June 3rd Reads

 Double murderer and triple-tried murderer Dana Chandler, 65, got sentenced today to life imprisonment for the 2002 murders of her ex-husband, Mike Sisco, and his fiancee, Karen Harkness, in Topeka, Kansas.

Since she foolishly fired her attorneys and represented herself and put herself on the witness stand, I don't think anybody but the most ignorant would find her not guilty of the murders.

Let's hope any appeal will be unsuccessful.

More details about today's sentencing is here.

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AI will hardly protect women from sexual assault from men.

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Some Thursday Reads

 Until a few minutes ago, I forgot to keep track of the Dana Chandler double murder retrial in Topeka, Kansas.  She was the woman accused of killing her former husband, Mike Sisco, and his fiancee, Karen Harkness, back in 2002.  Her two children and other family members long believed she killed both of them in a jealous rage because her ex was planning to remarry.  Chandler was convicted of the crimes several years back, 2012 to be exact, but the Kansas Supreme Court overturned the convictions because of prosecutorial misconduct.  The lead prosecutor in the original trial, Jacqui  Spradling, was disbarred over misconduct in this and other cases.  This was a classic case not only of screw-ups by the district attorney's office, but it was also a textbook case on how not to conduct a police investigation.

This week one of the highlights was a surprise witness who claimed to have seen Chandler's car near the scene of the crimes.

The case has now gone to the jury.  As botched as this case has been, it would be a travesty not to convict her.

When your kids think you have committed the murders given the extensive history of stalking and harassment--and Chandler was known to have traveled from her apartment in Denver to Topeka solely to harass Mike and Karen--then that should be the end of it.

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He's Alligator Food

 Today Florida officials revealed, but not too much, that remains have been found in the Carlton Reserve.  In addition, there was a backpack and notebook belonging to celebrated fugitive Brian Laundrie, the one-time fiance and most likely suspect in the murder of social media influencer Gabby Petito in late August.    The officers wouldn't say definitively they were Brian's or that they were even human.

Not that the conspiracy theorists will be convinced.  They have speculated Brian's parents were just like Alex Kelly's, that they helped finance his escape and Brian is now out of the country, perhaps Cuba, which does not have an extradition treaty.

Brian Laundrie: Gator food?

None of which made any sense at all.  Most likely a guilty Brian decided to take one last hike for old time's sake, kill himself, and made himself available for the alligators and snakes to feast upon.

And why is the notebook important?

From the Daily Mail:

Pathologist Dr. Michael Baden told DailyMail.com that it is likely the FBI already know whether the remains are Brian's, and that they would have been able to confirm it immediately, but are waiting for more examination to determine the cause of death. 

'Dental is 99.9 percent immediately accurate. They know it's him. But the cause of death might still take a while to determine. The cause of death has to be determined at autopsy, which probably won't be performed till tomorrow or the next day,' he said.  

At a briefing at 4.30pm, FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael McPherson confirmed that human remains had been found, but he would not speculate on the identity of those remains, nor would he reveal how long they had been there. 

         

                              

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

 I wrote that word three times to denote the number of victims killer Robert Durst is known to have murdered over the years including his first wife Kathie and fellow Galveston boarder Morris Black.  The third time was the charm today when a Los Angeles jury found the previously lucky killer finally guilty, in this case of his friend from college Susan Berman, who was an author and a mobster's daughter.  He killed her in 1980, allegedly because she knew too much about the details of Durst murdering his ex-wife and had planned to go to authorities.  Durst shot her dead execution style.  Durst, however, has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel being in terrible health at the age of 78.  

The HBO documentary The Jinx was credited for bringing his crimes to light and especially of reviving the Berman case thanks to new evidence.

"Life" in prison given Durst's age and health probably won't be that long.

link

He did take the stand in his own defense, but it was for naught.

Some Good News in a Grim World

 Some good news occurred regarding the infamous Schwartz case in Missouri.  This is the case where four brothers repeatedly raped their sister, who was 12-13 years of age, and one of them got her pregnant.  All four brothers should be in prison, but two of them were minors, so they were not charged.  The two oldest had violated the terms of their probation, which never should have happened in the first place, and the judge sentenced each brother to 15 years in prison.

Here is a podcast about the protests over the original probation and some perspectives from the point of view of victims of such abuse in the Amish community.

Will the "Jinx" Get Away With It Again?

Millionaire acquitted murderer Robert Durst, 76 and damned near on death's door, is expected to stand trial for the 2000 murder of writer and longtime friend Susan Berman early next year.  We will see if he gets away with murder yet again.

Durst, as most people know, is believed to have murdered his first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst, back in 1982 and either dumped or had somebody dump her body in an undisclosed location.  Her body was never found.  He was considered the prime suspect because he was very controlling of Kathie and did not at all support her ambition to become a pediatrician.  She was just months from getting her M.D. when she disappeared after a party in early 1982.  No doubt he wasn't going to let her have the life she wanted.  Reportedly Durst had been cheating on her with Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, and had been involved with her for three years.  Durst had a separate apartment.     However, there was no evidence connecting him at all with Kathie's disappearance.

Years went by with Durst seemingly disappearing off the radar.   Then Durst was connected to the death of  mob daughter and writer Susan Berman.  They had been friends for many decades, since they attended college at U.C.L.A.  A paper trail, including car rentals, found him going from Eureka, California, (where he is allegedly linked to one or murders in the region) to L.A. at the time of Berman's death.  Most observers believe she knew too much about Kathie's murder and tipped off authorities.   Durst is alleged to have shot her in the back of the head to make sure she never talked again.  He is scheduled to go on trial for her murder on January 13, 2020.

I had followed his saga for years, especially during his trial and acquittal for the murder of Morris Black, who Durst shot, dismembered, and  dumped Black's body parts in Galveston Bay, Texas, back in 2001.    I made a bunch of posts and links to the case because it was so fascinating the same way the despicable T. Cullen Davis case was.  Durst admitted he killed Black, but he said it was in "self-defense."  Obviously it wasn't, but Black's head was never recovered in the search, and therefore the jury could not determine whether Black was indeed killed in a struggle or was shot in the head like Berman was, which would have indicated premeditation or at least a crime of passion.  The biggest problem with the Black case was the defense made sure the only options the jury had were either Murder One or acquittal.  This was in fact a second-degree murder case or manslaughter, with the added crime of abusing a corpse, and, if those options had been made available to the jury, Durst would no doubt have been convicted.  The jury felt without the head, they had no choice but to acquit this guilty man.  It was a slightly less outrageous acquittal than the cases of O.J. Simpson or T. Cullen Davis, but it was still an injustice regardless.

HBO's The Jinx covered all this in its excellent documentary of a couple of years ago and featured the added bonus of recording Durst muttering he "killed them all" while in the men's room.  This admission helped in getting Durst tried for the murder of Susan Berman.  It remains to be seen whether he gets away with this murder or if he finally gets convicted, assuming he is still alive in January.

Men and Mass Murder

Mass murder and woman-hatred go together like bacon and eggs.

Racism and sexism go together like bacon and eggs. Most of these dudes are racist as well.

Dayton, Ohio, mass shooter Connor Betts

Male entitlement, of which violence is one form of it, IS the major cause of so many men's troubles and even poses a threat to the earth. They are conditioned to be narcissistic. They are taught, from childhood, that they are owed anything and everything, and this is especially true with regard to women. Men never can get it in their heads women don't owe them anything. They aren't things to put their d***ks in, they aren't incubators, and they aren't domestic servants for them. They are human beings, not things to possess and own, not things to be bought and sold (porn, prostitution, surrogacy). It is not women's "job" to fix men.

The attitude towards women is even worse in cultures and religions like Islam, which still see women as chattel, completely subhuman, who can be killed on a whim.

Nobody should be surprised by this article.

The fact that mass shootings are almost exclusively perpetrated by men is “missing from the national conversation,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Monday. “Why does it have to be, why is it men, dominantly, always?”

Good question, Gavin. Some postulate men are inherently screwed up; the root cause of their being fucked up is in the "deteriorating" y-chromosome. Others, however, say it is the way men are raised, and I tend to agree with this. If all men were as genetically fucked up as some claim, the human race would have been dead and gone a long time ago. After all, men make the choice to behave violently towards women; to say they can't help it is the same sexist shit that tells women they have to restrict their movements for fear of being raped and murdered. It is saying men can't help it, and they aren't responsible for their actions.  It is saying it is up to women to "control" men by restricting their movements and behavior.  It is horseshit, I think.

It all goes back to the idiotic sex roles kids are indoctrinated with early in life. The internet, with forums set up for men who think they are entitled to women because they see women as objects to fuck and pop kids out, merely exacerbates the problem:

Experts say the same patterns that lead to the radicalization of white supremacists and other terrorists can apply to misogynists who turn to mass violence: a lonely, troubled individual who finds a community of like-minded individuals online, and an outlet for their anger.

“They’re angry and they’re suicidal and they’ve had traumatic childhoods and these hard lives, and they get to a point and they find something or someone to blame,” said Jillian Peterson, a psychologist and a founder of the Violence Project, a research organization that studies mass shootings. “For some people, that is women, and we are seeing that kind of take off.”

...

Psychiatrists, however, say that the attention on mental health generated by mass shootings, and the common argument that mental illness is the explanation for these massacres, cannot explain the link between misogyny and mass shootings. Misogyny — or other types of hatred — is not necessarily a diagnosable mental illness.

Instead, said Amy Barnhorst, the vice chair of community psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, who has studied mass shootings, what ties together many of the perpetrators is “this entitlement, this envy of others, this feeling that they deserve something that the world is not giving them. And they are angry at others that they see are getting it.”

Narcissism and entitlement by men. THOSE also go together like bacon and eggs.

A Christmas to Remember

After 22 years of separation, a pair of devoted brothers are spending their first Christmas together tomorrow.  According to that reliable source of information, the Daily Mail, convicted killer brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez are going to spend the day enjoying the festivities at a California prison.  As we know, the pair executed by gunshot their parents,  music executive Jose Menendez and wife Kitty,  in 1989 as they were eating ice cream while watching television.  As we also know, the sons dodged the death penalty and instead both brothers are serving life without parole but have been incarcerated at different prisons in California until this past spring, when both brothers wound up in the same prison and in the same unit.  As we also know, their despicable attorneys, including Leslie Abramson, peddled the absolutely ludicrous notion their father "abused" them, and therefore they couldn't help but kill both parents after the "victimized" brothers were both legal adults.  Standard operating procedure by amoral attorneys making the victims the criminals and the criminals the victims when the guilt, premeditation, and motive are obvious.  In the end, it didn't get the brats off the hook.  They will die in prison.  Lyle is now 50, while Erik is now 48, which is longer than their parents had on this earth.

The REAL reason the parents were murdered was because of simple greed.  Jose Menendez was certainly a very driven man.  He became a millionaire executive at a very young age, and he naturally expected his sons inherited his drive.  He wanted the sons to become professional tennis players and graduate from an Ivy League university, but the boys really didn't have any ambition at all.  Jose was a type A personality, while Lyle and Erik were type Zs.  No ambition at all, just a pair of losers like so many kids of the rich.  They wanted the good life, but they weren't willing to lift a finger to get it.

Kitty and Jose Menendez flanked by their spoiled brat sons

In the end, Jose threw up his hands and threatened to disinherit his sons.  A big mistake.  A big, big, big mistake.  He wasn't the only millionaire to make threats to disinherit his spoiled brat children and pay the ultimate price.  One can look at Fresno's Dana Ewell, whose father Dale planned to disinherit Dana after an outrageous report in the Los Angeles Times made Dana the one who was a self-made millionaire rather than his father.  Dana, who was smart but not that smart, conned a friend of his to be a hit man and wipe out his entire family, which is what happened.  Unfortunately for Dana, he ultimately got caught.  What REALLY did it was he pointed his hit man toward where his father's ammunition was to kill his parents and sister, and of course the cops traced where they were purchased and by whom.  Pure genius, Dana.  He is rotting in prison now instead of inheriting the 8 million or so he stood to gain.

One can also look at the case of Franklin Bradshaw, the oddball Salt Lake City auto parts millionaire who was shot dead by his grandson in 1978 at the behest of his mother, Bradshaw's youngest daughter Frances Schreuder.  Same thing.  She was spoiled rotten, too, and lived a life of luxury in NYC on daddy's money, but then she was living way beyond her means.  Instead of going out and getting a job, she had her sons visit their grandfather in Utah to steal a couple hundred thousand  in stock certificates and such.  Bradshaw was furious and threatened to disinherit her.  At that point, Frances' plan to have one of her sons murder her father went into action.  She was eventually caught, and she and her son served prison time and eventually were released.  Frances died in 2004.

As for the Menendez brothers, they panicked.  They were worried they would be cut off from the 10 to 12 million they stood to inherit from their parents.  They had to devise a plan, which they did, and they carried it out.  Unfortunately for them, their motive for the  murders was too obvious in the weeks and months afterward.  They spent money like drunken sailors, wasting it on new cars, places to live, and business ventures that flopped.  The attorneys got the rest of the money, and the boys were ultimately left flat broke.  Not very smart.

Still, there are people out there who bought into their "abuse excuse" bullshit, which was nothing more or less than legal gamesmanship.  Most people, however, did not.  The brothers mostly stayed quiet for the past 25 years, and, because they didn't have much else to look forward to, became born-again Christians like Dana Ewell.

What a reunion tomorrow will bring!

From the article:

Asked if he had a gift for brother Erik or whether he had made him a festive card, Lyle responded: 'I haven't done anything like that, but that's not a bad idea maybe I will.'

He added: 'I think for us the gift is just being here together. It can be bittersweet, right, because being together brings back a lot of memories and things from the past... it's like seeing a family member that you have so much history with, not all of it good.

'But at the same time it's just, two decades being separated, every day is sort of shocking. So to just see my brother is just sort of a shock, so I don't think it'd be any different on Christmas.'

Well, Lyle, if you and your brother hadn't been such greedheads and killed your parents, you wouldn't have to be incarcerated in the first place.

Our Fucked Up Legal System

I can't get over the outrageous prosecutorial misconduct in the Dana Chandler case.  The tragedy in all this is Chandler is guilty of double murder, but the state completely and totally fucked up.

The link is a year old, but it spells out what happened with the prosecution.  The chief prosecutor should be disbarred for making shit up to get a conviction.

The Chandler case is a classic case of the police falling down on the job and not picking up evidence at the scene of the crime including wine bottles and cigarette butts for DNA.  They just walked all over the crime scene, contaminating it.  What fucking incompetence.  This is why Chandler got away with the murders for so long.

It's possible she will get away with it again in a new trial, thanks to prosecutorial fucking up in this first trial.  However, she is representing herself, so she might not.

From the year-old link, which sums up what happened with the case:

The Supreme Court’s powerful legal microscope has eerily pivoted beyond actions attributed to Chandler to the work of Spradling and, to a lesser extent, Taylor. During oral argument of Chandler’s appeal, members of the Supreme Court offered withering critiques of actions by the prosecution during the 2012 trial. A majority of the court invited Spradling to rebut allegations of misconduct.

Three justices fixated on the same point. They were distressed Spradling told the trial jury that Sisco secured a court protective order in 1998 to shield him from Chandler. Spradling referenced this supposed order in a written brief to the Supreme Court and offered a puzzling defense of the assertion in person.

Probably the reason Sisco and Harkness didn't get protective orders against Chandler is because Chandler lived 500 miles away, in Colorado.  They might have also felt a restraining order wouldn't have stopped her anyway.

This is as bad as it gets for prosecutors. Spradling herself should have gone to jail for this.

Did They Really Find Him?

This is old news about extremely ancient news, but according to this article, investigators have finally discovered the identity of the mysterious "D.B. Cooper," who in 1971 hijacked an airplane, parachuted out with a couple hundred thousand dollars, and was never heard from again.

Allegedly this guy is still alive.  His name is one-time Vietnam vet Robert Rackstraw. 

Call me skeptical.

Rackstraw – a former Special Forces paratrooper, explosives expert and pilot with about 22 different aliases – was once a person of interest in the case, but was eliminated as a suspect by the FBI in 1979. His elimination was controversial amongst the investigating agents, and he remained, for many, the most viable suspect in what remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the United States. In 2016, the FBI announced they were ending their investigation into the case.

“This has been a cover up, they’re stonewalling,” Colbert told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He believes that the FBI protected Rackstraw because he was involved in numerous classified units during the war and may have worked for the CIA. “This is an old fashioned scandal,” he said. (A rep for FBI’s Seattle field office told Rolling Stone that they have received “an immense number” of tips over the years, but “none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker.” They did not respond to a request for comment on whether the FBI stonewalled an investigation into Rackstraw.)

That's the problem right there. It goes into conspiracy nuttery.

I will take a wait-and-see attitude. Myself, I believe "Cooper" is long since dead.

An Anniversary to Remember, Unfortunately Not a Happy One

Hard to believe, but it has been forty years to the day, June 29, 1978, that actor Bob Crane, best known for his role in the dreadful sixties sitcom Hogan's Heroes, was brutally bludgeoned to death in a Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment.  So-called friend John Carpenter killed him.  He befriended Crane after being introduced to him  by Crane's HH co-star Richard Dawson.  Carpenter, as everybody who followed this case knows, was big on video, and eventually Crane got into it to the point where he was filming pornographic videos of himself with scads of women.   Crane was known as somebody who never smoked or drank, and  a wingnut long before it became fashionable. Because of his straitlaced image, it shocked the world when reports said the actor had a secret life known only to a few.    The rumor mill at the time had it he got killed by a jealous husband or boyfriend, but in truth, nobody but Carpenter had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill Crane.

Crane reportedly tired of the libertine lifestyle and had met someone he truly liked.  He wanted to stop doing this garbage and focus on other things, but Carpenter didn't agree.  Carpenter felt Crane pushed him aside.  He wasn't going to let Crane do what he wanted, so he took a tripod and bludgeoned Crane to death while Crane lay sleeping in his bed.  His body didn't get discovered until the following day.

John Carpenter with attorney

The case became the classic example of how not to do a police investigation.  Investigators botched this case from the very beginning.  It took 15 or 16 years before Carpenter went to trial, but by that time, the forensic evidence had been so degraded, and there were no other witnesses to the crime, the jury had no choice but to acquit Carpenter.  I don't think the D.A. should have even brought a case against Carpenter on such flimsy evidence.  If I had been on that jury, I'd have voted for acquittal.

From the article:

He noted that jury believed Carpenter was the murderer, but they didn't believe the evidence.

Almost from the time Crane's body was discovered in his bedroom of the Winfield Place apartments (now condominiums) in Scottsdale, authorities made critical mistakes that later undermined their case.

For starters, Scottsdale police failed to adequately secure the crime scene. They allowed his co-star, Victoria Berry, into the apartment to answer the phone several times, potentially contaminating the crime scene. In addition, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner climbed over Crane's body and shaved his head to examine the fatal wound, Hook said.

And while evidence photos show a piece of what appears to be human tissue on the door of Carpenter's rental car, the crime lab at the state Department of Public Safety either lost that critical piece of evidence or never bothered to recover it in the first place.

Officials blew it with this case.   It just wasn't right Crane's family got no justice at all.

Carpenter died a free, and very guilty, man.

The Cult of "Masculinity" is the Problem

While most men are not killers, almost all mass killers are men.  This is just one of the many excellent points Gary Younge makes in his piece for the Guardian.  It is time to look at the Toronto mass murders for what they are, and that is they are hate crimes.

Murders against women by men, since they are so fairly common, aren't considered forms of terrorism.  But this Alek Minassian  is a terrorist just the same.  

Younge gets right to the point about what the issue is:

With tens of thousands visiting their message boards, incel is hardly marginal – though arguably too amorphous and incoherent to dignify with the term movement. It is debatable how widespread the cult of Rodger might be. But the issues of misogyny and inadequacy that drive men to it characterise a far broader and deeper problem that helps to explain male violence.

On the one hand, there is the hatred of women, born for the most part from a sense of entitlement. These men do not just resent the fact that they can’t get a girlfriend. They feel women are denying them the sex that is rightfully theirs. They belong to broadly the same demographic as the Gamergate movement earlier this decade, in which male gamers systematically harassed female game developers and media critics, subjecting them to rape and death threats, and publishing details of their personal lives online. 

These men, wherever they are, now have more political space than they used to. There is considerable overlap with the American hard right. And they have a role model in the White House in a president who was accused of rape by his first wife, boasts of grabbing women by the genitals, makes up sexual stories about womenon the internet, and openly disparages their looks and intellect. In the 2005 book TrumpNation, the future president tells Timothy O’Brien his favourite part in Pulp Fiction is when “Sam [Jackson] had his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up: ‘Tell that Bitch to be cool.’ Say, ‘Bitch be cool.’ I love those lines.”

The gender--sex role--of masculinity is the problem.  As Younge concludes, it is feminism that helps to liberate men from the stifling sex roles, but these guys just don't understand it.  Or maybe more likely, these guys don't want to lose all the benefits--entitlement--that masculinity provides.

#himtoo

The big story of today, of course, was the conviction of Bill Cosby, once "America's Dad" who could always be counted on to dispense some advice on how people should conduct their lives, on three counts of indecent assault of Andrea Constand.  Constand, as you will recall, was the woman who brought a civil suit against him years ago and she settled out of court. 

This was the second trial for Cosby.  The first ended in a hung jury after six days of deliberations.  This time it took two.

I didn't follow either trial closely because I had heard years ago, when I lived in Reno, of Cosby's alleged assaults.  It was no news to me, and I have believed the women who came forward with their allegations against him.  Cosby made many, many trips to the Reno area entertaining in the casinos, and he and wife Camille were major donors to the University of Nevada, Reno, where I graduated with two degrees.  I had heard stories about him at least since the 1990s, before the Constand suit.

Of course, Cosby and his lawyers will fight the conviction.  Cosby is now 80 and not in great health, so I doubt he would spend much time in prison at all.

From the article:

The verdict now marks the bottom of a fall as precipitous as any in show business history and leaves in limbo a large slice of American popular culture from Mr. Cosby’s six-decade career as a comedian and actor. For the last few years, his TV shows, films and recorded stand-up performances, once broadcast staples, have largely been shunned, and with his conviction, they are likely to remain so.

At Mr. Cosby’s retrial, in the same courthouse and before the same judge, a new defense team argued unsuccessfully that Ms. Constand, now 45, was a desperate “con artist” with financial problems who steadily worked her famous but lonely mark for a lucrative payday.

The prosecution countered that it was Mr. Cosby who had been a deceiver, hiding behind his amiable image as America’s Dad to prey on women that he first incapacitated with intoxicants. During closing arguments Tuesday, Ms. Feden told the jury: “She is not the con. He is.”

We Need to Take These Crimes Seriously

These "incels" are not men to feel sorry for--they are committing hate crimes against women.

Thanks to their upbringing and addiction to porn, these assholes think they have a "right" to have sex.  They don't.  Women aren't fuck toys, they aren't incubators, and they aren't maids.  These men need to work on their social skills before they can even think about having relationships with women.

We women have enough to deal with in this world without more deranged dudes threatening or committing violence because they think they are entitled.

We women don't owe you men anything--ever.

We need to take these hate crimes seriously.

Incel boards have reacted to the Yonge Street massacre in different ways, but incels.me has users declaring the date of the attack “an absolutely glorious day”, celebrating the death of D’Amico, and hoping that there’s more violence to come. These spaces are puerile, yet they normalise violent misogyny and have the potential to radicalise socially isolated or vulnerable men. Some of the users are in it for the lulz; some of them are not joking. The latter become the Umpqua Community College murderer, the Isla Vista murderer, the Yonge Street killer. There’s a pattern here, and we can’t keep ignoring it.

These "incel" boards should be removed from any website.  They are training grounds for murderers and other criminals.

For those who don't understand what these guys are, here is a primer.

Certainly a Sign of the Times

Unfortunately, the author of this article about a man who used an online dating site to scam numerous women out of their assets romanticizes "con men" when in fact this guy is not a mere "con man" but an outright sociopath.  There is nothing--NOTHING--admirable or romantic about people who have utterly no conception of the feelings of others and take them for everything.

One family member of mine was taken in by somebody who was somewhat like this man though on a much lesser scale.  He had a few--very few--virtues, and he certainly didn't go around impersonating men who served in the military.  That of course is a crime, and this dude will no doubt will spend a few years in prison at least for it.  Too bad he gets away with scamming the women.

This is one reason why I haven't and never will use online dating sites.  I don't have any idea what is on the other end of the "transaction."  It is way too risky, and I think these scumbags like the criminal in the article are more numerous in the older age brackets.  These guys (and occasionally women scam men) take total advantage of vulnerable women, who still think they are worthless unless they have some man around.  They never learned what I learned at a young age that men are not necessary for women to feel "complete."  This criminal in the article never targeted never-married women.  No doubt he preferred the divorced or even widowed women because they were even more vulnerable to scams than never-married women.

When women are raised in the straitjacket called "femininity," they are sitting ducks for scammers.

Throwing the Book at a Perv

The judge in the Larry Nassar case threw the book at him today, sentencing him from 40 to 175 years in prison.  In other words, he will spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

I have seen reports that anywhere from 160 to 190 women accused Nassar of sexually assaulting them.  He had done this over a period of more than 30 years. 

I read a bit about him recently, after watching so many of the impact statements, and he clearly abused his position as  an athletic doctor in order to molest young women.  Most of the allegations center on his using pelvic/rectal exam techniques on young women, hence the numerous cases of parents being in the room.   I had read that in cases where female athletes have hip issues and similar injuries, sports doctors do at times employ pelvic/rectal probes.   The problem, of course, is Nassar violated medical protocol again and again and again.  He never used gloves, didn't get parental consent, ordered medical staff out of the room, and so forth just so he could molest the young girls and women.  They  didn't even know what he was doing other than they felt violated and were in many cases in excruciating pain.  It was that traumatic.  Their allegations were completely believable.

Nassar will rot in jail and never hurt another young girl or woman ever again.

Las Vegas Massacre

Stephen Paddock, 64, is the person believed responsible for the worst mass shooting in American history when he allegedly opened fire at an opened-air country music concert at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas on the famous Strip. He killed himself. He was from Mesquite, Nevada.

He allegedly used machine guns for the massacre. It is believed he was on the 32nd floor of the hotel resort when he opened fire, killing at least 50 and wounding at least 400.

He said there were about 22,000 people at the concert.

SWAT units swarmed the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay, closing in on the source of the shooting, a 32nd-floor room where they found the gunman, with “in excess of 10 rifles,” the sheriff said. “We believe the individual killed himself prior to our entry.”

The first reports of the shooting came at 10:08 p.m. local time, and officers overheard on police radio reported being pinned down by gunfire. Shortly before midnight the Las Vegas police reported that “one suspect is down,” and soon after the police said they did not believe there were any more active gunmen.

The sheriff identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., who had no significant prior criminal history.

He lived in a 55-and-over retirement community.

When I visited Vegas ten years ago, Mandalay Bay was the first resort on the left if one is driving on the Strip to downtown, perhaps a quarter or half of a mile from the famed "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, or it was the last casino resort on the right as one is leaving the Strip from downtown. I am sure there has been construction since.

Mesquite is 81 miles northeast of Las Vegas, located near the Nevada-Arizona border.


The suspect owned a home in Reno:

The man police accused of killing more than 50 people and injuring more than 400 in a mass shooting in Las Vegas has connections to Reno.

Stephen Paddock, 64, owned properties in town — as well as many other cities across the United States — according to a review of available public records.

The records indicate Paddock owns or owned two properties in Reno.

Paddock purchased a home in the Sierra Canyon by Del Webb neighborhood in Somersett in June 2013, according to the Washoe County Assessor's Office.
He also owned a unit at The Montage on Sierra Street, which he purchased in 2012. He sold it in December 2016, according to the assessor.
According to neighbors, Paddock lived with Marilou Danley at the Somersett house. Neighbor Susan Page described the two as "closet people" who "kept to themselves."

It was indeed a horror show.

Currently, 58 are reported dead, and over 500 injured according to CNN.

Never Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

I haven't seen my brother since 2003, but it is comforting to know he is still alive. However, he is working overtime to get into the Darwin Awards:

STOCKTON — A tense moment unfolded Thursday morning outside a north Stockton business when a police officer pulled his gun on a transient man who was advancing toward him with a knife, authorities said.

The officer told Gary Nunes, 63 [sic--he was 64 at the time], to move along because he was disrupting customers shortly after 9:10 a.m. in the 1500 block of East Hammer Lane, police said. As the officer walked back to his patrol car, he turned to see Nunes coming toward him with a knife, authorities said.

According to police, Nunes said, "You better pull your gun." The officer drew his weapon and ordered Nunes to drop the knife. Nunes complied and was taken into custody without further incident, police said.


Nunes was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, authorities said.

He must have needed a shower or a place to sleep badly to do something so incredibly stupid. I haven't laughed this hard in months.


If he ever gets shot by a cop, rest assured you will not find me on the talk show circuit talking about police shootings.

Sideshow Attraction

I posted this yesterday after doing a Google search, but I decided to make this a separate post for today.

Noted murderer and stalker Carolyn Warmus, now 53, was denied parole last Monday.

Warmus gained national notoriety for her 1989 murder of her married lover's wife, Betty Jeanne Solomon. Warmus had hoped by getting Betty out of the way, her dream of marriage and all of that shit would come true with Betty's husband Paul. She was so sociopathic, immediately after she killed Solomon, she took off to the old Treetops Lounge in Yonkers, meeting Paul, and then having sex with him in her car. Unbelievable the lack of conscience.

However, Carolyn was a nutjob who wasn't even clever enough to pick up one of her expensive gloves after killing Betty in the apartment she shared with cheating husband Paul. Officials were also able to trace the gun and the silencer she used in the killing.

Warmus worked as a long-term substitute teacher--not a regular, contracted teacher--in one of the hardest districts to get a job in the country, and Paul Solomon was a teacher there (he has since retired and remarried). Warmus had a history of chasing unavailable men. The reason this case gained notoriety is because the killer came from a filthy rich background.

The background and her stalking habits, which at one point caused one man and his fiancee to file a restraining order against her, were fodder for every shrink in NYC had she bothered to utilize one's services.

If I remember correctly, her trial was televised, at least in part, in the early 1990s.

Warmus has continued to claim she was innocent of killing Betty Jeanne Solomon. She even has a webpage proclaiming her innocence.



She was denied parole because she racked up too many infractions during her sentence to be released. She is eligible to reapply next year.

According to this report before she was denied parole, Warmus was hoping to get released in order to get surgery for a brain tumor.

This reposts a report noting Warmus was tried twice for the murder:

Warmus was indicted on the charge of second-degree murder on February 2, 1990. Carolyn made her $250,000 bail and her father paid for her bond. Carolyn's trial was held at the Westchester County Courthouse and David Lewis was her attorney.

The trial dragged on as piece after piece of testimony, evidence, and speculation were closely scrutinized by the jury. Twelve days after the prosecutor and defense gave their closing statements, the jury announced they were hopelessly deadlocked at 8-4 in favor of conviction and unable to arrive at a unanimous verdict. The judge was forced to declare a mistrial on April 27, 1991.

In January 1992, a second trial began. The new jury was able to gain better insight into who could have committed the murder with the introduction of a new piece of evidence. A bloody cashmere glove belonging to Warmus that had been spotted in a photograph of the brutal crime scene was recovered, and this would decide her fate.

At the end of this trial, the jury took six days to decide Warmus was guilty on May 26, 1992. Judge John Carey did not grant Warmus any leniency, saying she had committed "a hideous act, a most extreme, illegal and wanton murder." Warmus faced a minimum of 15 years, but Judge Carey sentenced her to the maximum, 25 years to life in prison.

Friday Reads About Last Night's Tragedy in Dallas

There are limits to "free speech." One limit is making veiled threats to the president of the United States by using inflammatory rhetoric.
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The tragedies in Dallas are no excuse for engaging in racist rhetoric:

One of the first sinister responses Thursday night, which appeared as news about the shootings was still arriving, came from former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh. This dolt, who has become known for inflammatory comments, let loose a series of tweets, including one (later deleted) that stated, "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out Black Lives Matter punks. Real America is coming after you." By the morning, things had gotten worse, and the vitriolic response had gone more mainstream. The Drudge Report, a highly-trafficked sewer of right-wing racism and hate, led its site with the despicable headline "Black Lives Kill." The New York Post, normally a slightly less unseemly sewer of the same, decided to go with "Civil War" in its headline. As well as offering a clue as to what side the Murdoch empire would have taken in the actual Civil War, this form of gross, borderline incitement is legitimately scary and depressing.

It is responses like these that now shape how people respond to tragedy. There was so much hatred and xenophobia circling the internet and the news media after Omar Mateen's murder of 49 people in Orlando that the focus shifted nearly instantly from grieving the dead (and confronting the urgent question of how to stop men like Mateen) to Donald Trump and other preachers of hate. Indeed, Trump is, predictably, a huge part of the problem. All the jokes on social media about what bit of stupidity will trickle out from his mouth after every awful event merely underline the fact that one of our two major presidential candidates is very likely to respond to a tragedy with, at best, self-congratulations, at worst, bigotry and hatred.

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Not about the Dallas murders, but this is about the latest publicized killing by police officers.
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The New York Post has gotten a lot of flak for this cover: