Criminal Conduct

Interview: Mommy Makes Me Sick; Defining Munchausen by Proxy

2013-08-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

Child abuse is heinous in all of its forms. One specific type of abuse that I find particularly interesting is Munchausen by Proxy, because my mother was a perpetrator. Munchausen by Proxy (MbP) is a form of abuse in which a caregiver, typically a mother, deliberately makes another person, usually a child, sick. A few years ago I went looking for support services to help me deal with being a survivor of MbP and that is how I came to meet Dr. Marc Feldman.

What I learned from discussing the subject of MbP with Dr. Feldman was that there wasn't any support services or even counseling groups for MbP survivors. An MbP perpetrator could find help, but victims were on their own. I came to the conclusion that if I was going to figure out how to psychologically deal with what happened to me, I’d have to understand what was wrong with my mother to begin with. Was she mentally ill or was she making a choice. Did she know what she was doing; did she do it on purpose? This was the impetus for the following interview conducted in May 2008.

With a specialty in Factitious Disorder, Dr. Marc Feldman is an international expert in Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen by proxy, and malingering. He was formerly Vice Chair for Clinical Services at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), Medical Director of UAB’s Center for Psychiatric Medicine and the Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama (UA), Tuscaloosa.

Michelle McKee:

The term factitious brings the word “lie” or “liar” to mind and the word “disorder” makes me think of something that is “pathological” or “habitual.” Therefore, Dr. Feldman, what is Factitious Disorder and is this just a ten-dollar term for pathological lying?

Dr. Feldman:
"Pathological lying" refers to lying consisting of a triad of features: it is impulsive or compulsive; it is repetitive; and it typically is ultimately self-defeating (e.g., the lie is exposed and undermines people's trust). It can involve anything--not just illness. One variant that often co-exists with full-blown Munchausen syndrome is called "pseudologiafantastica," or the telling of tall tales about one's personal history that mix fact and fiction. Such lies--the ones that are "a little" true--are the best kinds of lies because they are so difficult, generally, to detect. Pseudologia fantastica can be seen among MbP perpetrators as well.

Factitious Disorder(FD) is the feigning, exaggerating, or self-inducing of physical or psychological signs and symptoms to assume the "sick role." External incentives are absent, which contrasts with malingering, in which the principal goal for the disease enactment is external, and often tangible. Examples of malingering include obtaining opioids, evading criminal prosecution, getting disability monies, avoiding military service, etc.

FD is a mental disorder with its own chapter in DSM-IV-TR; malingering is merely listed in the Appendix as a condition that might warrant clinical attention but is not established to be a mental disorder. If the only way to understand the disease enactment is to invoke psychological processes, then the diagnosis is FD. Technically, FD and malingering cannot co-exist, but in reality they very often do because a person's motives for a piece of behavior can shift over time.

MM: How does Hypochondria differ from Factitious Disorder and Munchausen Syndrome?

Dr. Feldman: Hypochondriasis refers to the preoccupation with having a dreaded disease. These patients are convinced that they are genuinely ill but that doctors and others have failed to diagnose it properly. Some people consider chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia to be forms of hypochondriasis, but this is a bit controversial. Based on their convictions of illness, hypochondriacal patients may seek medical opinions repeatedly and from numerous practitioners. Hypochondriasis is one of the somatoform disorders, along with diagnoses such as pain disorder, somatization disorder, and conversiondisorder.

Munchausensyndrome is defined by the triad of 1) chronic and severe factitious disorder, 2) pseudologia fantastica, and 3) wanderlust (traveling from place to place to garner new audiences for the deceptions). The professional literature is uniform in stating that Munchausen Syndrome patients are predominantly male, but in my work, women have been more prevalent.
Munchausen by proxy is the feigning, exaggerating, or inducing of physical or psychological ailments in another person, typically by a mother against her child. Men have only rarely been implicated in Munchausen by Proxy maltreatment.

MM: Is Munchausen by Proxy (MbP) a form of mental illness?

Dr. Feldman: Munchausen by Proxy, isn't really an "illness," as I see it. It as a form of child abuse, not something a perpetrator "suffers from." In the same way that a mother doesn't "have" shaken baby syndrome, a mother doesn't "have" Munchausen by Proxy (MbP). However, the media almost always get it wrong, as do child protection agencies and courts.

MM: You say that MbP from your perspective is not an illness but child abuse. Therefore, I have to ask you, is child abuse related to a mental illness or is it a behavior choice.

Dr. Feldman: Child abuse is a behavioral choice, in my opinion, at least in MbP cases (an exception might be a phenomenon such as postpartum psychosis resulting in abuse/death of the child, because then the mother has lost contact with reality). These mothers are not psychotic nor necessarily impulsive; often considerable planning is necessary for them to carry out the deceptions. Some perps may claim that the behavior occurred during psychogenic "blackouts," but I'm not aware of any cases in which this was found to be true.

MM: In MbP the perpetrator makes another sick in order to garner attention for themselves. How do the perpetrators of MbP differ from those caregivers who have been termed “Angels of Death?” Don't both sets of perpetrators seek to garner attention for themselves by inflicting extreme illness to another party?

Dr. Feldman: The Angels of Death and MbP perpetrators have so much in common in many cases that I equated them in my co-edited 1996 book, TheSpectrum of Factitious Disorders. The relevant chapter analyzes numerous Angel of Death cases, calling them "hospital epidemics" of MbP. But some Angels of Death are "merely" homicidal and not particularly attention-seeking, and in those cases, the MbP term wouldn't be appropriate.

MM: To what extent do perpetrators of MbP seek to harm their victims? Do they seek to cause the eventual death of their victim or is the death of the victim counterproductive?

Dr. Feldman: There are some cases--relatively few--in which the MbP perpetrator seems to delight in the bereavement experience, enjoying funeral and burial rituals, etc. I think that's how the Waneta Hoyt case in upstate New York can be conceptualized, and it may also be true for the Marie Noe case in Philadelphia. But generally, the death of the victim is counterproductive because it removes the "object" they manipulate in MbP. Overall, though, it has been estimated that 9-10 percent of MbP victims eventually die, either as a direct result of the abuse or the iatrogenic complications caused by misdirected treatment efforts.

MM: How well informed is the medical community on the signs and symptoms of MbP?

Dr. Feldman: Overall, I think the medical community is inadequately informed. The reason is that MbP is not routinely taught in medical schools or residency programs. In a 1993 study I did with Barbara Ostfeld, we found that child psychiatrists were quite uniformly aware of the phenomenon, but that most family practitioners and social workers--who, after all, are on the front lines in dealing with families--were unaware even of the term "MbP," let alone what it takes to diagnose a case.

MM: I am pretty sure that if I decide that I want to have half a lung removed I can eventually find someone who will be more than happy to come up with a diagnosis to support the procedure and eagerly bill for it. Therefore, how culpable are the doctors who are involved in these cases, they're trained professionals, how can they be so easily duped?

Dr. Feldman: Regarding the apparent ease with which physicians can be duped: this isn't a surprise to me. Physicians are taught nothing about medical deception in medical school or residency. Even as a psychiatric trainee, I never even heard the word "factitious"; it was only after I submitted my first article about a patient who feigned cancer that I heard the term. In the article, I had called it "malingering," and the reviewers pointed out my mistake.

During medical school, a supervisor got angry with me for writing statements such as "According to the patient, she has shortness of breath" or "The patient states he has chest pain." He said that I was demonstrating that I already doubted what I was being told by not stating it as simple fact, and so I had to re-write the entry simply as "She has shortness of breath" and "He has chest pain." Also, doctors are taught (correctly) that the best clue to what is going on with a patient is what the patient and family have to say about it and that we must form an "alliance" with both (particularly in psychiatry, but actually in all fields). We are not taught ever to doubt what is being said. So, again, it doesn't surprise me that doctors can not only be gullible but also wind up being, as one author put it, "professional participants" in MbP maltreatment.

MM: Is there a victim profile for MbP, such as confined to a particular age group, gender, economic background? What about the perpetrator, is there a profile for them?

Dr. Feldman: MbP perpetrators tend to have personality disorders, especially borderline, antisocial, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders--the so-called "Cluster B" personality disorders, histories of psychiatric treatment earlier in their lives, histories of substance abuse, and, often, personal histories of factitious disorder that they now seem to want to extend to the next generation.

They may have been abused themselves earlier in life, but this is hard to know because the perpetrators often provide false historical information in a kind of attempt to exonerate or explain away their behavior. Clearly, the problems these mothers have allow them to objectify and dehumanize their children. Occasionally, a perpetrator might have an underlying mental disorder such as major depression or bipolar disorder that fuels their behavior to some extent, and we tend to view those cases as more treatable because mood disorders are quite treatable.

They tend to be in the age range associated with having small children. I think that MbP, like abuse in general, is detected more often in lower socioeconomic families, but I don't have research data to back that up. I rarely encounter African-American perpetrators in MbP cases, and I'm not sure what to make of that.

Regarding victims, they are usually, but not always, pre-verbal or scantily verbal and therefore can't communicate about what's going on. They seem not to have bonded terribly well with the perpetrator, and there can be several reasons for this. One is that, as in abuse in general, there may be something about the child (in the eyes of the mother) that makes him/her "imperfect" and dissatisfying.

Only one study of adult survivors of MbP has, to my knowledge, been published. As you would expect, many of the patients (I think there were 12 in the study) had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some avoided even medically necessary care because of their unpleasant memories, but a few became factitious disorder patients themselves, as if to "master" the trauma by making it their own.

MM: How common is MbP?

Dr. Feldman: It has been estimated by one researcher that there are around 1,200 new cases each year in the U.S., but that statistic makes a lot of assumptions that might not all be true. MbP is a form of abuse/neglect that is bathed in secrecy and I have the feeling that most--yes, most--cases are never identified.

MM: What needs to be done to better understand, identify, and treat MbP perpetrators?

Dr. Feldman: It has been very difficult to study MbP perpetrators because most deny their culpability even when faced with incontrovertible evidence, and therefore aren't amenable to research interviews.

It might help if there were a central database of MbP cases that accredited researchers could access in order to study perpetrators and victims more thoroughly. The victims tend not to be available because the focus is on placement once MbP is identified, and so once again study is stymied.

The broader problem, though, is that many jurisdictions still aren't even aware of MbP as a form of child maltreatment, and obviously one can't diagnose something one has never heard of. So, cases slip through the fingers of anyone who might try to study the phenomenon.

MM: What percentage of the population is affected, or believed to be affected, by MbP as victims and as perpetrators?

Dr. Feldman: We have no information to answer this question. Again, it would be very helpful if there were a central repository of MbP data, but it doesn't exist.

Very little formal research into MbP has ever been performed and government and private foundations in the U.S. have never contributed a dime in grant monies for these issues.

MM: Are children the only victims of MbP? What about the same type of behavior by a caregiver against, for example, an elderly individual or someone who is already disabled, would that also be classified as MbP?

Dr. Feldman: Yes, these would also count as MbP cases. We use terms such as "Munchausen by Adult Proxy" to label such behavior, which can have the very same motives as when a child is the victim. We should be aware too, that MbP can be perpetrated against pets in order for the perpetrator to receive attention and sympathy, care and concern, from the vet and/or others.

MM: What should someone do if they suspect abuse through Munchausen by Proxy?

Dr. Feldman: First, they need education about what MbP is and is not. They can quickly get this kind of information from the MbP chapters in my book, PlayingSick. Then, they need to match the facts of the given case to the knownfeatures and warning signs of MbP. Once they have this kind of information, they will be equipped to make a sound, organized report to their county child protection agencies. They need to cooperate with the authorities and remain available to assist, if possible. Of course, mandated reporters, such as physicians, must make the MbP report at the time they become suspicious that it is occurring, even in the absence of confirmation.

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Criminal Media

2013-07-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Corleone

A major theme in my novel One Man’s Paradise is how the media affects the American system of justice. Is it possible for a defendant to get a fair trial when every aspect of the case is discussed ad nauseam prior to the trial on the three major national cable news channels? It seems that in the age of round-the-clock news, voyeur journalism, and odious overbearing pundits, the freedom of the press has wholly usurped the right to due process.

Take the Casey Anthony case for example. If you followed this case at all during CNN’s prime time line-up, chances are you made a decision on Casey Anthony’s guilt or innocence prior to her trial. And chances are that decision was been based largely on the slanted views of former prosecutors who now hold themselves out as investigative journalists. Worse yet, you most likely formulated your opinion based on evidence that may not have been admissible at trial.

In a nation where jurors regularly cash in on colossal press cases through book deals and the like, is it possible that a fan of Nancy Grace may find her way onto the jury of a highly publicized crime? You bet. Potential jurors lie all the time to get out of jury duty. But what about those potential jurors that lie in order to make their way into the box?

It’s a frightening notion that defendants might be judged on evidence inadmissible in court. Because it means that information and physical evidence obtained by law enforcement through improper means may not be useless after all. Even if such evidence is excluded by the trial judge, it is certainly fair game in the court of public opinion. This has set a dangerous precedent.

And how are such cases selected by the national news media? Clearly producers and pundits select their cases on the totality of the circumstances. First, it seems, they look at the victim. Preferably female, preferably Caucasian, preferably well-educated (or currently studying), preferably young, and preferably attractive, particularly in the face. Then the networks consider the defendant. The case is a keeper if the defendant has a lot to lose. Again, it’s preferred that the perpetrator be Caucasian, that he or she have some connection to the victim, and that he or she look totally out of place shackled in an orange jumpsuit while walking through the courtroom.

Setting is also important. A tropical island, such as the one in One Man’s Paradise, is ideal. But really any affluent neighborhood or popular vacation destination will do. Cruise ship murders work well, too. Especially, if searchers are unsuccessful at finding the body.

Of course, I’m not defending criminals. That was my profession for several years as an attorney in New York City, and I’m glad to say I’m done with it. But the way the media handle certain cases is an issue that needs to be addressed and soon. It’s bad enough when these media vultures swoop down and exploit victims’ families for ratings. It’s worse when they convict defendants based on hearsay and tainted evidence months, or even years, before the actual trial.

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This post was contributed by Douglas Corleone, a former New York City criminal defense attorney; he now resides in the Hawaiian Islands where he writes contemporary crime fiction. His first international thriller Good As Gone will be released on August 20, 2013. You can find out more about this author and his books by visiting his website, following him on Twitter or joining him on Facebook.

Fame & Acclaim through Murder: Our Iconic Killers

2013-07-27T22:25:00.003-07:00

By Jeffrey A. Cohen

We all know the icon I mean. We see him in literature, in film, in popular culture, in the news. He’s the poet-murderer, the societal rebel, the killer as greater soul. The killer in social protest. He’s Mailer’s “hipster,” that existential hero and “true” individual, who expresses himself through violence, and gives us his reasons from prison.

Years ago while in law school, I became fascinated with the phenomenon of the jailhouse literary sensation, and particularly, Jack Henry Abbott. He was the convicted murderer who became a cultural icon and literary shooting star when his book of letters to Norman Mailer, In the Belly of the Beast, was published in 1981.

One irony of the Abbott case is that this evil man’s letters, irrationally justifying his lifetime of violent crime, resulted in public sympathy, literary acclaim, and even his parole (with Mailer’s assistance). Another irony, a tragic one, is that within six weeks of his release Abbott killed again, the night before a laudatory review of his book would appear in the New York Times. And a final irony—the most perverse of all—is that the man he stabbed in the heart, Richard Adan, 22, a night-shift waiter who refused him the use of an employees-only restroom, was by day pursuing his dream of becoming a writer himself.

We tend to invest our violent criminals with special qualities—they’re poets (like Abbott), they’re rebels (like Gary Gilmore), they have greater souls, or they bravely act in the face of society’s most sacred rules—our antiheros. Only, in truth, they are almost never heroes of any sort, and kill because they are less not more. The jailhouse literary sensation and our other celebrity killers, bask in the limelight of a little life turned big through evil acts, and blossom and flourish in our misconceptions of them.

This is the spark behind The Killing of Mindi Quintana. In my novel, Freddy Builder kills Mindi Quintana and is writing the book about their relationship everybody wants. It’s a lying rewrite of Mindi’s life and his own, and of his miserably thin involvement with her. Freddy is a department store clerk with dreams he’s done little to further. Now, as he awaits trial, excerpts of his book appear to acclaim, and interest grows in the case. His own lawyer, Philip, watches with disgust as Freddy builds his acclaim from the bones of his victim. And as a new celebrity killer takes the stage.

In the store, before killing Mindi, Freddy daydreams of his future this way:

“When he made it into high gear, he would know what to do: He would be witty for reporters, pensive when appropriate, insightful always, and clever sometimes. When people cared what he thought, he would think great things. When they came to him, he would know what to say. When there was no question of his stature, they would admire his work. All he needed was an occasion to rise to.”

The “occasion” is murder and my novel asks if Freddy is right. It asks if our iconic criminals are as often depicted in literature and the press, or if they are undeserving of attributions of special character, talent, or existential heroism. The Killing of Mindi Quintana is about celebrity through murder and the fascination we have with our violent criminals. And it delivers the blow we all wish for when we think of O.J. Simpson, Gary Gilmore, Jack Henry Abbott—the alleged killer with a book, or who gains fame through the backdoor of murder.

I was inspired to write my novel The Killing of Mindi Quintana by several aspects of the Jack Henry Abbott case: the dubious attribution of exceptional talent to his writing in In the Belly of the Beast; the public’s fascination with him for having killed; and the cruel irony of his killing Richard Adan—an aspiring writer who worked in obscurity to achieve what his killer was awarded for a lifetime of crime.

I think of what Abbott accomplished as “fame and acclaim through the backdoor of murder.” He was a pre-packaged jailhouse literary sensation, his letters to Norman Mailer on prison life chopped into pieces for Belly, edited, organized under subject headings, and graced with a forward by Mailer himself. I am always struck in reading his letters by Abbott’s ethos of violence, his monumental narcissism, and the disjointed philosophy he constructed from his prodigious reading to justify his lifetime of violence. (When I think of Belly, I think of the Unabomber’s manifesto—where would he be in our pantheon of criminal icons had he had a Mailer as his champion?)

Abbot’s self-acquittal in Belly is internally inconsistent, irrational at times, remorseless, and in many places lacks credibility—it is unpersuasive. To read his letters is to know he should not have been paroled. But I am concerned, too, with something else: I am concerned about a public and literati eager to call him a genius for too little, a cultural tendency I explore in The Killing of Mindi Quintana.

I am not unmindful of the high quality of Abbott’s writing here and there, which it would be dishonest to ignore. But his logic, his ideas and credulity are all doubtful, and his ability to do anything more than rant eloquently in short bursts is not apparent. All of this argues against his merit as a writer; and I am suspicious of both what was left on the cutting room floor, and the nature of the editing of what we do get to read.

I recommend reading In the Belly of the Beast yourself and coming to a personal conclusion.

It was in the late ‘70’s, while Mailer was working on The Executioner’s Song about Gary Gilmore, that Jack Henry Abbott first wrote him offering a primer on prison life through his letters. Gilmore, the first man to be executed in the United States after a ten-year hiatus, famously abandoned his right to appeal in favor of an expeditious execution. Like Abbott, Gilmore was a state-raised convict who had spent mere months outside prison as an adult before being released to commit heinous crimes.

As Belly does Abbott, The Executioner’s Song lionizes Gilmore through Gilmore’s letters from prison, carefully selected and edited. Mailer writes of that editing, “…[I]t seemed fair to show [Gilmore] at a level higher than his average…. Besides he wrote well at times.” (Song at pg. 1052) Fair to whom? The reader looking for an accurate depiction of Gary Gilmore?

Mailer brings to bear far more material than merely Gilmore’s letters to portray him as a poetic soul, a talented artist, a lover, good writer, and thinker. Mailer’s Gilmore is an existential hero, defying society by breaking its laws, and by killing, loving, and then dying on his own terms. Song also chronicles a moving prison love story between Gilmore and Nicole, his girlfriend of all of two months before his arrest for two murders.

The love story before prison was more prosaic: Nicole had grown bored of Gilmore and abandoned him. Their breakup, in fact, occasioned the murders. On successive nights, distraught over Nicole, Gilmore killed a gas station attendant and then a motel manager. He had each lie facedown on the floor in his place of business, had each tuck his arms underneath his body, and shot each twice in the back of the head. With Gilmore’s arrest, Nicole’s love is rekindled.

Gilmore’s letters, like Abbott’s, showcase an extreme narcissism and a remorselessly violent credo. In a number of his letters, Gilmore asks Nicole to commit suicide so that no other man will ever have her. She tries and fails to kill herself. He tries, not so hard, and fails, too.

The wind in the hair of these killers is supplied off camera by those creating the narrative we hanker for. My job, as I saw it, in The Killing of Mindi Quintana, was to skewer the icon, to show the ersatz killer-poet for true. We don’t all kill because we’re poets, it turns out; some of us kill because we’re not poets—then pretend to be when others see one in us.

In The Killing of Mindi Quintana, a department store clerk turned jailhouse literary sensation, builds his acclaim with his victim’s bones, as he writes his book. His defense attorney watches with disgust until he can watch no more.

I hope with my novel to steal the back the wind from the hair of a false rebel, and to deliver a comeuppance to the killer with a book.

This post was contributed by Jeffrey A. Cohen, a writer, technology entrepreneur and former trial attorney currently residing in Philadelphia. You can find out more about this author and his book by visiting his author page on Amazon, following him on Twitter, joining him on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Death Penalty for Holmes a Foregone Conclusion

2012-08-16T05:18:00.002-07:00

By Harry N. MacLean

Although District Attorney Carol Chambers will undertake an apparently thorough and deliberate process in deciding whether to seek the death penalty in the trial of James Holmes, the end result is a foregone conclusion. The law, her inclination, and the politics of the situation leave her no choice.

The law in this case is pretty clear. In Colorado you only need one of seventeen aggravating factors to qualify a defendant for the death penalty. The most clearly applicable “aggravator” here is that the defendant “intentionally killed more than one person in one criminal episode.”

The politics are almost as clear. District Attorney Carol Chambers will be out of office at the end of the year. The conventional wisdom is that the decision on the death penalty will be made in the next two months, no later than Thanksgiving, well before the end of her term. Chambers is a controversial DA who had gotten in trouble with the bar and the judges in her judicial district. She has not, however, hesitated to seek the death penalty in cases of much less magnitude than this one. (Nor has she always succeeded).

Typically, the prosecutors sit down and review the evidence, look for “aggravators” and “mitigators,” and talk with the families of the victims. They ask themselves whether, given the venue and the crime, they have a realistic chance of getting death if they seek it. The families can present problems; difficulties arise when they split on the question, and here one victim who survived has already said he forgives Holmes and doesn’t want him to be executed. The victims of those killed might well have different views.

One must wonder if the prosecutors have a real chance of convincing a jury to put Holmes to death. There are three persons on death row in Colorado, and only one inmate, Gary Davis, has been executed since the reinstitution of the death penalty in 1976. Nathan Dunlap, the Chucky Cheese murderer, had been on the row for twenty years. But don’t forget that Denver jurors sentenced McVeigh to death for the Oklahoma bombing murders. You could argue that Holmes’ crime was more cruel and heinous because the victims could see what was coming before they died. Arapahoe County, where this case will be tried unless venue is changed, is much more conservative than Denver.

If Chambers does not seek the death penalty for Holmes, she would have to explain why, and in that process would most likely have to lay out the weaknesses of her case, for the defense and the world to see. And while it’s early, so far we’ve seen no evidence of any “mitigators,” such as physical or sexual child abuse suffered by Holmes.

Chambers will issue a press release to announce her decision to seek the death penalty for Holmes. I could draft it for her now.

A final note: Holmes’ eventual fate could turn on the vote of one Democratic state senator. In 2009, when the Democrats controlled the governor’s office and both houses, a bill to repeal the death penalty passed the House and came within one vote of passing in the Senate. (Whether Gov. Ritter, a Democrat and former Denver DA, would have signed it is another question).

It’s interesting to think of the fate of such a bill were it to be introduced in the legislature, or put to popular vote, today in Colorado.

This post was contributed by Harry N. MacLean, former First Assistant Attorney General for the Colorado Department of Law. He is an Edgar Award winner and New York Times best selling author. You can find out more about this author and his books by visiting his website, following him on Twitter or joining him on Facebook.

James Holmes: Mass Media and Uncovering a Motive for Murder

2012-07-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

By Michael Tabman

Another mass shooting. Another day of agony for our country. A time for us to question, debate and jump to conclusions. And ultimately, another lost opportunity to learn lessons from a tragedy that will get overshadowed by more recent news and shocking events. Except of course, for those who suffered through the unimaginable; they will never forget.

In March 2005, I was the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the mass shooting at Red Lake High School, leaving 10 people dead. After my news conference, I was contacted by people from all over the world. For a few weeks, the event, its aftermath and the ensuing investigation were headline news. Six months later, Red Lake had disappeared from our collective memory. Our memories are short.

The same questions tend to arise after a mass shooting: Isn’t there a profile of these shooters? Aren’t there red flags? Usually, the answer is yes. There is a basic profile of mass shooters. Certain life events and changing patterns of behavior often unfold prior to the shooting. These are not hard and fast rules, but generalities that are frequently present.

Reports from family and friends of the alleged shooter James Holmes describe him as shy, but otherwise unremarkable – not the kind of person you are concerned about “going off the edge.” Yet, some neighbors have described him as a loner – a clear inference to someone who is odd and socially inadequate. Had this horrific event not occurred, would they still describe him that way, or is this just the effect of the commonly held shooter profile?

When the recent life of the shooter is examined, as is already happening, we often find stressors and triggers. These are the negative events which make one’s life unhappy and possibly unbearable. These stressors can be real or imagined. The triggers are the events that bring the shooter to the point of committing mass murder.

Holmes recently dropped out of his Ph. D. program, according to news reports. That could have been one red flag. By itself, it would not signal impending violence. Were there other signs? His mother was reported as saying, “You have the right person.” If a mother can readily accept that about her son, then there must have been other warning signs. These warning signs will be uncovered. His accumulation of weapons and ammunition should have been red flags. Did anyone else know about this? As of now, the police are confident he acted alone. That does not mean someone did not know something.

Mass shootings usually occur at school or the workplace as the shooter is seeking revenge against specific people or a group of people he sees as the source of his misery. School and the workplace are usually where these stressors are most intense. So, why the movie theater? Yes, he referred to himself as “The Joker.” Did he have some fascination with Batman, or did he seek a venue for inflicting maximum damage?

These events often end in suicide by the shooter’s own hand or by forcing the police to shoot him – suicide by cop. That did not happen; he readily surrendered. Why?

I suspect that he knew his life and story would be in the headlines for the next few weeks; he wanted to see his story told. As always, I must point out that Holmes is the alleged shooter; his guilt has not been determined.

Why do we tell the story of the shooter? We justify that by saying we need to understand; we need to recognize the warning signs; we need to discuss mental health issues and intervention and we need to re-visit the gun laws. These would be important conversations if we actually accomplished anything. But we don’t.

Holmes is not cooperating with law enforcement at this point. I think eventually he will. That will be the only way to bring his name back in to the spotlight after our attention turns to the next tragedy.

Maybe we should not give any coverage to the life and times of mass murderers. Do we really need to provide them with any more motivation than they create for themselves?

This post is contributed by Michael Tabman. It originally appeared on his Crime Scene Blog and is republished here with permission. Michael is a retired FBI Agent and the author of several books. He is also the founder of SPIRIT Asset Protection, LLC where he provides services in security and risk management. You can find out more about this author and his books by visiting his website, following him on Twitter or joining him on Facebook.

Interview: Catching Liars with Statement Analysis

2012-07-21T02:54:00.000-07:00

By Joe McKinney

Talking to people who don’t want to talk to you is hard. And it’s a skill that most cops have to learn on the job. We get extensive training with our guns. We’re taught how to drive our patrol cars under just about every condition imaginable. We even get put in computer simulators that gauge our ability to diffuse domestic disturbances. And yet, for all that, very little attention is given to the cop’s most basic tool – the ability to talk to people.

Well, my guest has made it his mission in life to change all that. Mark McClish, a former Deputy US Marshal with 26 years of law enforcement experience, is an expert in interviewing people and detecting deception. While an instructor at the US Marshals Service Training Academy, Mark McClish set out to learn all he could of the fine art of interviewing people. His research led him to develop the technique of Statement Analysis, which he uses to catch liars with a regularity that is almost uncanny.

Author of the textbook, I Know You Are Lying, and a frequent seminar instructor and lecturer, Mark McClish has assisted law enforcement agencies across the country in hundreds of cases. And, he has graciously agreed to share a little of his wisdom with us.

So, Loyal Readers, meet Mark McClish.

Joe McKinney: Mark, welcome. There are a lot of true crime readers out there eager to hear about what you do.

Mark McClish: Joe, thank you for providing me this opportunity to address your readers.

JM: Now, you’ve been a Deputy U.S. Marshal, a law enforcement instructor, and with the publication of your book, I Know You Are Lying, an author. I want to get to those points here in a bit, but first, would you give us a rundown of what Statement Analysis is? How is what you do different from that “gut feeling” most of us get when we know we’re being lied to?

MM: Statement Analysis is the process of examining a person’s words in a verbal or written statement to see if the person is being truthful or deceptive. The Statement Analysis techniques will also help you see additional information within the statement. The majority of the techniques are based on word definitions. For example, when President Clinton talked about testifying under oath at a deposition, he stated, “I was bound to be truthful and I tried to be.” In his statement, he is telling us that he was not completely truthful. The word tried means he attempted but failed to tell the truth.

Some of the techniques are based on the rules of grammar. When we first talk about a person or an item in a story, we use the articles a or an. Once the introduction has been made, we use the article the. For example, “I was walking along Highway 11 when I found a gun. I picked up the gun and gave it to the police.” The subject first identifies the firearm as “a gun.” Once the introduction is made, he then correctly refers to it as “the gun.” When a person introduces someone or something using the article the we have a problem; “A man grabbed me and forced me into the car.” The subject correctly identifies the attacker as “a man.” The problem is that the subject introduced the vehicle as “the car” and not “a car.” This indicates the person may be making up the story or the person recognized the car and was a willing participant.

A few of the techniques are based on observations that interviewers have made over the years. For example, it has been found that when a person invokes the name of God there is a good chance he is being deceptive; “I swear to God” or “Honest to God” or “God as my witness.”

Since the majority of the techniques are based on word definitions and the rules of grammar, the techniques are very accurate. While your gut feeling may tell you someone is lying, Statement Analysis will show you he is lying. There was a case in which a husband and wife were driving to breakfast. The husband pulled off the road to go to the bathroom in the bushes. When he exited the car he forgot to put it in park and the car rolled forward over a cliff killing his wife. He claimed it was an accident. The police believed he sent the car over the cliff on purpose. In his statement to the police, the man began his account by saying, “On July 2, I was with my wife Sharon and we were going to breakfast.” In the first sentence of his statement, he unknowingly tells us there was a problem with their relationship. In talking about his wife, the subject used the word with which always indicates distance. He could have said, “Sharon and I were going to breakfast.” The word and connects the two of them together. In the statement “I was with my wife,” we have I at one end of the sentence and wife at the other end of the sentence. This separation indicates there was some discontent. After analyzing the rest of his statement, it was quite clear he purposely sent his car over the cliff.

JM: Your website, http://www.statementanalysis.com, lists numerous examples of famous cases where statement analysis successfully identified deception. Your book, I Know You Are Lying, looks at eight more high profile case studies. How do you normally get involved in a case? Are you on standby with certain agencies?

MM: If there is a high profile case that I am able to obtain transcripts of an interview with the subject, I will analyze the transcripts and post my analysis on my website for the benefit of those visiting my site. I only get involved in a case if an investigator asks me to analyze a statement. Officers send me statements all the time involving cases that do not get national attention. I recently analyzed a note that was left in a store. The writer claimed she had been kidnapped and was leaving notes in an effort to get help. After analyzing the note, I determined it was a fake. The police never found a kidnapper or a victim.

JM: Most cops I know talk about training in terms of adding another tool to their tool belt. I know you teach seminars on a regular basis. After taking such a seminar, what kind of tool would an investigator have? Would he be able to dissect a subject’s statement himself, or would he simply be equipped with enough knowledge to know he needs to consult an expert?

MM: After attending one of my seminars or taking my online training, an officer will be a much better listener and have the ability to detect deception. This helps in obtaining additional information, eliminating suspects and getting a confession. Like with most skills, the more you practice the Statement Analysis techniques the better you will become at detecting deception.

JM: Are your seminars for law enforcement agents only, or are they open to other professionals as well, such as lawyers, insurance adjustors, or true crime writers?

MM: My seminars are open to anyone. The majority of the attendees are law enforcement personnel. However, other professionals such as social workers and attorneys do attend. I don’t think I have ever had a true crime writer attend but they are most welcome!

JM: I know from personal experience that most investigators start off their careers as generalists and gradually, over a period of many years, develop a specialty. How did your career path lead you into statement analysis?

MM: After becoming a Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1985, I set a goal for myself of teaching at our Training Academy. In 1990, I was promoted to an inspector/instructor at the Marshals Service Academy which is located at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, GA.

When I got to the Academy I asked if I could teach interviewing techniques. I had conducted a lot of interviews when I was in the field and it was an area that I was interested in. In preparing to teach our recruits, I was sent to several classes on detecting deception such as word analysis, response analysis and Scientific Content Analysis. I found the techniques to be very interesting. I then spent the next nine years teaching at the Academy and conducting my own research on the words that people use. After analyzing hundreds of statements, I developed my own system for detecting deception which I call Statement Analysis.

JM: When an officer does field sobriety tests on a DWI suspect, each test is designed to reveal indicators, or clues, that the subject is intoxicated. A certain number of clues on each test are sufficient to establish probable cause that the suspect is intoxicated. Does statement analysis follow a similar process? When you analyze someone’s statement, are you looking for a sufficient number of indicators to show the overall statement is deceptive, or are you identifying specific areas where the subject is being deceptive?

MM: When I analyze a statement I am looking to see what the person is saying. When people tell a lie, they generally do not lie about everything. There will be some truth in their statement. I focus on the areas where deception is present. By asking additional questions, I hope to clarify that portion of the statement, obtain additional information or perhaps get a confession. Ideally you want several indicators to conclude the person is being deceptive. Just because a person says one time, “I swear to God” does not mean he is lying. However, sometimes one word (usually a pronoun) can show us the person committed the crime.

JM: The results of a lie detector instrument are not generally admissible in court. Why is statement analysis different?

MM: Statement Analysis is different because it is based on the person’s language. When I analyze a statement I do not interpret but I point out what the person has said. If a rape victim states, “We went into the house and he raped me” we have a problem. The pronoun we always indicates there was a partnership. The victim should not be partnering up with her attacker. A true victim would state something like, “He forced me into the house and raped me.”

On the other hand, Statement Analysis is similar to a lie detector in that it is generally not used in court. You do not need an expert to testify that the word tried means the person has not done it, or that the phrase my victim is a confession because the pronoun my means the person has taken possession of the victim. Some areas of Statement Analysis would not be admissible in court because they are based on observations. This would include words or phrases that indicate deception such as “I swear on my mother’s grave.”

JM: As an investigator, I’ve had to interview every one from college professors to illiterate crack junkies so burned out they can barely mumble their names. Are the techniques of statement analysis adaptable across a broad socio-educational range, or do they necessitate a certain minimum standard of communication?

MM: People’s words will betray them. Therefore, the techniques will work with anyone who has the ability to communicate. However, if the person has poor grammar skills then some of the techniques may be difficult to use. For example, the person may use present tense verbs instead of past tense verbs not because he is being deceptive but because he does not know how to speak proper English. We have to take this into consideration when analyzing a statement. Other techniques will still work no matter what their educational level or background is.

JM: I know that word order and certain phrases can be indicators of deception. How do issues like regional dialects and suspects who speak English as a second language change the statement analyst’s approach to an interview?

MM: The approach in obtaining information should be the same. However, when analyzing the statement we have to consider regional dialects or if English is not the subject’s first language. The person may use a phrase that is unfamiliar to the interviewer. The interviewer will then need to ask additional questions to clarify what the person said. If English is the subject’s second language, this may cause him to use the wrong pronouns. An interviewer needs to recognize this and look for other signs of deception or truthfulness.

JM: Cops, as a general rule, don’t embrace change willingly. Even changes creating an obvious benefit sometimes meet with resistance. How receptive has the law enforcement community been to the field of statement analysis? If there is resistance, how do you address it in your teaching?

MM: Most officers embrace the techniques because they can relate to them. Officers often tell me they have heard many of the things that I teach but never associated it with deception. Their gut feeling told them the person was lying but they could not identify the deception in the person’s statement.

Probably the hardest thing for officers to accept is my theory that you should believe what people tell you. This is because most people do not lie. Instead they will give you a bunch of truthful statements and leave out the incriminating stuff. If you are looking for the lies, you are probably wasting your time. If you believe what people tell you, you will get a lot more out of their statement. This is because you will now be very discerning and will pay attention to everything the person says.

JM: Our discussion so far has dealt strictly with the law enforcement applications of statement analysis, but I imagine it could be applied to other fields as well, like business negotiations, or even in political campaigns, couldn’t it?

MM: Absolutely. Anyone who conducts interviews can benefit from the techniques. If you are interviewing applicants for a job, you want to hire a truthful person. Politicians are always carefully wording their statements. In 2006, Al Gore was asked if he was going to run for President. He replied, “I don’t have any plans to be a candidate again.” Some people would take that as a no but we only believe what people tell us. We do not interpret. Al Gore did not state that he would not run. He only said that he did not have any “plans.” People change their plans all the time. This was a good political answer that kept the door open to a possible run. As it turned out Al Gore did not run for President.

JM: With computer technology growing ever more complex and adaptable, where do you see statement analysis going in the next 5, 10, 20 years?

MM: When I was a U.S. Marshal we spent a lot of time catching fugitives. We apprehended many of them using high tech equipment. Therefore, I saw the art of interviewing diminishing. However, it will not disappear. Investigators still need to interview witness and take statements at a crime scene. Therefore, the Statement Analysis techniques will still be needed.

In terms of computer technology, officers can use my Statement Analyzer software to analyze a statement. It quickly identifies certain words within the statement and helps officers see things they were not familiar with or over looked.

JM: Thanks for joining us, Mark. It was a pleasure talking with you.

MM: It was nice talking with you, Joe.

This post was contributed by Joe McKinney, an author of several horror, crime and science fiction novels. He is also currently a sergeant with the San Antonio Police Department. You can find out more about this author and his books by visiting his website, following him on Twitter or joining him on Facebook.

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Interview: Former FBI Agent Talks About Oklahoma City Bombing

2012-05-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

By Michelle McKee

On April 19, 1995 the people of Oklahoma City fell victim to the worst case of domestic terrorism in United States history, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building.

I had an opportunity to speak with Jon Hersley about the investigation, conspiracy theorists and law enforcement in general. Hersley’s position within the investigation was as the FBI's Lead Case Agent responsible for the United States government’s case against Timothy McVeigh. Agent Hersley was involved in the investigation for its entire duration, from beginning to end, and it was his testimony before the Grand Jury that was instrumental in leading to McVeigh’s indictment.

In order to set an accurate record of the investigation and dispel the inaccurate and erroneous information being circulated regarding the bombing and the subsequent FBI investigation, retired FBI Special Agents Jon Hersley and Larry Tongate teamed up with Bob Burke, a local Oklahoma author, and wrote a book entitled Simple Truths. It is considered to be the definitive book on the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. The authors have declined any financial interest in the book, it was strictly a non-profit project, and it is the only accounting of the case that is told by the two FBI agents who were the closest to the investigation. The two men who were assigned as the Lead Case Agents responsible for building the government’s case against Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh, and who actually worked on the investigation from start to finish.

The Oklahoma City Bombing was the largest criminal investigation ever conducted in American history.

“This monstrous evil demanded justice. Whoever did this should never walk the face of the earth again.”

– Simple Truths: The Real Story of the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation, by Jon Hersley, Larry Tongate and Bob Burke

Jon Hersley: The victim families in the Oklahoma City bombing; what a dignified group of people they are. They’re like your own families. Like your brothers and your sisters, your sons and daughters, your moms and your dads. That’s who they are. They’re just like you are, like we are.

I sat in the courtroom and watched and listened to many, many of those victim family members testify about their loved ones that were killed. Spouses who’ve had their husbands or wives killed, their kids killed, their sons and daughters, their aunts and uncles, their grandmas and their grandpas, and their mothers and fathers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

I was a thirty-year law enforcement officer; I’ve had all kinds of cases. But this one changed me. I watched the dignity that all these people testified with. And they all tried to maintain their composure on the witness stand, and they all broke down before they could finish. It honestly just rips your heart out, and it changed me as a person. I am a different person today after experiencing all of that, knowing these people, and watching what they’ve been through.

“And Helena saw another man carry Brandon Denny from the building. Colton Smith was carried out next and laid on the concrete. Helena did not want to leave Colton but she wanted desperately to find Tevin.

She stayed with Colton, watching him, waiting and watching as more and more of the babies were carried out and laid down next to her. She screamed to the men, “Please don’t lay our babies on this glass, we don’t want our babies on this glass.” Pieces of glass were everywhere. A man swept the glass away from the children as they lay on the plaza floor.

Helena had not yet realized the babies were dead. A nurse came and began tagging the tiny bodies, and finally Helena realized they were gone. But still there was no sign of her precious Tevin.”

"On Saturday, three days, and what seemed like years after the bombing, Helena was notified that Tevin had been found. She was at church when the news came. Helena was never able to see Tevin’s face again. Tevin had a severe head injury, necessitating a closed casket funeral. She was able to kiss his feet and legs, but the rest of his body remained covered."

Tevin Garrett was 16-months old.

Jon Hersley: It had been a clear day, you could see all the way down to the Oklahoma City area from the windows of our building. I was on the drug squad in Oklahoma City at the time. I was actually in the FBI office up on the 16th floor, where my squad was, when the bomb exploded.

Our building was probably four or five miles from downtown Oklahoma City and I remember hearing this sound, this tremendous noise. I went and looked out the window and saw this tremendous cloud of dark, black smoke coming from the downtown Oklahoma City area. Of course, we didn’t know it was a bomb then. We didn’t know what had happened. I remember, we were talking in the office that there must have been a gas explosion or something. But then it was just a matter of minutes before we started hearing on the news that something terrible had happened in downtown Oklahoma City, and that the Alfred P. Murrah Building had blown-up down there.

Once we found out what happened we knew we were going to have an investigation that we were going to have to coordinate. We knew we were going to have people and supplies coming in from out of state, responders and rescuers, and such. I was initially tasked with staying at the office to begin coordinating everything, so it was about two days before I went down to the building site.

When I got down to Oklahoma City my first reaction was that it looked like a war zone. I was very upset and angry that someone did this. I thought, “Who could do such a thing?” It was just terrible. There was debris all over the place, the whole façade of the Murrah Building was blown off, and the buildings around the Murrah Building were also seriously damaged. Windows were blown out all over, and the structural parts of those buildings were all damaged. It was horrible, just horrible. I remember thinking, you know, “this is not the Middle East, what is going on here? What happened here?"

“It was impossible to walk around inside the building. There was smoke and debris everywhere, and the officers had to crawl.”

Michelle McKee: Is it true that as a result of the investigation Michael and Lori Fortier were discovered to have had prior knowledge that Timothy McVeigh was not only going to blow up the Murrah Building specifically, but also on what day it was going to occur and exactly how he was going to do it, all the way down to the rental of the truck and use of fertilizer and fuel?

Jon Hersley: McVeigh had described in detail to the Fortiers what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He told them that he was going to use a Ryder truck, that he had acquired the bomb components and described to them how he was going to configure the bomb making materials in the back of the Ryder truck.

He had pointed the Murrah Building out to Michael Fortier in mid-December, and told him that it was the building he was going to blow-up. After McVeigh had pulled off the highway and pointed the building out to Fortier, they discussed the best place for McVeigh to leave his car so he could get away quickly.

Michelle McKee: Did either Michael or Lori Fortier make any attempt to stop the bombing?

Jon Hersley: No, they did not make any attempt to stop it from taking place.

The Fortiers say that they didn’t think that McVeigh would actually go through with it. But he had acquired all of the bomb components, he had picked out the building he was going to blow-up, he picked out the type of vehicle he was going to use. He had everything. And he was trying to get Michael Fortier to help him. However, Fortier would not help him so to me that puts Fortier in a little bit of a different light than Terry Nichols.

So yes, you have to surmise, and I have no doubt, that the Fortiers knew exactly what McVeigh was going to do. And they could have stopped the whole thing with a phone call, and they didn’t. It could have been an anonymous phone call.

Michelle McKee: Do you think that Michel Fortier should have received life in prison?

Jon Hersley: Well, you know, I have to go by what the laws in our country are. And I think that those laws were followed and Fortier was sentenced accordingly. But, do I think he deserves life in prison for what he did, and what he didn’t do? Yes, I do.

Michelle McKee: What about Lori Fortier? Is she an innocent bystander?

Jon Hersley: Well, you can’t really say that someone is an innocent bystander if they’ve been told everything that is going to happen, and they do nothing to try to stop it, can you? But as part of the deal with Michael Fortier, we agreed not to prosecute Lori.

"Floors of concrete had fallen and were pancaked on top of where the officers were trying to free trapped victims. [Sgt.] Flowers heard a woman scream and saw her rolled up in a ball, her feet and legs tucked under her chest. She was imprisoned in a mass of cement blocks and steel rebar. He reached up through the concrete and touched the woman, telling her she was going to be okay, although he knew there was no way – it was impossible to move the concrete and steel rebar by hand."

Michelle McKee: What was Michael Fortier convicted of?

Jon Hersley: Primarily weapons charges. He helped McVeigh transport weapons from Kansas to Kingman, Arizona, to help put money back in the coffer that Nichols used. I don’t know that Fortier knew exactly what all that was going to be used for, but he helped. So, he was convicted of weapons charges.

We didn’t have enough evidence to convict him of the bombing, absent the things coming out of his own mouth.

I think it’s important to understand that in a case of this magnitude you need an insider, and you need an insider for two reasons. One is you need the insider testifying in the courtroom, so the jury will have confidence in their verdict. And, I think you also need an insider for the sake of the public, so that the public will have confidence in the investigation and the outcome of the trials.

In cases of this magnitude, sometimes you have to make a deal with the Devil. That’s what we did. We needed an insider in the case, and Michael Fortier was that insider. Was it pleasant making a deal with Michael Fortier? Absolutely not, but I would still make the same decision today.

I will also say this, once Michael Fortier made the agreement with us, and agreed to testify, he definitely lived up to his end of the bargain. He did, I think, as good a job as he could have done testifying. And, I do think he regretted the fact that he had not picked up the phone and made a call. Now he has to live the rest of his life knowing that he could have stopped it all.

Michelle McKee: Was McVeigh the sole person involved in the planning of the bombing?

Jon Hersley: No. Terry Nichols was involved in it all the way. He helped McVeigh acquire the bomb components; he planned it out with him, including the day before the bombing when Nichols helped McVeigh mix the bomb at Geary Lake.

Michelle McKee: Would you say Nichols is a follower?

Jon Hersley: Terry? No. He’s absolutely not a follower. He was in this all the way with McVeigh.

The only thing that Terry Nichols didn’t do was go down to Oklahoma City on the morning of the bombing. He was afraid of getting caught there, so instead, he chose to hide behind his wife’s apron strings in Herington, Kansas, and let McVeigh go do the dirty work.

I think Terry Nichols is every bit as guilty as Tim McVeigh is, and the evidence in the case showed that.

You know one thing that has always bothered me about McVeigh and Nichols. If you feel strongly enough about committing a crime of this magnitude should you not stand up and say why you did it? Take responsibility for what you did? Say “I did this, because of this.” Have they done that? Not at all.

Michelle McKee: Do you think Terry Nichols is a coward?

Jon Hersley: Absolutely, Terry Nichols is a coward. Absolutely!

“Daina Bradley’s leg was caught between the basement floor and a slab of the collapsed floor above. For hours she had laid in six inches of water and was in shock. Dr. [Andy] Sullivan removed the hard hat he had been given and crawled on his stomach until he reached the patient. A light bulb rigged by the rescue workers provided a small glimpse of light.”

“He had to make quick decisions. A rescue harness was hooked to her body so she could be pulled immediately from the rubble after he amputated her leg.

The doctor was afraid to administer Demerol or Morphine in fear that the medicine would kill Daina. Instead, he gave her Versed, an amnesic that would help her forget what was about to happen. He prayed Daina would not bleed to death and die in his arms as he performed the crude surgery.

With the tourniquet tightened, Dr. Sullivan told Daina what he was about to do. At first she said no, but then relented, recognizing that loosing a leg was better than loosing her life.

Dr. Sullivan began his work. The first, second, and third scalpel blades broke as Daina screamed and thrashed about with her free arms and leg. The doctor used his body to pin her leg against the concrete wall and switched to an amputation knife. Hitting against the concrete dulled the knife, so Dr. Sullivan had to complete his horrible task with his pocket knife.

Because of Dr. Sullivan’s heroic effort, Daina survived."

Michelle McKee: Did both men know that there was a daycare inside the Murrah building?

Jon Hersley: Well, you know, that’s speculation. But Michael Fortier said that McVeigh certainly knew. We didn’t have as concrete of evidence that Terry Nichols knew that there was a daycare there. But I believe they both knew it.

Michelle McKee: Did Nichols or McVeigh ever express any remorse for anybody that they killed, even for just the children, the babies that died?

Jon Hersley: No. Not one bit.

“As she rounded the corner from Harvey and looked across Northwest Fifth Street, Helena could see the Murrah Building had been almost completely destroyed. The entire face of the building had blown off. As she ran toward the building, she counted in her mind, “One, two,” trying to imagine where the second floor of the day care center would have been. She began climbing the pile of debris - she desperately needed to be where Tevin would have been.”

“As she moved closer to the plaza area immediately behind the day care center, Helena screamed at two strangers that her baby was inside the building. The men asked her what she meant, and Helena screamed, “There’s a day care center in there, my baby’s in there.”

Michelle McKee: The Turner Diaries were very significant to McVeigh, weren’t they?

Jon Hersley: Absolutely. The Turner Diaries were like his bible. It was a very important book to him and he tried to get many, many people to read that book.

I don’t know if you’ve read the book; it’s absolute garbage, a piece of trash! To me, there is no redeeming quality about that book, at all. It’s racist, it’s biased. I don’t know how he could buy into all of that. I don’t know how anyone could buy into it. I think you have to have a skewed type of foundation to buy into something like that. It’s just bizarre, that book.

“He told his old friend about The Tuner Diaries. It was important to McVeigh, and he pressed Hodge to read the book. He left a copy of the book, along with a letter, for Hodge to read.

The letter stated in part, “Steve, Read the book when you have time to sit down and think. When I read it, I would have to stop at the end of every paragraph and examine the deeper meaning of what I had just read…..It is like you have written a diary during now and (when) a “revolution” took place in about 3 years; you keeping a diary the whole time. Then in 10 years or so, or even a thousand, an "archeologist” discovers your diary…..I am not giving you the book to convert you. I do, however, want you to understand the “other side” and view the pure literal genius of this piece. Again this is accomplished by not just simply reading this, but in analyzing every sentence you’ve read. Think “what made the author write that paragraph”, or “what deeper meaning is he trying to convey”, or “How, by wording it like that, is he trying to subliminally influence someone’s thinking”. If you look at it like that, it is a masterpiece.”

Michelle McKee: Was McVeigh’s hatred for the government fueled by his failure in the military?

Jon Hersley: McVeigh had a lot of anti-government hatred built up for years, before he went into the military.

Before he went into the military he was upset and very, very angry with the government over gun control. He had even written a letter to the newspapers up in the Buffalo area about gun control rights, saying something like “what does this have to come to? That blood might have to be spilled in the streets about this?”

He completed his military career and tried out for Special Forces. But he was unable to compete in the physical arenas that Special Forces competed in and he voluntarily dropped out, after he had tried to do a five-mile walk with a rucksack on his back and found it to be too difficult.

Michelle McKee: What was the true motive for the bombing? Was it really retribution for Waco?

Jon Hersley: Yes, Waco had a lot to do with it. I think McVeigh, in his own warped mind, felt like he was avenging what had happened there.

He also, in my estimation, had not accomplished what he wanted to accomplish in his life. He was seeking relevance in life because he had none. So, I think in his own twisted mind, Waco gave him the excuse he wanted to try and make something of himself.

“It was no small coincidence that the book, Homemade C-4, ordered and shipped to McVeigh in May 1993, detailed the mixture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer with nitromethane and/or anhydrous hydrazine to complete a powerful explosive material. FBI explosives experts were certain the bomb that was exploded in front of the Murrah Building on April 19, 1995, was an ammonium nitrate based bomb.”

“Agent Hersley and other Agents assigned to the investigation took full note of the fact that Homemade C-4 was ordered and delivered to McVeigh approximately one month after the fire on April 19, 1993 at David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas.”

Michelle McKee: What do you think it was about McVeigh that enabled him to commit such a heinous act?

Jon Hersley: McVeigh was a loner and I think in order to be able to do something like this you have to be capable of disassociating, because of all of the human lives you are going to take. I think it was easy for McVeigh to - retreat from society, if you will.

I think McVeigh was unique in this way; he never really had a meaningful relationship with a person of the opposite sex. He had no meaningful relationships in his life at all. And he had no real relationship with his mother. He referred to his mom in extremely derogatory terms, and his sister as well, he also referred to her in derogatory terms. His mom and his dad divorced when he was pretty young, and I don’t think he ever forgave his mom for that.

So I do think the fact that McVeigh had no real relationships in his life enabled him to distance himself from society. That’s no excuse or justification for what he did, but all of those things contributed to who McVeigh was.

Michelle McKee: Have you ever spoken with McVeigh’s family, and if so have they ever expressed their own remorse for Tim’s actions?

Jon Hersley: That is one tragedy that probably some people don’t focus on in this case. What this did to Bill McVeigh, Tim’s father.

I spoke with Bill McVeigh. He came out and talked with us after Tim was arrested. He wanted to go out and visit his son, and I was hopeful that maybe by Bill McVeigh talking to Tim he could convince him that he should do the right thing and tell what happened.

When I first spoke with Bill McVeigh he was like a shell of a man. There was nobody inside. It was like someone had ripped his insides completely out and left him hollow. It was like a tornado had hit him. This absolutely tore him to pieces. I don’t expect he’ll ever recover from this, and I think he was really a pretty good guy. He didn’t have animosity like Tim did towards the government. That wasn’t part of Bill McVeigh’s make-up.

Michelle McKee: What about his sister, Jennifer? Did you ever speak with her, and if so did she ever express remorse for her brother’s actions?

Jon Hersley: Jennifer McVeigh was a little bit different. She had bought into some of Tim’s anti-government sentiment and had a lot of that built up inside her.

I spent a lot of time with Jennifer because we knew that Jennifer was going to be a pretty important witness. And she was. She didn’t like it, but she really didn’t have much choice.

She told me that she thought McVeigh was going to do something on that day, and that it might include killing someone. But she had no idea he was going to blow-up a building full of people. She was in a complete state of shock while we were talking to her. She was shocked that her brother could do such a thing. She did cry, and I remember telling her that it was okay to cry.

Michelle McKee: What was it that you were hoping McVeigh would tell you that you didn’t discover in the investigation?

Jon Hersley: Well, as any investigator would like, you’d like the main culprit to sit down and tell you everything. I didn’t feel like we needed him to put our case together. We were already well on our way to putting our case together by the time we arrested him. But any investigator that is heading up a case like this would love to sit down with the main culprit and go start to finish with them.

We are very confident that we know who was involved in this, and that those people have been brought to justice. Someone might say, well, did McVeigh tell you that there was no one else involved? I am very, very confident that there were no other people involved. In fact, I’m 100% confident that I know who was involved in this, who plotted and planned the bombing, who carried it out, and that those people have been brought to justice. I don’t know that I would be any more confident in our investigation if McVeigh told me himself that we had all of the participants than I am right now.

Some people might say that Michael Fortier didn’t spend enough time in prison, and I’d be one of those. But that’s what the laws of our society are, and those did not enable us to get Michael Fortier sentenced to any more time than he got. I don’t disagree with those laws, but I don’t necessarily think that they’re set up for a case like this. Michael Fortier received twelve years. I’d like to see Michael Fortier spend the rest of his life in prison.

Michelle McKee: What about people on the sidelines in this tragedy? Those individuals that others may not necessarily perceive as victims, but who are victims of the bombing none the less?

Jon Hersley: There are all kinds of victims in this.

Eldon Elliot, he was a victim. He started crying one day when we were interviewing him. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “Jon, I know I rented the truck to this guy.” I told him, “Eldon, I’m a law enforcement officer in Oklahoma City and maybe I should have been up on I-35 when McVeigh was coming into the city and stopped him. This is not your fault. You had no idea what he was going to do with that truck.”

The guy who sold the fertilizer to McVeigh felt awful, just awful. But he couldn’t have done anything. He didn’t know what McVeigh was planning to do with it.

There are all kinds of victims in this. There are people who were involved in the investigation that were taken away from their families for three years and others who weren’t involved in the investigation and feel badly because they weren’t. It’s like people who are involved in these mass shootings. They feel guilty because they survived. There are all kinds of things like that.

Michelle McKee: Are you still in contact with the victim families? If so, how are they doing?

Jon Hersley: They are doing much as you might expect. Most of them are doing really well. Some of them have had trouble letting go, and I say letting go carefully because they never really let go. I’d say rather than letting go, some of them have had more difficulty than others living the new life they’ve been so unfairly dealt.

Michelle McKee: What do you think the public should take away from Oklahoma City?

Jon Hersley: Oklahoma City was a domestic crime committed by our own people, for all the wrong reasons.

What can we take away from this horrible tragedy, and learn from it? It’s certainly not what McVeigh wanted us to learn from it, to feel his sense of anger. I don’t think we should feel that. I think we should feel love and kindness and what these people meant to the world.

If anything, we need to take away from it that we don’t want people to feel isolated in the world, to feel full of anger and hatred and loneliness with no sense of relevance.

You know, with as much animosity as I have for McVeigh, I can only imagine what his life was like. Can you imagine getting to the point where you are so full of hatred, and anger and loneliness that you could do something like this? Blow up a building full of innocent people?

Michelle McKee: There is a common perception that the FBI doesn’t get on well with other law enforcement agencies. How true was that in this case?

Jon Hersley: Well, I know exactly what you are talking about. Sometimes the FBI has been accused of not working well with other agencies, being prima donnas and not sharing information back and forth. I’ve never experienced that myself, though. I always try to treat those agencies and officers the way that I’d like to be treated, and I’ve found that once we all start working together it always seems to work just fine. It’s just a matter of treating people with respect and courtesy, like you’d want to be treated yourself. But I do know what you’re talking about.

In this case, with the magnitude of this tragedy, all of the agencies and the public worked very closely, and extremely well together. Any little side issues that people may have had before the tragedy were put aside. It really was a thing of beauty to watch, and be a part of, something positive arising from this terrible tragedy.

The citizens of Oklahoma City were really wonderful and they really came together to try and do the best that they could to help. For example: when we got our command post set up we would get food deliveries in there for the first several weeks, and it was more than we could ever possibly eat. We would be working eighteen to twenty hours a day, and we really didn’t have time to go out and get lunch or dinner so people were bringing food to us. I remember telling everyone “we have to be really careful what we ask for here, in the way of supplies and everything else, because we might end up getting a truckload of it!”

“Though scores of buildings were damaged, there was no looting. When rescue workers and firefighters asked for something, they got everything. By the box – by the truckload – there was no limit to the love.

Jon Hersley: I do think though, that the FBI, the way we are set-up, is the only law enforcement organization in our country that could do a case like this. And that’s not meant to be braggadocios or arrogance or anything, it’s simply a fact that we are the only organization that is set-up in that fashion. We had leads covered in virtually every state in the United States while this case was going on.

“A rescue and recovery operation involving thousands, for weeks, around the clock, in rain and wind and under the white of lights on cranes, conducted simultaneously with the investigation of the largest criminal case in the history of the United States. Firefighters, police officers, emergency service personnel, construction workers, all feverishly picking the building apart with their hearts, hands, and five-gallon buckets.”

Michelle McKee: Is it true that witness recollections are notoriously inaccurate?

Jon Hersley: Not necessarily witness recollections, but witness identifications you have to be really careful with. I think eye-witness sightings may be what you mean. With eye-witness sightings, unless there’s some other significant event that happened along with it, I would say to law enforcement that they have to be very careful on eye-witness sightings.

When you’re conducting a business transaction with somebody it’s much easier to remember them. And it’s much more reliable than if you just pass somebody on the street or you see something happen very quickly, that’s when you really have to be careful.

For me to consider them to be reliable there would need to be some other event that took place with it. If the victim was assaulted, you’re going to have a better chance of remembering the person. Even though it’s a real traumatic event, and sometimes that impacts your ability to remember.

What I’m saying is that if there’s some reason for you to focus on the person, it’s easier to remember them.

For example; When McVeigh came into Elliot’s Body Shop for the first time on Saturday morning. Well, it was only him and Eldon Elliot that were in there together, and they were less than two feet apart when McVeigh was reserving the Ryder truck. Then Eldon Elliott got a chance to see McVeigh again when he came in on Monday afternoon. I bring up Eldon Elliot because Eldon had a reason he could remember McVeigh, and it was because he waited on McVeigh, signed the paperwork with him and talked with him.

Another example would be if I were to say to you that you’ve probably stayed at hotels in the last five years, other than the manager or someone working at the hotels, would you really remember any of the other guests staying next door to you, or that you might have passed?

McVeigh and Nichols stayed at different hotels and any time that that they stayed at hotels we would go and get the reservation cards and find out if the managers or the hotel office people knew anything about either of them. But to expect any of the guests that stayed there to remember McVeigh or Nichols, remember whether they were actually there or if somebody was with them, is really asking those individuals to stretch their mind too far.

Michelle McKee: Wasn’t there someone who came forward who stated that they had witnessed some men, that they believed to be of Middle Eastern decent, in the area just before the explosion?

Jon Hersley: There was a homeless man in downtown Oklahoma City on the morning of the bombing that said he saw two Middle Eastern people running across the street, jumping into a brown pick-up and hurrying away from the bombing.

Then he said they went west on Fifth Street, and turned north on Harvey Avenue. Well, those are both one way streets, and they go in the opposite directions of where he said he saw these two people go. He was interviewed the next day and he couldn’t keep his directions straight as to which direction they had gone.

He also provided really elaborate descriptions of those two people. You have to ask yourself “why was he so focused on those two people?” Nothing had happened, yet. The bomb had not gone off. There was no reason for him to sit there and analyze everything about these two guys and what they were wearing.

We conducted all kinds of investigations and follow-ups to people calling the hotline reporting brown pick-up trucks that were being spotted all over Oklahoma City, many at the same time.

As the investigation continued we were able to determine that the information just wasn’t accurate. There weren’t two people running across Fifth Avenue, Middle Eastern or otherwise, that the homeless person’s information was not at all reliable.

Michelle McKee: Jon, is there any Middle East connection to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City?

Jon Hersley: Absolutely not. There is absolutely no Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing at all, and I am 100% confident in that.

Michelle McKee: Is there specific criteria for the FBI to come into an investigation? Do you have to be invited in or are there specific types of crimes that fall within FBI jurisdiction?

Jon Hersley: It’s both of those, really. Mainly it comes down to whether Congress has enacted legislation and laws that give us the jurisdiction over those crimes.

There are specific types of crimes that the FBI has jurisdiction over, the Oklahoma City bombing was one. We don’t have to be asked by anybody to come into an investigation like that.

Certain types of crimes we do have to be invited in. There is some where we have to be asked by other state or local law enforcement agencies to lend assistance, and we will do that. Crimes that are not in our country; sometimes in terrorism crimes we are invited to come into other countries with crime scene investigations and things of that nature. Kidnappings in the United States; there has to be indications that the victim, or victims, have been transported across state lines before the FBI can be involved in it. Most of the crimes that the FBI investigates they have jurisdiction over, and they don’t have to be invited.

Michelle McKee: If you were to give others in law enforcement any advice in conducting an investigation of this magnitude what would it be?

Jon Hersley: If I was to be asked what to tell an investigator heading up a case like this I would say to keep an open mind and cover every base, look under every rock. It’s very important that an investigator keep an open mind when they go through a case like this, because you don’t want to miss anything. You don’t want to miss one single thing - and we didn’t.

You learn that you can’t do everything in an investigation yourself. You have to depend on other people, and we literally had thousands of people across the country helping us in this case. I remember thinking to myself, “My gosh, I can pick up the phone and call anywhere in the United States and ask that ‘this’ be done, or that ‘this’ be checked out and any law enforcement officer across the country would not only say, “We will help you”, but “We will help you right now. We will do it right now.” That was pretty nice to be able to do that, it gave us a sense of confidence.

And I think you need to have people with some experience. That’s one of the things that I felt that Larry Tongate and I had in this investigation. We had a tremendous amount of trial experience and courtroom experience, and that helped us a lot.

Michelle McKee: What do you think is, or was, the biggest public misconception in this case and of the FBI’s investigation

Jon Hersley: Well, there were all kinds of conspiracy theories out there. Were there more people involved, did the FBI rush to judgment, were there people involved that we didn’t investigate early because we had our men and we wanted to prosecute them, was the government actually involved in some type of a cover-up, and was there actually a sting that had gone wrong?

You know, it’s really offensive to me that people with really no foundation or base whatsoever would accuse the government of being involved in the bombing, or say that it was some type of sting that had gone wrong and the government was trying to cover it up. That’s really pretty asinine and ludicrous. It’s absolutely unfounded, there is no basis for it whatsoever, and it is really, really offensive.

Having known people and had friends that were killed in that bombing, there is no way I would have ever rested if I would have thought anything like that had happened. If there had been anything pointing to someone else having been involved I certainly would have wanted to know that! And, in the position that Larry Tongate and I were in, in the bombing investigation, if there was ever even a hint about any of this we would have known about it, and that absolutely did not happen.

Michelle McKee: Did McVeigh belong to a militia?

Jon Hersley: No. That’s a misnomer. No, he was not a militia member.

You know, that’s one of the things that I almost would like to get out to people. I’m not signing up for militias, but you know, they’re not like this. They’re not like McVeigh. They don’t do that. They don’t like this. They don’t want to be associated with this crime. Again, I’m not signing up for militias, but you know, most of these militia people are not really bad people. They’re not like this. They don’t act out like this and take people’s lives just because they might disagree with certain things.

Michelle McKee: In your career with the FBI have you ever been told not to investigate a tip associated with a case, regardless of how ridiculous the tip sounds?

Jon Hersley: No, absolutely not.

Michelle McKee: Were you ever asked not to investigate any tip associated with the Oklahoma City bombing case?

Jon Hersley: There was not ever any hint at any time, and we were never told not to look at any tip coming in to this case. Nor were we ever told, or even hinted at, that we shouldn’t look at anything we wanted to in this investigation. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. We were encouraged to look at absolutely everything, and we did that.

Contrary to some of the conspiracy theorists belief that the FBI rushed to judgment, I would say exactly the opposite occurred. In fact, it turned out that we may have over investigated this case at times. But in retrospect I’m glad we did that, and I feel very confident in our investigation because we did do that.

Michelle McKee: Where you ever told not to investigate Elohim City?

Jon Hersley: I have seen it reported in the news media that the FBI was told to back off of the investigation in Elohim City. There is absolutely no truth to that whatsoever.

Michelle McKee: Was the FBI successful in positively confirming the identity of the individual identified as John Doe #2?

Jon Hersley: Yes. That was Todd Bunting.

McVeigh went into Elliot’s Body Shop and picked up his Ryder truck on Monday afternoon, April the 17th. Michael Hertig and Todd Bunting went in there on Tuesday afternoon, April 18th.

Michael Hertig and Todd Bunting were both soldiers at Fort Riley. Hertig was being transferred to a new duty station and he went into Elliot’s Body Shop to pick up a Ryder truck in conjunction with his move Tuesday afternoon. His buddy, Todd Bunting, drove him over to pickup the Ryder truck and had gone inside with Hertig

Todd Kessinger was a mechanic at Elliot’s Body Shop. He had started going into the office in the afternoon to take his break, because he liked to talk with Vicki Beemer. So he was in there on Monday afternoon eating a bag of popcorn and having a soda pop when McVeigh came in to pick up his truck. He was also in there Tuesday afternoon, doing the same thing, having his break and talking with Vicki Beemer, when Michael Hertig and Todd Bunting came in to pick up their truck. He had started paying attention to Hertig because Vicki Beemer made a comment to Hertig when he pulled out his drivers license that she had been married longer than Hertig had been alive. Kessinger said that when she said that he looked up at Hertig and studied him a little bit, and also saw his partner, Bunting.

Michelle McKee: Did Hertig and McVeigh look similar?

Jon Hersley: Well, if you described them orally they would be similar in their description. They were roughly the same height and weight, and hair color. But they really don’t look a whole lot alike. It’s kind of hard for a guy to say this, but Michael Hertig was a better looking man than McVeigh was. So when you saw them you wouldn’t necessarily confuse them, but if somebody described them to you their description would be pretty similar. They both had the same general hair color, wore it relatively the same length, Hertig’s was a little bit longer than McVeigh’s. And Hertig had a moustache at that time and McVeigh didn’t.

Kessinger did not mistake Hertig for McVeigh in his mind. Kessinger is the one that we did the composite drawings from and Kessinger absolutely described McVeigh as John Doe #1. And he’s been very consistent, and has always been consistent about that. When he saw McVeigh for the first time after McVeigh was arrested he said, “That’s the guy. That’s John Doe #1 right there. That’s who I was describing.” After he saw a series of pictures of Todd Bunting he said “that’s who I was drawing as John Doe #2, right there.” Kessinger had mistakenly taken Bunting, from the Hertig / Bunting episode and put Bunting in with McVeigh. That’s a fairly common thing that happens. There’s a word for that, and I can’t think of it right now, but there have been books written on it. Where you take somebody from one event and replace them in another event mistakenly. That’s what happened there.

Michelle McKee: Who is Danny Coulson, and how does he fit into this investigation?

Jon Hersley: Danny Coulson, is the former FBI SAC [Special Agent in Charge] of the Dallas division, and a guy that I know pretty well.

Danny Coulson was not involved in the Oklahoma City investigation for any real length of time, at all. So he doesn’t know the inner workings of the investigation. But that hasn’t stopped him from speaking about it as if he does.

He had made one comment in the news media that there should be a Grand Jury called to investigate this. That tells me volumes, because there was a Grand Jury that investigated this. For eighteen months. Apparently Danny doesn’t even know that. That’s kind of sad, really.

Unfortunately, Danny handles himself very well when he talks, and he presents himself pretty well on TV.

I’m a little bit upset with Coulson for what he’s done. But he can do what he wants to, I guess. He’s entitled. But when he goes out and makes statements about the bombing investigation on things he knows nothing about, that’s kind of frustrating.

Michelle McKee: So, the public sees his remarks as having credibility, as though he knows what he’s talking about, because he carried those FBI credentials too?

Jon Hersley: Yep. For whatever reason, and I don’t want to speculate on what his reasons are, Danny feels the need to come out and comment on this investigation and he wasn’t even involved in it for very long at all. He really doesn’t know very much about it.

Michelle McKee: How long was Danny Coulson actually involved in the investigation?

Jon Hersley: He worked on the case for about one month.

Michelle McKee: Your wife was brought into one of these conspiracy theories, wasn’t she?

Jon Hersley: Yes. She worked at a department store and there was a woman who worked there whose husband is a conspiracy theorist. He has accused her of knowing about the bombing beforehand. He has claimed that she told his wife about the bombing beforehand, and that is absolutely and blatantly false. There is absolutely no truth to that at all. My wife is one of the most decent people I’ve ever met in my life, and she certainly didn’t have any information like that because there absolutely was no information like that.

It’s upsetting to you as an FBI agent to have somebody accuse your wife of that, but she’s also confident in me, and confident in what our investigation shows.

But, you have all kinds of things like that.

I’ve told my wife, if people ask you questions about the Oklahoma City investigation, or they want to know your feelings about it, feel free to tell them. But don’t try to convince them of anything because they have their own feelings and they need to derive their own thoughts from what happened. You’re not going to convince somebody who doesn’t want to believe it. So, if you want to speak your mind about it, go right ahead. But then give those people the right to feel how they want to feel about it, they’re entitled to that, and you shouldn’t feel badly because they feel differently than you do.

Michelle McKee: If there was one thing that you could say to those individuals who continue to promote conspiracy theories, what would it be?

Jon Hersley: Well, I’d ask them to keep in mind that every time they come up with one of these unfounded conspiracy theories it sends the victim families on an emotional rollercoaster.

Every time one of these conspiracy theories is brought up, and they’re brought up in a way that encourages the victim families to believe that there is somebody else involved, and that not everybody has been brought to justice, it sends these victim families on these tremendous emotional rides. I think that is very unfortunate because they’ve already been through enough. They’ve had their insides completely ripped out. They’ve had their loved ones taken completely away from them for no legitimate reason whatsoever and they want to have some type of closure. Closure, I don’t think is the right word, because they don’t ever really experience closure. They only learn to live their lives in a different way. They now have a different life. I would ask them to maybe consider this a little bit before they start putting out theories to the public that have no basis and no foundation at all.

Imagine having a family member killed in a tragedy like this, and then not knowing for sure whether the people that were responsible for it have been brought to justice. It’s going to completely churn up all of those feelings that you have had to deal with for the last twelve years, and it’s going to be the same thing after twenty years. So I think there needs to be some credibility to these theories when they’re brought up. There needs to be some basis for them. I would only ask these individuals to consider the victim family members feelings when they go off and start promoting these half-cocked theories.

I think the evidence comes out when we are twelve years after the Oklahoma City bombing and none of these theories have proven to have any life whatsoever because there’s no basis for them, there’s no foundation for them, there’s no proof, there’s no facts and there’s no evidence for them. Yet individuals continue to engage in mere speculation.

We’ve had three trials, two federal trials in Denver and a state trial in Oklahoma. McVeigh and Nichols each had upwards of about fifteen attorneys apiece for those trials. Those attorneys did not further these conspiracy theories in those trials because there is nothing to them, and you know if there was any substance or foundation to them they would have. There is no substance, there is no foundation, and there is no evidence. And no conspiracy theorist, investigator, reporter, Congressman, or any other member of the public has come forth with anything credible in the past twelve years that suggests otherwise.

We can’t deal in mere speculation in law enforcement. We have to deal in facts and we have to deal in evidence. That’s what it takes in the courtroom. That’s what you need when you charge someone and you are going to try them in our country. You need to have the law and the facts and the evidence on your side, you can’t engage in speculation and go off on something half-cocked. And that’s what these conspiracy theories are based on, half-cocked speculation with no basis in facts or evidence.

I think if individuals are going to continue to try and push these conspiracy theories on to others when those theories simply have no basis in fact then I think they need to examine what their own agendas are for doing that.

I’ve told people that I now know how the investigators who did the Kennedy assassination felt. Because I’m sure they are very, very confident in their investigation just like I am in ours. Yet there is always going to be people who are going to question that, and that’s their right. I don’t have animosity or ill feelings towards people for that, but I know how those investigators feel now, I think.

I fully encourage anybody to look into our investigation. Congress, conspiracy theorists if they would like, any member of the public. I invite them to look into our investigation because I am 100% confident that we came to the right conclusions and that we know exactly what happened in the Oklahoma City bombing. So people can look at it for the next twenty-five years if they want to, there’s not going to be any change in the outcome because we know what happened.

There was a Congressman from California that investigated the FBI’s investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing, and put different theories out there. The Congressman has not found anything that the FBI did not find in the course of their investigation.

I’m going to say this very carefully, because I would never have any ill feelings toward any member of Congress who wanted to look into our investigation. I think that is one of the duties Congress has in their position. They should do that. But I think they also need to be careful in what they put out to the public, and make sure that what they are putting out is accurate. When they conduct investigations into things like the Oklahoma City bombing then at the end of that investigation they need to be very forthright with the American public about what they did or did not find. I think Congressmen, conspiracy theorists, any member of the public, if they’re going to look into this investigation should have the responsibility, after the fact, to report back to the American people what they did or did not find.

The FBI concluded that two men, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, planned and carried out the making of the bomb, and McVeigh delivered it to it’s destination outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Building on the morning of April 19, 1995.

Many people have wondered if anyone else accompanied McVeigh to pick up the bomb truck at Elliott’s and deliver the truck in front of the Murrah Building on the morning of the bombing. The answer might lie in the fact no one else was needed.”

“With a crime as horrific as the Oklahoma City bombing, it is natural to assume that many suspects had to have been involved. However, the reality is that one man alone could have carried out the crime. Two men were more than enough. Other than uncorroborated and unsubstantiated eyewitness testimony, no credible evidence existed that anyone other than McVeigh and Nichols were involved.”

“McVeigh and Nichols, through the literature they possessed and the conversations between themselves and Michael Fortier, as well is others, tried to project themselves as patriots and heroes. They were neither.

They attempted to compare themselves with the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, men of honor. McVeigh and Nichols were neither.”

“Their actions are the actions of cowards. Hopefully, our great country and the world will remember them as such.

When all is considered, the simple truth is that Timothy James McVeigh and Terry Lynn Nichols tried to satisfy their hatred for the United States government by killing innocent men, women, and children in the heartland of America. May their
dastardly and cowardly deed never be repeated – nor forgotten.”

Michelle McKee: What do you think the public should know, overall, about the men and women in FBI?

Jon Hersley: That’s a broad question, but I’d say that there’s a bunch of really good people in the FBI. The people in the FBI are great people, they’re wonderful people, family oriented people – tremendously so! They try to do the very best they can and they want every bit as much as any member of the public to solve crimes that have been committed. They will spend hours, and hours, and hours to make sure that they’ve investigated the crime thoroughly, and that the right people are brought to justice.

I think the public, at times, may view the FBI as just being this big entity that moves forward without regard to feelings. They forget that there are actual people inside the FBI who are conducting these investigations who have families and friends just like they do. We are exactly like they are.

The FBI, sometimes, contributes to this public conception because they often times will take the position that they have no comment when the news media asks them questions. Well, that can be perceived negatively by the news media, and I think often times it is. And when that’s reported to the public it’s perceived negatively, when in fact a lot of times the FBI cannot comment publicly on an investigation for privacy ramifications and rules. That’s kind of just a product of what happens.

Just ask the public to consider that we have faces, we have families, and we have hearts. People and conspiracy theorists want to hurl stones and daggers at us like we’re not people. That we’re somehow this FBI entity, not a family, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I would say that if the public actually knew the FBI investigators that are conducting the investigation they’d feel much differently and have much more confidence in the investigations that are being conducted and they’d realize that FBI Agents are human beings like everybody else and they want what’s right, and they want what’s just, and they want to conduct the very best investigation that they can. They’re also human and from time to time some mistakes are made, and we try to learn from those.

Michelle McKee: How do you feel about the portrayal of FBI agents on television?

Jon Hersley: I don’t watch those shows, personally. I don’t have much interest in watching shows about law enforcement. But I would have to say that these shows probably give the public a misconception of what actually happens in criminal investigations because most of the FBI shows you will see solve major crimes in an hour, hour and a half. In reality it’s far from that. It takes long hours and you spend a great deal of time away from your family. Just like in the Oklahoma City investigation. Basically, we were away from our family for the better part of three years doing that investigation. So, the public probably doesn’t really get a good feel of things like that or the commitment level it takes.

Michelle McKee: What makes a good FBI agent?

Jon Hersley: A good person. A good person, with a lot of perseverance, who is willing to work really long, hard hours, has unquestioned integrity, and is just a really good person inside. And probably being a really good family person helps out too.

Michelle McKee: How did you and Larry Tongate come to write this book?

Jon Hersley: I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to write one. I really wasn’t sure that it was an appropriate thing to do.

But, there were two gentlemen that I admired and respected a great deal. Two federal judges in Oklahoma, who I had, had many cases before in the courtroom. They believed a book on the bombing investigation needed to be written for the sake of history. They believed that in order to set the record straight on the facts of the investigation, there was a responsibility to the American people to write one. And, that with the position that I had held within the investigation, the obligation to set the record straight was mine. I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to write a book, but I had a tremendous amount of respect for these two men, and what they said got me thinking. There had been other books written and they simply were not accurate. McVeigh had a couple of news reporters interview him and they had done a book. Maybe the judges were right, and maybe from the standpoint of history, it was something that needed to be done.

So I called Larry Tongate, Larry was the Lead Case Agent on the Nichols side of the investigation, and said, “This is kind of what’s going on, what do you think?” We talked about it, and we thought, well, maybe from the standpoint of history, and given the fact that we were the closest to this investigation we know intimately more than anybody else does. So maybe we did have an obligation to do something like this.

We agreed that if we did write a book it would have to be non-profit. We didn’t want to capitalize or profit off of the bombing or the bombing investigation. I would never want the victim families to construe me as a profiteer, making money off of their tragedy. I couldn’t look at myself if I did that. Let alone what they might think about it.

This book is not like a novel that you sit and read, you know. You could write a whole book on the inner-workings of the investigation and the command post and all the personalities – I would never embark down that road. We tried to write this from a standpoint that the reader could understand how the investigation went from the inside out, like we did.

The most important thing that we had in our mind was that we wanted the victim family members, if they wanted the very best accounting of what happened in the investigation, that they would have a place to go get it. We wanted to give the victim family members an inside out look at the investigation, if they want to look at it; and be able to comfort themselves knowing that the investigation was done in a way that they could be confident in. That’s really why we wrote the book.

One of the Daily Oklahoman news reporters told me after he read the book, “Jon, this is a book that will have the same meaning forty years from now.” I liked that comment. That was one of the things we were trying to accomplish.

Some people would say that we could have talked more about the conspiracy theories. But myself, I feel like if we had done that we would give them more credibility and we wanted to get the truth out there.

Michelle McKee: Who is Bob Burke?

Jon Hersley: Bob Burke is an author and an attorney in Oklahoma City who has written about fifty books on Oklahoma history, all non-profit. He was instrumental in helping Larry and I put this book together, and in getting it published. In fact, Bob contributed about twenty-five thousand dollars of his own money as a donation to the Oklahoma Heritage Association for the purpose of getting this book produced.

Michelle McKee: Did the FBI have any control over the content of the book?

Jon Hersley: We did not consult with them when we wrote the book. We wrote it, and then we took the manuscript and sent it to them for their approval. As an FBI agent you have to submit it to them first for their approval and then they vet it.

Michelle McKee: Did the FBI request, or require you to make any changes, omit anything, delete anything, or include anything that hadn’t already been included?

Jon Hersley: They did not ask us to change one thing. Not one thing. They signed off on it without making one single change.

Michelle McKee: Was there anybody who said that you shouldn’t write the book, or don’t write the book?

Jon Hersley: No, no one.

Michelle McKee: How did the McVeigh and Nichols families feel about it?

Jon Hersley: I don’t know, we didn’t converse with them. We didn’t write the book from the vantage point of McVeigh and Nichols. So, it wasn’t meant to be something that would be understood or placated or reviewed by the McVeigh and Nichols families. It really wasn’t written with them in mind.

McVeigh had already, pretty much, had the chance to tell his side of the story in a book. I wanted to tell the victim families what really happened, and how we figured this all out.

Michelle McKee: Was there anything that you decided not to include in the book, for whatever reason, that in hindsight you wish you had included?

Jon Hersley: No. There’s not anything in retrospect that we would have put in the book that we didn’t. We got in there what we wanted, and I think if a reader sits down and reads it with an open mind it will be difficult for them to come away without having a better sense of confidence in the investigation. That’s what we wanted to accomplish and I think we did.

Michelle McKee: Where do the proceeds from the sale of the book go?

Jon Hersley: The proceeds go to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and the Oklahoma Heritage Association, which is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to preserving Oklahoma history. The Oklahoma Heritage Association owns the rights to the book, and they funded it.

Michelle McKee: What final thought would you like readers to leave with?

Jon Hersley: I think crimes that are committed like Oklahoma City get their origin from hatred, anger, animosity, and the lack of love and kindness in the world. I think the more that we can realize that as a people, then the more we can do to keep people from feeling so isolated and lonely. I think that the more we can promote love and kindness and friendship in the world the better chance we have of keeping crimes of this magnitude from being repeated. We also have an obligation to protect ourselves.

I think that when you see these crimes in the high schools, shootings at McDonald’s and things of that nature it’s because people are becoming isolated from society and they feel like they’re alone. Hatred and animosity starts growing in them because of their perceptions about the way they’ve been treated by society. Many times, probably most of the time those are misperceptions. But those misperceptions are still those people’s belief of how they’ve been treated.

Treat people like you would like to be treated yourself, let people know that they are loved and we’ll be fine in this society. I think that would go a long way. I’m not going to say that it’s going to put a stop to all crimes, that would be ridiculous, but I hope that the older that we get as a country we will realize more and more that it IS important how we treat each other.

I really do believe these things. If we treat people like we want to be treated I think the world would be a better place. I’m not always able to follow that, but my mother tried to instill that in me. And if I could be half the person my mother was by the time I die I think I’d be a pretty good person.

Simple Truths, written by Jon Hersley, Larry Tongate and Bob Burke, can be found at Barnes & Nobel, Amazon and through the Oklahoma Heritage Association.

Purchase from Amazon

“Warning: Drinking Alcohol During Pregnancy May Cause Your Baby to Serve Hard Time in Prison"

2012-05-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

By Burl Barer

This potential warning label is not far fetched. The direct link between Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and crime is no longer a matter of scientific dispute.

Children afflicted with full-blown FAS display both physical and mental characteristics. Those with partial FAS may not have the physical abnormalities, but they display the same behavioral and psychological problems.

The effect of alcohol on the fetal brain is such that this region does not develop sufficiently to allow the FAS individual to appropriately control his or her actions. As such, FAS patients tend to be impulsive, uninhibited, and fearless. They often display poor judgment and are easily distracted. Difficulties in perceiving social cues and a lack of sensitivity often cause interpersonal problems. FAS patients have difficulties linking events with their resulting consequences. These consequences include both the physical, e.g. getting burned by a hot stove, and the punitive, e.g. being sent to jail for committing a crime. Because of this, it is difficult for these individuals to learn from their mistakes.

Lacking sufficient cognizance of the threat or fear of consequences, the FAS patient is less likely to control his or her impulsive behavior. Similarly, FAS individuals have trouble comprehending that their behavior can affect others. As such, they are unlikely to show true remorse or to take responsibility for their actions. These are the very attributes that can lead to crime, "They are very impulsive and do things that are not well thought out, and they get into significant difficulty from that. The malicious intent is seldom there. I find they're exploited by more talented criminals to do some of the running, if you like, and they're more likely to get caught."

As many as half the young offenders appearing in court may be there because their mothers drank during pregnancy, says Royal University Hospital psychologist Josephine Nanson. Her assessment has tremendous implications for how the criminal justice system handles youth in custody, says University of Saskatchewan law professor Tim Quigley. "It's analogous to the mental disorder defense, in the sense that we've said that people who are affected should not be punished in the usual criminal justice sense," he said. "Are these victims just as much affected by something over which they have no control, and are they deserving of punishment?"

Legal Aid Commission lawyer Kearney Healy says Nanson's suggestion strikes to the basic principles of criminal justice. "The criminal justice system is based on the premise that people understand there are rules, why they have to be obeyed, and if they aren't obeyed then society has the right to come up with any number of options," he said. “All of those things are irrelevant to these kids. It's got nothing to do with good or bad - they just don't see it the same way. Planning, organizing and learning from past mistakes are not in their repertoire. They are egocentric, impulsive and very concrete in their thinking. Typically they do not make connections between cause and effect, anticipate consequences or take the perspective of another person."

"There are an increasing number of cases reaching the courts because we've been diagnosing this for about 20 years. Those individuals are now in adolescence and adulthood, and at a prime age for when they're going to be involved in the court system," she said.

"It presents tremendous challenges, and I'm not sure the courts always understand." commented Professor Habbick, noted researcher. "Given the strict diagnostic criteria used in the study, you're only looking at the tip of the iceberg. For every full case of fetal alcohol syndrome, there are four out there with the partial effects."

"All too often, I find there are children who aren't able to moderate their behavior in even the most obvious ways, even when there are strong rewards," said Healy. "Instead, they are doing things that are going to cause them a great amount of personal pain, for no gain. When I see them, I've got to think there's something going on there."

Shirley LeClaire of Social Services' Family Service Bureau says "there's been a longstanding history in our community of not giving this the attention it needs. It's one of the areas where there's not a lot of attention paid, especially fetal alcohol effects, because you don't have the physical attributes," she said.

"The whole area of FAS and fetal alcohol effects is significant because the way that our system is set up to deal with kids is obviously not going to work for them."

One of the ironies is that children with FAS often make model prisoners, Nanson said. "In terms of the justice system handling individuals with this, one of the things they fail to understand is that FAS people do very well in structured environments," she said. "Often people are fooled in the early stages of treatment into thinking somebody is doing really well, not realizing that they're doing really well because all the opportunities for them not to do well are taken care of in a structured program.. There is a point where the individual with FAS falls apart again."

Being crazy isn’t against the law, but murder is a capitol offense. When the one accused of murder is mentally ill, a variety of factors immediately come into play.

“Popular misconceptions about mental illness are partially responsible for the railroading of mentally ill persons through the criminal justice system,” states Jeff Reynolds. “From arrest to the determination of competency to stand trial and beyond, a person's mental illness affects every stage of passage through the criminal justice system.”

“Behavior associated with mental illness is often perceived as bizarre and suspicious,” insists private investigator Fred Wolfson, “thus drawing police attention, even if the person has not committed a crime. Untrained to recognize and handle mental illness, arresting officers and other staff inappropriately assume the arrestee understands such things as their Miranda rights. Mentally ill people are more likely to give a false confession, especially if they are delusional.”

The concept of culpability is an important aspect of who is sentenced to death. Culpability signifies qualities such as consciousness, reason, and responsibility. It is precisely these qualities that are disabled and distorted by mental illness and therefore a gap exists between a mentally ill offender's behavior and his culpability.

This post was contributed by Burl Barer, an Edgar Award winner, two-time Anthony Award nominee and New York Times best selling author of true crime, mysteries, thrillers, and pop culture. You can find out more about this author and his books by visiting his website at http://www.burlbarer.net, following him on Twitter or joining him on Facebook.

Death By Headlines: Journalism and Culpability

2011-12-04T19:25:00.001-08:00

By Burl Barer

If you cover up a killing, interfere with an homicide investigation, or tamper with a jury, you face hard time in the big house. When newspapers, radio and television outlets promulgate false and deceptive information leading to the deaths of innocent people, they face a good time in the White House – or at least access, and some one-on-one interviews with important politicians.

What we read in the newspaper, see on television, and hear discussed on “news/talk” radio is often an absurd mix of distorted opinion, misinformation, and outright lies. When such lies result in multiple deaths, looking for someone to blame is a common reaction. Blame, according to me, is only important to drunks and lawyers. Culpability is another matter.

I've worked in broadcast news, and have watched stories mutate between initial report and eventual mass media dissemination. If rumor is more entertaining than facts, the rumor gets the lead paragraph; the facts are buried in the bottom. When it comes to international “incidents,” it is not only facts that get buried, but human beings. The bottom line of irresponsible journalism is death by headline.

If you need an example, an obvious one is the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 — and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later.

"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964. That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."

It was all horse feathers. Johnson ordered U.S. bombers to "retaliate" for a North Vietnamese torpedo attack that never happened. One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale a few years ago, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power."

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson himself confirmed, "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

In the absence of independent journalism, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam — sailed through Congress on Aug. 7. The resolution authorized the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

American journalism reported official claims as absolute truths when they were not true at all. If journalists didn't know better, if journalists didn't have access to honest accurate information, then there is no culpability in the deaths of 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese.

The tragedy,of course, is that reporters did have have access to honest information, and they kept it quiet. Perhaps they didn't want to appear unpatriotic, or be accused of “not supporting our troops.” Whatever the pressure, a pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media reluctant to question official pronouncements on national security issues.

The original role of the press, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers, was as watchdogs – expose lies, reveal corruption. We were to be mirrors of truth, uncontrolled by political or religious special interests. Our only interest, as professional journalists, was an unfettered search for truth. Get the facts, present them accurately, and let the public decide what to do about it.

So, my friends, here is the brain teaser question of the day: If a news outlet, acting as a conduit for government propaganda, knowingly passes on misinformation leading to deaths, or having access to contradictory information, fails to give that information public exposure when failure to do so results in death, does that outlet have culpability?

This issue plagues journalists, believe you me. Columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident." Schanberg blamed not only the press but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public. We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”

Medical Child Abuse: A Prosecutorial First

2011-12-03T03:21:00.001-08:00

By Mike Trent

On February 28, 2006, two women who hardly knew each other, Darcy Wall and Susan Owen, walked into a Harris County Constable, Precinct Four substation together. Darcy was a mother of two children and the wife of a pastor at a local Bible church. Susan was a nurse in a pediatrician’s office. They had both been close friends and supporters of a woman named Laurie Williamson, the mother of three terminally ill children. They had little else in common other than a deep and growing fear that the children were in danger, and the courage to do something about it. They had come to report their friend Laurie for child abuse.

Sgt. Mike Johnson of the Domestic Violence Unit listened to the two women patiently. He could see that their concern was genuine and seemed legitimate, but he was initially uncertain of what to do. Darcy and Susan believed that Laurie had Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), and that she was pretending her children were sicker than they really were. It sounded to Johnson like a problem for CPS to handle, but the women had already reported the matter to CPS, to no avail. After researching MSBP on the internet, Johnson determined that it was indeed a form of child abuse that could result in permanent injury or even death. His search turned up a news article about a local case of MSBP that had recently been prosecuted, Kimberly Sue Austin. Johnson decided to contact the prosecutor who handled the case, and that’s where I came in.

I had tried Austin less than six months before for injury to a child. She had injected her infant son with insulin, almost killing him. Further investigation had determined that she had murdered another infant son in 1993 by either suffocating him or injecting him with insulin. At trial I had shown that the two complainants, as well as two other Austin children, were victims of MSBP, also known as “factitious disorder by proxy,” (FDP), “pediatric condition falsification” (PCF), and, most recently “medical child abuse” (MCA). All of these acronyms describe the same type of conduct: The intentional exaggeration, fabrication, or induction of illness symptoms in a child by the child’s caretaker, resulting in unnecessary and harmful or potentially harmful medical care.

In the Austin case, where the abuse had gone undetected for years, this translated into over 400 doctor visits and hospitalizations, including several unnecessary invasive tests and surgical procedures. Evidence indicated she had poisoned the children, injected them with insulin, and even smothered them almost to death. Kimberly Austin had even been caught putting Coca-Cola in her son’s IV in the hospital.

Realizing the danger posed to the children after discussing the case with Mike Johnson, I told him that we needed to take swift action and offered to help him with the investigation. But I also had a warning for him: “I hope you’re ready to work.” MCA prosecutions were notoriously difficult and time-consuming. From experience I knew this was going to be no easy task.

We began by issuing grand jury subpoenas to every health care entity we knew of that had seen the children. Then Johnson started taking statements and collecting letters from various friends, family members, and other individuals who had knowledge of what was going on in the Williamson household. The picture that emerged was disturbing.

Laurie Williamson had three children: Tom, age 11, Roger, age 9, and Chrissy, age 6. They wore diapers since none of them were potty trained, and Tom and Chrissy were confined to wheelchairs and had g-buttons through which liquid formula could be pumped directly into their stomachs. Laurie told everyone that the children had mitochondrial disease and a regressive neurological disorder, among other ailments, and that they were not expected to live beyond their teens. The Williamson household was dark, with heavy shades on the windows, and Laurie kept the temperature at 62° because she said the children were sensitive to heat and light. Consequently she kept them indoors and rarely allowed them outside to play. All three children were on numerous prescription medications meant to control a host of different problems. Chrissy’s had to be administered through her g-button as she was never allowed to eat or drink anything by mouth. Laurie said she had a swallowing disorder and would choke.

One of the first things Sgt. Johnson obtained was a pair of letters from the children’s pediatrician. The first, dated January 10, 2006, and addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” listed out all the problems with which the three children had supposedly been diagnosed. Tom, for instance, had “mitochondrial disorder, metabolic disorder, neurological regression syndrome, global developmental delay, seizure disorder, hypotonia, status post history of failure to thrive, gastrointestinal malabsorption, gastro-esophageal reflux, esophagitis, status post gastric-button placement, hypothyroidism, hypotension, urinary incontinence, stool incontinence, heat intolerance due to poor thermoregulation from the metabolic disease state, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, decreased acoustic reflexes in the right ear, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, pragmatic language disorder, decreasing IQ scores, sensory integration disorder, auditory processing disorder, and poor immune function.” Her assessment of Roger and Chrissy was similar.

The second letter, written just a few weeks later on March 1, 2006, represented a 180-degree turn. “It has recently come to my attention that there are several extremely serious issues in regards to the health of the children and the possibility of Munchausen’s Syndrome as well as Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy with this family.” Now even the pediatrician, who had been fooled by Laurie for eight years, could finally see that things were not adding up. The children, still in Laurie’s care, were in grave danger. The situation called for immediate action.

I asked Sgt. Johnson to contact CPS and try to get the children removed from Laurie’s custody. Prosecuting MCA cases requires a multi-disciplinary, team approach, with cooperation between law enforcement, health care workers, and CPS. CPS had investigated at least five previous referrals that Laurie Williamson was neglecting or abusing her children, but each time, she had been able to convince the caseworker that her children were genuinely ill and that she was doing the best she could to take care of them. If we were ever to prove that Laurie Williamson was medically abusing her children, we would have to enforce what pediatricians refer to as “therapeutic separation” to see if the victims got better once they were out of the perpetrator’s care. Therapeutic separation is always the ultimate proof of MCA. If the children’s health problems abruptly resolved themselves away from Laurie, it would be the most powerful piece of evidence I could offer in court.

On March 20, 2006, after an emergency meeting that Sgt. Johnson and I attended with CPS officials and caseworkers, CPS took emergency custody of Tom, Roger, and Chrissy. Shortly thereafter, they were admitted to the hospital for observation. With MSBP as their working diagnosis, the attending physicians weaned the children off of a multitude of prescription drugs their mother had been giving them, ordered the removal of the g-buttons from Tom and Chrissy, and eventually discharged them all in excellent health, having ruled out almost all of the diagnoses their pediatrician had mentioned in her January 10 letter. Chrissy ate solid food for the first time in her life without any problem swallowing. Other than some behavioral issues, they were in perfect health.

The question now was: With what offense could we charge Laurie Williamson? Munchausen syndrome by proxy and medical child abuse are not offenses. After reading the final discharge report from the hospital and the statements taken by Sgt. Johnson, I was confident I could prove that she had endangered her children according to the broad definition of Tex.Pen.Code 22.041. But the state jail felony punishment range hardly seemed appropriate in this situation. In most cases of MSBP, the perpetrator is caught personally harming the children in some way: Smothering them, injecting or poisoning them, tampering with medical equipment, or even deliberately trying to infect them. Sometimes – if doctors are suspicious – the offense may even be covertly recorded on video. These acts usually fit the definition of injury to a child under Tex.Pen.Code 22.04.

But in the case of Laurie Williamson, we did not even have an affirmative act, much less one caught on video. Clearly, the children had suffered unspeakably at her hands, but how could we hold her responsible? I began discussing the case with Dr. Reena Isaac, a pediatrician specializing in child abuse and a member of the Child Protection Team at Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Isaac would prove to be my right hand, my “security blanket,” and an indispensable help throughout the prosecution. I explained the situation to Dr. Isaac and the charging dilemma it represented. She pointed out that the children had undergone numerous unnecessary tests and even surgeries under Laurie’s care and with her consent. As we brainstormed, an idea began to form in my mind: Could an unnecessary surgery constitute injury to a child? I went over the legal definitions with Dr. Isaac, including “serious bodily injury.” Her response was swift and certain: Any procedure involving general anesthesia created “a substantial risk of death,” and the surgery itself could cause “serious permanent disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.”

But doctors had actually performed the surgeries, not Laurie Williamson. Were we going to claim their conduct was criminal, as well? I turned to a little used subsection of the law of parties, Tex.Pen.Code 7.02(a)(1).

(a) A person is criminally responsible for an offense committed by the conduct of another if:
(1) acting with the kind of culpability required for the offense, he causes or aids an innocent or nonresponsible person to engage in conduct prohibited by the definition of the offense.

My theory of culpability for Laurie would therefore involve proving three things:

1. That the surgeries were medically unnecessary.
2. That the surgeries met all the elements of injury to a child with serious bodily injury.
3. That Laurie Williamson intentionally and knowingly caused the surgeries.

I was so focused on proving this novel theory that it did not even occur to me that I was attempting to do something never before done in the prosecution of a medical child abuse case: Secure a conviction based solely on unnecessary surgical procedures.

The first step would be to subpoena all of the medical records for all three children and Laurie Williamson, too. I included her records because a significant number of MCA perpetrators also exaggerate, fabricate, or induce symptoms in themselves. This would turn out to be true in Laurie Williamson’s case as well. For the next several months, I issued grand jury subpoenas and Sgt. Johnson dutifully served them. To minimize duplication and confusion, we agreed that CPS, represented by the Harris County Attorney’s Office, would serve as a central repository for all records obtained, and that Sgt. Johnson would have his office scan in the records as PDF files and put them on CD-ROMs. The process was time-consuming and exhaustive, but eventually we got most of the records we wanted. They totaled over 40,000 pages.

I then began going through the records to create a chronology of medical contacts in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I owe a debt of gratitude to several interns, most notably Amanda Johnston, who assisted in this tedious, eye-straining, mind-numbing task. On the spreadsheet, I entered the date, the name of the patient, the type of event (phone call, office visit, admission, etc.), the provider, and the complaint and diagnosis, if any. When I finished, I had documented nearly 600 doctor visits, hospitalizations, phone calls and other contacts for Laurie Williamson and her children. I did not even include the speech, occupational, and physical therapy all three children received at home three times a week.

Next, I catalogued the records for easy reference and had Sgt. Johnson scan almost three dozen statements and letters from various witnesses. To prove my case I was going to need experts; specifically, pediatricians specializing in the recognition and treatment of child abuse. They would need to review all of the records in order to form opinions as to whether the children were victims of medical child abuse and whether the surgeries in question were necessary. I already had in mind the physicians I wanted: If I was going to ask a jury to send Laurie Williamson to prison based on expert testimony, then I needed that testimony to come from some of the foremost pediatricians in the country.

I did not want to rely solely on experts, however. After reviewing the records, I began tracking down the actual doctors who had recommended and performed surgeries on the children. After talking to Dr. Isaac, I was targeting three procedures: A g-button placement/muscle biopsy and vagal nerve stimulator implantation performed on Tom, and a g-button placement/nissen fundoplication performed on Chrissy.

Going into the case, like many people, I believed that there would always be some “test” or other objective basis before a doctor would perform a surgery. When I contacted the treating physicians, I asked them for any objective data that supported the surgeries, independent of information that came from the mother. To them, the question made no sense. Pediatricians rely almost exclusively on the history given by the child’s caretaker. They assume that the caretaker is telling the truth because the caretaker wants the child to get better. Clinical tests, while useful, are seldom as conclusive as we would hope, and will almost never by themselves justify a surgery. The history from the caretaker and any objective results or observations are given equal weight and are considered indistinguishable.

In the case of the Williamson children, I discovered that there were almost no test results or objective bases for the surgeries that could not have somehow been manipulated by Laurie Williamson. The gastrostomy tube, or “g-button” surgeries, in which Tom and Chrissy had feeding tubes implanted into their stomachs to supply them with formula, had been performed because they were failing to thrive. Although the children had been losing weight and were not growing and developing properly, this could have been caused by simple malnutrition rather that some rare metabolic disorder. The vagal nerve stimulator had been implanted in Tom to help control persistent epileptic seizures. But, while a few EEGs had been abnormal and suggestive of seizures, no actual seizure had ever been recorded, despite repeated and lengthy tests. Instead, the surgery had been performed due to Laurie Williamson’s reports that Tom was having up to ten seizures a day despite being prescribed powerful anti-seizure medications. Dr. Isaac and other physicians confirmed that none of the surgeries appeared to have been medically necessary and that Laurie Williamson appeared to have been pushing the doctors to perform them.

In April of 2007, once I was satisfied that I had met all the elements, I presented the case to a grand jury, which indicted Laurie Williamson for two cases of injury to a child with serious bodily injury and three cases of endangering a child. The injury cases represented two of Tom’s surgeries, while the lesser endangering cases covered the broad mistreatment each Williamson child had experienced. To give the charges teeth, I alleged the scalpel as a deadly weapon in the injury cases, which seemed appropriate since it was the instrument used to inflict needless suffering on Tom. Sgt. Johnson and I tracked down Laurie, who had moved into a shelter for battered women after losing her children, and arrested her – at a doctor’s office, of course. And while there is no evidence to suggest Williamson was ever a victim of domestic violence, she frequently claimed to be the victim of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of various people, including her ex-husband, parents, and sister.

With the defendant in custody, I began preparation for trial in earnest. While some doctors were already on board, I knew I would need more experts. After all, if I was going to be asking a jury to send Laurie Williamson to prison based on opinion testimony, it only seemed fair to present them with the very best expert opinions I could find. After obtaining approval to hire experts from my supervisors, I recruited two teams, composed of some of the foremost experts on child abuse in the nation. The first team represented Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine and would consist of Dr. Reena Isaac and Dr. Joan Shook. The second team would represent Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital and the University of Texas Medical School and would consist of Dr. Rebecca Girardet, Dr. Margaret McNeese, Dr. Sheela Lahoti, Dr. Kim Cheung, and Dr. Christopher Greeley. The teams would operate independently and would each form their own opinions after reviewing the records. Within the teams, I allowed the physicians to consult with each other, share opinions, and divide the responsibilities however they saw fit.

I supplied each team member with a packet of materials: Seven CD-ROMs containing all the medical records on Laurie Williamson and her children; the completed “Chronology of Events” spreadsheet summarizing the contacts; a catalog of the CD-ROM contents; a page of legal definitions; a brief set of instructions, and; a list of questions they were to answer. I included on the CD-ROMs copies of all the letters and statements Sgt. Johnson had collected and instructed my experts to review them, as well, and give them whatever weight they wanted in arriving at their opinions. Just like a forensic pathologist trying to determine a cause of death, they would not be confined to looking at the body only; they could consider outside sources of information as well. My goal was to have my experts base their opinions, as closely as possible on the same body of evidence with which the jury would be presented. Lastly, I gave my experts a deadline about six months away. Just like lawyers, doctors tend to procrastinate, and I knew my experts would need plenty of time to review the records properly, especially with their busy schedules. I also knew that the defense attorneys would need time to have experts of their own review the records, so a quick trial setting would not do.

In an effort to streamline the process, I made a proposal to the defense that had worked well in the Austin case: I would give them CD-ROM copies of everything: Medical records, witness statements…everything. In return, all I asked was that they stipulate to the authenticity of the records under Texas Rule of Evidence 902. This served two purposes: First, it would save me the trouble of filing the records with the clerk 14 days in advance of trial, and, second, it would satisfy my duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. While the records held no earth-shattering proof of innocence, they contained many facts that could be argued to be exculpatory. Perpetrators of MCA are clever, and often they merely exaggerate symptoms that are really present in the child. The Williamson children had undergone countless tests, the vast majority of which were normal, but some of which were either abnormal or inconclusive. Finally, on some occasions, they really had been sick. The last thing I wanted was to be accused of hiding evidence. The defense would only be stipulating to authenticity; they reserved the right to object to items within the records.

It took more than a year for the case to come to trial, but on April 4, 2008, we began. I was privileged to have sitting with me Kate Dolan, a veteran prosecutor in our office and one of my colleagues in the Major Fraud division. Kate brought fresh insight and experience to the table, and was vital to the success of the case. The trial lasted four weeks and we called over three dozen witnesses. Many were former friends of Laurie who had helped and supported her over the years. These were churchgoing, traditional, stay-at-home mothers, some of whom had special needs children of their own, and all of whom had felt compassion for Laurie. When I made contact with them prior to trial, I expected them to be ambivalent, perhaps even tearful about the prosecution, and I tread delicately. When I asked if they were comfortable with the fact that I would be asking the jury to send their friend Laurie to prison, their cool, matter-of-fact responses left an indelible impression upon me. To a woman, every one of these Bible-studying soccer moms firmly and resolutely wanted Laurie locked up – for as long as possible. While their support was a welcome surprise, I was still taken aback at the cold-blooded, dispassionate attitude. Only later would I understand why they showed no mercy for Laurie: They knew firsthand what she had done to the children. And it was awful.

At trial, the evidence proved that for a period of approximately six years, Laurie Williamson had systematically starved and overmedicated her children in an effort to simulate and induce the symptoms of various illnesses. At the same time, she had failed to teach, train, and nurture her children, while exposing them to countless unnecessary tests and invasive procedures. The result was that Tom, Roger, and Chrissy appeared to be chronically ill and developmentally disabled, unable to perform basic tasks or physically take care of themselves.

The defendant told people that her children were terminally ill, that they had a mitochondrial disorder, and that they were not expected to live beyond their teens. She often said these things in their presence. The motive for the abuse was to gain sympathy, support, and financial contributions from various people and entities, including the government. Laurie Williamson, who was unemployed, lived off of a combination of child support, disability benefits for her children from the Social Security Administration, and donations from her friends. From 2000-2005, she received more than $150,000 from fellow church members (at different churches) and even more than that in donated goods and services. In 2004, with the help of the children’s pediatrician, she had even gotten a free trip to Disneyworld, paid for by the Make-a-Wish Foundation. When the investigation began, she was in the process of trying to raise over $300,000 to purchase a new, wheelchair-accessible home and van.

The only problem was that none of it was true. The children were not terminally ill, they did not have any kind of mitochondrial disorder, nor did they have any of the absurd list of illnesses she recited during her fundraising efforts. This list of ailments, which she had her pediatrician include in the January, 2006 letter quoted above, were possible diagnoes she had “collected” over the years from various physicians and specialists. She represented them as confirmed when in fact, in many instances they had actually been ruled out. Muscle biospies and other tests for the mitochondrial disorder, for example, had all been either negative or inconclusive.

Laurie Williamson’s deceptions did not go completely unnoticed. As far back as 2000, teachers and counselors at Tom’s school became concerned that the once bright, playful preschooler became thin, malnourished, and lethargic. They testified that he seemed “zoned-out” and that they were concerned that the defendant was overmedicating him, especially after he improved during a stay with his grandparents. During a meeting about Tom, these school officials discussed the possiblity of MSBP. They decided to begin weighing Tom on a regular basis, and even took the extraordinary step of drafting a letter to two of his physicians, expressing their concerns. However, the letter was never sent due to concerns school administrators had about liability.

Laurie Williamson responded in the same way she always did when suspicions arose: By cutting contact with the suspicious party. She transferred Tom to a different school and ultimately withdrew him entirely, saying she was going to home-school him. She repeated this pattern with anyone who questioned her: Her husband, her friends and neighbors, her parents and sister, her fellow church members. And while few doctors ever doubted her, if they did she moved on quickly, using HIPPA as a shield and refusing to sign information releases. In 2002, for instance, after physicians at Texas Children’s Hospital became suspicious of possible MSBP, Laurie Williamson moved on to specialists at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital.

Many who had regular contact with the Williamson family, particularly the therapists who saw the children twice a week and measured their progress, noted that Laurie Williamson seemed to seek out new equipment and diagnoses for the children and consistently downplayed and minimized their progress. She was adamant that Roger needed a g-button like his siblings, even though he ate normally when allowed to without any problems. Once, after he had gained weight at a doctor visit, Laurie came home furious, vowing ominously that he would lose weight before his next visit.

For two years, neurologists, geneticists, and other specialists in the UT system puzzled over the Williamson children, baffled by the wide array of symptoms their mother described. In August of 2004, Laurie Williamson, who had undergone a biopsy herself, received good news: She did not have mitochondrial disorder herself, and therefore she could not have passed the maternally inherited disease to her children. She continued, nevertheless, to represent the opposite to everyone else. In January of 2005, she brought the children to one of their last office visits, where the UT geneticists wrote that their observations of the children were “inconsistent with the condition the mother describes” and expressed concern about any further invasive testing. They recommended one final, simple urine test to determine if the children might have a rare regressive disorder, though they deemed it unlikely. Laurie Williamson, faced with the prospect of what she knew would be a negative result, never brought them in for the test.

Instead, she experienced a series of major health crises herself, culminating in some seizures that, despite being diagnosed as psychosomatic, somehow resulted in her almost complete paralysis. It was at this point, in the spring of 2005, that her scheme fell apart. Multiple witnesses saw Laurie Williamson using limbs she earlier had claimed were paralyzed, and a lengthy EEG during her hospitalization detected no seizure activity. During one supposed seizure, a friend who was present asked a nurse at Williamson’s bedside if she was going to do anything to help her. “She’ll breathe when she needs to,” replied the nurse, and walked away.

Now that she was pretending to be disabled, the defendant and her children needed 24-hour care. A platoon of supporters began coming into the house to cook and clean for Laurie. With these kind-hearted women feeding the children and making sure Chrissy had plenty of formula in her feeding pump, the Williamson children thrived at long last. Chrissy, a five year-old who wore size 18 month/2T clothing, doubled her weight, gaining 25 pounds in six months. It became impossible to hide the fact that the kids were not disabled and did not need all the expensive medical equipment that Laurie Williamson had obtained for them.

Chrissy had weighed just 15 pounds on her second birthday. Experts testified that, with a feeding pump to regulate her nutrition intake 24 hours a day and in the absence of a metabolic disorder, the only explanation for Chrissy’s small size and failure to thrive was that her mother was starving her.

The defendant, however, was still trying to raise funds, soliciting TV shows like “Extreme Home Makeover” and others to help in her efforts to build a new house. Donations were pouring in as generous people offered to pay bills. Concerned that the government might see the donations as income and cut off her disability benefits, the defendant asked one supporter, Paula Pedrick, to open a second, secret bank account in which to hide cash contributions. Alarmed and uncomfortable, Pedrick refused. As the inconsistencies and lies piled up, some of the women began comparing notes. Finally, a few of them, led by Darcy Wall, approached Laurie with a proposal: Laurie should select a “Wisdom Team” of people she trusted. They would organize help in the home, provide emotional support, and assist in raising and directing funds. All they asked in return was financial transparency and accountability. Laurie refused.

Shortly thereafter, Susan Owen, a nurse for the Williamson family pediatrician and longtime friend of Laurie, visited the house for the first time in several months. Her friendship with Laurie had cooled recently as Susan saw things that disturbed her. Now she was astounded to see Tom and Chrissy, who were supposed to be wheelchair-bound, running and playing. The therapists testified that the children consistently behaved worse when the defendant was around, and that, rather than excited, the defendant appeared unhappy when they reported the achievement of a goal or milestone, often making the excuse that the child was “having a good day” and minimizing the progress. With the help of their physical therapists and without their mother around to hinder and undermine them, all three children had made progress by leaps and bounds. Susan realized at long last that her friend had been lying to her. A few weeks later, she and Darcy went to the police and set in motion the string of events that would lead to the trial.

At the trial, the jury was allowed to see the “big picture,” including extraneous offenses and bad acts the defendant had committed against all three children, as proof of her motive to make the children sick. My experts testified that the children were the victims of MCA, that the surgeries were medically unnecessary, and that they fit the legal definition of injury to a child. Even the doctors who had prescribed and performed the surgeries acknowledged that they would not have done so knowing then what they knew now. My experts further testified that Laurie Williamson had simulated cyanotic episodes in Chrissy by smothering her when she was just six weeks old, and that, essentially, she had used the health care system to torture her children.

With the help of Juan DeAnda, a graphic artist in our IT department, I created a timeline, based on the “Chronology of Events” spreadsheet, that represented all of the nearly 600 medical contacts for the Williamson family from the birth of each child. The timeline chart vividly illustrated how the contacts increased in frequency as the years passed, especially after the birth of Chrissy in 1999 and the separation and divorce of Laurie from her husband in 2000. In 2001, when the surgeries in question had taken place, Tom had spent a total of more than two months in the hospital. The hospitalizations and office visits had continued, usually at least one per week, until 2005, when they abruptly tapered off after Laurie Williamson’s supposed medical problems began. In March of 2006, I noted the removal of the children by CPS with a bold, red line. In the two years since their removal, the children had combined for a grand total of four office visits to doctors, three of them for routine checkups. The point was obvious: Therapeutic separation had worked. The children were completely healthy.

At last, after nearly a month of trial, it was time for the jury to decide the case. Following about seven hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Laurie Williamson of both cases of injury to a child for the g-button and VNS surgeries performed on Tom. During closing argument on punishment, I appealed to the jurors not to give Laurie Williamson a “mother’s discount” just because she had harmed her own children. Kate Dolan pointed out that the scars the abuse had left on the outside of the children were nothing compared to the scars it had left on the inside, and that they would be dealing with the trauma of the abuse for years to come. I also reminded them of the testimony from the trial that neither MCA, MSBP, nor any of the other acronyms they had heard about represented any kind of mental illness. Many people assume that anyone who harms their own children must be “crazy.” But Laurie Williamson had been evaluated multiple times by psychologists and psychiatrists, and had been found completely sand and mentally competent. Even her own experts agreed she was rational, intelligent, and free of any psychosis or mental disease. Whether you called it “Medical Child Abuse” or “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” the conduct was simply another form of child abuse. Like other MCA perpetrators, Laurie Williamson knew exactly what she was doing, but chose to engage in the behavior in order to satisfy her greed.

But in spite of our efforts, faced with a probation-eligible, first offender, female in a wheelchair, the jury returned a verdict of 15 years. Undoubtedly some of the women who had trusted and supported Laurie over the years were disappointed in the verdict and thought she deserved more time. Fifteen years seemed a paltry sentence compared to the years she stole from her children. Instead of a childhood filled with joy and wonder, the Williamson children had a childhood filled with tubes, wires, needles, and the hopeless, looming prospect of an early death. But I reminded Darcy, Susan, Paula, and the others that, had it not been for their courage, the Williamson children would still be in that house today. They were far better mothers to the children than Laurie ever was. And with an affirmative finding of a deadly weapon, Laurie Williamson will have plenty of time in prison to reflect on that fact.

Mike Trent was the assistant district attorney with the Harris County District Attorney's Office, where he began working in 1994. He has tried over 100 felony jury trials and was assigned to the Special Crimes Bureau, Major Fraud Division, where he handled primarily white collar crime. A native Texan, Mr. Trent graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, and received his J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 1994. A passion for prosecuting child abuse cases, Mr. Trent is the co-author of Investigation and Prosecution of Child Sexual Abuse (2d Ed., TDCAA 2007). He has three children and resides in Texas. Mr. Trent believes that good and evil are not simplistic concepts and that the struggle between the two forces goes on every day...especially in the courtroom.

The article first appeared on the true crime website In Cold Blog on June 5, 2008 and was subsequently published in the July - August 2008 Edition of "The Texas Prosecutor," The Official Journal of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

Florence Small Lost Her Head

2011-11-27T22:55:00.001-08:00

The defense made a valiant effort on Frederick Small’s behalf.

Proclaiming that he was in Boston at the time,

and had witnesses to the fact.

There was undeniable proof that he wasn’t near the cottage,

when it burned into the ground.

And he had absolutely nothing to do with the body that they found.

He could not, would not, did not murder his wife.

Yet in jail he sat, on trial for his life.

************

The normal nighttime twinkle of lights from the little cottage that sat on the shore of Lake Ossipee, in the village of Mountain View, New Hampshire, had been replaced with the roaring flames of an incendiary fire. One set to erase all evidence of the murder that had been committed there and reduce the body of Mrs. Florence Small to little more than bone and ash.

Foiling the plot of what was expected to be a perfect crime; the floor beneath Mrs. Small’s body gave way during the fire and she fell into the basement below, fortuitously landing in a little pool of water that had collected there.

A cord bound tightly about her neck, a skull fractured by numerous blows, and a bullet wound to the forehead told the ghastly tale of the fate that had been bestowed upon Florence Small. She had not met her death by succumbing to the smoke and flame, but rather to a cold blooded killing.

In an effort to eradicate all signs of his crime her killer had applied a resin of thermite to his victim’s body and sprinkled it about the scene. The compound, typically used in welding to generate an extremely high heat, was intended to fuel a fire so hot that it would incinerate the body, the house, and any evidence that remained.

An onlooker who had stood by to watch as the bungalow burned stated that they had peered through a window upon arriving at the fiery cottage and believed they bore witness to Florence Small’s body partially suspended from the bed by a rope.

After the embers cooled, an alarm clock, some wire, spark plugs and a .32 caliber revolver were found amid the debris in the burned-out rubble of the Small’s summer home. The same caliber bullet was retrieved from Florence’s head.

The assailant stood above her as Florence lie prone on her back, and it was from that angle that he had shot her, the medical examiner said. And while the head shot would have eventually proven to be fatal, the thrashing she took to her skull most likely would not. However, the medical examiner presented, it wasn’t the fire, the gunshot or the blows to the head that had killed her. She had died from strangulation, instead. In his professional opinion, after suffering through a beating and being shot in the head, he estimated that Florence succumbed to the ligature around her neck, finally asphyxiated, and five minutes later was dead.

A Boston broker, Frederick Small was Florence’s husband. Out of town when the fire broke at 10pm that night, he had left for Boston at 3pm earlier in the day, just after lunch. But despite being away from the scene at the time, Florence’s loving husband became the primary suspect in her case.

Frederick had been married twice before. His previous love, second wife Laura Patterson Small, had granted his request for a divorce. Frederick came briefly into the public eye when he sued her paramour for the alienation of lovely Laura’s affections. The man in her life, Frederick Small alleged, was none other than millionaire baseball executive, Arthur H. Soden, president of the National League. Frederick Small wanted A. H. Soden to pay for his crime of the heart. He wanted $500,000 in damages for the loss of his lady love. He also alleged that Soden had drugged both he and his Laura, leaving them unconscious within their own home. Awarded a pittance compared to that which he coveted, a mere $10,000 was all that Frederick was deemed to receive.

On the night of the fire, following the dispatch of news regarding the death of his wife, a physician inquired of Frederick as to what should be done with her remains. “Why?” Frederick asked the good doctor, “is there enough left of the body to require a casket?”

The state believed Frederick concocted some kind of infernal machine. One that employed the spark plugs and wires and ignited gasoline, the fuse had been set with a timed device that he had formed with the alarm clock that they had found. They believed that he had killed his wife after lunch, some time near mid-afternoon, and then rigged the device to ignite the fuse after he had already left town.

Upon his return from Boston, Small proffered a theory that his wife had been murdered by a tramp or a thief, and then offered up a $1,000 reward for the capture of the person who had ended her life.

The police didn’t buy it; they believed that Frederick Small was their man and they surmised that a $20,000 life insurance policy was the reason he hatched his plan. The grieving widower was arrested in his hotel room and carted off to jail. From there he made the arrangements to bury his beloved.

After being acquainted for only ten days, Florence and Frederick had now been married for five years. Her husband spared no expense when it came to burying his beautiful wife. Ninety-eight dollars he spent, covering half of a plot, a paltry casket and a few flowers. He requested no formalities that required any additional attention – such as a headstone, grave marker or service. For her burial only one gift of flowers was received. A wreath, arranged in white and sent by her husband with an inscription that read, “To My Love.”

When Frederick returned to New Hampshire and was questioned by police waiting there he stated that he bade Florence farewell and that she was still in the house when he left. The driver who took him to the station for his trip concurred with Mr. Small; he saw for himself Frederick turn toward the door and heard him say “Good-bye” to Mrs. Small. The driver, however, admitted that he didn’t personally lay eyes on Florence at the time nor had he heard her voice at all.

One of Florence’s previous physician’s came in from Massachusetts. He stepped forward and offered up evidence of some possible prior abuse. The physician recounted an exchange from Frederick as Florence was being treated for injuries. Her husband boastfully quipped, said the doctor, “I hit her in the head with a bootjack. I ought to have killed her and I will yet.”

The mother of the victim had very little to say, but opined Frederick to be a “fear-inspiring hypnotist.” He is, she said, a man “without a drop of the milk of human kindness in his heart,” her Florence had feared him for years.

As the trial proceeded forward the jury took a field trip to the scene of the crime. And with an opportunity advantages to a public display of remorse, Fredrick Small broke with the composure that was the trademark throughout his ordeal and collapsed into a fit of tears. He howled and wailed at the site of his burned house. “Oh my dear wife,” he cried. Unable to hold himself up, he had to be propped up by the sherriff at his side. For the most part, the jurors ignored Frederick Small and his histrionic outbursts, but occasionally one would cast a gaze in the direction of his pitiful tear filled sobs and proclamations of grief.

But the most dreadfully alarming piece of evidence, by far, came in dramatic fashion at the trial’s climax; when the prosecution presented, for the visceral response of the jury, a hideous and frightful display. Florence Small’s severed head. What Frederick didn’t know, as they buried his wife, was that the prosecution had obtained an order to remove his bride’s head and have it placed in their possession for safe keeping. A few other portions and parts had also been plucked for possible use at his trial and they were being kept cozy and well preserved in alcohol filled jars nearby.

The judge suggested that women leave the courtroom, as Florence’s head was produced. Eight fair lasses remained seated, and craned their necks with the rest of the court’s observers as the prosecution’s gruesome exhibit was displayed. A gasp went through the courtroom and Frederick Small covered his face. He sobbed into his hands as a witness described in detail the current state of his wife’s face. Her features had been distorted by fire and frozen in time by death; the neck was still attached and encircled by the knotted cord that took her life. There was clearly a gunshot wound to her forehead and her skull had been cracked and damaged by at least seven forceful blows to her head.

The accused never took the stand to speak in his defense and let his counsel do their job. His attorney argued that the state had not offered proof that his client could cause a fire seven hours after he left his home. And they countered that the thermite was not possessed by Frederick Small, he had no knowledge of any such compound at all. The wires found in the basement, they said, near the spark plugs and clock, were merely telephone wires and nothing nefarious.

The prosecution unleashed upon the defendant a closing argument of vitriol and venom. Charging that the crime was as heinous an act as had ever been committed in the state, it was likened to the same unspeakable cruelty that had befallen women and children who had burned at the stake in the days of early New Hampshire. “Frederick Small,” declared the Attorney General, while shaking his clenched fist, was an “Imp form Hell.” A soulless cad teeming with “the spirit of the Devil”

The jury recessed for dinner and then they went to work. After a fourteen day trial it took only three hours for the verdict to be reached. It was a unanimous finding for guilty; murder in the first degree.

The defendant entered the courtroom looking pale, drawn and haggard. His attorney, brother and nephew were at his side. And as the verdict was read he staggered and swayed just a bit, but then quickly regained his composure.

“Have you anything to say as to why sentence should not be pronounced?” the judge asked of the defendant.

“I have your honor,” Frederick Small replied. “I know no more about this crime than you do. I am an innocent person.”

And then after the formalities of adjournment had been observed, and Frederick Small had been sentenced for his act, he turned to the courtroom, and addressing the reporters still present within he repeated himself for the record, “Gentlemen, I am innocent of this crime. I know no more about it than you do. I am awaiting the next move.”

As journalists crowded around the man who had been damned to hang by his neck a reporter remarked, “The coolest man in the courtroom by far is the man who has just been condemned to death.”

The defense did their level best in lobbying on behalf of their client. Requesting an acquittal on grounds of evidence insufficient for presentation to a jury, appealing the sentence and filing multiple exceptions, but they failed in their endeavor. Affirmation came, supporting the verdict and the sentence. Frederick Small would be executed.

On the day of his death Frederick Small went to the gallows calmly. He would neither admit nor deny that he had ended the life of his wife. “I am resigned. God’s will be done,” were the last words he chose to utter.

The lights were turned out, and amid the blackness that shrouded the hangman’s gallows the strap that operated the trap door beneath Frederick Small’s feet was pulled and the condemned man dropped to his death in darkness.

************

The first case to be heard within the Ossipee, New Hampshire courtroom walls was that of Frederick Small for the murder of his wife Florence. Easily a victim of domestic battery, Florence Arlene Curry Small died on September 28, 1916. She was 37-years old. She had been beaten, strangled, shot, and burned. Her head later removed for the benefit of prosecutorial theatrics and paraded about a courtroom for the shock and awe of spectators and jurors.

Her husband, Frederick Small, was executed for her murder on January 15, 1918. He dropped to his death at 12:18 am and was pronounced dead nine minutes later. His remains were cremated and put into the care of his brother who returned with him to Portland, ME.

At the end of the trial Florence Arlene Small was forgotten. Left abandoned in an unmarked grave at Grant Hill cemetery for 91-years, it was a mystery as to where in the graveyard Florence actually lay buried, or if she was even there at all. There was little to speak to the fact that Florence had ever existed in Ossipee. The court transcripts had been lost and there was no recording of her death in the 1916 record of vital statistics for the town.

Then one day Natalie Peterson, a woman helping to restore the old courthouse, stumbled upon Florence’s grave and the story of how she came to rest there. She set forth to see that the town’s forgotten victim was forgotten no more. Ninety-one years after her passing Florence Small finally received a proper headstone and long awaited remembrance.

I can’t help but wonder, though… if anyone ever remembered to give Florence back her head?

Chloe Davis Murder Case: Part 4

2011-11-26T21:17:00.001-08:00

Chloe’s neighbors and classmates had gathered on the lawn of the Davis residence to await her arrival. Faces of onlookers fell pale as the police motorcade pulled to the front of the little house and Chloe smiled and gave a casual wave from the car window.

Today, under the company of the famed police psychiatrist, Dr. J. Paul De River, Chloe would lead her law enforcement entourage through rooms that had once held the sounds of laughing children and the hopes and dreams of a family, but now only retained the sickening sour scent of blood and death.

Happily, Chloe led a captive audience room by room though her domicile of horror, completely unaffected by the grotesque scene before her. With a delightful little bounce in her step and a cheerful smile, Chloe padded about the grisly crime scene, with its blood drenched carpets and gore spattered walls - her audience in tow. With a callous coolness of demeanor, she nonchalantly told the story of the frenzied butchery that had taken place, while reenacting the crime scene as though she were playing a bit part in her 6th grade class play.

When asked if she had been frightened during the ordeal she replied, in a very matter of fact manner, “Well, I didn’t cry. If that’s what you mean?”

As they entered the bedroom that she had once shared with her siblings a cameraperson, who had accompanied the group to the crime scene, had Chloe pose seated on the edge of her bed, a doll cradled in her arms. Looking distant and wholly uninterested in the notion of being photographed playing with dolls, Chloe paused for a moment and pointed to a bookshelf located in the corner of the room. With a bright smile, she exclaimed, “I’m a real bookworm. I read all the time!”

Chloe Davis was, indeed, a brilliant and well read child, despite that she displayed a vernacular overrun with the slang terminology of the 1940’s. Dr. De River would conclude that Chloe was the “coolest-blooded individual” that he had ever met and possessed the intellect of a sixteen year old adolescent with “a mind as clear as a bell.” One that was “distinctly capable of planning and committing the murders.”

Yet despite being as well read as she clearly was, and demonstrating an academic brilliance that was equally impressive, when asked why she locked the door as she left the house after the murders of her family Chloe calmly replied that she believed that those demons her mother spoke of would be able to get in. She had locked the door to make sure to keep them out.

Captain Edwards was unable to accept a version of events which he thought to be wholly “fantastic and unbelievable,” and did not let up on his questioning of the young girl. He was convinced that she and she alone had murdered her family and that the story she had been telling of her mother and demons was nothing more than the makings of an imaginative young murderess who was seeking to get away with the merciless bludgeoning of her family.

Left practically incoherent from shock and near the verge of collapse, Frank Barton Davis was a complete wreck, “Oh God, why can’t I die, too? I’ve nothing to live for,” he exclaimed while at police headquarters.

Brought in to assist in the questioning of his daughter; he listened to the bloody tale spilling from her lips and began to sob. “Oh my poor baby,” he wailed. “You can’t blame her. She’s just as innocent as the other children. She only did what she was told to do.” Chloe cast a sympathetic glance in his direction, “Buck up dad,” she said, “Don’t let it get you down.”

He could give no explanation as to why his wife would suddenly loose her mind, murder three of their youngest children and then implore their oldest to pound her completely senseless. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with my wife,” he sobbed hysterically, “She was a perfect mother and loved her children.”

And by all accounts Lolita Davis had behaved as any other perfectly normal woman would. At least up until the morning of the murders. Although she had been under a doctor’s care for anemia she most certainly had not shown any prior signs of being deranged. She was not a disturbed woman and she had never before spoken of demons. Of that, F. Barton Davis was absolutely sure, “She was as normal as any woman could be,” he stated. And Chloe concurred.

There was also something else that he was sure of. His only surviving daughter would never and could never tell a lie, most assuredly not one to the police.

But as the police captain continued to insist that Barton Davis’ lovely young daughter was the sole slayer of her family the reality of the situation began to sear into his brain, and he began to hysterically defend his child. Then as quickly and as ardently as he avowed that his wife was as sane as any woman could be, he retreated from his declarations and began to paint the scene with an entirely different brush.

He asserted that his wife had an astounding power over her children, Chloe in particular. There was no doubt in his mind that Chloe would follow her mother’s instructions, regardless of what they were. Barton Davis, in defense of his only remaining offspring, declared, “She’s telling the truth, she never lies. Don’t you think she could have done it. How can you be such fools? I tell you, you are wrong. Chloe could not, would not, have done such a thing. She was helpless in her mother’s hands.”

Lolita Davis, alleged her husband, had been perfectly happy until she had come into the possession of a particular book, “Blind Devotion, I think it was called,” he said. The book was about a woman in Michigan who had four children and at some point, he said, his wife had come into the notion that the book had been written about her.

“Her mind was tortured,” he conceded, “She was acting peculiar for weeks.” At first, he said, that he thought the strange ideas were occurring because of her anemia.

It was two weeks ago that he woke to find his wife sitting upright in bed having a cigarette. When questioned, “She said that she had a terrible confession. She knew the spirits were going to kill me and turn the children over to white slavers. An evil spirit was creeping up on us and she was waiting for it.“

Realizing that there was something imminently wrong with his wife he immediately took her to a psychiatrist. The doctor and Mrs. Davis visited for a considerable length of time and when both Davises left Lolita remarked that she had felt “as though a terrific burden had been lifted.” However soon after the consultation she, again, began discussing the book and stating that she had seen visions of demons torturing the children. Refusing to seek council with another psychiatrist, Lolita Davis instead agreed to be seen by physicians. It was then that she was diagnosed as being anemic and had been receiving shots for the condition. “I took her to two doctors and to a psychiatrist,” stated her husband, “The psychiatrist told me that there was nothing wrong with her that couldn’t be cured.”

Dr. V. J. Stack, the family physician came forward and confirmed that Barton Davis himself had contacted the good doctor not more than two weeks prior because he feared that his wife was teetering on the brink of insanity.

According to both Chloe and her father, Lolita Davis held to a belief that with the shear power of her mind she could force those around her to succumb to their deaths. When her cousin, Patsy, died a number of years earlier Lolita claimed that it was she who had caused the child to expire and that demons were therefore going to “get” her as retribution. “She had been nervous for several years,” Davis said, “But had apparently become worse. She told me that she was responsible for Patsy’s death. I told her that she had nothing to do with it. Patsy died naturally.”

But that wasn’t the end of her delusional meanderings, according to her husband. He claimed three weeks prior to the murders of his family his wife had come to him and asked where she could purchase chloroform. When questioned as to why she wanted such an item Lolita Davis stated that, “she believed all of us were menaced by some strange demon. She said some unseen power was going to kill the children and she wanted it to pour over their faces so that the pain would be eased.”

He also confessed that his wife wanted him to help her commit suicide. She had implored him to prove his love to her by helping her to die locked inside the family automobile while inhaling the fumes of carbon monoxide piped in through a hose connected to the exhaust. Just the night before the murders, Davis shared with police, while sitting at the dinner table, his wife had asked him, in front of the children, what was the best way to kill a person? “Where was the most mortal spot,” she asked; “I laughed and said, ‘a shot straight through the heart,’ then changed the conversation.”

Soon friends and neighbors began to step forward in young Chloe’s defense. Further substantiating the fantastic tale of a mother beset by a belief in demons and obsessed by the notion that she possessed an innate power to kill those around her.

According to friends and neighbors, Lolita Davis frequently spoke of individuals whose lives had come to a violent conclusion. She was fixated on death. At one point during the investigation an attorney came forward, a friend of the Davises, and revealed that three weeks prior to the murder Lolita Davis had asked him not only how she would go about procuring enough chloroform to kill but where the best place on the head would be to hit someone if you wanted to bring about their death.

Chloe had endured two days of questioning by Dr. De River and the hard-boiled homicide investigators of the Los Angeles Police Department, but she never lost her composure. Never once did she shed a tear. During the police interrogations Chloe’s demeanor was of such an even keel that she would calmly intercede to correct her father on certain points of the case.

A policewoman held that Chloe had, “the face of an angel,” but that when she had remarked that the young girl “must try to forget what happened,” the child replied, “My father is the one who needs to forget. He’s nuts.”

“She stood up well for one of a family struck by such a crime. She showed little emotion,” Dr. De River remarked to the press, “We must take into consideration the fact that Chloe might have an Electra Complex. This would lead us to believe her capable of such a deed.”

And although Chloe had recalled during questioning that while she was attempting to bash her mother’s brains in Lolita Davis had demanded that she fetch a razor and then used it to slash her own wrists, severing the arteries of each, “There’s one thing I forgot to tell you gentlemen,” she quipped, “Ma asked me for a razor blade and I saw her slash both writes with it,” and indeed a razor blade had been recovered at the crime scene covered with congealed blood and feathers, retrieved near where her mother had breathed her last breath. Other than that one modest little detail, the razor, Chloe never once changed her story.

Unable to shake Chloe in her account, and now with the steadfast support of her father in the claims concerning the mental stability of her mother, and the further assertions of friends of the Davis family to the same, Captain Edwards needed to make a decision. Either Chloe was telling the truth, or she was a cold blooded killer. He knew that if she was found guilty the maximum sentence for annihilating her family would be confinement to a juvenile facility until age twenty-one and then she would be released. Chloe’s father was putting the pressure on, now, too. He wanted his daughter out of state custody and he had hired an attorney to make sure that happened. It was time for Captain Edwards to either charge his young detainee with murder, or release her to the custody of her father.

The clock was ticking, and unfortunately for the LAPD it was strapped to a little stick of dynamite named Chloe Davis. There was going to be an explosion.

Chloe Davis Murder Case: Part 3

2007-04-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

In the world of criminal psychiatry, Dr. Joseph Paul De River was a self-made man, a visionary and a pioneer with some of the most revolutionary ideas of his time.

Before the good doctor began to dip into the heads of the Los Angeles criminal populace the dedicated field of criminal psychiatry, more specifically the minds of sexual psychopathic criminals, was uncharted territory. That particular field of study, of specialized practice and skill, did not exist. De River recognized this and knew that if one wanted to be able to understand the evil that undoubtedly existed in the psyche of some, then that evil would have to be studied.

Being an exceptionally driven man whose ambition was only equaled by his egocentricities, De River, began his internship, of sorts, by volunteering his time as a consultant in the area of criminal psychiatry for the Los Angeles Probation Department. It was through his work there that he began to make a name for himself within the law enforcement community as the man to call when it came to criminal psychiatry. It is also where his interest in criminal psychiatry became focused on the psycho-sexual criminal mind. Before long his freelancing for the probation department would include the Los Angeles courts when various sitting judges would call him aside and ask for his views on this case or that.

In June 1937 De River began his ascent into rockstar status when he was called to consult on a case involving the murder of three little girls in Inglewood, California. There was no suspect in the case and De River had been requested to review the crime scene and provide his insight into the psychology of the type of individual who could commit such a heinous act.

Relying on the expertise he had gleaned from the countless hours he had spent reviewing criminals and their crimes for the Los Angeles judicial system, gratis no less, Dr. De River submitted a report of his summations to the Inglewood District Attorney’s office and police department. This report contained an analysis of the type of individual that the doctor felt law enforcement should be looking for and could arguably be called the first initial effort at criminal profiling for the specific purpose of identifying a suspect in a crime.

After the Inglewood suspect was arrested it was debatable as to the significance Dr. De River’s profile actually played. And there may have also been a question, or two, as to the actual accuracy of his suspect analysis. However, given that it was 1937 at the time it was an impressive effort nonetheless.

Law enforcement hadn’t yet had a chance to employ the use of the profile in their hunt for the Inglewood killer when the suspect, a rather dim-witted individual who had already been cleared of the crime, walked in unannounced and loudly proclaimed that he wanted answers as to why law enforcement was still looking at him as a suspect. They hadn’t been, but they were now.

Regardless of the actual success of his profile, De River had succeeded in impressing some of the more powerful figures in the Los Angeles law enforcement community with his exceptional insight into the criminal mind. So much so that he was subsequently provided an official position with the Los Angeles Police Department, although it would still be in the freelance capacity, heavy on the free. Two more years would pass before the doctor would become an official paid employee of the LAPD.

He had become the first psychiatrist to be hired by a police department in a major US city and as a result became the founder of the first Sex Offense Bureau in the United States. Housed within the Los Angeles Police Department, De River maintained structured, detailed files on those convicted, arrested, or suspected, of committing sexually motivated offenses. He would examine his subjects both physically and psychologically, photograph them, fingerprint them, interview them and then catalogue them by their various proclivities. It would later come as no surprise to many of those who knew the doctor, and respected his work, that he would be requested to help pen the first sex offender registration law in the United States, one that has continued to stay in effect today.

With all that he created, and though he would come to be involved in the criminal investigation of one of the most infamous unsolved homicides in the history of Hollywood, the Black Dahlia, the case that would send his rising star crashing into the ground, more than sixty years would pass from that beautiful spring morning in 1940 when the suave police psychiatrist would make the acquaintance of the young Miss Chloe Davis and nary a sole will have heard his name or know the significance that this complicated and fascinating man played in the chronicles of criminal profiling.

Dr. Joseph Paul De River was a most important figure in the annals of criminal psychiatry and crime investigation, a brilliant man, a man of considerable ego and the keeper of his own brand of secrets. He may not have known it at the time but he would become the grandfather of criminal profiling and sex offender registration. He would also come to find himself both loathed and loved by the very people he had called colleague and friend.

The Interview

By the time 1940 rolled around the name J. Paul De River had more than begun to gain prominence and power within the Los Angeles law enforcement community.

Being that he was the official police psychiatrist, Captain Edwards requested that Dr. De River accompany him to the hospital to interview the young Miss Davis. When they arrived Chloe was in the company of a policewoman. She had been treated for the head wound and was now lying on top of one of the infirmary beds. Her arms comfortably crooked at the elbows and her hands clasped behind her head.

In addition to the small scalp wound and blistered palms she also had a small bruise to her upper right forearm, about the size of the hammer head, and several fingernail scratches just above her right elbow. There was also a thin scratch approximately 1 ¼ inches in length that ran along the inside of her left thigh. She was at ease, alert, and entirely unemotional regarding the events of the day. She exhibited no more of an emotional response over the brutal slaying of her mother and younger siblings than if someone had just said “Chloe, dear, I boiled eggs.”

Dr. De River entered Chloe’s room and took center stage. He was a balding man of average height and build, perhaps just a little stout, with squared shoulders, made to look even more so by the dapper dress of the day. Not particularly handsome, in the classic sense of the word, yet, even so, one couldn’t help but be in awe of the famed police psychiatrist. He was cock sure of himself and exuded confidence; a stylish, natty dresser with a slick dark moustache and overall look that rivaled any up and comer of the time. If one didn’t know better they could easily ask whose image came first; Agatha Christie’s Poirot or that of the good doctor. His large hands reached into his pocket for his pipe. It was a black shiny thing with a long, straight stem and as he held a match to the bowl and began to gradually suck at the stem the sweet musky scent of pipe tobacco wafted through the air.

As her captive audience listened, 11-year old Chloe Davis began to tell the story of how she came to find herself in her current, unseemly predicament. As she spoke she nibbled from a bag of candy she had been given, occasionally offering some to those who now shared her tiny room at the Police Emergency Hospital. Her parents, if anything at all, had raised a polite and courteous child and to not offer to share would be nothing less than ill mannered. And she certainly wasn’t ill mannered – well, maybe just a little. But then weren’t most 11-year olds at one moment or another?

There was no doubt that Chloe had a tendency to get angry on occasion. By her own admission she said had a quick and volatile temper. A former neighbor and the mother to one of Chloe’s friends could apparently attest to that and stated that according to her daughter “Chloe had once grabbed her mother by the hair and knocked her head against a concrete wall because she refused to give her a nickel for ice cream.”

Chloe was an athletic child and captain of her gymnastics team. At 4-feet 11-inches tall, and a little over 80Lbs, she was just a head shorter than her mother and about 50Lbs lighter. She was a strong, agile youngster, her muscle tone and overall strength more in line with that of a 13-year old boy than an 11-year old girl. Proud of her strength and physique, Chloe happily flexed a bicep for her inquisitors.

J. Paul De River drew on his pipe, gazed at Chloe and began to pose the most obvious of questions. What happened that morning at the Davis residence, and what possessed her to beat her mother in the head thirty times with a claw hammer? Then twenty more times about the body with the handle when the hammer’s head broke free from the wear and tear and flew haphazardly across the room?

According to Chloe; she, her mother, and her siblings were all asleep when her father left for work that morning. She and her siblings all shared a room and it was her sisters who had gotten little Marquis up that day allowing her to continue to sleep. (When police respond to the crime scene they find Marquis dead on the kitchen floor, completely dressed, shoes tied. Daphne is also dressed.)

She had awoken to the the agonizing shrieks and yelps of pain from her brother and sisters as Lolita Davis pummeled them in the head with her hammer. Her mother was screaming; “I’m doing this for your own good. I love you so much that I have to kill you in order to save your souls.”

Chloe leapt from her bed and ran into the hallway where she encountered her mother as she wildly swung the hammer toward the little girl’s head. Chloe quickly moved out of the way and the hammer only grazed her scalp. As Chloe struggled with her mother for the weapon she was easily able to over power the severely anemic and slight framed woman.

The crazed woman was screaming of demons and a power she possessed to kill. She said that she had used that power to kill her young niece and then demanded that Chloe help her drag a mattress from a cot in her room to the hallway. Chloe obliged.

She stated that her mother than grabbed some matches from a cupboard and attempted to light her (Chloe’s) hair on fire. But she was too quick for her and would blow the matches out before her mother could do any damage to her beautiful blond locks. Lolita Davis, laid down upon the mattress and instructed her eldest daughter to set her afire; first her hair and then her nightgown. Her nightdress went up in flames around her head and she began to scream in pain from the burns that had now been inflicted upon her body. She implored her daughter to beat the life out of her with the hammer. Chloe, being concerned over her mother’s now ever present suffering paused and considered her mother’s request, for but a second, maybe two. Choosing to put her mother out of her current state of misery, Chloe began to beat the hell out of her.

It was laborious work, the matter of murdering her mother. After a bit she became tired and her throat parched. Chloe lay down for a few minutes, while her mother continued to beseech her to beat her brains in. After she rested a bit and regained some of her strength and composure she went into the bathroom and got herself a glass of water. Being the unselfish child that she was, after she quenched her own thirst she then “poured some down [her mother’s] throat.” Once she had been sufficiently rehydrated Chloe resumed beating the helpless woman in the head. This routine continued three or four more times, according to Chloe. She would become tired, weak and dizzy, and need to go lay down. All the while her mother was lying in the hallway pleading for her to continue striking her in the head until she was dead. After she was rested, Chloe would then get a drink of water and “also pour some down [her mother’s] throat” then resume the tedious, tiring, wielding of the hammer.

It was on one of Chloe’s jaunts to quench her continual thirst, from the exertion of pummeling a woman who refused to die, that Chloe said she entered the kitchen and found the backdoor ajar. She noted that the time was a quarter to eight; approximately forty-five minutes or so after her father had left for work. Marquis was whimpering helplessly on the kitchen floor. Chloe asked her mother if she shouldn’t whack him a few more times in order to silence his suffering. Her mother nodded. After striking her brother until he was dead, Chloe returned to the hallway and again proceeded to continue to beat her mother in the head.

Ultimately, the head of the hammer became loose and flew from the handle. Not to be dissuaded from the task at hand, Chloe went into the kitchen, stepped over her brother’s body and got another hammer from a drawer. It was small, thin, silver and sleek. It was one singular piece of metal, shaped like an ‘L’ and slightly resembling a reflex hammer from the doctor’s office. At one end of the metal handle was a small hammer head, at the other end a small v-shape made the claw. Much to her dismay, Chloe, found that the tiny little hammer was not nearly strong enough to do any significant damage. She picked up the handle to of the one that had broke and continued to pound on the frail woman’s body with it instead.

Despite the appearance that Lolita Davis died from blunt force trauma the coroner would return findings that her skull had never fractured. With her head resting on top of a pillow, that was resting atop a mattress, it would appear that while Chloe was bludgeoning her mother with all of her might, all her mothers head would do was bounce.

The cause of death that the coroner returned was surprising. Lolita Davis had died from the loss of blood resulting from her wrists being slashed. One had been cut so completely that an artery was severed. To the amazement of investigators, just prior to the coroner releasing the cause of death, Chloe would remember that her mother had asked her to get a razor so that she could slit her wrists. At first Chloe denied having witnessed her mother cut herself, but later admitted that she had, in fact, watched her do it.

After twelve hours of questioning by the best police investigators in Los Angeles, Chloe Davis was transported to the juvenile detention facility where a charge of murder was attached to her admissions sheet.

As she was preparing to retire for bed a member a the staff inquired as to whether or not Chloe was hungry and perhaps would like something to eat. “A big steak and a bottle of beer” she quickly barked in reply. When her steak was provided and the beer was not Chloe became defiant and boasted that she liked beer and that her mother happily split one with her only a few days prior.

When morning came she wolfed down breakfast and prepared to begin another day of questioning. An inquest into the murders was set for today and there would be a field trip. Chloe would accompany the investigators to the crime scene for a walk-through.

AP photos:

Chloe at the Police Emergency Hospital with policewoman

Diagram of Murder Scene

Part 4

Chloe Davis Murder Case: Part 2

2007-04-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

It was Christmas day in 1926 and 23-year old Lolita Dell Bjorkman was getting married to her heart’s desire, 28-year old Frank Barton Davis. Barton, as he was called, or F. Barton Davis as he would later be referred to in the press, was born in Kansas and Lolita in Illinois. Both had grown up in the same Michigan town, met and fell in love. Barton had briefly moved to Los Angeles in 1925 but hastily returned home so that he could marry his hometown sweetheart. Over the next few years, with children in tow, he and his new bride would move back and forth between Grand Rapids and Los Angeles.

On September 4, 1928 a beautiful baby with bright blue eyes was placed into the arms of two excited new parents. The Davises, opting for a name that was rooted in family history, chose Chloe Dibble for their little girl. Over the course of nine years Chloe would be joined by three siblings: Daphne Dell arriving on January 10, 1930; Deborah Ann on July 1, 1933; and little brother Barton Marquis, who followed his sisters on March 7, 1937.

By 1940 the Davises had again settled in Los Angeles. They were now living in a little two-bedroom house at West 58th Place. They were a typical middle-class family. Devoted to their children, attended Sunday services with their neighbors and were thought of as one of the most likable and devoted families in the church. Barton Davis was a manger at a local grocery store and Lolita spent much of her time the same way that most mothers do, caring for her children and caring for her home. She was an impeccable housekeeper and, according to her husband, her children adored her. When she found free time she would spend much of it reading; both she and her eldest daughter shared the same love of books, including an attraction to crime stories. But her primary interest was in how to be a good parent, so she spent a great deal of time reading up on the subject. Two of the books found in the Davis home were titled How to Be a Good Mother and How to Raise Children. The Davis family, by all appearances, were normal, vanilla, status quo.

Then, one lovely spring morning, all hell broke loose.

When police arrived at the Davis residence officers were stunned by what they encountered. The murder scene was as gruesome as one could imagine. And there at the heart of it all was Chloe. Just as calm, cool and collected as could be. Her mother and little brother were dead at the scene. Daphne and Deborah, alleged to still be breathing, were transported to a local hospital. Each pronounced dead shortly thereafter as a result of the injuries they had sustained. Her father was near collapse. And through it all Chloe shed no tears, never lost her composure.

Chloe arrived at the ‘Police Emergency Hospital’, as it was termed then, sporting a minor head wound and substantial blisters to the palms of her hands. The staff wrapped her head in an exaggeration of bandages that seemed to be more for effect than in response to any significant injury. Her head wound wasn’t life threatening by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly hadn’t been inflicted with near the strength and force that was behind the crushing blows to her siblings. They had each been struck multiple times, and with such force that many of the skull shattering wounds had retained the contour of the head of the hammer that inflicted them.

Captain Edgar Edwards, of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Homicide Squad, opined early in the investigation that the blisters were a result of considerable use of the hammer; her head injury was most likely self-inflicted or it had occurred during the scuffle with her mother.

For the moment Chloe was in a ward at the hospital under police supervision and for the next twelve hours she would be relentlessly questioned. Her calm, unemotional responses and cool, unaffected demeanor during the hours long interview would mystify even the most experienced and hardened of the homicide squad. No matter the tactic, the little girl was never going to crack under the pressure. She wouldn’t be rattled. She was quite the cool cucumber for a child her age, at one point when she thought investigators were trying to trick her into an admission of culpability she barked “you can’t make me confess. I didn’t do it.”

Captain Edwards believed that Chloe had killed her family, although he had no idea of the motive. His evaluation of the crime scene, based, I’m sure, on his years of experience as a police officer, indicated to him that Chloe had awoken while her mother was still in bed. She went into the kitchen and bludgeoned Marquis and Daphne. Hearing the screams of her children, Lolita Davis sprang from her bed and was met by Chloe as she ran into the hallway. A struggle ensued and Chloe stuck her mother knocking her to the ground. Upon ending her mother’s life Chloe then went into the bathroom and killed Deborah Ann. Edwards believed that in an attempt to disguise what she had done Chloe drug a mattress into the hallway, placed her mother’s body upon it, and in an effort to burn the house down she attempted to set the body afire by igniting her mother’s nightgown. When Chloe saw that she was not going to be able to incinerate the house and the evidence it contained she took an hour to get her self together and think things through. She then concocted a most unbelievable story in order to explain the events of the morning - her mother had been seeing demons and the entire chaotic, bloody mess was all her fault.

Upon hearing Edwards’ version of events, Chloe disagreed with all points, save two; she did indeed murder her mother and brother. However, she most certainly did not lay a single bloody digit on either of her sisters. Her mother had killed the two of them.

Chloe blamed the entire affair on her mother. In her version of events she was the last one up and had awoken to the sounds of hammering and screaming. Her mother was in a murderous fury, running around the house half-naked and screaming about visions of demons as she cracked open the skulls of her precious babies. She insisted that the children must die in order for them to be saved and after apologizing to her eldest daughter for not murdering her as well, she begged Chloe to beat her in the head until she could no longer speak or breathe. Surely, a blade to the throat would have been much quicker way to go.

According to Chloe she found Marquis moaning and whimpering in pain on the kitchen floor. After asking her mother if she shouldn’t hit him a few more times in order to put him out of his misery, Lolita Davis, suffering from massive head trauma, allegedly either raised her head and nodded ‘yes’ or actually spoke the words - depending on which version of Chloe’s story you prefer. Chloe stated that the only reason that she killed her mother and brother was because she had been instructed by her mother to do so. And being a most obedient child, who would never argue with her parents, Chloe did exactly as she was told to do – or so she said.

During the initial examination into the mental state of Lolita Davis, both father and daughter insisted that she had never before spoken of demons or exhibited any sign of insanity. According to her husband, she was “as normal as anyone could be.” But in less than 24-hours police would request assistance from the elder Davis in questioning his daughter. And as F. Barton Davis listened to the horrific tale spinning from his daughter’s lips, almost as soon as he had uttered those words in defense of his wife’s sanity, he would begin to take them back.

And so began the defilement of Lolita Dell Bjorkman-Davis by her husband and daughter as a murderous mother who after killing her three children, and wounding a fourth, committed suicide by slitting her wrists while beseeching her 11-year old child to bludgeon her to death with a hammer.

Images:

Top right, Lolita Davis; Baby Chloe

Middle left, Marquis, Chloe, Daphne and Deborah

Bottom left, F. Barton Davis and Chloe

Part 3

Mother May I...Murder You?

2007-03-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Chloe Davis Murder Case

Lolita Davis had grown quiet and still. Her burned and battered body lay partially sprawled on a mattress that had been drug from one of the bedrooms and now rested in the hallway squarely between her bedroom door and that of the bathroom.

Unrecognizable and practically scalped from repeated blows with a claw hammer, her hair and nightgown had been burned almost completely from her body and her wrists had been slashed with a razor - severing an artery. Chloe, her 11-year old daughter, sat at her side.

Chloe rose from the position she had held next to her mother. The house had grown quiet. There were no more screams or guttural moans and gurgles from the dying. All she could hear now was the sound of her own breathing. The house was in shambles, blood splattered the walls and Chloe herself. She looked down at her nightgown. It too was covered in blood.

Chloe was stoic as she maneuvered her way toward the bathroom, side-stepping ever so slightly around the mattress that her mother was laid out on. The hallway was narrow and the mattress and her mother’s body were taking up a great deal of room. When she exited the bathroom she would have to side-step around the mattress again, or walk across the corner of it, in order to get to her bedroom where her clothes were. The living room was just to the right of her bedroom so at least she wouldn’t have to maneuver around her mother’s body again to get to the front door.

She removed her blood soaked nightgown and began to wash up. Chloe was going to have to use the bathroom sink rather than the bathtub this time, as it was occupied by her sister, 7-year old Deborah Ann, who was face down in the now crimson water. Her skull fractured from repeated blows by the same claw hammer that had reigned down upon the head of their mother. Chloe calmly washed her face, dabbing lightly at the blood trickling from the wound on her head where the hammer had grazed her.

She quietly continued to compose herself as she got dressed. She fashioned her blonde hair, which fell just below her shoulders, in to two pigtails, put on her shoes and then made her way to the front door. It had been approximately an hour, give or take, since her mother had expired before her, a little more than two since her father had left for work. As Chloe exited the modest two-bedroom Los Angeles home she had shared with her family, she locked the door behind her.

It was sometime between 9am and 9:30am when Chloe arrived at the home of a neighbor and requested to use the telephone to call her father, who was working at a grocery near by. The neighbor kindly obliged and Chloe calmly, without any detail, told her father he needed to come home – right now. After hanging up Chloe walked back home and patiently waited for him to arrive. She was sitting on the front porch when her father came home and inquired as to what the urgency was that had brought him racing from work. Chloe’s unemotional response was simply “I think you better go in the kitchen and see.” She gave no sign, no warning as to the mayhem that had transpired that morning.

Barton Davis unlocked the door and stepped into what little more than 2-hours earlier had been a pristinely cared for home. He had kissed his wife and left for work right around 7am. Now he was returning at the behest of his eldest daughter in order to survey the scene of a murderous frenzy that had been unleashed only a short time before.

The horrified father went from room to room, viewing the carnage that had once been his family. Approaching the kitchen he found 3-year old Marquis lying in a pool of blood on the floor, almost blocking the entryway. Lying just behind him was 10-year old Daphne. Both children had been beaten in the head with the same hammer that wielded the blows against 7-year old Deborah Ann and the children’s 36-year old mother. All of the victims had received enough blows to render them unrecognizable.

Almost as quickly as he entered, Barton Davis ran screaming from his front door. And as he frantically paced up and down the walkway, screaming and crying that he “no longer had anything to live for” his only surviving daughter attempted to offer words of support; “Brace your self up, daddy. You mustn’t get excited. Come on, let’s go for a little walk.”

While Chloe tended to her father, it was the neighbor who summoned police to the little house next door.

Soon Chloe would be questioned by one of the most infamous police alienists in the history of crime investigation. She was the sole survivor, the only living witness. She would be expected to recount the story of exactly what took place that deadly April morning. And she would capture everyone’s attention when she did.

Part 2