In Cold Blog

O fiction, fiction, wherefore art thou, fiction?

chuckhustmyre@gmail.com (Chuck Hustmyre) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:08:00 +0000

After years of writing nothing but true crime, I've turned my hand again to fiction. Nobel and Pulitzer nominated novelist and short story writer Ernest Gaines once told me, "You can tell more truth with fiction than you can with nonfiction."

Recently, I completed my second novel, A Killer Like Me. My agent, Scott Gould of RLR Associates in New York City, is submitting the novel to several big editors. I have my fingers crossed. Meanwhile, I'm working on a third. It pays to have a backup plan.

Here, submitted for your perusal, is the first chapter of my recently completed novel.

A KILLER LIKE ME

By Chuck Hustmyre

CHAPTER 1

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." --Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

NEW ORLEANS -- 2:30 p.m.

The woman's body lay sprawled on the grimy floor. She was naked, her arms extended, legs spread. Dried blood caked her crotch. More blood had leaked onto the floor and formed a gooey puddle under her buttocks.

Homicide detectives Sean Murphy and Juan Gaudet stood near the dead woman's feet, looking down at her.

"He hurt her before he killed her," Murphy said.

Gaudet nodded. "Looks that way." He let out a deep breath. "You think it's our guy?"

"She's got ligature marks on her neck."

"But no plastic cable tie," Gaudet said.

Murphy took a careful step toward the woman's head and leaned forward to get a better look at her neck. The ligature contained tiny ridge impressions, like those found on a cable tie. "He must have cut it off."

"But why?" Gaudet said. "He left them on the other victims."

"It's him."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I got a feeling."

"You got a feeling?" Gaudet said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice to let his partner know he wasn't buying it.

Murphy nodded. "It feels like our guy. The way he put her on display, right in the middle of the dance floor. She looks like she's been sacrificed on an altar."

"The other ones weren't posed."

"They just weren't this obvious," Murphy said, "but I bet if we go back and look at the crime scene photos, we'll see it."

"Like one of those pictures you stare at until you see the hidden image?"

Murphy ignored the question as he stepped over the victim's outstretched left arm and squatted beside her head. Staring at the dead woman's face, he said, "He's getting more into the act itself. He likes it. He's gaining confidence and developing into a more sophisticated killer."

The crime scene was inside an old club on North Rampart Street called the Destiny Lounge, a black juke joint a few blocks from Elysian Fields Avenue, in the Upper 9th Ward. The club had been closed since Katrina. For a long time after the storm, the Destiny Lounge had been a place where bums took a shit and junkies came to get high. Several months back the city finally boarded up the doors and windows.

Murphy stood and shined his flashlight at the ceiling, amazed that the mirrored disco ball still hung over the dance floor.

An overweight uniformed cop stood just inside the half-open front door. Murphy recognized him but couldn't remember his name. "Who called it in?" Murphy asked.

"Anonymous 9-1-1 call," the fat cop said.

"Some dope fiend would be my guess," Gaudet offered.

"A dope fiend with a conscience?" Murphy asked.

"I bet he fucked her first."

"The killer?"

"No," Gaudet said. "The 9-1-1 caller."

"She's kind of ripe."

"Still, piece of ass lying there like that, these junkies don't care. I bet there's more than one sperm sample in her -- one from the killer, one from the caller."

"She's a twenty-five dollar crackwhore," Murphy said, "which means we're probably going to find a whole sperm bank inside of her." He shined his flashlight around the bar. The dead woman's clothes were gone.

Outside, the late July sun beat down on the city through a cloudless sky. The heat radiating inside the sealed building was so thick Murphy felt like he could set his notepad and flashlight on top of it. Sweat ran down his face. His shirt and suit coat were stuck to his back.

Hardly any of that blinding sunlight, though, penetrated the tomb-like interior of the bar. The plywood covering the club's doors and windows hadn't keep out the victim, or the killer, or the transient who found the body, but it kept out the light. The only ambient illumination came from the halfway propped open front door.

"How'd the first officers get in?" Gaudet asked the fat uniform cop.

The patrolman pointed toward a back room. "A door in there has been pried off the hinges. It's leaning up against the frame, but it's pretty easy to move."

"Is that how you got in?" Murphy asked.

The cop nodded.

"What about the front door?"

"It was chained shut from the inside. We used a tire tool to bust open the padlock so we could get some light in here, and some fresh air."

Gaudet turned to his partner. "You're the Homicide Division's expert on dead women. How long do you think she's been here?"

Murphy painted the body with his flashlight. Then he took a big whiff of the air. "I'd say at least two days."

The front door banged open as a uniformed sergeant took a half step into the building. "Hey, Murph ... " The sergeant looked around like someone who had just walked into a dark movie theater. "Where the hell are you?"

Murphy waved his flashlight. "Right here."

"Coroner's man says it'll be at least an hour before he can get here. They're pulling a floater out of the river by the French Market. The body got hung up on a pylon."

"Male or female?"

"Female."

"A local girl?"

The sergeant shook his head. "Tourist. They already got her I-D'd. Her boyfriend reported her missing yesterday. He said they were having sex on that old pier up by the zoo. Somehow she fell in. I guess she couldn't swim."

Great, Murphy thought. Another hour standing around inside a sauna with a rotting corpse. By law, even Homicide couldn't move a body until the coroner's investigator got to the scene.

He and Gaudet went back to examining the victim.

She was black, twenty to twenty-five years old, and badly swollen. Her tongue was the color of chocolate syrup. Her eyes were open and bulging out of her face. The whites had turned dark from the burst blood vessels.

Textbook strangulation.

The ligature marks, the bruising left by whatever had been used to choke her, looked like they encircled her neck. When the coroner's investigator got there, they could roll the body and be sure, but Murphy was betting she had been strangled with a cable tie.

The woman had been skinny but the stretch marks on her belly and hips indicated she'd had at least one child. Scabs and needle marks dotted her arms and legs. Three of the fingernails on her right hand were broken.

She fit the profile of the others. Six previous murders in twelve months, all fairly young, all prostitutes, all victims the department brass called women with high-risk lifestyles. All but the first had been strangled with heavy-duty cable ties, thick plastic bands with a one-way ratcheted lock on one end that tightens but doesn't loosen. The only way to remove a cable tie once it's on is to cut it off.

"What are you thinking?" Gaudet said.

Murphy shook his head to clear it. He'd been staring down into the dead girl's blood-soaked eyes, but there wasn't anything behind them. Everything she had ever been, every dream she'd ever had, every memory -- good, bad, or ugly -- was gone. Nobody starts out in life wanting to be a junkie prostitute, but that's all this poor woman would be remembered as, assuming she was remembered at all. But even if she wasn't, she would exist forever in the files of the New Orleans Police Department as a dead hooker, murder number one hundred and something, whatever the count was up to as of this afternoon.

"Hey, partner," Gaudet said, "don't get too wrapped up in this shit. It's just another case."

Murphy looked at him. "You think they'll finally admit it?"

"Your serial killer theory?"

"I think we're past the theory part."

"Brother, you had me convinced after murder number three," Gaudet said. "But I'm not in charge. I just work here."

"I'm going to talk to the captain again. We need a task force. We need resources. If we don't catch this guy, he's going to keep going and going."

Gaudet's laugh sounded like the bark of a hyena. "Just like the bunny."

Murphy cracked a smile. "Yeah, just like the Energizer bunny."

***

Crime scene techs took pictures of the dead woman and the inside of the bar. They also measured how far the body was from fixed objects around the room, and from the back door, the most likely point of entry. They plotted the distances and directions on a diagram. Forty-eight feet separated the back door from the woman's body.

While everyone waited for the coroner's investigator to show up, Murphy managed to talk one of the techs, a woman whom he guessed weighed about 130 pounds, into letting him drag her around on the floor. Murphy paced off fifty feet of floor, on the opposite side of the club from the back door and the victim's body, then asked the tech to lie on her back. He dragged her one way, then dragged her back. After a little experimentation, he found out it was easiest to pull her by her feet.

"Not this method acting shit again," Gaudet said as he watched his partner drag the crime scene tech across the filthy dance floor.

Breathing hard, Murphy said, "It works, I'm telling you. You get inside a person's head and you can figure out how and why he does what he does."

"How do you know he dragged her? He could have carried her."

"They call it dead weight for a reason," Murphy said. "If he choked her unconscious while they were outside, he had to get her in here somehow. Lifting and carrying an unconscious or dead adult by yourself, even a female, is nearly impossible."

"You carry a lot of unconscious or dead women, do you?"

"If you don't believe me," Murphy pointed to the crime scene tech lying at his feet, "try carrying her from the back door to here."

"He ain't carrying me nowhere," the tech said. "That's enough of this bullshit."

"Maybe they walked in together," Gaudet said.

"Could be, but I don't picture our guy as a smooth talker. He's not Ted Bundy." Murphy stared at their victim for a half-minute. "I picture him as shy around women. I think he approached her on the street, tells her what he wants. They make a deal, he shows her some money. Then they go down the side of the building or come around the back to take care of business. But he grabs her and chokes her out, or maybe he slugs her with something. Either way, he brings her in here unconscious. There's no way she comes in here willingly just to have sex. This place is too nasty, even for a crackwhore."

"He would've had to know he could get inside."

"He scouted it out ahead of time. He was probably the one who took the door off the hinges." Murphy looked down at the crime scene tech still lying on the floor. "Can you check the hinges and the pins to see if there are any fresh tool marks? I want to know if they look like they've been taken apart recently."

"Can I get up now?"

Murphy ignored her. "We need more light in here. This dance floor is covered in grime. If he dragged her in here, she would have left a trail, maybe even some hair. Look for shoe impressions, too."

The crime scene tech held her hand up to Murphy. "Are you going to help me up?"

***

It was almost five o'clock when the coroner's investigator showed up. By that time Murphy was so hot he had stopped sweating. From his Boy Scout days he seemed to remember that was one of the signs of heat exhaustion, or heat stroke, heat something.

The dead prostitute -- he and Gaudet had already decided that's what she was -- had no pockets to empty, nor possessions to catalogue. Nothing but injuries to document and photograph.

The coroner's investigator examined the woman's body by flashlight. He started with her scalp and began working his way toward her toes. He stopped halfway. Murphy, who was looking over the investigator's shoulder, saw the tip of a dark object protruding from the woman's rectum. "What is that?" Murphy said.

The investigator angled his head down for a better look. "I don't know."

"Guess."

The man flicked at the object with a latex-covered fingernail. It clinked. "Sounds like glass."

"Glass?"

The investigator probed with his finger, then nodded. "It feels like a bottle." He cast a quick glance around the abandoned bar. "Probably a beer bottle."

"The whole thing?"

"That'd be my guess. The tapered neck would make insertion a little easier, but we'll have to wait until the autopsy to remove it."

"That's a new twist," Gaudet said, "sodomizing her like that." He looked at Murphy. "None of the others had anything like that done to them." He paused for several seconds. "You still think it's your guy?"

"He's not my guy. He's our guy?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I think it's our guy. He's just ratcheting things up a notch and getting off on causing more pain. Maybe that's why the cable tie is gone. Maybe he cut if off so he could keep her alive while he tortured her."

"He must have left something behind," Gaudet said. "He either raped her, or jacked off on her, or licked her, or maybe he just jizzed on the floor. One way or the other, though, he had to have left some DNA behind."

"Don't you think he knows about DNA?" Murphy said.

"Maybe he's not a CSI fan."

"He hasn't left any yet."

Gaudet pointed to the body. "He's never done this before, either. You said he's ratcheting things up and getting off on what he's doing."

"We'll see," Murphy said, though he didn't believe they would find anything. This killer was too smart for that.

Gaudet shuffled his feet around like he was suddenly uncomfortable.

"What's wrong?" Murphy said.

"When are you going to talk to the captain?"

Murphy glanced at his watch. "Tonight," he said. "I'm going to catch him before he leaves the office."

"He's already told you no, twice I think. You keep fucking with him, he's going to see to it you get fired ... again."

"Maybe." Murphy looked around the filthy, abandoned bar, then back down at the dead woman. "But I'll do whatever it takes to catch this sick bastard."

The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part II!

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:23:00 +0000

By Denny Griffin

Continued from: The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part II

The Chicago Outfit’s strawman in Las Vegas, Allen Glick, hired a bodyguard. But his new employee had a sense of right and wrong, and a friend in the local police department.

In the 1970s, Bob Gatewood was a sergeant working with the police department in Newport Beach, California. He was assigned to the Organized Crime Unit. One day in 1973, he received a phone call from a friend, a Marine he’d met while undergoing SWAT training at Camp Pendleton. They’d become close and socialized together with their families.

Gatewood’s friend told him he’d retired from the Marine Corps and taken a new job as a bodyguard for Allen Glick, who had a residence in an exclusive area south of Newport Beach. The ex-Marine had come to the conclusion that his new employer had some very shady associates and was probably involved in something illegal. He felt morally obligated to do something about it, but wasn’t sure exactly what.

Due to his work in intelligence, Gatewood was familiar with Glick and his reported ties to organized crime and the Teamsters Pension Fund. During the discussion, Glick’s bodyguard revealed that his position required that he accompany Glick on trips and at social gatherings, as well as receive a copy of the guest list to every event hosted by his boss. The former Marine agreed to provide information regarding Glick’s activities and acquaintances, but only to Gatewood.

After the phone call, Sgt. Gatewood entered the information into the database of the national Organized Crime Intelligence Unit. He was soon receiving calls from agencies across the country, including the Nevada Gaming Control Board and, later, Las Vegas law enforcement.

For the next two years the informant fed information to Bob Gatewood, who in turn passed it on to Nevada authorities. During that time the bodyguard became increasingly concerned for his personal safety and that of his family. He had his home checked for bugs and wiretaps. Sergeant Gatewood advised his friend that he could terminate his cooperation whenever he felt the situation had become too dangerous, but the flow of information continued until the informant switched jobs. He has since passed away from natural causes.

Bob Gatewood was never told exactly how the information his friend provided was used, but he believes it was instrumental in facilitating the investigations into Glick’s involvement with organized crime.

Other Endeavors

In addition to loansharking, Tony Spilotro had other money-producing irons in the fire, burglary and fencing stolen property chief among them. Burglars working for Spilotro eventually earned the nickname the Hole in the Wall Gang (HITWG). This handle resulted from their method of gaining entry into commercial buildings by making a hole in the wall or roof. But the thieves didn’t limit themselves to breaking into businesses; they stole from private residences and hotel rooms with equal zeal. Jewelry and cash were prime targets.

The size of the burglary crew fluctuated depending on the nature of the job. Some small capers might require only one or two men, while a major heist could need six or seven. In the latter case, extra help was sometimes imported from Chicago or elsewhere.

The proceeds from a job were split among Spilotro and the burglars. For a big haul, Tony was obliged to send some of the profit to his Chicago bosses. He also had to pay a certain amount of overhead. Valets, maids, desk clerks, and others who provided information regarding the value and activities of potential victims were compensated for passing on the information.

One of these scams was operated out of two locations, a major Strip property and a popular restaurant, and involved valet parkers. The valets identified affluent guests and struck up conversations to obtain additional information about the guest’s plans. For locals, valets could usually find address information with the registration papers in the vehicle. In the case of visitors, the name of their hotel was extracted during seemingly idle chitchat. Then, indicating long and short-term parking areas, the valet inquired as to how long the guest would be leaving their car. If the answer reflected a lengthy stay, the valet turned over the car to a burglar who, armed with keys to the residence, could conduct a leisurely burglary, using the victim’s own vehicle to transport the booty. For out-of-towners, a friendly desk clerk at their hotel was contacted for specific room information. If the target’s plans didn’t allow the time for an immediate theft, the information was filed away for possible future use.

So, depending on the size of the score and the number of ways the loot had to be split, an individual burglar might earn enough money from a job to be able to take a few weeks off and live it up. However, if through faulty intelligence or bad luck, the break-ins weren’t profitable, the thieves might be forced to strike again quickly just to maintain a basic standard of living.

Well, maybe “forced” is too strong a word. As a retired detective familiar with Spilotro’s burglars told me: “Those guys loved to steal. It was what they did. They could be sitting in a restaurant with ten grand in their pockets and they’d go across the street to a convenience store to steal a pack of gum. They wanted the big money, sure. But stealing, in and of itself, was a necessity for them. They were addicted to it.”

As Tony’s status grew, additional sources of income materialized, too. The Ant and his gang weren’t the only street criminals in Las Vegas, other crooks, not mob-connected, wanted to share in the bounty, and there was more than enough to go around. But Tony was running his budding underworld empire like a business. Legitimate entrepreneurs are required to get business licenses and pay related fees; if they’re caught operating without the necessary permissions, they’re subject to sanctions. Enterprising criminals wanting to get, or stay, in business also had to follow a certain protocol. They needed to get Tony’s blessing and pay him a share of their profits, known in gangland parlance as a “street tax.”

And it wasn’t wise to think you could simply ignore Tony and go about your business without his finding out about it. He knew everything that went on within the Las Vegas criminal element. No one did anything — from contract killings to burglaries, robberies, fencing stolen property, or loan sharking — without his approval and without paying him a monetary tribute where appropriate. And the sanctions for violating Tony’s procedures could be much more severe than those imposed by a governmental licensing agency.

Tony Spilotro was becoming ever more powerful, and his organization was growing.

Next: The Spilotro Era – Part IV

Star's Accumulation of Atrocities

noreply@blogger.com (Star LaBranche) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:11:00 +0000

Police investigate Michael Jackson's death

The King of Pop's cause of death has not been announced yet due to the pending toxicology report. The LAPD is currently investigating the singer's death and has started looking into his past medical history. They still have not discerned how Jackson acquired the prescription sedative Diprivan.

Meanwhile, the LAPD has warned fans who do not have tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial service not to go to the event. The police are concerned about crowd control for the singer's memorial and urge those without tickets to watch the events on TV.

Sticky Fingers

An underage boy stands accused of stealing medical supplies from an ambulance while paramedics were treating his mother. The boy, whose name was not released, was charged with theft over $1,000 after an oxygen tank, medical bags, and a paramedic's purse were discovered inside of a camper that he was exiting.

Items that were stolen from a car shortly before the paramedics arrived were discovered nearby. The boy has also been accused of breaking into the car. He was taken to a juvenile detention center.

Whoops!

An elementary school teacher is being investigated for criminal activity after a few seconds worth of homemade pornography was discovered on DVDs that she sent home with students. The DVDs, which teacher Crystal Defanti made, was supposed to contain clips of the children reading stories. However, there was also approximately 6 seconds of footage of Defanti having sex on a couch spliced in as well.

It appears that the sex tape splicing was an accident and although Defanti is being investigated she will probably keep her job. Parents were alerted to the sex tape footage and were instructed to destroy the DVDs.

Overdosin'

No matter how many time I watch this it still makes me laugh. I also love how the news anchors can't keep a straight face. Enjoy!

Writing Is Like Sex.

noreply@blogger.com (Burl Barer) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:13:00 +0000

By Burl Barer

For authors, writing is like sex. We think about doing it more than we actually do it, and we do it better when thinking about it than we do when we actually do it. Thinking is more safe than action. Thinking shows intent, but action proves culpability.

Recently interviewed by fellow author Carl Brookins, he asked me penetrating questions about being a writer. It was a fun interview, Carl is a great guy, and here is a brief excerpt:

CARL : What’s the hardest thing about being an author?

BURL: Making money.

CARL: What surprised you the most when you became a published author?

BURL: I was surprised that authors don't have groupies such as the ones who pursue rock stars and famous actors, or even disc jockeys. Never be an author to pick up chicks.

CARL: Have you ever collaborated on a novel? Would you consider it?

BURL:: Yes, I collaborated on a novel (unpublished) with someone who wasn't a writer. I would love to collaborate with someone who is a writer. I did contribute to one of Lee Goldberg's pulp fiction novels that he wrote under an assumed name. I helped him with one of the sex scenes. He was, at that time, not as experienced with that topic as he has since, no doubt, become. When his Nana complained that the book was nothing but sex and violence, Lee wisely shifted the blame to my brother and me. My brother deflected criticism by insisting that he only helped Lee with the legal/courtroom scenes. When Mom called me, she asked “How could you pervert your little nephew that way?” I told her, “ Mom, I only helped him write one sex scene, honest!” She replied, “It was the one with the ice-cream wasn't it?” She was right. It was.

For the full interview, and other cool stuff from Carl Brookins, visit his popular blog: http://agora2.blogspot.com/2009/06/burl-barer-bares-all-most.html

One of the fun things about being on In Cold Blog, and doing the TRUE CRIMES radio program with Don Woldman on Outlaw Radio, is the opportunity to promote the excellent work of other authors. The past several shows have been a blast – I’ve had Mickey Sherman, Mathew Randazzo V, Johnny Fratto, Ron Franscell, and coming up on July 11th is Marek Fuchs, author of “A Cold Blooded Business.”

"Marek Fuchs has written a penetrating portrayal of twisted lust, eager betrayal, a savage murder, and a small town's long memory. With the drama of a novel and the nuances of a seasoned reporter, he delivers a sober, blood-splashed narrative about justice delayed, but not denied." Ron Franscell, best selling author of The Darkest Night

If Ron Franscell praises this book, you KNOW it's good! We trust Ron, so we are THRILLED almost beyond human comprehension to have Marek Fuchs join us LIVE July 11th 2pm Pacific on TRUE CRIMES!

LISTEN LIVE BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!

OR you can listen via Itunes by selecting "radio" then "Talk/Spoken Word" then scroll down to Outlaw Radio!

Here is the essense of the story:

In 1959, Olathe, Kansas was made famous by the murder of the Clutter family and Truman Capote's ground-breaking book on the crime, In Cold Blood. But fewer know that Olathe achieved notoriety again in 1982, when a member of Olathe's growing Evangelical Christian population, a gentle man named David Harmon, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping--the force of the blows crushing his face beyond recognition.

Suspicion quickly fell on David's wife, Melinda, and his best friend, Mark, student body president of the local bible college. However, the long arms of the church defended the two and no charges were pressed. The case was declared as dead as David Harmon.

Two decades later, two Olathe policemen revived the cold case making startling revelations that reopened old wounds and chasms within the Olathe community--revelations that rocked not only Olathe, but also the two well-heeled towns in which Melinda and Mark resided. David's former wife and friend were now living separate, successful, law-abiding lives. Melinda lived in suburban Ohio, a devoted wife and mother of two. Mark had become a Harvard MBA, a high-paid corporate mover, a family man, and a respected community member in a wealthy suburb of New York City. Some twenty years after the brutal murders, each received the dreaded knock of justice on the door.

A Cold-blooded Business provides fascinating character studies of Melinda and Mark, killers who seemingly returned to normalcy after one blood-splattered night of violence. A fast-moving true crime narrative, A Cold-blooded Business is a chilling exploration into the darkest depths of the human psyche.

Marek Fuchs was a stockbroker for Shearson Lehman Brothers and a money manager before becoming a journalist who wrote The New York Times' "County Lines" column for six years. He also did back-up beat coverage of The New York Knicks for the paper's Sports section for two seasons and covered other professional and collegiate sports. He contributed frequently to many of the Times' other sections, including National, Metro, Escapes, Real Estate, Arts & Leisure, Travel, Money & Business, Circuits and the Op-Ed Page.

In addition, Fuchs writes and stars in "The Business Press Maven" video columns for TheStreet.com, on how business and finance are covered by the media. The videos are syndicated on Yahoo! Finance, where they are regularly the portal’s featured video. For his work on that column, he was named the nation's best critic of business journalism by the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He was also nominated as best online business columnist by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Fuchs was formerly editor-in-chief of Fertilemind.net, a financial website twice named "Best of the Web" by Forbes Magazine. His book A Cold-Blooded Business, (Skyhorse, distributed by W.W. Norton), based on a murder story he covered for The New York Times, was a Top 10 seller in the Murder book category on Amazon.com, and was called “riveting” by Kirkus Reviews. He also wrote a chapter for a book, Over the Hill and Between the Sheets (Springboard Press, a Warner Book). Fuchs speaks regularly on business and journalism issues at venues ranging from annual meetings of the Society of American Business Editors and Writer to National Public Radio. He teaches journalism at Manhattan College in New York City.

Fuchs, who lives in a loud house with three children, is a volunteer firefighter. The highlight of his life prior to July 11th was being on Mickey Sherman's show. The highlight of Mickey's career was being on our show! This will be FUN.

On July 18th, ICB contributor Hart D. Fisher , the “Scariest Man in America,” returns to terrorize the neighborhood. Okay, he knows how to market himself. In real life, Hart is about as scary as a box of Pop Tarts, and every bit a gentleman. Boris Karloff (Frankenstein's Monster) proved you can be scary professionally and safe as milk personally. Hart D. Fisher is a master of both. This time, Hart is also bringing his lovely wife with him to the Lighten Up Lounge. We will all be on our best behavior.

Here is a picture of Hart and me. He is the guy with the nail polish.

A true American, Hart D. Fisher champions truth, justice, freedom, and personal responsibility. Since his previous appearance on TRUE CRIMES, Hart has conquered Europe with a hit TV series, rave reviews for his film THE GARBAGE MAN, and has become the latest controversial voice on the #1 True Crime site in America, IN COLD BLOG.

Yes, you are reading the #1 True Crime site in America. This bespeakes volumes of your erudition and good breeding. Take that as a compliment.

Help solve the Case of the Missing Mummy

franscellr@aol.com (Ron Franscell) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:41:00 +0000

By Ron Franscell, Author of 'The Darkest Night'

Ready to play Gumshoe?

While researching an upcoming book, I came across the intriguing story of the long-lost mummy of John Wilkes Booth ... or at least a fellow who claimed to be him.

It all begins in 1870, five years after the Lincoln assassination, when a young man named John St. Helen settled in Glen Rose, Texas, where he took a job as a bartender and acted in the local theater. He reportedly had an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare and remarkable stage presence. But when the daughter of a local politician invited a slew of U.S. Army officers and a federal marshal to her fabulous wedding, St. Helen mysteriously disappeared.

In 1871, he popped up in Granbury, just up the road. He again worked as a bartender at a local saloon and befriended a local lawyer named Finis Bates. Bates noted years later that although St. Helen was a teetotaler, he drank himself silly on one day of every year, April 14 — the anniversary of Lincoln’s shooting.

While in Granbury, St. Helen got sick and believed he would soon die. Secretly, he whispered to his friend Bates, “My name is not John St. Helen. I am John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.”

To be sure, he bore a resemblance to the famed actor and dastardly killer. His age (about 40) was about right, and his theatrical demeanor gave one pause. And he told a remarkable story of mistaken identity on the Virginia farm where Booth was supposedly killed by federal troops.
But St. Helen didn’t die. He recovered long enough to disappear again, reportedly leaving behind a pistol wrapped in a Washington newspaper dated April 15, 1865.

That was the last anyone heard of St. Helen — until 1903, when an itinerant housepainter named David George committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma. He’d again confessed his “true” identity to a local widow, who described him as an intelligent man who often quoted Shakespeare when in his cups. And the coroner discovered George’s right leg had been broken just above the ankle years before, and he was born in the same year as Booth. They wondered, might David George’s alias be a combination of two Lincoln conspirators’ names, David Herold and George Atzerodt, both hanged for their roles in the assassination plot?

George/St. Helen/Booth’s corpse was mummified and displayed for two years in the front window of an Enid funeral home until his old friend Finis Bates (future grandfather of actress Kathy Bates) came to identify George as his old friend, John St. Helen. He claimed the body, had it positively identified by Booth relatives, then sent it on a carnival sideshow tour as the mummy of John Wilkes Booth.

In 1931, a team of doctors and detectives X-rayed the mummy (pictured above). They allegedly found a broken leg and thumb, and a scar on the neck that matched wounds Booth was known to have suffered. Oddly, they also found a corroded signet ring in the mummy’s stomach — bearing the initial “B.” Suddenly, people began to wonder … could it be?

In 1937, the mummy reportedly attracted more than $100,000 from sideshow gawkers. Various carnivals displayed the mummy over the years until it vanished completely in the mid-1970s ... about the time the feds were cracking down on displaying human remains. Whether the Booth mummy was destroyed or is now in a secret collector's care, the central question is ... where is it?

~~~~~~~~~~

Personally, I am skeptical that David George was Booth ... but it's that sliver of possibility that intrigues me. Even if he isn't, though, maybe we can explore the tragedy of being nobody wanting to be somebody ... and ultimately being lost altogether. Whether the mummy is found or unfound, the book will explore bigger issues of culture and psyche ... and cultural psyche.

Who wants to play? Doesn't matter if you are a skeptic or a believer ... let the courts and scientists sort it out. If you have clues or special inside knowledge, let's see if we can crack the Case of the Missing Mummy. (And you thought it was easy?)

You may post here or write directly to Ron by clicking here

Corey Mitchell on The Michael Smerconish Show at 9:30pm (CST)

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:22:00 +0000

In Cold Blog founder Corey Mitchell's interview with Michael Smerconish on the Yogurt Shop Murders can be heard at 9:30PM (CST) - http://tinyurl.com/m9vxe2 - click on the "Listen Live" button.

Corey Mitchell to discuss Texas Yogurt Shop Murders on The Michael Smerconish Show at 12:30pm (CST)

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:14:00 +0000

In Cold Blogger founder Corey Mitchell will be on The Michael Smerconish Show at 12:30pm (CST) talking about the Texas Yogurt Shop Murders and his book, MURDERED INNOCENTS. Nationally syndicated radio program airs live in some markets/taped delay in others. Check your local listings.

Women Who Kill

noreply@blogger.com (Cathy Scott) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:00:00 +0000

By Cathy Scott

My latest book, The Rough Guide to True Crime, is scheduled for release on August 31. So, here is an excerpt from a section in the Homicide chapter:

Women who kill their husbands often tell police that their spouses pushed them into doing it, or they did it because, as battered women, it was their only means of escape from violence. Canadian Army bride Kimberley Kondejewski was no different. Her married life began in a city suburb where she and her husband John had settled to start a family. But along the way, things started to go horribly wrong.

When her abusive husband demanded that Kimberley commit suicide so that he could make claim on her life insurance, she snapped. After years of torment, the usually subdued Kimberley fought back--and took the ultimate revenge.

On 15 May 1997, lying in wait for her husband to return home from a rifle club meeting, Kondejewski fatally shot him three times. Seventeen years earlier, the abuse began almost as soon as she married her childhood sweetheart. After the wedding, Kondejewski saw a completely different side to her husband, one she’d never seen before. John became controlling and seriously abusive. Still, she stayed with him. They had two children and settled down in Brandon, a city in southwestern Manitoba, Canada. But she faced her life with John a day at a time.

Kondejewski wasn’t a violent woman, but she later claimed her husband gave her no choice. She testified that he was going to kill her. On that fateful day in May 1997, John went too far, she said, giving her an ultimatum that forced her to act in defense. Commit suicide before he returned from work that evening, he said, so he could collect on her life-insurance policy and become a rich man. “Do as I say,” he told her, “or you will be dead and so will the kids.”

Her husband's words sent the quiet housewife into a frenzy. To protect the children, Kim decided she’d have the final word this time, instead of her husband deciding. It was final: John would die instead of her. As the Oxygen network’s “Snapped” producers put it in a segment about the Kondejewski case, “the meek housewife put a quick and final end to his cruelty.” After shooting John, she turned the gun on herself, but she recovered from her injuries.

Kimberley was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Afterwards, a case study by Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) argued that Kimberley should not have been charged in the first place, let alone with first-degree murder, in light of the evidence of threats. At the most, CAEFS said, she should have been charged with manslaughter.

During her trial, she took the stand in her own defence, telling the jury her compelling story about her seventeen years of abuse at the hands of her husband. Her attorney told the court that Kimberley suffered from battered wife syndrome and had no choice but to kill him. Kondejewski’s lawyer declared that men cannot abuse women without suffering the consequences.

The jury agreed. She faced a mandatory minimum life-in-prison sentence, if convicted. But moved by Kondejewski’s blow-by-blow account of the lengthy abuse she underwent, the jury found her not guilty.

In 1998, after the verdict, Kimberley Kondejewski was released from custody. Today, she
works as a library clerk at a community college in Canada.

Cathy Scott is a journalist and true crime author. Her books include Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion Homicide Case, The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls. She is based in Las Vegas and San Diego. You can find out more about this author by visiting her web site at www.cathyscott.com

Star's Accumulation of Atrocities

noreply@blogger.com (Star LaBranche) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Clear skin

John Mullarkey, 20 (18 at the time of the killing), has been accused of murdering his on-again, off-again girlfriend Demi Cuccia (pictured left), 16. Mullarkey's defense now includes his use of the acne medication Accutane.

The drug has some notied side effects including depression, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis. Mullarkey claims that he doesn't remember much of what happened the day Demi was murdered and blames the drug for his behavior around that time which included crying spells and depression. Text messages that Mullarkey sent to Cuccia the day she died have also been entered into evidence.

Hope in a Box

Xiomara Gamez (pictured left with a police officer), 25, was arrested after allegedly abandoning her baby daughter in a shoe box inside of an apartment building lobby. The baby, who was nicknamed Baby Hope, was discovered in good health with dental floss tied around the umbilical cord.

Gamez pleaded not guilty to the charges of reckless endangerment, child abandonment and child endangerment. She stated that she was a drug addict and was addicted to cocaine during her pregnancy. Gamez also has 6 other children who currently live with their father.

Making the grade

Caroline McNeal, 39, has been charged with 29 felony counts of unlawful use of a computer and 29 felony counts of tampering with public records after she allegedly altered several high school student's grades. McNeal, who was employed as a secretary at the high school, has been accused of using passwords of other employees in order to boost her daughter's grades and lower the grades of two other girls, in order to raise her child's standing in the class of 2008.

The grade changing, which took place of 4 years, included 193 total changes. A discrepancy was discovered in October 2007 when Brittany McNeal's SAT score was replaced with one almost 400 points higher. The maximum sentence for each charge is 7 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Stupid Criminals of the week

A short video, but oh so hilarious.

If I Get Near Him, I’ll Kill Him

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:58:00 +0000

By Hart D. Fisher

They told me I was going to have to testify at the trial. Eric Daniels was saying that he’d had a relationship with Michelle. That she liked rough sex, that they’d had consensual sex at the hotel, he didn’t rob anyone.

I stood there holding the phone like a snake that had bit me.

Eric Daniels had robbed the motel where Michelle worked with his partner just ten days before she’d starting working there. They came into the place with shotguns and locked our friend up in a closet. They kept telling him the whole time they were going to kill him, they were going to shoot him through the door. Out in the parking lot they took a shot at someone. Our friend, who was filling in for my old housemate Rob, quit that job the next day. Just in time for Michelle to take it.

Now Daniels was telling folks that he had a relationship with Michelle. The press was all over it. Black male assailant, pretty white girl, yeah they loved this goddamn story, ran it right into the ground. The police needed me to testify as to Michelle’s physical condition before she went to work. They needed me to testify on the witness stand about our sex life. They wanted to know if Michelle liked to be hit, if I had hit her, if we had rough sex.

The phone bit me again and again and again…

I answered their questions under a surge of white noise rushing through my head. Blood ran down my lip from where I’d bit my tongue. I wanted to go outside, climb in my car, drive down to the police station with a gun and start killing until I got him, until I heard him screaming over and over and over, until his blood was hot on my skin…

I told the police Michelle was NOT into rough sex. She was fine when she left the house to go to work. Not a bruise on her… bruise… she was bruised… how bruised? What did he do to her? Did she scream when he did it? Was she screaming for me… I bit into my lip harder, brought myself back.

I told the police I would be there. Whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. They could count on me. My vision doubled. I hung up the phone, barely made it to the kitchen. The dogs ran away from me. I was growling deep within my chest, drinking the vodka from the icy bottle. It burned but I liked it. I wanted to kill him, kill him, kill him, kill him, Kill Him, KILL Him, KILL HIM, KILL THAT FUCKER DEAD…

The cold vodka helped.

The press called all day but I ignored their messages. I had only talked to them in the first place to help catch her killer. Now he was caught from his own stupidity. He’d been bragging about what he’d done to this little white bitch to his buddies, the buddies who snitched him out. When the cops came to his place they found the shotgun, the shells, his sweatpants with her blood on them under his bed, and his semen out of her dead body.

He was the guy.

He was my man.

I thought about him all the time. It affected my writing, my work, my art, everything. People walked away. I thought I’d been a pariah before, now I was kept at a distance. My entire Tae Kwan Do club backed off and “gave me my space.” Nice. I didn’t need space. I needed help. I was crushed. My townie friends, they took care of me. They came over in the middle of the night to help me put down the knife. They were there for me like no one else was.

They were angry.

At night I pounded my fists into a bloody mess on the concrete basement floor. The stereo blasting one song over and over and over but not loud enough to drown out my screams, all of the screams. Shuddering, snot bubbling down my chin, I was a destroyed human being. A whipped animal with a crazy light in its eyes.

Eric Daniels said he didn’t do it. Some other guy did it. Not him.

Daniels laid down this line of bullshit about just hanging around while some other guy named T did all of the killing. It was T who shot her in the face, took time to reload his gun and shoot her again while she lay dying naked on the dirty white tile halfway into the ladies room … I wondered if his old crime partner had been in on this one. They’d grabbed him too for the earlier motel robbery and an armed robbery they pulled at a White Hen Pantry. The two of them liked robbing people. Eric had been staying at the hotel. He’d been watching Michelle for days. He’d knocked down two doors to get to her.

I wonder if she heard him coming. I wonder if she hit the button, the disconnected panic button on the floor, waiting for help to arrive. A sitting duck, left in the lurch by the management of the hotel. Michelle was the night auditor. She was supposed to be safe.

Supposed to be…

All Contents Copyright 2009 Hart D. Fisher. All Rights Reserved.

Hart D. Fisher is a legendary horror creator who’s work has been featured on Larry King Live, CNN's Murder By Numbers, Entertainment Tonight, The Jerry Springer Show, The Sally Jesse Raphael Show, CNN Headline News, A&E's Biography, and in magazines such as Time, Tattoo Savage, Hero Illustrated, People, The Comics Journal, the non-fiction best seller The A-Z Guide to Serial Killers and more. Mr. Fisher is currently producing his internationally syndicated television show, American Horrors, running his post production house Crime Pays and is working on projects with Glenn Danzig, Frank “Obituary” Watkins, Death Dealer and more. His first feature film, The Garbage Man, releases on DVD June 30th, 2009 from Indie Pictures.

Karla in Review

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:31:00 +0000

By Star LaBranche

I'm assuming that readers of In Cold Blog are familiar with the Homolka/Bernardo killings, so I'm not going to rehash their crimes in detail. If you need a better background, check out their entry on Crime Library.

The short version is; Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, also known as the Barbie and Ken killers, were convicted of murdering three teenagers, Tammy Homolka (Karla's younger sister), Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. Bernardo later admitted to committing a number of rapes. Karla testified against Bernardo in exchange for a plea deal and was released in 2005. Bernardo is in prison for life.

The film, Karla (official website), caused as much controversy as one would expect. The movie was pulled from the Monterey Film Festival, although later the families of the victims viewed Karla privately and stated that they would not protest it. The debate raged whether the filmmakers were exploiting the horrific crimes or attempting to tell their tragic story.

Either way, the film closely follows the reality of couple's life and crimes before they were finally caught. One noticeable difference is that the names of the two schoolgirl victims were changed to Tina McCarthy and Kaitlyn Ross. Although since the movie was so realistic and everyone already knew the names of the victims anyway, it seems somewhat futile.

The film is punctuated by Karla's letters and complimented by the her informational monologue. While lending itself to reality is also shows Karla's detachment. She states that killing Tammy made her and Paul stronger and brought them closer together.

Viewing the movie is conflicting since the viewer is forced to make a judgment about Karla's character while the events play out. There is no disputing that Paul abused Karla. The domestic violence is well documented. However, the movie shows Karla standing at the sidelines, not wanting to be a part of the crimes, but unable to leave because of her sadistic husband's wishes.

It would have been easy for this movie to venture into a genre of horror movies known as gorn (gore porn). The crimes were sexually brutal and while the filmmakers could have indulged in expanding on the sadist events. However, there is minimal nudity and the actual rape scenes are short.

Instead the focus is on Karla. When Bernardo strangles Tina McCarthy the camera remains on his wife. She doubles over in horror and nearly vomits as she tries to look away from murder. A viewer not familiar with the real life crimes might feel a twinge of sympathy for this woman, caught in an abusive relationship, too terrified to leave and too insecure to walk away.

Meanwhile, the reality is not that simple. In the video tapes that Karla and Paul recorded Karla is shown as a willing participant. At times she even held the camera while her husband violated the young girls. In the tapes she is not at all concerned with the girl's suffering. She was noted to casually blow dry her hair after the second victim was dead.

Naturally, it was easy for Karla to claim that she was the victim and that her involvement in the crimes was forced and that Paul scripted everything that happened. True to life, this is shown through the movie and explains how Karla managed her incredibly light plea deal. At the end of the film Karla states that she was not responsible for the murder of the two schoolgirls, but that she did kill her sister, which is the only crime that the film version of the criminal shows any remorse for.

Overall, the film is a disturbing and mostly realistic depiction of the events surrounding Paul Benardo and Karla Homolka. In the end of the film, Karla has her last say about what she did and what she was accused of. The psychologist's evaluation of her is the last shot of the film. It labels her as manipulative and egocentric. It goes on to state that she might have tendencies towards psychosis.

Don't Bury the Lede: Rehabilitation via Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Caitlin Rother) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:01:00 +0000

By Caitlin Rother

San Quentin state prison in northern California, population 5,286, has more residents than some small towns.

And although many of these small towns have daily or weekly newspapers, I was quite surprised to learn that San Quentin has one, too. As a former newspaper reporter of nearly 20 years and now a journalism instructor, I've been watching as many papers across the nation are shrinking their staffs, reducing their news hole, or going into bankruptcy, some shutting down entirely. So, I was even more surprised when I learned that San Quentin's own was launched just last year after a 20-year hiatus, bucking the national trend.

But I'm burying the lede, as we journalists call it, which is that the San Quentin News is written for inmates – by inmates, including some of the nation’s most dangerous murderers who live here on death row. Some of you may share my sense of irony in this tagline under the paper’s logo: “The pulse of San Quentin.”

Now, how, you might ask (I know I did), can an inmate report and write a news story while in prison, where he has few, if any, rights or privileges? Where access to a computer, let alone the ability to do Internet research, is virtually nonexistent? And where phone calls can only be made collect from pay phones?

For those of you who have no experience researching or writing a news or feature story, let me explain briefly how I, or any other reporter who is not behind bars, writes a story like the one you're reading. First, I troll the Web on my home office computer, looking for an idea or a tip, which in this case came from reading an Associated Press story. Second, I pick up my phone and call San Quentin to do an interview. Third, employing whatever charm and knowledge I might possess, I try to persuade someone to take a message or transfer me to someone who might actually give me some information. In the prison system, mind you, this is often no easy task. Luckily, however, I finally got a hold of Lt. Rudy Luna, who happens to be the program sponsor for the inmate newspaper, so I was able to get the scoop.

If I had been one of the inmates working on the monthly San Quentin News, Lt. Luna would be my lifeline, my go-to guy.

“They bug me half the time, because I have to do the leg work for them,” he said. “I tell them who’s coming… They have no access to phones. I make calls for them sometimes.”

In other words, he would have to dial the person I wanted to speak to and hand the receiver to me if I needed to interview someone who wasn't on prison grounds; and one of the teachers, prison volunteers, or one of the paper’s five-member advisory council would have to do any necessary Internet research for me. I also would have to depend on Lt. Luna to give me ideas and access to the names of interesting or notable celebrities who will be stopping by – such as Dr. Patch Adams, author Dave Eggers, or former Virginia Attorney General Mark Early – and hopefully will let me interview them while the prison video training crew (also inmates) tapes our dialogue.

“Had I not known they were in prison, they were behaving just like the media, just asking questions,” said Luna, who also reviews the stories before they are published in the four-page, double-sided publication, by the prison print shop.

The San Quentin News has two editors, both inmates, who earn 15 or 20 cents an hour putting out this publication, which reads somewhat like a corporate newsletter. It's actually their full-time, 40-hour-a-week job, for which they had to interview, just like on the outside.

Michael Harris, who is serving a sentence of 28 years to life for murder, landed the job as editor-in-chief. A businessman, formerly in the record business, Harris has been at San Quentin since 1988 and will soon be coming up for parole. Apparently, he just wanted to learn about how to be a newspaper reporter and editor.

“When we first started, a lot of people were real dismissive of the paper," Harris, 47, told the AP. "Once we started printing the paper... you see this prison comes to life in terms of cooperation, in terms of, hey, this is an opportunity to be able to tell the stories from your perspective and also allow the rest of the world to see what's happening here.”

The paper also has two staff writers, although any inmate can submit stories for possible publication. One of staff writers, David Marsh, was actually a reporter before he broke the law and became an inmate. The death row prisoners, who are not allowed to interview anyone, may submit a handwritten poem, a compilation of their thoughts, or some inspirational words of humor, because face it, what else can you do when you know you’re going to be looking at the same four walls for the rest of your life?

Here's a sample of prison humor, written by George Leite: “You know you're a Con When: You wash your clothes in the toilet. You call your mother ‘Dawg’ or ‘Holmes.’ You tell your wife it isn't your draw when she asks you to go to the store. You put things in your sock instead of your pocket. You end your letters with, ‘I send mine.’ You have to remind yourself, ‘She is still a man.’ You use sriracha [hot chile] sauce for everything, including deodorant. You make a spread out of everything on your dinner plate.”

The paper is also put out with the help of the five-member advisory council of former and retired journalists and teachers, who are training interested inmates in a course known as the San Quentin Guild.

“Actually, the inmates are pretty good reporters,” Luna said.

I also had to laugh at the irony of the name “guild,” which in my experience refers to a labor or bargaining group of reporters who are trying to negotiate better benefits and privileges. My humor, however, was lost on Luna, a very affable man whose journalism experience consists of writing for his high school newspaper, after which he worked for more than 20 years in the security forces for the US Air Force before coming to San Quentin.

But his heart seems to be in the right place about this pet project of the former warden, who has since been replaced.

“It sends out a message that here at San Quentin, we’re giving them opportunities to grow,” Luna said, voicing a very different attitude than I heard during the 1990s and early 2000s, when I was covering jails and prisons as a staff writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Back then, punishment was the focus and rehabilitation seemed like a foreign, dirty concept to the California Department of Corrections. This is evidenced by the change in the department's name to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

But what about balanced reporting, I wondered, and getting both sides of the story? And after visiting San Quentin twice to witness an execution back in the late 1990s (it was stayed the first time, then occurred on my second trip), I knew how many many many rules had to be followed there, even by visitors like us. So, I also wondered, how could these inmates even hope to work as real journalists, whose mission is often to question authority and act as watchdogs?

Chomping at the bit to see the actual product, Luna directed me to the Web site so I could see for myself. Click here for the most current issue, which came out in April, and here for those of you who are curious and would like to see back issues.

You can judge the content for yourself, but if you're like me, you may be surprised to see that inmates have a baseball team, participate in track meets, and attend health fairs – just like the rest of us on the outside. (OK, well, some of us.)

No matter what you might think of this project, suffice it to say that the San Quentin News most definitely offers us all a new and unique insight into today's prison life under Arnold the Governator.

To read about one of San Quentin’s death row prisoners, Wayne Adam Ford, you can check out my new book, Body Parts. Marcus Wesson, a mass murderer and death row prisoner, is described in the book, Where Hope Begins, which I co-authored with Alysia Sofios, and comes out in September. My current book project, which will be released next year, will feature Skylar Deleon, yet another death row inmate. Deleon was recently sent off to the state’s psychiatric facility in nearby Vacaville to recover from a mental breakdown after spending only four days at San Quentin. But he’ll be back.

To learn more or contact me, check my Web site, http://caitlinrother.com/.

Johnny Depp Praises John Dillinger

noreply@blogger.com (andy kahan) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:27:00 +0000

By Andy Kahan

Actor Johnny Depp, who portrays John Dillinger in the soon to be released movie Public Enemies, was recently quoted stating John Dillinger "Is a really cool dude". Depp went on to state that he is a big fan of the other J.D. and that he actually hopes people will root for him.

Depp went on to say "Some people might disagree, but to me he is a real life Robin Hood".

During Dillinger's crime wave he and his henchman killed 10 people and wounded 7 others. A Sheriff was murdered and 2 prison guards were wounded by Dillinger and his men. Of course, banks were robbed during his spree and that made him an icon to the masses.

So, is Depp out of bounds with his praise of John Dillinger? What of all the families that lost loved ones during Dillinger's reign of terror, do they merit acknowledgment from a Hollywood celebrity of Depp's caliber, one who reaches tens of thousands of people anytime he speaks? Or like most victims, do Dillinger's also remain forgotten and left to be buried under the rug?

Andy Kahan
Mayor's Crime Victims Director
Houston, Texas

"MISSING: 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings," a new article by Chuck Hustmyre

chuckhustmyre@gmail.com (Chuck Hustmyre) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Vanished.

Haleigh Cummings, a precocious 5-year-old, disappeared in February from the double-wide trailer where she lived with her 24-year-old father and his 17-year-old girlfriend. Both the father and the girlfriend have a history of drug abuse and seedy relationships. Girlfriend Misty Croslin -- now Ronald Cummings's wife -- says Haleigh was snatched from the bed next to hers in the middle of the night by a lock-picking kidnapper.

Chuck Hustmyre explains the stories and relationships in this true life tragedy for truTV's Web site CrimeLibrary.com.

To read MISSING click here.

Wrestling Evil

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:33:00 +0000

By M. William Phelps

On July 7, 2009, M. William Phelps’s tenth true-crime book, CRUEL DEATH, drops. It is the story of thrill killers Erika and Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit, those snake-loving, Xanax- and cocaine-snorting Hitler fans who committed one of the most heinous crimes of the past ten years.

The following is an expanded version of the book Author’s Note.

Throughout my years of writing true-crime, I’ve always drifted away from the more gruesome cases. Granted, every murder is an act of evil; every untimely death a tragedy. But I have not waded in terribly bloody waters, if you will excuse my frankness. I have generally written about those murders we tend not to cringe at—those deaths which have been quick and (God willing for the victims) painless.

That being said, as I began work on CRUEL DEATH, I knew it would involve a certain amount of horror I had not yet covered: the brutal dismemberment of two human beings. What I didn’t know was that this act of savagery by the killers was only the beginning. What I uncovered while researching and writing this book—some of which has not been yet reported—affected me in ways I had never experienced, in all of my years reporting on murder. There were times when I had to leave the book alone for a day or two to catch my breath and think about things. Now and then, as you write these books day in and day out, you can get caught up to a point where some of what you’re doing doesn’t seem real. Yes, I used dozens of interviews, thousands of pages of court records, trial transcripts, photographs, police reports, military reports, depositions, interviews with the perpetrators, and scores of other documents to write this book, a process of which becomes, at times, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. But here, within the pathos of this case, the way the victims were treated before, during and (especially) after death was so profoundly evil and cruel—there are not enough adjectives in the English language to describe the treatment these victims endured—that as I wrote about it, a part of me began to drift into a despair I had never experienced while writing true-crime. It made for an incredibly bumpy road—emotionally. There were days when I had to put this project aside, due to the graphic nature of what I had uncovered, and work on something else. There were also days when I thought I could not go back to it.

I have never written—or read—true-crime for its shock value. To me, the process has always been about exploring the lives of people, telling the victim’s side of the story, and getting to the core of what makes murderers do the incredibly evil things they do. My goal is always to tell the most complete, unreported story I can find. In addition, I search for those stories I believe need to be told. With that being said, part of my hope in publishing CRUEL DEATH is that readers get the metaphor I feel is entirely implicit throughout the book: that the people we meet throughout an average day—passersby, smiling strangers, the man and woman sitting next to us on the beach, the couples we might “hook up” with at a club, etc.—may not be who they claim to be.

BJ Sifrit was honor man in a class of seventeen Navy SEALs; a quiet, clean-cut, wholesome looking twenty-something from Texas. Erika was from a loving, caring, wealthy family; a business owner; an all-American high school basketball player.

It was easy to trust these people. Why wouldn’t you?

This story proves, however, that anyone can fall victim to the face of evil. The victims in this case—Martha “Geney” Crutchley and Joshua Ford—were smart, hardworking, middleclass people on holiday in Ocean City, Maryland, when they crossed paths with Erika and BJ. Meeting, they were four adults having a “good time” while on vacation. It all seemed so harmless.

What remains clear to me is that the horror Erika and BJ perpetrated against two wonderful, kind, and loving human beings in Ocean City on that Saturday night before Memorial Day in 2002 is, at its core, a depravity of such gargantuan proportions that the true nature behind these crimes can never be fully explained, understood, or accessed emotionally. It’s hard to really wrap our minds around what happened in that bathroom and the subsequent days when Erika and BJ were running around Ocean City seemingly celebrating their crimes. As summer bears down on us here in America, keep in mind that the world is not what it was twenty or even ten years ago—and the people you will meet this summer may not be who they claim to be.

To read an excerpt from CRUEL DEATH, click on either of the photos!

Yogurt shop murder defendants released on bond

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:41:00 +0000

Here's a detailed article on the temporary release of two defendants featured in Corey Mitchell's best-selling true crime book, MURDERED INNOCENTS.

Yogurt shop murder defendants released on bond

The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part II

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:27:00 +0000

By Denny Griffin

Continued from: The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part I

A 1974 study by the Los Angeles Times found that in the three years Tony Spilotro had been in Vegas, more gangland-style murders had been committed there than in the previous 25 years combined. A casino executive and his wife were gunned down in front of their home, another casino executive was murdered in a parking lot, a prominent lawyer was blown up in his Cadillac, a loan shark victim went missing, and another casino boss was beaten and crippled for life. It didn’t matter whether or not Spilotro was responsible for the violence. People, including the cops, believed he was, and as his reputation for viciousness grew, so did his boldness.

“Everybody on the Strip is scared to death of the little bastard. He struts in and out of the joints like Little Caesar,” the Los Angeles Times quotes one casino owner as saying at the time. The same piece also quotes a store owner who first met Spilotro when Tony stopped in to buy clothes for his son. “When he came in the store the first time, you almost wanted to pat him on the head, until you looked into his eyes.” Tony’s eyes, described as pale blue and reptilian, looked through people, and not at them. Many who dealt with Tony, including law-enforcement personnel, agreed you could find death in those eyes.

Spilotro’s fast rise as a force to be reckoned with in Vegas was interrupted again in 1974, when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago. This time he was one of six defendants charged with defrauding the Central States Teamsters Pension Fund of $1.4 million. Among his co-defendants were Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo, one of Tony’s superiors in the Chicago Outfit, and Allen Dorfman, believed to be a catalyst in arranging financial transactions between the Teamsters and organized crime. Dorfman had been convicted in a Teamster kickback case a few years earlier.

The government’s scenario was complex, involving several companies and thousands of bookkeeping records. It could be a difficult case to get across to a jury. But the feds had an ace up their sleeve. The operator of one of the companies used to siphon money from the pension fund was cooperating. Prosecutors believed that their key witness, 29-year-old Dan Seifert, a Chicago businessman, would be able to walk the jurors through the maze of transactions in a manner they would be able to understand. If the prosecution proved successful, Tony and his pals would be off the streets for a long time.

In September 1974, three months before the trial was scheduled to begin, Seifert, his wife, and their four-year-old son stopped by Seifert’s plastics factory early on a Friday morning. Four armed men wearing ski masks materialized and chased Seifert through the plant. They caught and killed the young husband and father with a shotgun blast to the head.

Seifert’s murder had a chilling effect on the other witnesses. When the trial began, they crumbled on the stand as Tony’s eyes bored into them. Spilotro was soon dropped from the case. All five of the other defendants were subsequently acquitted. Being an important witness in any case against Tony Spilotro was turning out to be extremely hazardous.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas and California, three more people met suspicious and untimely demises. Many suspected the murders were either carried out at Tony’s behest or by the mobster himself. Spilotro was even charged in one of the homicides.

William Klim

On June 23, 1973, William “Red” Klim, a Caesars Palace employee, was shot and killed gangland style in the parking lot of the Churchill Downs Race Book. There were multiple theories regarding scenarios as to the motive for Klim’s murder. One held that the deceased was cooperating with authorities in an investigation of illegal bookmaking that targeted Lefty Rosenthal. Another suggested that the dead man had information pertaining to Spilotro’s implication in a fraud against the Teamsters Pension Fund. Yet another designated Klim as a loanshark who refused to pay the Ant a tribute. All three theories involved Tony either directly or as Rosenthal’s protector.

Although Spilotro was charged with Klim’s murder the following year, the case against him fell apart when witnesses were unable or unwilling to positively identify the killer.

Marty Buccieri

Marty Buccieri was a pit boss at Caesars Palace and a distant relative of Chicago underboss Fiori “Fifi” Buccieri. He reportedly had connections to most of the Vegas crime figures worth knowing and had used those connections to facilitate the granting of a number of Teamster Pension Fund loans to Allen Glick, CEO of Argent (Allen R. Glick Enterprises), the Outfit-installed owner of the Stardust, Hacienda, Fremont and Marina casinos. In the summer of 1975, law-enforcement sources learned that Buccieri had approached Glick and demanded a $30,000 finder’s fee for his help in obtaining the loans. At one point he’s said to have physically threatened Glick. The Argent boss then informed Lefty Rosenthal — the behind-the-scenes power of the operation — of the incident.

A few days later, Buccieri was found shot to death. The law immediately suspected that Tony Spilotro was involved. Others in the know disagreed, citing the use of a 25-caliber weapon, rather than the .22 that was supposedly a Spilotro trademark. Regardless of the identity of the perpetrator, though, it’s logical to conclude that Glick was a dangerous man to argue with or threaten.

Tamara Rand

Tamara Rand was an erstwhile friend and business partner of Allen Glick. She invested heavily in his Vegas casinos and, in spite of having no gaming experience, had signed a contract as a consultant at the Hacienda for $100,000 per year. Rand believed that through investments she had purchased five percent of Glick’s casinos, so when Glick denied such a deal, she filed suit against him for breach of contract and fraud. A court trial could have blown the lid off the mob’s hidden interests in the Las Vegas casinos. Consequently, on November 9, 1975, just days after a bitter argument between her and Glick, Tamara Rand was murdered at her home in San Diego.

Unlike the gun that killed Buccieri, the murder weapon in Rand’s case was a .22, the reputed weapon of choice of Spilotro and his associates. Although Tony was a prime suspect in the Rand killing, there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the murder. One report even circulated that Tony had a solid alibi for the day in question. According to that story, while Rand was being rubbed out in San Diego, Tony was in Las Vegas chatting with an FBI agent who, for unknown reasons, had flown in from Chicago for a visit.

But former law enforcement officers familiar with the Rand case and the Spilotro investigations don’t recall Tony being cleared because of any such visit. They consider the report to be “dubious,” and maintain that Spilotro was never taken off the table as a suspect.

At any rate, Tony gradually faded from the headlines in the Rand murder. That wasn’t the case for Allen Glick, however. The relationship that had existed between Glick and the victim created a firestorm of speculation and media interest. By Thanksgiving, Glick was forced to issue a statement. He not only denied any involvement in the Rand murder, but also proclaimed that Argent had no connection to organized crime. Many in Las Vegas and law-enforcement circles found the latter contention to be absurd. Spilotro even got back in on the act by stating through his lawyer that he had absolutely no connection to Argent. Those in a position to know also greeted this declaration with great skepticism.

Around the time of the Buccieri and Rand murders, additional information about Allen Glick’s activities began to surface from an unexpected source.

Next: The Spilotro Era – Part III

A Culture Of Hate

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:59:00 +0000

By Stephen Singular

On this mid-June morning, I’m driving across Kansas and into the heart of America’s second civil war. Up ahead is Wichita, where two weeks ago Dr. George Tiller, the nation’s most prominent abortion doctor, was gunned down in the lobby of his Lutheran Church. It was well known in the anti-abortion movement that Dr. Tiller always wore a bulletproof vest, so his alleged killer, Scott Roeder, shot him once in the forehead from only inches away. This landscape of flat farm country and political assassination is deeply familiar to me, because I grew up in rural Kansas and have spent more than two decades on my own journey into domestic terrorism.

Twenty-five years ago a group of neo-Nazis called The Order killed Denver talk show host Alan Berg -- his death became part of the largest-ever federal investigation into homegrown terrorism. My book on the case, Talked to Death, came out in 1987 and since then America has changed dramatically. Our political/religious divisions and our bitter emotions, still on the fringes in the mid-1980s, have entered the mainstream through cable TV and the Internet. All day long on blogs and every evening on the airwaves the new civil war is played out for mass consumption (FOX’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reach just under five million viewers per weeknight). In the past few years, hate groups are up more than 50%. Common ground has become increasingly uncommon -- my side has to be right so that yours can be wrong. “Bleeding Kansas” was at the center of the first American Civil War, fought over race. It’s a key battleground state again in the new war being fought around God and human sexuality.

The FBI has launched a federal investigation to see if Scott Roeder acted alone in allegedly killing Dr. Tiller. From his jail cell in Wichita, Roeder quickly began issuing statements that America could expect more violence from people like him. Within 24 hours of Dr. Tiller’s death, a father and his nine-year-old daughter were gunned down in southern Arizona. The police arrested Shawna Forde, leader of the anti-illegal immigration group Minutemen American Defense, as the key suspect in the murder of Brisenia and Raul Flores. Ten days after Dr. Tiller was assassinated, white supremacist James von Brunn opened fire in Washington D.C.’s Holocaust Museum, killing a black guard. On June 13, longtime Republican activist Rusty DePass said on Facebook that a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo in Columbia was “just one of Michelle’s [Obama] ancestors -- probably harmless."

With the ongoing battles over abortion and immigration, a faltering economy, and the election of an African-American President, racial fears are rising again. Those who monitor hate groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, warn of more troubles ahead. What could be more symbolic of our current civil war than a doctor getting murdered for helping (under the laws of Kansas and the U.S.) women confronting serious health issues -- by someone who fervently believes that God is sanctioning his actions? I’ll be looking for some answers in Wichita.

Stephen Singular is the author of nineteen books which range in topics from high-profile crimes and social criticisms, to business and sports biographies. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado. You can find out more about this author by visiting his website at stephensingular.com

The JonBenet Ramsey Case: Never Give Up

incoldblog@aol.com (Michelle McKee) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:54:00 +0000

By Stephen Singular

The most famous unsolved murder in America -- the JonBenet Ramsey case in Boulder, Colorado -- is cold, but not dead. For those who’ve believed that this maddening 1996 crime will never be solved, don’t be so certain. A group of mostly civilian investigators has never stopped digging below the surface of this homicide and in the past year there’s been movement on various fronts. Last summer, outgoing Boulder DA Mary Lacy officially cleared the Ramsey parents as the killers of their daughter, after two samples of “touch DNA” from JonBenet’s underwear were consistent with genetic material in her panties and beneath her fingernails. All the samples belonged to a single male: her murderer had likely been identified genetically, if not by name. This was the first real development in the case since the child’s body was found in her basement more than twelve years ago. As retired Colorado Springs homicide detective and DA Ramsey investigator Lou Smit told me this past spring, “All we have to do now is wait for someone to get arrested for another crime and we’ll match that person’s DNA to the killer’s. We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”

The greatest difficulty surrounding the case is not that there isn’t investigative work to be done, but that the Boulder authorities have consistently refused to do some of it. Credible suspects have not been cleared by DNA because they’ve never been tested. Leads generated by Smit and other legitimate sources haven’t been followed, but dismissed. Witnesses that would move the case in the direction of child pornography and exploitation haven’t been taken seriously. Since Lacy cleared the Ramsey parents last year, the Boulder Police Department has been in an indefensible position: the two people the local cops focused on from the beginning, to the exclusion of most everyone else, were John and Patsy Ramsey. Patsy died in June 2006 and John has now been was exonerated as the killer. Even if the Ramseys had some involvement in or knowledge of the crime, the case isn’t going to be solved by looking only at JonBenet’s father.

A parallel investigation into JonBenet’s death, led by retired police officers like Smit, is alive and well. Information is being generated and over the years a suspect list has grown. In January 2009, those following the case felt a rush of optimism when new Boulder DA Stan Garnett said he wanted to take a fresh look at the murder. Last winter, I contacted Garnet and have spoken with him several times. Unfortunately, instead of overseeing the Ramsey investigation himself, he turned it back over to the BPD, which hasn’t been able to bring charges against anyone since 1996. There’s little evidence that the Boulder police are doing anything new; they, too, may just be waiting for a DNA match after someone is arrested in Colorado or another jurisdiction. The good news is that civilians have widened the Ramsey investigation on their own and made some connections and progress.

In April 2009, Showtime featured the film, “Zodiac.” As I repeatedly watched it, in part because of the excellent acting by Robert Downey Jr., Jake Gyllenhaal, and Mark Ruffalo, I felt a sliver of optimism about the situation in Boulder. It took well over a decade for one civilian, “San Francisco Chronicle” cartoonist Robert Graysmith, to finger Arthur Leigh Allen as the most likely candidate as the Bay Area Zodiac serial killer from the 1960s and ‘70s. Graysmith did it through relentless determination and research -- finding and piecing together information well after the San Francisco police had given up on solving the crime. There’s work left to be done on the Ramsey case and some people, including myself, are still doing it. On In Cold Blog I’ll provide occasional updates on the murder probe being done outside official circles.

Stephen Singular is the author of nineteen books which range in topics from high-profile crimes and social criticisms, to business and sports biographies. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado. You can find out more about this author by visiting his website at stephensingular.com

Yogurt Shop Murder Re-Trial Set

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:21:00 +0000

Case featured in Corey Mitchell's book, MURDERED INNOCENTS.

Yogurt Shop Murder Re-Trial Set

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WATCH: Judge says he'll release defendants if trial delayed | News for Austin, Texas | KVUE.com | Top Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:40:00 +0000

Case featured in Corey Mitchell's book, MURDERED INNOCENTS.

WATCH: Judge says he'll release defendants if trial delayed | News for Austin, Texas | KVUE.com | Top Stories

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Star's Accumulation of Atrocities

noreply@blogger.com (Star LaBranche) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:13:00 +0000

By Star LaBranche

Happy Father's Day!

B. Brian Blair (pictured left), 52, former politician and WWF wrestler, was arrested for domestic violence against his two sons, Brett and Bradley. Blair allegedly punched the two boys, 17 and 12, several times and choked them. Both children allegedly received bruises from the beating.

Blair is being held without bail. He goes to court on Monday for charges of domestic violence.

RIAA vs. Thomas-Rasset

RIAA has won a court case against Jammie Thomas-Rasset (pictured left) over some music that she illegally downloaded over the internet. Thomas-Rasset downloaded 24 songs onto her computer and was charged a total fine of $1.92 million dollars despite the fact that many of the song's download price was .99 cents.

The case originated in 2007 where Thomas-Rasset was accused of sharing 1700 songs. A mistrail was declared due to an error in jury instructions and Thomas-Rasset opted for a new trial. The Minnesota woman plans to appeal the decision.

Distinguishing features

Eduardo Lazcano (pictured left), 21, was arrested for burglary after he was identified via his dyed hair. A witness saw a man break into a home and steal computer and camera equipment and gave a description to police, including the suspect's fire engine red hair.

Lazcano was arrested shortly afterward. He is charged with burglary and grand larceny. The witness was able to identify Lazcano.

Skinny Puppy

Krystal Lynn Lewis, 23, and Austin Michael Mullins, 26, have been accused of killing and skinning a puppy (pictured left), using the pelt to make a belt. Mullins allegedly shot the puppy ten times before the pair skinned it and stretched out the skin on a board.

Both are charged with a felony count of cruelty to animals. The terrier puppy was a gift to Lewis from an ex-lover that she didn't get along with anymore. Lewis and Mullins are being held on $25,000 bond. A mental compentency hearing has been called for both of them.

Andy Kahan: National TV Appearances Today and Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (andy kahan) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:19:00 +0000

Will be on CNN Live around 1:30 PM Central Time and will be on Fox and Friends Tomorrow Morning around 8:30 AM to discuss the status of the 'Murderabilia' Industry

Andy Kahan
Director of Crime Victims Assistance for the Mayor’s Office of Houston, TX

Happy 2nd Birthday To ICB!!

noreply@blogger.com (Corey Mitchell) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:13:00 +0000

By Corey Mitchell

Well, I almost missed that…how ‘bout you? I’m talking about our second anniversary here at In Cold Blog.

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but we eclipsed that milestone at the beginning of this month and I’m just now gettin’ ‘round to it.

Thank you to all of our faithful readers and for those of you who drop in occasionally. We love you all and encourage you to tell your friends about In Cold Blog, or ICB, as we are affectionately referred to by our fanatics.

To this day, I don’t believe there is a better place to pop in for compelling insights into the world of true crime. We have always been different here at ICB and, apparently, that’s what you love about us. We don’t simply grab news from Google Alerts and spit them back out with snarky rejoinders. We give you unique, thoughtful, and entertaining works that make you think, make you cry, and even piss you off.

ICB is doing something right these days.

We’ve been branded every name in the book by our competition and sometimes, even by you readers. From “ultra-liberals” to “fascist right-wingers,” from “misogynistic pigs” to “victim-only sympathizers,” we’ve heard all the negative (usually anonymous) barbs and insults. But more often than not, we hear you telling us thanks for the hard work. Thank you for giving a voice to victims. Thanks for shining the light on an injustice of a defendant.

And that is what makes ICB work so well.

We have a multitude of brilliant contributors with many opposing viewpoints, but they are all worthy of reading, digesting, and discussing. If you don’t like what one contributor writes, there is usually someone else with a different perspective with whom you might agree. The thing is, you know you can always come to ICB and share you differences of opinion.

We’ve had some former contributors who failed to understand that. When they did not get their way, they were kindly shown the door. We have not missed a beat ever since. In fact, we have escalated leaps and bounds since their departures and could not be happier around the ICB campus. Of course, that does not mean everyone here agrees with everyone else; no, just that all of our writers are mature adults who know how to disagree with one another and to make this a well-oiled, multi-faceted, multi-viewpoint machine.

Plus, we just don’t like stalkers.

So, on this belated 2nd year anniversary of what has often been called the #1 true crime blog, I want to give a big thanks to all of you who have read this far. Also, special kudos go out to our wonderful editor, Michelle McKee. She takes no guff and gives everything back in return.

There are plenty of new things in store for ICB and I hope to share those with you sometime later this year. In the meantime, keep enjoying the fresh content coming down the pipe. Also, be sure to check out some off our newest, wonderful contributors including Paula Ururburu, Joe McKinney, Steve Singular, and Cathy Scott. I am just as excited as you to read these new voices here at ICB.

Now, I must return to my man cave and finish my next book on Bart Whitaker.

Happy 2nd Birthday to us!

Corey Mitchell writes books about serial killers, mass murderers, and the evil that men do. He also loves heavy metal, long walks on the beach, and fondue.

Drug Dealer Convinces Supreme Court to Abandon Common Sense

joemckinney2033@yahoo.com (Joe McKinney) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:05:00 +0000

By Joe McKinney

On April 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its ruling in the case of Arizona v. Gant. That opinion effectively turned three decades of police training and practice in searching vehicles incident to an arrest on its ear and dealt a hard blow to the common sense standard the Court created in the 1981 case of New York v. Belton.

The trouble started on August 25, 1999, when two Tucson police officers were dispatched to a house to investigate a tip about narcotics activity. When they got there, a druggie named Rodney Gant answered the door and told the officers the owner of the house wasn’t home. After they left the house they ran a check on Rodney Gant and found he had a suspended license and a warrant for his arrest for driving with that suspended license. They decided to return to the house later that evening and when they did they saw Rodney Gant pulling into his driveway. The officers closed on Gant as he was exiting his vehicle, arrested him, and stuffed him into their patrol car. The officers then searched the vehicle Gant had just stepped out of and found a gun and a baggie of cocaine. The gun and the drugs were seized and Gant was arrested for the warrant and the cocaine and driving with a suspended license. So far so good.

A short time later, Gant’s team tried to get the evidence seized from his car suppressed. The superior court denied the motion, Gant was convicted, and he was thrown in a jail cell where he belongs. Again, so far so good.

But, completely unwilling to accept the consequences of his actions, Gant appealed. This time his attorneys went to court armed with a 2001 case, Arizona v. Dean. In that case, two Phoenix police officers got into a car chase with a drug dealer named Donald Dean that ended in Dean’s driveway, where he ditched his car and fled on foot into his garage. The officers got the keys from Dean’s vehicle and called in a tactical squad, who searched the house for two and a half hours before locating him in the attic. After the arrest, the officers searched Dean’s vehicle and found more drugs. Actually, a lot of drugs.

Now in that case the court decided to suppress the evidence found in Dean’s car because the arrest occurred a considerable distance away from Dean’s vehicle and after a significant time lag. I agree with that ruling. At the risk of sounding like a Monday morning quarterback, it seems pretty clear that the officers should have gotten a search warrant, just to make sure everything stuck; they certainly had enough probable cause to do so.

But the trouble here is that Gant’s attorneys thought they could bend the circumstances of Gant’s case enough to make it seem relatively similar to Donald Dean’s case. Though Gant had literally just stepped out of his vehicle, Gant’s attorneys argued that he was not a recent occupant of that vehicle at the time of the arrest, and therefore the warrantless search of his vehicle was an infringement of his Fourth Amendment rights and the evidence should be suppressed.

Now I don’t know how you can be much more “recent” than Gant was, but somehow Gant’s defense team managed to sell this offensive load of horse manure to the Arizona Court of Appeals Division Two and to the Arizona Supreme Court. The conviction was overturned and the druggie was set free to deal again.

Up to this point there was still some hope that common sense would prevail. The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and when they did so, they were armed with two benchmark cases from opposite ends of the country that together established the standard and practice of searching vehicles incident to an arrest. The first of those two cases was Chimel v California, 395 U.S. 752, 763 (1969). In Chimel, the Court held that a lawful search incident to arrest should only include “the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” The Court’s intention in Chimel was twofold: prevent harm to the arresting police officer and prevent the destruction of evidence of the crime being investigated. Sounds good, right?

A decade later, the Court heard New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981). In Belton, the Court applied their opinion in the Chimel case to the search of a vehicle incident to a lawful arrest. The Court wrote that when an officer arrests “the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of the automobile and any containers therein.” This is based on the logical assumption “that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of automobiles are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within ‘the area into which an arrestee might reach.’” Since that decision the police and the courts alike have interpreted those words to mean that an officer is justified in searching the passenger area of an arrestee’s vehicle even if the arrestee is not likely to regain access to the vehicle.

The Belton ruling was good law because it made sense. It created a simple, workable rule for officers to follow during searches without bogging the issue down with needless nitpicking about how far away an arrestee needs to be in order for a compartment inside a vehicle to be within reach. The Court recognized that there was no way to apply arbitrary “arm’s reach” standards that would fit all real life situations, which is why they both reaffirmed and extended the holding of the Belton ruling when they decided Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615 (2004).

But then along comes Gant (remember Gant?) and suddenly the Court decides to throw thirty years of sound and prudent law out the window. The Court, though not explicitly stating so, is essentially overruling Chimel and Belton by creating a two part rule to take the place of the established precedents. Under this new two part rule, an officer can search the passenger compartment of a vehicle if the suspect is still within reaching distance of the vehicle at the time of the search or if the officer has reason to believe, and can clearly and logically articulate that belief, that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.

It seems to me that there are two logical outcomes of this new two part rule. The first will be to place arresting officers at an unnecessary risk of harm from suspects who show surprising speed and determination in reaching for a weapon. Don’t buy that argument? Consider the 21 Foot Rule. For a long time now law enforcement agencies and self-defense experts have been studying police shootings with the hope of arming officers with enough information to prevent future injuries. One of the interesting bits of wisdom to surface out of all that research is the 21 Foot Rule. Simply stated, this is the distance an average person with a knife can cover in the time it takes an average officer to pull, aim, and fire his weapon. 21 feet! That is a huge distance, especially when you dealing persons who may be drunk, high, desperate, or just plain crazy. Especially when you consider that the overwhelming majority of police shootings occur at a distance of less than 10 yards. But, thanks to the Court’s decision in Gant, we can safely forget all about the 21 Foot Rule. After all, now that the Court is throwing good law out for bad, that drug dealer we just stopped eight feet from his open car door wouldn’t have any reason to run back and get his gun, would he?

The second part of this ruling is just going to create wiggle room for defendant’s to issue countless appeals. Instead of a simple, workable rule like we had under Belton, the Court has thrown the door open to every defense attorney with enough grease on his ethics to go hunting after technicalities. Where before we had one fair workable standard, I can foresee a future where felons are tossed back on the street because they were one inch too far away from their car to justify a search incident to arrest. Things are going to get ugly out there, folks!

Joe McKinney is a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department and a writer focusing on horror, science fiction, and crime fiction.