Where Is the Outrage?

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I support Americans' right to assemble peacefully, to protest peacefully when they believe an injustice has occurred. I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

I wish my government did, too.

For more than a week now, Americans have witnessed scenes in the streets of Ferguson, Mo., where a black teenager was shot and killed. They haven't always been peaceful — or anything resembling it. What are they protesting? A young man died. That is a sad thing. Some would call it an injustice.

I wouldn't.

Before you make any assumptions about me that are not true, hear me out. My definition of injustice is when justice has been denied. Has justice been denied in this case? No. The system has not had time to do what it was designed to do.

Many of the people I have seen involved in the protests in Missouri say they want justice — but they don't. They want revenge. Those are two different things. Justice requires facts, evidence. Revenge does not.

If anyone — in Ferguson or anywhere else — tells you he/she knows the police officer was guilty of murder, he/she is lying — because no one knows all the facts. That is — supposedly — why we have trials. To see the evidence, hear the testimony, then sift through it all and decide what the truth is.

Murder, by the way, is a legal term that is reserved for a case in which a jury has ruled that someone's death was caused deliberately by someone else. Until a jury has made that determination, legally (based on the laws of the state where the death occurred), no murder has happened.

Legally.

And I can tell you — as one who covered my share of trials in my reporting days — that almost no one knows the whole story until that trial has been held.

We don't really know what happened in Ferguson two weeks ago. We should reserve judgment because we do know that our system requires that we presume the innocence of the accused until he has been proven guilty in an open court. If I am ever accused of anything and find myself in court, I want that presumption of innocence. For it to remain strong, it cannot be denied to anyone. Nor can due process.

That is so important because often there is no unambiguous evidence of someone's guilt, and all the available evidence must be studied before a conclusion can be reached. Criminal charges of any kind are far too serious to be left to emotion.

We do know what happened in Iraq, though. It is not ambiguous. We don't know precisely when it happened, only when the video of the execution of photojournalist James Foley by an ISIS terrorist surfaced. Foley's beheading wasn't accidental. It was intentional. It was carried out by an apparent Briton — but nearly all of him — including his face — was hidden by black clothing.

He wasn't necessarily British. I have taught many foreign students; some spoke with distinctly British accents, but they weren't from the U.K. They came from other countries. Without exception, they were schooled in British schools by British teachers, and if you spoke to any of them on the phone, you would assume they were British. But they weren't.

The English–speaking jihadists were recruited deliberately. It's obvious. With their British accents, they can blend into places like America without arousing any suspicion while waiting for their assignments. Such accents are regarded as non–threatening by most Americans. And, even if they don't necessarily look British, with our borders as wide open as they are, who's going to notice another undocumented foreigner?

I am outraged on several levels by this act of blatant barbarism.

While I have done other things in my life, I will always consider myself a journalist. I never faced the danger that Foley clearly did, but I have known those who did. And when something like this happens, it is like a death in the family. I never met James Foley, but, as I say, I have known many like him.

The president, who never hesitates to stick his nose where it doesn't belong domestically, especially when it involves white on black crime (of which there is remarkably little), took some time from his vacation to acknowledge the murder — and took the unprecedented step of revealing details about a U.S. mission that failed to rescue Foley earlier this summer — then rushed back to the golf course in Martha's Vineyard, which is where he was when Foley's family held their emotional press conference.

He didn't have a photo op with Foley's family the way he did with Bergdahl's — even though he could have negotiated for Foley's freedom when he went against American policy to negotiate for Bergdahl's release.

What reason was there for disclosing details about the mission that failed? Politics. It was the president's way of getting credit for being tough — yes, he did try to do something, but, oops, it just didn't work. And, for all you bad guys, here's what we tried to do with material that we have at such–and–such location. Do you think that put any Americans in jeopardy? I do.

The president, along with his media enablers, is loath to use the word "evil," even when really no other word is sufficient. This is one of those times.

In just an hour or so on the internet last night, I found two references — in the New York Times and U.S. News and World Report — to ISIS' brownshirts as "militant."

My father is OK with the use of the word "militant," but I'm not. It strikes me as flippant. When I hear the word "militant," I think of the protests of the '60s — when campus militants, as they were called, threw Molotov cocktails at buildings — and people. Mostly, those "militants" were protesting for something (i.e., civil rights) or against something (the war in Vietnam). Sometimes, people got hurt. Occasionally (but, really, not that often) people were killed.

But it was never as blatant, as cold–bloodedly deliberate as the slaying of James Foley.

We need a word for these ISIS people. Judging by their behavior, people is far too generous, but there are those who would object if they were called animals, which is much closer to the truth. Do we need a new word? I'm not so sure. I think it would be appropriate to call them 21st–century Nazis. In the '40s, if someone said the word Nazi, you knew precisely what it meant.

Like the 20th–century Nazis, these people cannot be appeased. They are intent upon killing Americans. They said they would execute more Americans — and all they're looking for is an excuse. They asked for $132 million for Foley, then, when they were told that time would be needed to raise the money, they stopped communicating altogether.

They weren't interested in the money. They already control the oilfields in Iraq and Syria as well as all the sources of revenue in the larger cities. All the request for time to raise such a huge sum did was take away an excuse to kill an American, but they had another one ready. They blamed the pin–prick airstrikes and warned that, if they continue, more Americans will die. Obama said they would continue.

Do you doubt that they will make good their threat? I don't. Not for a second. They clearly want to kill Americans — and they want Americans to see them killing Americans.

It was naive for anyone to believe that the war on terror was over. Now, I fear, it will be deadly.

Do you believe that, somehow, ISIS will fail because evil always fails? The Nazis didn't fail. They were beaten by the Allies. It is the only way to deal with this kind of people. I regret having to say that because it contradicts the way I was brought up. But as long as these people exist, they are a deadly threat to us and our modern allies. Our friends in Europe should be especially concerned, being as close to ISIS as they are, geographically.

A few months ago, we observed the 70th anniversary of D–Day, the event that marked the turning point of World War II. A sustained effort is needed now if we are to rid the world of the menace that threatens us today.

We cannot delude ourselves into thinking it is over until it really is.

Staying a Step Ahead of the Stalkers

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It is hard to remember Rebecca Schaeffer. I can look at a picture of her today and be unable to place where I saw her — or if I saw her or what her voice sounded like.

When you look at her picture, you can see that she had an appealing smile, a generally engaging demeanor. (Yes, I do think you can tell that from a picture.) But there have always been many of those in the entertainment world.

Of course, it has been more than 25 years since she graced our television screens in My Sister Sam, a sitcom that lasted a couple of seasons in the 1980s. She had a small part in Woody Allen's "Radio Days," but those scenes were cut. Otherwise, she hadn't made much of a dent in her field — yet.

She was 21 years old, still new on the entertainment scene, seemed to possess some star quality. I was aware of her name, but I can't say that I watched either My Sister Sam or the handful of movies she made, a couple of which were released after her 1989 murder — when, I suppose, her commercial appeal was at its height.

But we know that at least one person, 19–year–old Robert John Bardo of Tucson, Ariz., was watching.

He became obsessed with her after the first object of his obsession, a child peace activist named Samantha Smith, died in a plane crash. Bardo stalked Schaeffer for awhile; he even tried to gain access to the studio where her TV show was filmed, but he was kept out by security. For awhile, it seems he lost interest in her and fixated on others, but he zeroed in on her again after watching one of her movies and seeing her in bed with an actor.

Bardo hired an investigator to find Schaeffer's home address, which he did through Department of Motor Vehicles records. Bardo then confronted Schaeffer at her home 25 years ago today. Schaeffer answered the door, gave Bardo an autograph and went back to her apartment. She thought he had gone away when her doorbell rang a second time. She went to answer it, and Bardo shot her in the chest.

Who knows what goes through the mind of such a person? Does he think of the consequences of his crime? If Bardo bothered to think at all about how his act would be perceived by anyone — and, based on my experience as a police reporter, I doubt that he gave any thought to it, especially how it would be perceived by the media or social activists — he probably thought it would be treated like one of thousands of murders that were committed that year.

But it wasn't. It was a landmark legal event that made government acknowledge stalking for what it was. Prior to Schaeffer's murder, my impression is that stalking was treated as a "boyfriend/girlfriend" thing. Even if the two were not lovers, even if one was a total stranger to the other. Those were merely details.

It wasn't taken seriously. It wasn't treated like a real crime. Of course, it was and is a real crime. Schaeffer's death was a flashpoint for that realization. A public epiphany.

Laws were changed to protect the privacy of citizens, prohibiting state Departments of Motor Vehicles from releasing personal information about licensed drivers.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. The advent of the internet, with its online address search services, significantly eroded that law's impact. Today, anyone with access to a computer and the know–how to use it can do what that investigator did for Bardo 25 years ago.

Evolving technology has changed most things, and those who would rather such private information is not so readily available to potential stalkers need to be steadfast in their resolve.

For all the Rebecca Schaeffers out there, we must stay a step ahead of the stalkers.

Remembering the Simpson-Goldman Murders

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It is still vivid in memory.

It's been a couple of decades, but, in many ways, it seems as if it happened yesterday.

Sometime during the evening hours of June 12–13, 1994, the ex–wife of former pro football star O.J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered in the courtyard of her southern California townhouse. The body of a young man, Ron Goldman, was found a few feet from her.

They had both been stabbed repeatedly. Nicole's head had nearly been cut off her body.

The bodies were found shortly after midnight, about half an hour after a Chicago–bound airplane on which O.J. was a passenger left Los Angeles International Airport.

There were a lot of other details that emerged in O.J.'s trial, which came to be regarded as the trial of the century. It was also — as far as I can tell — the public's first real introduction to DNA evidence.

But, on that mid–June day in 1994, what was widely known was that Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were dead. From outward appearances, Goldman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He worked as a waiter at the restaurant where Nicole had dined with her family that evening, and her mother had left her glasses there. Nicole called the restaurant and was told that they would be brought to her home. Goldman, who was working in the restaurant that night, apparently volunteered to take the glasses when he finished work.

The assumption at the time was that Goldman had interrupted the attack on Nicole.

It was revealed later that Ron and Nicole were friendly. They had been seen riding together in Nicole's car, and the exact nature of their relationship remains uncertain to this day.

As for the DNA evidence, people had to be educated about that by the prosecution when O.J.'s trial got under way in 1995. But all of that was still in the future on this day 20 years ago.

O.J., of course, was acquitted of the murders — but was later held liable in a civil trial. Years later, he was convicted of an apparently unrelated offense in Nevada and given a sentence that, while not a life sentence, was expected to wind up being a life term, given O.J.'s age. After recent legal rulings, though, O.J. could be released as early as 2017.

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But that wasn't the end of it.

I guess it was to be expected that the 20th anniversary of the murders would bring new revelations, and it has. The National Enquirer, for example, recently published an article claiming to tell why O.J. killed Nicole.

Goldman's sister recently told the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles that forgiveness for the murder of the brother to whom she was especially close is not possible for her.

Last month, Lili Anolik suggested in Vanity Fair that the Simpson trial was the first reality TV show. It was a point I hadn't considered before, but it made sense.

Or perhaps it was more like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The trial brought forth a string of witnesses for the prosecution who could have been a 1995 version of the cast of Desperate Housewives with all achieving a certain amount of rather short–lived fame. It was established during the trial that at least one of Nicole's friends/house guests had a cocaine problem, and it was suggested by the defense during the trial that drug dealers could have committed the murders and that their actual target had not been Nicole but rather her friend.

By the time the trial began, the murders themselves were almost afterthoughts; the human tragedy was mostly ignored. Ron and Nicole were vivid as people only in the memories of those in the court — and outside the court — who knew them. To everyone else they were props in a courtroom drama.

There was a wide range of human wreckage left in the wake of those two deaths.

The image that stays with me is of the streams of blood that could be seen on the pavement outside Nicole's townhouse in the news reports 20 years ago — and the children who were left without a mother. At some point, O.J. was awarded custody of his children, and they moved to Florida.

Those children are adults well into their 20s now. I often wonder what their lives were like after their mother was killed and their father was accused of the crime.

All I know is that the oldest, Sydney, was arrested in connection with a school incident nearly 10 years after her mother's death and sentenced to 50 hours of community service. Last I heard, she was waiting tables in Atlanta.

I think her brother is still in Florida.

An Unheeded Cry for Help

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Fifty years ago today, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death a short distance from her home in Queens, N.Y.

By itself, that isn't too noteworthy, but there were unusual circumstances that made the case stand out, primarily the fact that more than three dozen of her neighbors apparently heard her screaming for help — but did nothing to assist the 5–foot–1, 105–pound woman.

Why? It was probably explained best in a simple comment one of the neighbors made to a New York Times reporter: "I didn't want to get involved."

The attack lasted roughly 30 minutes. The assailant apparently selected Genovese at random and was chased off twice after he started stabbing her — the first time when a neighbor shouted from his apartment window, "Hey, let that girl alone!" and the second time when other windows started opening and the attacker decided to go move his car — but returned twice, the last time to finish off the semiconscious victim, who had managed to get inside one of the buildings.

Her killer found her by following the trail of blood she left behind. He finished her off, then raped her corpse.

About 40–45 minutes after the attack began, one of the neighbors called the police — after first calling a friend for advice on what to do. The police arrived in a couple of minutes; in the course of their investigation, they found 38 witnesses who had heard or seen at least a portion of the attack.

He suggested the witnesses may have been confused by what they were seeing and hearing.

An investigator told the press that Genovese might have survived if the police had been summoned when the attack began; otherwise, there didn't seem to be anything too unusual about the murder at first. It received scant coverage in the newspapers, and little was said in the investigators' report.

"This tendency to shy away from reporting crimes is a common one," the deputy police commissioner said at the time — and, in fact, the case drew no special attention.

Until two weeks later, when the New York Times ran an article with the headline "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call."

The case was troubling for many people who wondered how civilized humans could stand by and do nothing while a young woman was being brutally murdered. Some offered the explanation that they thought it was a lovers' quarrel, and they didn't want to interfere.

One psychiatrist said the failure of the witnesses to act promptly may have been at least partly because of television. "We underestimate the damage that these accumulated images do to the brain," he said. "The immediate effect can be delusional, equivalent to a sort of post–hypnotic suggestion."

There were numerous theories offered to explain why no one did anything, but none was satisfactory. The Times, in a hand–wringing editorial, wondered why that was. "Seldom has The Times published a more horrifying story," the editorial said, "than its account of how 38 respectable, law–abiding, middle class Queens citizens watched a killer stalk his young woman victim ... without one of them making a call to the Police Department that might have saved her life."

Fear was a plausible reason, I suppose. The city of Boston, about 200 miles to the northeast of New York, had been gripped by the fear of the "Boston strangler" killings around that time. The thought of that may have intimidated some of the witnesses.

But, in the end, it was still hard to rationalize what had happened.

Folks are still trying to make sense of it. Karen Matthews writes for the Associated Press that the case still fascinates people half a century later.

"Kitty Genovese's screams for help couldn't save her on the night she was murdered outside her apartment in 1964," Matthews writes. "Fifty years later, those screams still echo, a symbol of urban breakdown and city dwellers' seeming callousness toward their neighbors."

There are those who, much like the folks who deny the Holocaust, argue that Genovese's murder was not quite what it has been made out to be. Some people, including author Kevin Cook who just published a book on the subject, take issue with various parts of the story, including the number of witnesses.

Some observe that Times metro editor A.M. Rosenthal had lunch with the city's police commissioner about 10 days after the murder, and the commissioner mentioned the case, prompting Rosenthal to send a reporter out to Queens to get a compelling story.

And the reporter came back with a compelling story.

The Genovese case was responsible, I think, for the designation "the bystander effect," a psychological phenomenon in which the more witnesses there are, the less likely people are to help an individual in distress. They conclude that someone else is sure to call the authorities, that such a call may already have been made.

In the long story of human history, I'm sure something similar must have happened before Genovese was slain, but, for whatever reason, it never caught the public's attention the way the Genovese case did.

If you want to find something good that came from the case, Matthews points out that "[i]t has been credited with spurring adoption of the 911 system in 1968 as well as 'Good Samaritan' laws that give legal protection to people who help those in trouble." And that is good.

The emergence of mobile technology makes it easier for people to reach out for assistance as well.

So I suppose the question is: Can a Genovese case happen in the 21st century?

And my answer is: I don't know. Modern technology might not make a difference. I gather that most, if not all, of Genovese's neighbors had access to telephones.

The "bystander effect" might still apply, anyway, whether the phones were mobile or landline.

Preppie Love

On this day 25 years ago, Robert Chambers became the "Preppie Killer" when he strangled an 18–year–old girl named Jennifer Levin in New York's Central Park.

That was a different time. Today, the murder of an unknown yet attractive girl anywhere would attract dozens of camera crews from all over the world, and the internet would be full of details on first the investigation and then the trial. In 2011, you wouldn't be able to escape those details, no matter how hard you tried.

But in 1986, things were different. I was living in Arkansas at the time, working on the copy desk of the largest newspaper in the state. I thought that having access to the Associated Press' wire meant I would know things that many of my friends did not, but the information we got on the Preppie Killer was spotty at best.

I'm sure the coverage of the case was pretty intense in New York and the media centers of the Northeast, but, as I say, that was many years before cable and the internet made it possible for people to see and read daily news coverage in places around the globe.

As the drama of Chambers' arrest and trial played out, I might as well have been in another hemisphere. Most of the information I got on the case came from my subscription to Newsweek. It wasn't quite as spotty — but it still left a lot to be desired.

I have often wondered if it might have been the "trial of the century" until the O.J. Simpson case in the mid–1990s — if the technology of the 1980s had been as advanced.

When Chambers eventually did go to trial, it was hardly what I would call the "trial of the century." But it sure did draw a lot of attention for its day — and that did lead to a kind of trickle–down effect in terms of the information that was available.

It's the kind of thing that has always attracted the folks in our culture, and if cable TV had been more extensive and the internet had been more than an information network linking research–oriented institutions, the audience that followed the Preppie Killer story might have rivaled that of the Casey Anthony trial.

Chambers was a tall, good–looking guy who, apparently, had most things handed to him as he grew up. He seems to have had something of a social inferiority complex.

Chambers attended prep schools on scholarships; his family couldn't afford the tuition. He did not thrive in that environment, received poor grades and ran into problems with theft and substance abuse.

He was accepted to Boston University, but the same problems that plagued him in prep school followed him to college, and he was asked to leave after a single semester.

On Aug. 26, 1986, a month before his 20th birthday, he was at a Manhattan bar where his girlfriend loudly ended their relationship, throwing a bag of condoms at him and assuring him that "you're not using them with me."

Chambers' girlfriend was, reportedly, upset that Levin was at the bar. The story was that Levin was Chambers' secret lover. Witnesses said they left the bar together.

I don't know if that was true or not. Neither do I know if it is true that, later, Chambers and Levin had "rough sex" before Chambers, who stood more than a foot taller than Levin and weighed nearly twice what she did, strangled her in Central Park.

Chambers claimed that Levin hurt his genitals and he pushed her from him, accidentally killing her. It never really seemed plausible, considering the nature of the physical evidence.

"I've been in this business for a while," the prosecutor said to Chambers, "and you're the first man I've seen raped in Central Park."

But that was Chambers' story, and he stuck with it.

Well, whatever the truth was, Chambers wound up pleading guilty to manslaughter, and he served 15 years in prison. He was released, ironically, on Valentine's Day 2003. With time off for good behavior, he might have been released earlier — but he had disciplinary issues in prison that mirrored the ones he had prior to Levin's death, and the same problems followed him as he tried to carve out a life for himself after his release.

A few years ago, Chambers, now in his mid–40s, was sentenced to 19 years in prison after his conviction on drug charges.

I suppose it is possible that he could get some time off for good behavior. But, given his history, it doesn't seem likely. I think he will be behind bars until he is in his 60s.

A cynical person might say a pattern has been established.

The Death of Innocence

Today is an odd day for me, a day that brings back a mixture of memories.

It was on this day 35 years ago that a sixth–grade girl from a small town in my home county vanished in broad daylight. Her body was found a few days later. She had been raped, murdered and left in a stock pond.

Her name was Dana Mize. Few of the people I knew had any idea who she was — until she was abducted. And, initially, that was newsworthy because her father was a candidate for county office in the upcoming primary.

I never met her. But I knew people who knew her fairly well. Her family attended First Baptist Church in my hometown, and "FBC," as it was called, was the biggest church in town. Still is, I imagine. And the congregation always has been tightly knit. A few days ago, I mentioned this upcoming anniversary to an old friend of mine who was a member of that church at the time, and he said he remembered feeling a terrible sadness for the family.

That was the prevailing emotion — at FBC and throughout the county and its communities.

It wasn't long after she disappeared, though, that the whispers began. Her abduction, people were saying, had nothing to do with local politics. If it had, the abductor(s) almost certainly would have contacted someone with a demand that her father withdraw from the race or something similar. But no such communication had been received.

It must have been sexual, so the reasoning went — and, it turned out, the reasoning was right on the money.

I didn't want to believe that. I guess most of the people in the area didn't want to believe it, but I had to admit that it made sense.

It's hard to describe what a shocking time that was. One of the reasons why it was so shocking, I think, was the fact that my hometown was still somewhat innocent and naive when it happened. The place often seemed to exist in a bubble. For whatever reason, people in my hometown seemed to believe they were immune to the tragedies of the world.

That conviction never really made much sense to me because tragedies happened there all the time.

Before I was in grade school, a girl I knew was diagnosed with cancer and died a short time later. When I was in third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. A few years later, the son of some family friends was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A tornado ripped through my hometown when I was 5 and leveled several homes (took a few lives in the process).

And those were just a few of the tragedies that touched me personally. In the years when I was growing up, there were other tragedies that affected other people — like any other place.

I guess what made the Dana Mize episode unique was the fact that criminal intent was behind it. The other tragedies could be written off as being caused by disease or random acts of nature or perhaps sloppiness or stupidity. But this was deliberate.

In a large city, the disappearance of a young girl — and the subsequent discovery of her dead and sexually abused body — wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in those days.

But it was different in my hometown. Everyone who lived there had to accept a previously unthinkable truth: Sexual predators must have been living among us, as they do in any other city or town — and, based on statistics, I can only conclude that some of the girls with whom I attended school must have been abused — by their fathers, by cousins, by family friends, who knows?

In my hometown of Conway, Ark., it seems to me that there must have been sexual predators around — even in that seemingly innocent time.

There was nothing terribly special or unique about my hometown. It was a town much like any other town, I suppose. It was mostly a blue–collar town in a mostly blue–collar county. I'm sure young girls were molested, abused, even assaulted there when I was growing up, but those cases were usually handled quietly, away from the public eye.

What did make the Dana Mize case unique was the fact that the perpetrator didn't live nearby. Turned out, he had flown to Arkansas from his home in New Jersey, committed the crime and flown back.

I still don't know what drew him to Mize's tiny hometown of Vilonia — which was much smaller than Conway. To my knowledge, he had never been to that area before.

I have tried, many times over the last 35 years, to reconstruct his movements, and I have tried to figure out how he could just stumble onto Vilonia. I don't know what the odds would have been, but I keep coming back to the idea that — somehow — he must have known that Vilonia was there.

His plane had to have landed in Little Rock. He could have rented a car at the airport and easily driven to Conway, which is along the highway outside Little Rock.

If the trail stopped in Conway, you could chalk the whole thing up to randomness, I guess. But Vilonia is one of those out–of–the–way country towns. You don't just stumble onto it. You have to be going there on purpose.

And the stock pond where the body was found was, as I recall, even more remote.

A complete stranger to the area would be almost bound to get lost after being, to say the least, distracted by a life–and–death struggle, either before or after the sexual assault, and a search for a suitably secluded spot to drop the body.

It seems likely to me that he would have had to ask for directions back to the highway. And someone almost certainly would have remembered giving directions to a disheveled stranger in a rented car whose clothes may have been dirty and/or wet.

Yet my memory is that the perpetrator did all this in a single afternoon, returned to the airport and caught a flight back to New Jersey — and he didn't ask for directions and apparently wasn't connected to the crime until a few days later, when he confessed to his psychiatrist.

He's still alive, I hear. He was convicted of capital felony murder, which often carries a death sentence, but his jury sentenced him to life without parole. He was 34 at the time he committed the crime so he is about to turn 70.

I've heard he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the same mental illness that afflicts the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords back in January.

That would answer a lot of questions, I guess. But not all.

I suppose some questions will never be answered.

The Missing Week

It remains an unsolved mystery after more than 60 years.

On this day in 1947, a young woman named Elizabeth Short was last seen alive in southern California. That was the beginning of her "missing week." On Jan. 15, her body was found in a vacant lot in south Los Angeles. She had been mutilated, cut in two and drained of blood. Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, apparently giving her face the appearance of a grotesque, "Joker"–like grin, and she had been posed with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles.

History remembers her as the "Black Dahlia," but it is unclear whether she acquired that moniker before or after her death. Newspaper reports at the time of her murder suggested that she had been given the nickname the summer before. It was a word play, the report said, on the title of a popular movie, "The Blue Dahlia," a film noir starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. But other accounts suggested she was given the name after she died.

That last week is shrouded in mystery, but that's kind of the sad and brief story of her life. Short was only 22 when she was killed, but she had moved around a lot. She had been back in the L.A. area for about six months, but she was always on the move, bouncing from hotels to rooming houses to apartments. She seems to have had an active social life — after she was killed, more than 20 men she was known to have dated were interviewed by investigators. Did one of them kill her sometime between Jan. 9 and Jan. 15 in 1947?

The case has been the source of endless speculation. It has inspired movies, books, evaluations by criminal profilers. It seems to be among the coldest of cold cases.

But, like any mystery that goes unsolved, it has the power to intrigue, to captivate.

I guess it always will.

I Never Thought Of That

If I have a "guilty pleasure," I guess it would be those real–life forensics investigation shows on TV.

I'm like most amateur sleuths, I guess. I like to think I'm pretty good, although I'm probably not as good as I think I am.

But I really have to give credit to the investigators who were looking for evidence in the murder of 28–year–old Jasmine Fiore.

Her body was found in an Anaheim, Calif., dumpster last weekend. Her teeth had been extracted and her fingers had been removed. Police said it was apparently a deliberate attempt to obscure her identity.

However, Fiore, a former model, had breast implants, and she was identified by the serial numbers on her implants.

I never would have thought that implants could have the same identification value as fingerprints or dental records. Guess I don't know as much about forensics as I thought I did.

By the way, an arrest warrant has been issued for Ryan Alexander Jenkins, a former reality TV contestant. Jenkins and Fiore were married in March.

Apparently, he didn't know as much about forensics as he needed to.

My guess is that he thought he had come up with the perfect crime. But he was wrong, wasn't he?

The Legend of Lizzie Borden

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"Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty–one."

Anonymous

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If you're over 25, you surely remember the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

But you would have to be over 125 to remember the Lizzie Borden murder trial.

On this day in 1892, Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were found murdered in their Fall River, Mass., home. Andrew Borden's daughter, Lizzie, was the only person ever charged with the crimes. Although she was acquitted of the charges, she has been held responsible for more than a century, unofficially convicted by the media of the day.

Officially, it remains an unsolved mystery.

A hatchet that was found in the basement was presumed to be the murder weapon. It was clean and missing most of its handle. An expert in forensics asserted that there was not enough time to clean the hatchet after the murders were committed.

The hatchet evidence was rendered even more inconclusive because the police had no faith in the emerging technology of fingerprinting so no fingerprints were taken from the hatchet. And, of course, a century before the O.J. Simpson case, no one had heard of DNA evidence.

The police also found no blood–stained clothing in the house. A 1975 TV movie on the case starring Elizabeth Montgomery (ironically, Borden's sixth cousin once removed) suggested that a possible reason for such a lack of finding was that Borden could have removed her clothes before attacking her stepmother in an upstairs bedroom and her father in a downstairs sitting room, washing off the blood after each attack.

The sequence of the attacks is not clear. Lizzie Borden and the maid, Bridget Sullivan, were the only other people in the house, and the maid may have been outside, cleaning the windows as she had been instructed to do.

What is known is that Lizzie's father returned to the house shortly before 11 a.m., and Lizzie found his body about half an hour later. While Lizzie was being tended to, the maid discovered the body of Lizzie's stepmother.

In the years since the murders, several plausible suspects have emerged. It has been theorized, for example, that Sullivan committed the crimes. She was angry, so the theory went, at being ordered to clean the outside windows on a hot day, one day after the entire household had suffered from food poisoning.

Another theory put the blame on a supposedly illegitimate half–brother to Lizzie who allegedly tried and failed to extort money from their father.

Whether she was to blame for the killings or not, Lizzie Borden lived for nearly 35 years after the deaths of her father and stepmother, dying of pneumonia at the age of 66 in 1927. Her sister, Emma, from whom she had been estranged for more than two decades, died nine days later.

Visitors to Fall River can visit the house where the murders took place. It is now a bed and breakfast so visitors can spend the night there if they wish.

Oh, and by the way ...

That stuff about giving her mother 40 whacks and giving her father 41 is an exaggeration, a little poetic license used to sell newspapers. It was determined that Mrs. Borden was struck 18 or 19 times and Mr. Borden was struck 11 times.

Abortion Provider Killed in Kansas

Dr. George Tiller, 67, whose Wichita, Kansas, clinic is one of the few in the nation that perform late–term abortions, was shot and killed while he was serving as an usher at his church in Wichita this morning.

A 51–year–old suspect was taken into custody this afternoon. Police have not released his name at this point.

Tiller's clinic, Women's Health Care Services, has been a magnet for abortion battles for close to 20 years. In 1993, the doctor was shot in both arms outside his clinic. The woman who was convicted of shooting him currently is serving her prison sentence.

I've read speculative articles today suggesting that pro–choice activists may retaliate for this, but I fail to see how that will enhance the debate. I know abortion is an emotional issue — on both sides — but retribution is not the answer, and it certainly won't bring Dr. Tiller back.

As I have said before, I believe what Bill and Hillary Clinton have advocated: Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

I also believe that those who provide abortions should feel safe in their workplaces. And they should feel safe when they attend services at their churches.

Abortion has been legal in this country for more than 35 years. If it is to become illegal now, let that be accomplished in an acceptable, legal manner.

Legal Lessons

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Paul Cézanne's "The Murder."

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The wording of laws can be tricky. But that is deliberate. Laws are intended to protect the rights of the accused as well as the rights of those who are not accused. And circumstances differ so the law has to be somewhat vague to cover all possibilities.

For the most part, law enforcement officials are aware of this ambiguity in legal language. They may confirm that they have searched a particular location, for example, but they will not confirm if certain people who are connected to that location are under suspicion — until an arrest is made.

That's a fine point in the law of which many people are unaware — and such legal ignorance has made many libel lawyers rich and many aspiring journalists poor — and unemployed.

I was reminded of that this week when police in Tracy, Calif., were investigating the disappearance of an 8–year–old girl, whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase submerged in a pond at a dairy farm.

During the police investigation, a nearby church and the home of its pastor were searched. Based on this information, a blogger speculated that the pastor "could have had something to do" with the murder — even though no one in authority had linked the pastor to the crime. The blogger acknowledged that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but her words implied that she considered the pastor a possible suspect.

I made a comment about this, and the blogger replied that she was free to speculate. She seemed oblivious to the consequences of being sued for libel, contending that all she had to do was offer an explanation for her actions. I said that it would be up to the jury whether to accept the explanation and pointed out that fair comment is considered a defense when the plaintiff is a public figure. I expressed doubt that the pastor of a church is considered a public figure. I was especially doubtful since the church appears to be a small one.

The thing about libel law is that even public figures can file suits if they feel they have been defamed, but it is up to the jury to decide who is right. The ruling may not go against the writer, but the legal defense itself can be costly. Judgments, of course, can be even costlier. Judgments in libel suits can be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

Are you old enough to remember Carol Burnett's libel suit against the National Enquirer in 1981? The tabloid accused her of public drunkenness, a charge to which she was particularly sensitive because her parents were alcoholics. It was a landmark case involving celebrities, and the jury awarded Burnett a $1.6 million judgment.

That amount was cut in half on appeal and eventually the case was settled out of court. But Burnett gave part of the money to the University of Hawaii and University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to fund law and ethics courses. She said the lawsuit was a matter of principle, that it was never about the money.

In my experience, which includes a period in my life when I was a police beat reporter, the police often cast a wide net in their investigations. They're looking for evidence. In some cases, the only evidence that is recovered is microscopic forensic evidence — hairs or fibers that cannot be seen with the naked eye. They may not find it in a particular location, but how can they know until they search it?

Red flags may appear during an investigation for several reasons — for example, reluctance to cooperate with investigators. I heard no reports that the pastor did not cooperate. Apparently, there were no red flags.

Early today, some of the lingering questions in the case were answered. Police arrested a 28–year–old woman, who is a Sunday school teacher and the granddaughter of the church's pastor, and charged her with kidnapping and murder.

The victim was a playmate of the woman's daughter. The suitcase in which the girl's body was found belonged to the suspect. The woman and her daughter live with the pastor. I guess that explains why the church and the pastor's home were of interest.

Few other details have been released. The suspect has admitted that the suitcase was hers, but she claims it went missing the day the girl was last seen. No motive for the crime has been alleged.

But the case is a reminder to everyone — not just journalists — not to jump to conclusions.

The Latest -- and Perhaps Last -- From Aruba

CNN reports that authorities in Aruba have dropped the case against the three young men who are suspected of being involved in the disappearance and presumed murder of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in May 2005. Aruban authorities cite a lack of evidence.

We were hearing a different tune from prosecutor Hans Mos about a month ago. Back around the time of the American Thanksgiving, Mos was saying that it wasn't necessary, under Aruban law, to have a body to prove that a murder had occurred.

But today the public prosecutor's office announced there was not sufficient evidence to convince a court "that a crime of violence against Natalee Holloway had been committed nor that her death has been caused by involuntary actions by ... the suspects."

Seems to me the prosecutor doesn't know as much about Aruban law as he should to do his job.

Another Dead End in a Cold Case

Less than a month ago, news reports included developments in Aruba, where the three young men who were the original focus of the investigation into the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway had been taken into custody.

Today, those three young men are once again free, once again because a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to hold them any longer under Aruba law.

The chief prosecutor, Hans Mos, sounded optimistic last month that charges would be brought in the case and asserted confidently that there was no need, under Aruba law, to have a body in order to prove that someone was dead.

Today, however, Mos sounds anything but confident.

Mos says he does not expect to find Holloway's remains and he believes that it would be "very hard" to prosecute a suspect without them.

"We promised the suspects that after December 31, we will not pursue the case," Mos said Friday. "This investigation should end at a certain point."

What needs to end is the seemingly endless harassment of Holloway's family.

Aruba is not very big. Searches of that tiny island have failed to produce any evidence of a corpse since the teenager disappeared in May 2005.

It's time for Aruba to acknowledge that its officials haven't been smart enough or resourceful enough to bring closure to this case -- and allow Holloway's family members to grieve and move on with their lives.

Enough is enough for all concerned.

A Cold Murder Case Heats Up

Usually, at this time of the year, the annual "Iron Bowl" football game between Alabama and Auburn dominates conversation in Alabama. This year, there is also the race for mayor in Birmingham to keep locals occupied.

In recent days, another topic has been introduced, one that most area residents probably thought had tumbled into the dustbin of history -- the case of missing teenager Natalee Holloway, who disappeared while on a post-high school graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005.

Three men whose names were mentioned in connection with the case in the early days -- Joran van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe and his brother Satish Kalpoe -- have been arrested and are in custody in Aruba, charged with "involvement in the voluntary manslaughter of Natalee Holloway or causing serious bodily harm to Natalee Holloway, resulting in her death."

The Birmingham News has devoted a section of its website to the case.

Aruba's chief public prosecutor, Hans Mos, said Friday that it is not necessary, under Aruba law, to have a body in order to prove that someone is deceased. "And any day that passes now is just more evidence that she is not alive anymore," he said.

Mos told CNN that investigators who were taking a fresh look at the case found some new evidence and have uncovered some discrepancies in earlier investigations.

The three young men have consistently maintained their innocence.

The wheels of justice turn notoriously slowly. We shall see what happens.