor. Judges in NH are ordered to attend. Neither Sullivan or Arnold would confirm or deny they had attended. They actually said nothing. It must be like the Masons where they will not say anything about the organization until you show them the secret hand sign.

Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis once wrote that the best description of a judge is the impartial guardian of the rule of law. How does three days of wine, women and song contribute to impartiality? It does not. So it should not have been any surprise that they would not answer me. After all, they were not on trial. I was. But they are going to be. They were suppose to protect to rule of law not collaborate in its demise. They have failed miserably.

A guardian ad litem is an attorney appointed for a child. The attorney solely represents the child. I got one when I was first separated to get a neutral pair of eyes and ears on the family. I was disappointed in his findings.

A few years later, another guardian was appointed for one of the kids. A regular report filed with the Court painted me as some sort violent psychopath. I thought that was uncalled for seeing as we had never met. It start a flurry of nasty letters between until we both came to the conclusion that this was not about us. We ended on a friendly note.

At a Court hearing later on I approached him. I asked him if he had had any domestic violence training. He said yes, that it was required to become certified as a guardian ad litem. Another chapter for The Second Set of Books that I never managed to acquire.. So men, if you were thinking about getting a guardian ad litem for an unbiased assessment, then you should ask for the domestic violence material that certified the guardian. And do not worry that you are not sure what you are looking for. It will stand right out.

There are more sections of The Second Set of Books. Medical personnel are supposed to report suspected domestic violence. The college professor Angela Davis has a story of a Latino couple in California getting in trouble feeding the dog his liver for dinner. Mental health employees are also required. Think of Wendy threatening our kids with foster care. Teachers, day care providers, the list just goes on and on. The East German secret police, the Stazi, had 25% of the population on record as informers. The United States is not that high yet, but we are still growing.

These people-police, prosecutors and judges-are suppose to protect us. They are checks and balances to prevent injustice. That is why we spend so much money of police training. But if the police screw it up, the prosecutor can catch it. If the prosecutor misses it then the judge can step in to fix it. But if all three have been compromised, then what does one need to do to get justice? Go to the appeals court or the Supreme Court? That seem a little ridiculous particularly when the zero tolerance has arrests for something as trivial as touching.

On one hand we have the law. On the other hand we have what we are really going to do-the policies, procedures and protocols. The rule of law is dead. Now we have 50 states with legal systems as good as any third world banana republic. Men are demonized and the women and children end up as suffering as well.

So boys, we need to start burning down police stations and courthouses. The Second Set of Books originated in Washington. But the dirty deeds are being carried out by our local police, prosecutors and judges. These are the people we pay good money to protect us and our families. And what do we get for our tax money? Collaborators who are no different than the Vichy of France or the Quislings of Norway during the Second World War. All because they go along to get along. They are an embarrassment, the whole lot of them. And they need to be held accountable. So burn them out.

In the last 25 years they have arrested one in six adults in this country and forced 25% of the men, women and children into homelessness. In 50 years it will be one in three adults arrested and 50% of the men, women and children ending up homeless. Most of our kids will live to the age of 68 years old. As bad as it was for you, your children will have twice the odds of it happening to them.

Some of you will say that 50% homelessness sounds absurd. But 25% is absurd and that is already here. There is no evidence that the police, courts, or government is planning to do anything different in the immediate future. And they will not do anything different until we make it so uncomfortable that they must change. Bureaucracy at its worst. So burn them out. This is too important to be using that touchy-feeling coaching that is so popular with business these days. You need to flatten them, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to be taught never to replace the rule of law. BURN-THEM-OUT!

Most of the police stations built in New England over the last 20 years are stone or brick. Fortunately, the roofs are still wood. The advantage of fire on the roof is that it is above the sprinklers. But even the sprinklers going off work to our advantage. There is no way they can work in a building with six inches of water. And I am certain we will disrupt their momentum once they start working out of a FEMA trailers. If they still do not get the message, then burn down the trailers.

The easiest way of burning a building is with the Molotov cocktail. It was invented by the Finns when the Soviets invaded in 1939. You fill a bottle with gasoline and stuff a rag in the end for a wick. You light the wick and throw bottle, It shatters on impact spraying gas everywhere and the wick ignites the gas. Simple, readily available, and effective. And only two things to remember.

First, use a glass bottle. Thinner glass is better than thicker glass. You want it to shatter on impact. When I was teaching a kid at the high school on the West Side Worcester, MA. threw a Molotov cocktail into his school. Fortunately, he used a plastic bottle. It burned about three square inches of carpeting. I had to laugh when I said to myself, "Thank God for dumb kids."

Second, you need to tie the rag to the bottle. Nothing worse that throwing a Molotov cocktail, landing where you wanted it, and having it shatter perfectly. Then you noticed the wick had fallen out on the way to the target. No wick-no fire.

Some of these building will have brick faces and metal roofs. Just break a window and throw the Molotov cocktail inside. Carpets, furniture, computer plastic, even paint on the walls will burn. It is okay if the sprinkler goes off. I wonder if you can get hip waders over a gun belt?

We had a kid in my hometown that burned down the old junior high school. He walked up to the front door one night with a can of lighter fluid. The applicator on the end squirts the lighter fluid out. He squirted under the door and along the seams and lit a match. The kid took out the entire old part of the building. Why are kids so competent when it is something they should not be doing?

There will be some casualties in this war. Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours.

Now, nobody wants to get killed. But let us look at your life. You are broke after paying child support. She and the kids are not doing any better. None of you are middle class any more. You have no say in the kids education, their health treatment, you may not even have visitation with your sons and daughters. And everything you thought you knew to be true-the rule of law, the sanctity of the of the family, the belief that government was there to nurture your brood-all turned out to be a lie. Face it boys, we are no longer fathers. We are just piggy banks.

So you are not losing anything by picking up the Molotov cocktail. It may be too late for us. But without something changing, your kids will have double the odds of it happening to them. That will knock them out of the middle class again, providing they ever get back in. And their kids, your grandchildren, will end up damaged goods before it is over. So it is okay to run. You just need to turn around and run at them. They are no way as imposing as they seem. They only do what they do for a paycheck.

Television would make us believe that people get arrested because of fingerprints, DNA, facial recognition, and instruments that can tell where a substance was made and here is the local distributors. It is Hollywood crap. Most of the people in prison are there for one key reason. They could not keep their mouths shut. They told someone. That someone told others. The cops hear it and start looking at them for a suspect. That how it works in real life.

This need to confess seems to be primeval. Just human nature. But if you cannot keep a secret, do not expect the one you tell to keep their mouth shut. There is only three people I know for certain they will keep their mouths shut. That would be Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

I only managed to get the main door of the Cheshire County Courthouse in Keene, NH. I would appreciate it if some of you boys would finish the job for me. They harmed my children. The place is evil. So take it out

Some where along the line I picked up the crazy notion that it is better to be dead as a free man than to live as a serf. The government needs to be a little more careful about what they teach in our schools.

And bring a can of spray paint to these fires. Paint the word COLLABORATORS ( two L's with an S on the end) on the building before you burn it. Maybe we can shame them back to the rule of law. And we do want the police to know exactly who burned the building. Then the police can start interviewing the usually suspects, all 36 million of us.

We have covered the do-bies. Now let us look at the bureaucrats that say-ers.

The Second Set of Books originated in Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) which is part of the United States Department of Justice. Some of these policies, procedures and protocol were developed locally. But the local results would be sent up to OVW and, if approved, would disperse it out to all 50 states. They are smart, clever, bigoted and able to lie as well as any politician that ever called Washington home. In other words, they have now become Washington insiders.

But what makes them so uniques is their anger towards men, any man. They are so twisted in their hatred of men that they are positively scary. And it is not what they are doing to men that makes them frightening. You would expect that. No, it is what they are doing to the women and children that makes them so twisted.

When the Pentagon drops a bomb on innocent civilians the military calls it Collateral Damage. It sounds better than, "Yeah, we killed a bunch of women and children." Those poor, innocent, stupid civilians have always been caught in the middle since the time we were fighting with rocks.. Your wife and kids are Collateral Damage in the war against you, the man in the family. For 25 years these feminists at OVAW have been willing to sacrifice the women and children to get you. And they cannot claim ignorance about what they are doing. Under the VAWA the federal government is funding at least 1,800 homeless shelters. As long as the Office for Violence Against Women exists in the U.S. Department Justice , no American man, women or child will be safe in their own home.

If you ask these feminists why are the shelters all full, they will not say because of all the arrests. The shelters are full because of men. But they knew from the beginning that this was not man bad-woman good thing. The year was 1976. Two things would happen that year.

First, someone at the U.S. Dept of Justice decided to count the dead bodies. In 1975 there were 1522 women killed in domestic violence. And for men killed in 1975? The dead for men was 1506. Statistically equal a friend tells me so.

If you had asked me before the study, I would have assumed that women were getting the worst of it. But I would be looking at it by genders. What I should have been looking at was species, homo-sapiens, human beings. Men are human-women are human. Being the same species you would expect the same results from both genders. And that is exactly what the dead bodies told us.

The second thing that happened in 1976 was the first domestic violence survey was released. It was so new the time that they called it family violence. Murray Straus of UNH and Richard Gellars from a school in RI were the researchers. They did not find two perpetrators of domestic violence, but three. Men initiated violence 25.7% of the time: women 25.2%, and the other 49.1% was the two going after each at the same time. These two people going after each other at the same time is well recognized in law. The law in NH calls that mutual combat. Men are human. Women are human. And once again we found both genders acting the same manner.

So how did we end up with the theory of man bad-woman good that the government at all levels is using? The feminist writer Susan Brownmiller wrote In Our Time that," the way you get funding and church donations is to talk about the pure victims. If you talk about the impurity of the victim, the sympathy vanishes." If women get to be good then men get what is left-bad. Man bad-woman good was originally a funding raising technique. After 35 years, it has turned into official government dogma at all levels, from the local cop on the beat to the White House. Men need to be punished, restrained and retrained. Your wives and children are, unfortunately, just collateral damage in this effort to punish men. So you were not dreaming it. There really is a government pogrom against men.

When a man batters or kills, there is no excuse. When a woman commits the same act, there is nothing but excuses. Simple though inaccurate. But there is one redeeming aspect to men being demonized. Now we men can act like devils. And we do not even need to apologize for it. Men are going to start acting just like they made us out to be. As an old high school semi-punk I can assure you boys of one thing. This is going to be fun. You guys are going to end up laughing like hyenas.

The money funded under the VAWA is split in two when it leaves the Treasury. Part goes the Health and Human Services for fund these domestic violence homeless shelters. If that 36 million number is correct, and it is all that we have, then the 1.44 million arrests a year will be made producing 2.88 million homeless Americans each year. Women and children constitute 60% of these homeless people, 1.7 million Americans a year. Shutting down these shelters would be cruel. What would these women and children do then? Go live under a bridge. No, we are stuck with these shelters for a while. But there is one thing that Congress needs to fix when they fund them again.

These shelters do not allow men on the property let alone inside the residences. Why is it against the law to use federal money on organizations that discriminate against black, Jews, gays or even women but it is okay to do so against men? Men contributed half that tax money. Eight years ago a man in California fled with his children after the police warned him to get out after they had arrested the wife and mother. None of the shelters would take him and the kids in because he was a man. I wonder if this would survive a legal gender discrimination challenge in a federal court?

A society without men is freakier than a world without blacks or Jews. That is not to say blacks or Jews are any less worthy. It just that there are more men in the world than blacks or Jews even if you combined them. If these feminist had to deal with men on a regular basis, then maybe the country would not be in the pickle we are in now.

There is a third reason to end this discrimination, something of a more practical nature. Apparently, some women like to have sex with men. But men are barred from the property. Suddenly, that 15 year boy two doors down starts looking real good. It might even be fun breaking in this new meat. So this woman driven into insolvency by the push for domestic violence arrests now finds herself charged as a pedophile because someone barred men from her world. With domestic violence advocates as friends, who needs enemies.

This shelters came up with a novel approach to fixing the pedophile problem. Male children over the age of thirteen are barred from staying there. Too troublesome. The family broke up when the father was thrown out of the house. Now a second break up is happening with the teenage boys. Perhaps a relative has one bed available. Maybe the family of a high school friend would take him in their home. If neither option works then that is okay. He can move in with his father. Then they will both be sleeping in the car down by the river.

Children of these parents also suffer. They used to have their own bedroom in a safe town with good schools. First they have a shelter, then Section 8 public housing. An urban school. Maybe good-maybe not. Kids learn how to be tough in an urban environment. The kids might go bad or they could come out just fine. But there will be no clunky car as a teenager. There will be no saving fund for college. There will be no monetary gift to use as a down payment for a starter home. This tradition of the older generation giving the younger generation a financial leg up has been ruin due to the older generation's lack of money. Financially, the older generation is merely treading water. It will take generations after these present two generations to repair the economic damage to these families.

So we are stuck with funding these shelters for a while. These women and children have no place left to go. Some of you guys may think that these feminist caused the problem and then created the solution. But homeless shelters are not a solution. They are just barely a band aid.

The remaining money under VAWA goes to the United States Department of Justice for the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW). As long as OVW exists then the government is at war with men. As long as there is a pogrom against men, then women and children are going to end up as collateral damage. So there is no need for discussion about OVW going. The only thing we need to figure out is which of the two ways we can use to get rid of them-the easy way or the hard way.

And boys, do not try to burn down Washington's Dept. of Justice Building in an effort to get rid of the Office of Violence Against Women. Their offices are over at N Street.

The easy way is using Congress. The VAWA comes up for funding every five to seven years. Next time it comes up, Congress votes no and everyone at the OVW gets a pink slip in late September. Nice and simple except nothing is simple in Washington. We, the people out here in the sticks, do not always know what the dynamics are in Washington. There might be one method of getting Congress on course. Have Congress demand that the Attorney General get, and release the arrests figures. Or have the President order it. He is usually fearless after he makes up his mind. And this is too large and too well known to continue the Washington plausible deniable routine. Then they will know how much trouble they are in because of these arrests.

There are 220 million adults 18 or older in this country of both sexes. If my figure of 36 million is correct, then that is 16.4% of the adults have been arrested. It could be as high as 55 million or 25%. It might be as low as 22 million or 10%. Whatever the number there are two things that Congress should know. First, is the fellow who discovered the arrests in Minneapolis back in 1992 said do not use it because it does not work. And second, the people arrested now constitute a Fifth Column here in the United States. Our loyalty to Washington is gone. But what did these genuises on the Potomac expect? They have harmed our children. If they think Al Qaeda is a pain in the ass, wait to they see what Americans can do once their fuse is lit.

I am certain the Attorney General will sit for months on the request for the number of domestic violence arrests. Then he will explain that they do not readily have the number and that some sort of Manhattan Project effort will be needed in time and money. Nonsense. When Washington started these arrests in 1984 over 6.3 personal computers were sold here in the U.S. That figure does not include all the mini's, midi's and mainframe computers sold that year. There is no way they can pretend that this data does not exist in electronic storage. A request to Ohio for the arrests 1984-2010 would tie up a state clerk for an hour, including their 15 minute coffee break. Time for the truth boys and girls. Because this is not going away.

The hard way is more time consuming, cost more money and is full of headaches. Because the only way of removing a department from the federal government without the consent of Congress is to take out the entire federal government.

The first time I heard that, I said that is ridiculous. We cannot run this country without a federal government. But we will replace the old government with something new and improved. The new government would honor the debts incurred by the old government. There are a lot of useful reasons for starting with a clean slate.

The bipartisan debt commission released their recommendation for cleaning up the $14 trillion we have borrowed over the years. Convention wisdom has it that Congress has no stomach for any of the recommendations.

But a new government could install those recommendation on day one. Three years later, most Americans will not remember that anything is different. The old government laid off its employees when it closed. The new government is hiring. But instead of 65,000 employees at the Dept. of Education, the new government is only hiring 45,000. Instead of an average federal wage of $70,000 a year, the new average will be $52,000. The new government will have to write a tax code. Everyone pays 15% with no deductions. How many IRS employees could you get rid of if there were no more deductions? Any thing is possible with a new government.

Normally over-throwing a elected government is considered treason. Treason is punishable by death here in the United States. But there is one way of over throwing the government. That is through the ballot box. Then it is not treason but democracy. Allegedly, Washington is in favor of democracy, particularly if their candidate wins.

There is no legal mechanism in the Constitution or the Federal code of the United States for dissolving the government of the United States. So that is what we need first. Congress would need to write it. We get them to do it through the ballot initiative.

A ballot initiative is when enough registered voters sign a petition to get a question on the ballot for the next election. The following would be a sample of what the question would look like in New Hampshire.

That all elected representatives from the state of New Hampshire to both houses of the United States Congress are to propose and advance a bill that would set up a legal mechanism to dissolve the United States government should the people decide to do so in a general election by a simple majority.

If this initiative passes in all 50 states then Congress will be stuck. They will have to write the law to dissolve. If they do not I suspect within ten years they will be standing in a stairwell at the British or French embassy with a suitcase in hand waiting to get to a rooftop helicopter. I doubt if they will be thinking about the humiliation of being thrown out of the country. They will be far too busy worrying about what will happen if the mob gets their hands on them.

Washington has not got a friend in the world. Even the British and Israelis loath them now. Kind of a bad time to be losing domestic support. And what they done over the last 25 years? They have wiped out the middle class pandering to a special interest group of bigots. And in typical Washington fashion, they did not even know they did it.

This Ivy League inbreeding in Washington has produced an elite that knows what best. Everyone else-husbands, wives, police officers, prosecutors, judges, attorney generals and guardian ad litems-are to shut up and do what they are told. The rule of law is gone, replaced by the policies, procedures and protocols of The Second Set of Books. Which means the federal government will be going shortly. For the government being unable to deliver the rule of law is like an auto mechanic who claims he does not know how to change the engine oil. A certain minimum competency is required. So it looks like the parents of the Washington elite were right. One can be too smart for their own good.

Betty Friedan wrote that the feminist revolution, like any revolution, would have its excesses. Losing the rule of law is too great to call it a mere excess. It is a catastrophe. It is the heart, mind and soul between the people and their government. These feelings of betrayal by losing it may be permanent. I have 21 years of Army service going back to the Vietnam War. My loyalty to the government should be a given. It is gone. I am certain it will never return regardless of how long I might have lived.

It was another woman that lead us in to this decision to clean house inside the beltway. Something she taught us fifty years ago. You simply look at those folks in Washington and then ask yourself the old Ann Landers question, "Am I better off with them, or without them? Are my children better off with them, or without them?" They are sinking like stones.

Washington, DC was chose as the capital because it was the geographical center or the old Colonies. Today, the geographical center of the country is just west of St. Louis Missouri. The new government can set the capital anywhere in the United States it wants. Imagine how many rodents, insects and parasites they could lose by moving 1500 miles west.

Whether you replace the federal government or not, men are still going to need a legal defense center for men. Something like the NAACP used to get black people their rights. The only checks and balances in the Second Set of Books is the First Set of Books. Which means lawsuits. Now I know you guys are broke. Some of you have had your wives and kids thrown into homelessness. So I completely understand when you tell me that you are broke. But if everyone who has been arrested throws in $10.00 a year then the legal defense center will have a war chest of $360 million. You can buy a whole bunch of lawsuit with that kind of money.

The Ball family has been supplying sergeants to the Army since at least the Revolutionary War. Elijah served as a sergeant in Cushing's Regiment at the Battle of Bennington. His commanding officer was a general from NH with a name of John Stark. General Start was a clever warrior. He was responsible for the bulk of the heavy casualties the British suffer at their victory at Bunker Hill. His orderly, fighting withdrawal allowed the other units on the hill to not only retreat but collect their wounded on the way out.

General Stark would repeat this performance on three hill tops outside the village of Bennington VT one hot August day in 1777. At the end of the battle, the British lost over 900 men killed or captured. The Colonists suffered 30 dead. Two months later, the depleted British army would surrender at Saratoga. That victory at Saratoga would bring the French into the war. John Stark was the most competent general this country ever produced. For that reason alone his men loved him.

But as brilliant as he was on the battlefield, General Stark would become even more famous for something he said. In 1809 the veterans of Bennington decided to have one last reunion. A delegation called on the General with his invitation. But the General was old and frail. He could not attend. But he did send a message, "You tell the boys I said live free or die. That death is not the worst of evil." Since 1945 the State of New Hampshire has stamped Live Free or Die on every pen, coffee mug, license plate and highway sign that they have gotten their hands on.

I think the General and his sergeant would be please that his words have elevated from the novelties and bric-a-brac to something more dignified like a courthouse door. Neither of them would give a second thought to the mess left over after the fire was extinguished. War has always been a grim business. Civil wars are usually worse.

But they would be trouble by the new enemy. Oh, they understood when a government betrays it people. They took up arms against the super power of their day to get relief for their grievances. But the enemy we face now is the government that these men birthed at places like Bennington, Saratoga and Bunker Hill. Government is no different than the food in a refrigerator. Given enough time both will go bad.

The smartest person I knew in this life was my mother. Perhaps that is true of all of us. Maybe I just got lucky. She was a nurse by trade. She worked in a time when Western medicine made that final transition from butchery to science. But it would not be her nursing skills that made her extraordinary. No, it would be this one incredible knack she had that I had only modest success at mimicking in my life. If she had something important to say to you, she would say and then never mention it again. She would talk about it if you raised the issue. But she never mentioned it twice on her own. And, oddly, you always heard her.

But she did have one favorite saying. I must have heard in a thousand times in the eighteen years I lived under her roof. It always came at the end of the conversation as she peeled away to see if it was time for Perry Mason or Lawrence Welk. She would turn her head to the side, and over her shoulder she would say, "And the only thing you really have in this world is your family." Now, thanks to the United States Government, neither we nor our children have that.

. I have three things to say to my children. First, Daddy loves you. Second, you are my three most favorite people in the world. And last, that you are to stick together no matter how old you get or how far apart you live. Because it is like Grandma always said. The only thing you really have in this world is your family.

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Inmate moved after jail suicide attempt

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:47:00 +0000

THIBODAUX — Deputies have moved a Lafourche Parish jail inmate who attempted suicide last week to a state correctional facility in St. Gabriel, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

Curtis Hinton, 55, 160 Nora T. Lane, Thibodaux, is expected to make a full recovery after being found unconscious in his cell before 3 a.m. Oct. 16, Lafourche deputies said in a statement Wednesday.

Hinton will be housed at the medical/suicide unit at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, deputies said.

Sgt. Lesley Hill Peters, sheriff’s spokeswoman, said Wednesday Hinton will be transferred for court dates in Lafourche Parish but deputies do not have plans to return him to the parish jail once he recovers.

Hinton tried to hang himself from jail bars with a torn bed sheet in his cell inside Lafourche Parish Detention Center in Thibodaux, deputies said. The sheet did not support Hinton’s weight.

He was served with divorce papers a day before the suicide attempt and had not expressed suicidal thoughts or intentions beforehand, deputies said.

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Hulk Hogan reveals suicide attempt

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:46:00 +0000

The New York Daily News has published excerpts from Hulk Hogan's new book "My Life Outside the Ring" revealing that the WWE legend had his finger on the trigger of a gun and planned to kill himself.

This followed Hogan's suicide attempt with a cocktail of rum and the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.

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Mother shot in murder-suicide filed for divorce, had restraining order

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:40:00 +0000

(NECN: Lauren Collins, Manchester, NH) -

Police say Melissa Charbonneau of Manchester, New Hampshire was shot and killed at the hands of her estranged husband, who later took his own life.

Melissa Charbonneau thought her estranged husband was at work when she and her dad went to the Jewett street home Thursday afternoon. "I's unclear why she went to the house," says New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin, "although it appears she and her father went to the home thinking the defendant would not be there."

The six hour standoff that followed ended with Melissa murdered, her father seriously wounded, and Jonathan Charbonneau dead of his own hand.

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After 14 years, James Kelly free

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:55:00 +0000

After 14 years in prison, James J. Kelly Jr. is a free man.

Kelly is expected to be paroled Monday after serving part of a 35-year term for soliciting the murder of his ex-wife, Jayne, found stabbed in her Naperville townhouse Sept. 3, 1991, amid a bitter custody battle.

Now 63, Kelly likely will return to Chicago to reside with his longtime girlfriend. He must wear an electronic-monitoring device while serving three years of supervised release. He also is barred from having contact with his three children, now grown, who haven't spoken to their father in years.

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Plummer pleads guilty to murder, sentenced to life without parole

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:50:00 +0000

The gunshots that took Kimberly Ware’s life continued to resonate months later as her father returned to work.

Stepping through the doors of the West Rome Post Office where he worked with his daughter, Nathaniel Ware found he still unconsciously looked for her bright personality even after her death.

“I really miss going to work every day, and I’d hear ‘daddy,’” he said. “It’s kind of hard going to work at the post office — it became a chore.”

The story culminated Wednesday with Theron Plummer entering a guilty plea to the May 25, 2008, murder of his estranged wife, Kimberly Ware. He was sentenced to life without parole in Floyd County Superior Court.

But the story began long before the killing. The family had long been dealing with a marital situation gone terribly wrong.

“The one thing that I’ve learned is that when you confront that person, they’ll say ‘I’ll do better,’” Nathaniel Ware said.

But Plummer didn’t do better. Kim took out a restraining order and filed for divorce. But working through the system wasn’t fast enough to save her life, her father said.

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Prosecution presents case in Swain murder trial

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:45:00 +0000

TORTOLA, BVI — It has been almost two years since David Swain was extradited to the British Virgin Islands from his dive shop in Jamestown, R.I., accused of murdering his wife, Shelley Arden Tyre.

Originally ruled an accident by BVI authorities, the mysterious events surrounding Tyre’s death have since rekindled interest within the British jurisdiction’s judicial system, and Swain’s fate now rests in the hands of a nine-person jury in Tortola’s high court.

If convicted, Swain would face a mandatory life sentence in prison, under BVI law.

While the case has become amplifi ed by international media outlets,

the mood in the quiet territory of less than 30,000 residents has remained constant, with locals concerned more about gearing up for cruise ship season than a stranger’s fate.

But to family members currently on Tortola to support opposing sides of the argument, the case means either vindication or justice for Swain or Tyre.

Since Oct. 7, jurors have been introduced to a man described by the prosecution as a murderous husband, fueled by two motives: “money and the chance to explore a new love life with a new lady.”

In his opening statement, Direc- tor of Public Prosecution Terrence Williams painted the picture of a man who was similarly portrayed to a U.S. civil court judge three years ago, resulting in Swain’s wrongful death conviction.

“This is a case which starts in a marriage and – we say – ends in murder,” the DPP said in his opening statement last week.

The prosecution’s case, he further alleged, would tell the story of a scuba dive that would place Swain at the scene of a crime, causing his wife’s death.

Williams continued, informing jurors that over the course of the next few weeks, they’d be introduced to several scuba industry professionals who would testify that the state of Tyre’s equipment and the arrangement of her snorkel, mask and fin would point to a struggle – and Swain’s behavior, he alleged, would point to his guilt.

Acknowledging that some in the jury box would have no experience with scuba equipment and the recreation of diving, Williams assured jurors they would receive ample schooling throughout the course of the trial.

“This is a case where we will present to you certain facts and opinions of experts in the field,” he said. “I would like you to have regard particularly to the quality of these experts.”

Williams also told jurors they would hear from Mary Basler, who he said would testify about her relationship with Swain before and after his wife’s death.

Two letters would be presented as evidence, Williams added, which would depict Swain’s desire to end his marriage and pursue another relationship.

Since Swain signed a pre-nuptial agreement barring him from collecting money in a divorce, Williams alleged that for Swain to pursue a life and lucrative future with Basler, he decided to kill his wife.

“That dive was for this new woman – the fare of the change of lifestyle – the knowledge that if he divorced he’d get nothing, and the anxious expectation of the great wealth that would come of her death,” Williams said in his opening statements.

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North Naples man indicted on six counts of murder

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:40:00 +0000

Detectives say that Damas told an FBI agent while he was being held in Haiti that he killed his wife and children because she said she was going to divorce him.

Damas, according to a statement by Collier County sheriff’s Det. Andrew Henchesmoore, told FBI special agent Peter Kolshorn that on the night of Sept. 17, Guerline said again “that she was going to leave him and he became angry.”

Damas, said Henchesmoore, grabbed a knife, got a rope and tied up his wife and put tape over her mouth.

Guerline, said Henchesmoore, motioned she wanted to speak to her husband, so he removed the tape.

“Guerline told Mesac that she loved him and begged him not to hurt the children,” Henchesmoore said.

Damas said he had second thoughts but then “bad spirits” took over.

Damas told the FBI agent that he killed Guerline with the knife because he knew she would call the police if he let her go, Henchesmoore said.

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Murder/Suicide Claims Lino Lakes Board Member

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:23:00 +0000

LINO LAKES – A city volunteer is dead following an apparent murder/suicide that took place at a couple’s home in Lino Lakes on October 1.

Investigators believe that Pamela Taschuk’s husband, Allen Taschuk, killed her first and then himself, less than a week after his wife filed for divorce in Anoka County. Both individuals were found dead of a single gunshot wound each.

Taschuk, 48, a social worker and member of the Lino Lakes Park Board, had recently told a Lino Lakes police officer that her husband fit the mold of those men who kill their wives after the women leave an abusive relationship. “I am scared that the next time he gets mad and hits me that it could be the last time,” she told police.

This past August, an altercation at the family home led Taschuk to report her husband for domestic abuse and false imprisonment, for which he was arrested and charged. He was released two days later after posting bail.

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Post-Divorce Murder-Suicide Thought to Be Over Valuable Real Estate Transferred to the Former Wife

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:08:00 +0000

Posted by Janet Langjahr.

Fatal domestic violence incidents, particularly murder-suicides, are becoming an epidemic, according to a representative from one central Florida shelter for domestic abuse victims.

In 2008, there were two murder-suicides in Orange County, Florida. In 2009, ten. Orange County reportedly has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in Florida.

The most recent area incident was the killing, allegedly by an ex-husband, of his ex-wife and her new husband. Twelve years after the divorce.

The couple had five children together, but there also appears to have been a history of domestic abuse.

The former husband allegedly just began shooting at the door of his ex-wife’s home one morning.

The suspected motive: the former husband had been $200,000 behind in his child support payments, so the court had awarded the former wife a rental property that was worth over $1 million. When the former wife sold the property, she collected the entire net sales proceeds.

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Trial starts for man accused of wife’s 1983 death

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:01:00 +0000

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Trial has begun for a family photographer accused of killing his estranged wife 26 years ago to avoid losing custody of his daughters.

William Mordick faces life in prison if convicted of killing Katherine O’Connell Mordick at her Southern California home in 1983. New DNA testing led to his arrest last year in Spokane, Wash., where he owns a photography business known largely for family portraits and wedding pictures.

During opening statements Wednesday, his lawyer told jurors that the 63-year-old defendant is innocent. The lawyer discounted DNA evidence that William Mordick’s blood was at the death scene.

Prosecutors claim he left his daughters, then 2 and 4, in his car while he slashed her throat five days before a divorce hearing.

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Man helped brother beat ex-wife’s family to death

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:56:00 +0000

LINCOLN, Ill. — An Illinois man has been charged with helping his older brother beat to death members of his ex-wife’s family, less than a week after the younger sibling insisted his brother was innocent of the crime.

Jason Harris, 22, of Armington, was charged Thursday with five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, Logan County Sheriff Steve Nichols said. Identical charges were filed Oct. 2 against Harris’ brother, Christopher Harris, whose former father-in-law, Raymond “Rick” Gee, Gee’s wife, Ruth, and three of their children were found bludgeoned to death in their home in the tiny central Illinois town of Beason on Sept. 21.

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Aiken County Woman Pleads Guilty in Murder for Hire Plot

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:16:00 +0000

(Media-Newswire.com) - COLUMBIA, SC—United States Attorney W. Walter Wilkins stated that Judy W. Dickson, age 42, of Salley, South Carolina, plead guilty to an Indictment charging her with hiring a man to murder her estranged husband and his son. United States District Judge Margaret B. Seymour accepted the guilty plea late yesterday, one day before jury selection was scheduled for the case.

According to an FBI Agent’s testimony during the guilty plea hearing, Ms. Dickson agreed last May to pay David Hutto, her boyfriend at the time, a large sum of money plus expenses to burn the Shallote, North Carolina, home of her estranged husband, Raymond Dickson, and his son, Ryan “Bugaboo” Dickson, while they slept inside. Ms. Dickson was concerned about her divorce settlement and wanted the proceeds of her husband’s life insurance policy. Hutto told Ms. Dickson he would carry out the plan, but instead alerted the victim, Raymond Dickson, and later went to the FBI.

Prior to contacting the FBI, Hutto and Raymond Dickson made three taped calls to Ms. Dickson, wherein Hutto and Ms. Dickson discussed the plans to kill her husband, including Hutto starting a fire in the crawl space of Raymond Dickson’s home with pine straw and gasoline. The FBI also monitored one taped call wherein Ms. Dickson again approved the plan to murder her husband.

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Brownsburg man sentenced to 55 years in wife's murder

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:10:00 +0000

Cat Andersen/Eyewitness News

Danville - After pleading guilty to stabbing his wife to death in front of their children, a Brownsburg man was sentenced Friday.

Joseph Warnock, 41, was sentenced to 55 years in prison for killing his 38-year-old wife Angela in June. The couple's two daughters witnessed the crime and called 911.

Investigators say Warnock, in a drug-induced rage, stabbed his wife over 50 times in front of their 12- and 8-year-old daughters.

"On Father's Day, he butchered their mother," said Larry Miller, Angela Warnock's father.

According to family members, the couple was going through a divorce and Angela Warnock was planning to take her daughters to Hawaii, her home state. She refused to let her husband see the girls on Father's Day. Warnock was accused of breaking into the home and attacking Angela Warnock.

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Tape Of Confession Played In Father's Killing Of Children

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:08:00 +0000

October 08, 2009|By Tricia Bishop | Tricia Bishop,tricia.bishop@baltsun.com

Mark Castillo and his three children spent the day downtown, at the Maryland Science Center, before he checked into the Marriott Inner Harbor hotel at Camden Yards about 5 p.m. March 29, 2008, according to a statement he gave police at Maryland Shock Trauma Center a day later.

By then, the children were dead, and Castillo was recovering from self-inflicted stab wounds to his neck.

"My plan," he said on the tape, "was after [we] had a good day, to, uh, take their lives."

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More details emerge in Perry County homicide case

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:00:00 +0000

A Perry County man who has been charged with criminal homicide in his wife’s death had recently lost his job, contemplated suicide and planned to get a divorce from her, according to arrest papers state police at Newport filed yesterday.

Police wrote that they found the body of Sherie Deardorf-Buck, 47, under brush about 200 feet from her home in the 1900 block of Honeysuckle Hollow Road in Saville Township Wednesday. She had suffered multiple gunshot wounds, they wrote.

George Edward Buck, 47, was arrested at the home Wednesday and is being held in Perry County Prison without bail pending a preliminary hearing in November.

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Lawsuit was part of motive for killing his wife.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:25:00 +0000

By James Romoser

JOURNAL RALEIGH BUREAU

Published: October 5, 2009

RALEIGH - In courtrooms, it's called "alienation of affection" or "criminal conversation."

In love, it's called cheating.

Whatever you call it, the opportunity to sue over it just got narrower.

A new state law, which went into effect last week, limits the circumstances in which a spouse's extramarital lover can be sued.

Under the new law, if a married couple is separated, any extramarital affair that goes on during the period of separation is no longer grounds for a lawsuit.

Critics of the change say that it removes a deterrent to adultery and weakens a long-established public policy meant to protect the sanctity of marriage.

Supporters say that the concept of "alienation of affection" is a relic of a time when women were considered the property of their husbands. Nowadays, these lawsuits are often used by one spouse to harass the other spouse through the court system or to try to gain leverage during a messy divorce.

One such lawsuit was at the heart of the case of Dr. Kirk Alan Turner, the Clemmons dentist who was accused of murdering his wife. Turner was acquitted in August by a Davie County jury, which found that Turner stabbed his wife to death in self-defense.

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Charges added in murder-for-hire case

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:21:00 +0000

By Rob Young/Appeal-Democrat

Jonathan Scott Franklin, the Marysville man who allegedly plotted to have his estranged wife murdered, also tried to have the wife's boyfriend killed, according to an amended criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Yuba County Superior Court.

Franklin, 36, allegedly paid $1,000 to an undercover Marysville police officer posing as a hit man.

Deputy District Attorney Mechele Cook filed the new complaint, which identifies the boyfriend as "A.H." and includes a new, misdemeanor charge of possessing pornography — an image of a child engaged in a simulated sex act.

Franklin, who is being held in Yuba County Jail on $2 million bail, pleaded not guilty to the new charges.

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Attorney: Wife feared for her safety before murder-suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Deerfield, Oneida County (WSYR-TV) -

The attorney for Kristin Longo says Wednesday his client feared for her safety just days before she died.

Kristin Longo was stabbed to death in her Oneida County home on Monday. State police say she was killed by her husband Joseph Longo.

The Utica police detective then stabbed himself and later died.

Kristin Longo filed for divorce on September 18th. The couple was in court just four hours before the attack.

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Ex-HSBC Banker’s Wife Had 45 Injuries, Pathologist Tells Jurors

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:12:00 +0000

By James Lumley

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The wife of former HSBC Holdings Plc chief investment officer Neil Ellerbeck had 45 injuries on her body when she was found strangled, a government pathologist told a London jury.

Bruises and abrasions to Katherine Ellerbeck’s face, neck and jaw might have been caused by fingernails, Ashley Fegan-Earl testified yesterday at Ellerbeck’s murder trial at London’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey.

“They are not the sort of injuries one sees in a fall down stairs,” Fegan-Earl said.

Ellerbeck, who worked in HSBC’s global liquidity unit in London, was charged with murder on Nov. 17, days after his wife’s body was found in their London home. Prosecutors claim he strangled her after she asked for a divorce. Ellerbeck, 46, denies murder. His defense lawyers will present their case later in the trial.

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So-called 'Drew' law upheld in Peterson case

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:01:00 +0000

Peterson is charged with murdering Savio, 40, who drowned in her bathtub in March 2004. He has remained in the Will County jail on a $20 million bond since his May 7 arrest. Prosecutors said Peterson killed Savio because he faced financial devastation from the couple's ongoing divorce as he tried to begin a new life with his fourth wife, Stacy - with whom he had an extramarital affair - and their baby. They said Peterson even offered a state witness $25,000 to kill Savio months before her death.

The media fervor grew after Stacy vanished in October 2007 amid their marital troubles. Stacy has never been found. Peterson has not been charged with her disappearance, which sparked authorities to reinvestigate Savio's death.

Peterson, who maintains his innocence, is due back in court Oct. 29.

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Surprise testimony in murder trial

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:27:00 +0000

After the first time Michelle Hall visited her husband's grave, she reportedly told Mathis that she'd become "very angry" and "dug her heels" into the dirt because she was "very, very mad at him for leaving her here to deal with everything."

Both of Michelle Hall's ex-husbands -- Steve Davis and Rusty Hart -- testified about instances of physical violence at the hands of the defendant.

Davis described an instance in February 2001 in which Michelle physically attacked him for forgetting to bring home ice for his daughter's first birthday party. He described a similar incident in spring 2001. That attack was corroborated by another witness, Andy Binion.

Hart testified that Michelle found out he was acting romantic toward another woman -- Britt's first wife -- and she punched him in the nose. After their divorce, according to Hart, Michelle hit him in the back of his head with a cordless phone while he was at their home retrieving his belongings.

Thursday began with testimony from Lt. John Lewis of the Coweta County Sheriff's Office. He testified that the night of the shooting, Michelle Hall told him that her husband shot at her and then killed himself. Lewis examined the victim's body and concluded that the gunshot to his chest was "inconsistent with a suicide wound." In fact, he later concluded from the soot ring on the victim's shirt that it was a close contact gunshot, probably fired from 18-24 inches away.

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Male Suicide and the Family Court System

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:14:00 +0000

“I know my father was a good man and a good father. … He obviously reached a point where he could see that justice was beyond his reach and for reasons that only God will know, decided that taking his life was the only way to end his suffering,” Ashlee White wrote. Ashlee signed the letter “In Memory of My Loving Father.”

Those are the words of a 14-year-old Canadian girl writing to that country’s prime minister. Her father had been denied access to her because he was unable to pay child support that was set at twice his take-home pay. Darrin White’s anguish at losing contact with his daughter, and the frank indifference of the Canadian family court system to either his or her welfare led him to hang himself. As Ashlee said, justice was indeed “beyond his reach.”

That justice is beyond the reach of many fathers is one of the main reason this blog exists; it’s one of the reasons for the astonishing growth industry called ‘fathers’ rights.’ Here and in many other places are chronicled the countless injustices done to children and their fathers in the name of a mythology created over the past forty years. That mythology holds that fathers are indifferent to their children at best and dangerous to them at worst. It holds that even the most caring father is incompetent to do the simplest task relating to children.

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Man Who's "Too Fat To Kill" Gets Life In Prison

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:12:00 +0000

HACKENSACK, N.J. (WPIX) - A Florida man who did not have much luck convincing a jury last month that he was just "too fat to kill" his former son-in-law, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for the 2006 murder.

62-year-old Edward Ates was given the maximum sentence allowable for the brutal murder of Paul Duncsak. Judge Harry Carroll, who handed down the sentence, called the killing "a cold and calculated execution."

Before the decision was announced, Ates addressed the courtroom that was crowded with relatives of the victim as well as several of the jurors who convicted him.

"All I can say is, I'm innocent," Ates said. "The jury got it wrong. This is a terrible miscarriage of justice."

During the six-week trial, Ates' lawyer told jurors his client, who weighed a whopping 285 pounds at the time of the killing, wouldn't have the energy to actually shoot Duncsak and escape to Louisiana.

Ates' weight has caused a myriad of health problems including asthma, sleep apnea and other ailments, his lawyer had said.

However, prosecutors claim Ates drove from Florida to Duncsak's home in Ramsey, New Jersey, climbed a staircase and shot the 40-year-old.

When the shooting occurred, Duncsak and Ates' daughter were reportedly involved in a bitter custody dispute following their divorce.

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Woman blocked cop just before Clemente shooting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:09:00 +0000

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. (KABC) -- New details are emerging about the moments leading up to the massacre inside a San Clemente home that left four family members dead, including two young girls.

An Orange County Sheriff's deputy arrived at the San Clemente home shortly before the shots rang out.

When the deputy entered the home, she found the bodies of two young girls, their mother and grandmother.

The deputy was called to the home to perform a welfare check. When she heard the shots fired, she took cover, thinking the shots were aimed at her.

Seconds before the shots were fired that killed 4-year-old Catherine Fontaine, her 2-year-old sister, Julia, their mother, Elizabeth Fontaine, and their grandmother, Bonnie Hoult, an Orange County Sheriff's deputy was trying to get in the door of the San Clemente home.

"She did see the grandmother, Bonnie, with the 4-year-old child holding her hand," said Orange County Sheriff's Spokesman Jim Amormino. "Once the grandmother saw the deputy, she began walking briskly toward the open garage door. The deputy tried to catch up with her. She put her foot in the door but the grandmother was able to slam the door, then lock it."

The deputy then heard four gunshots.

Authorities were first called to the house by Kevin Herbert, who lives at the home, and had allowed the four to stay there while they were visiting.

Herbert didn't want to talk about what happened on camera. Authorities say he didn't see a gun, but he was worried enough to grab his own family and leave.

Seven minutes later, the deputy showed up at the house to do the welfare check.

"I don't think anything could have been done differently," said Amormino. "It wasn't a case where a gun was seen and it was imminent. There's no reasonable cause to use force."

Authorities are waiting for further test results to determine who fired the gun. It was registered to the 67-year-old Hoult.

Hoult's daughter, 38-year-old Elizabeth, filed for divorce from her husband, Jason Fontaine, last year. Elizabeth accused him of molesting their oldest daughter. Charges were never filed. Jason's attorney says experts found the allegations were not true.

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