Miscellany Buffet

Green River, Running Red by Ann Rule
September 25 – September 28

( 4 stars)

From a story about one single, isolated murder, to the story of 49 confirmed murders, Ann Rule covers all the bases.

Gary Ridgeway, a.k.a. that Green River Killer spent over twenty years eluding the police and racking up bodies.  After his arrest and eventual plea bargain, the number of confirmed victims would be close to fifty.

This book was the story of the country’s most prolific serial killer.  From the very first victim (who along with sever subsequent one was found in the Green River in Washington State, this selection from the Ann Rule library is painstaking and detailed.

taking place in the world of murder and underage prostitution, its not exactly a bed time read, but a must for true crime buffs.

See the whole 2011 List…

2010 list…

In the Still of the Night: The Strange Death of Ronda Reynolds and Her Mother’s Unceasing Quest for the Truth by Ann Rule
September 19 – September 25

( 3 stars)

Ann Rule is commonly accepted as the best in the genre of true crime.  Her latest book is the telling of a twelve year saga, that of Ronda Reynolds, an ex-cop who was found dead in the closet of her home with a gunshot to the head.  The official record would show her as a suicide.

Believing that her daughter would never take her own life, Barb Thompson embarked on a quest that would last for more than a decade.  The tale of this victim’s mother wanders through a myriad of emotional and chronological places; from the bureaucracy that slowed processes and left many stones unturned, to the genuine heroes who fought for justice – Ronda’s mother their unfortunate leader.

Lot’s of details and a story that will probably leave you a bit angry, as well as unsure about the forces and people that we were always taught to trust.

See the whole 2011 List…

2010 list…

Phoebe Prince was a 15 year-old student at South Hadley High school, in South Hadley, MA.  After moving the the U.S. from Ireland, the pleasant and attractive young girl made some friends easily, including a senior football player.  After the brief fling became common knowledge, a group of fellow students decided that Phoebe needed to be put back in her place.  That is when the bullying began.

On January 14th, after what students would later report as an incessant day of harassment for Phoebe, she was walking home from school.  A car passed with one of the “Mean Girls,” as the group has now been termed, screamed one more nasty comment and threw a soft drink can in Phoebe’s direction.  We’ll never really know if that was the moment that Phoebe’s resilience broke or if it was at some point earlier in the day.  What we will never forget is the fact that Phoebe continued home, and once there, hung herself.  she was found by her 12 year-old sister.

Sadly, even this didn’t make a difference to everyone.  It has been reported that some (more…)

I can’t just give you a link to this one – it’s not available on-line.  If you have a Netflix membership, you can watch it there.  Otherwise you need to rent or buy the DVD.  I highly recommend it.

Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father, is the moving tribute of filmmaker Kurt Kuenne on behalf of his life long best friend, Dr. Andrew Bagby.  Dr. Bagby was murdered by his estranged girlfriend who then fled to Canada to escape prosecution.

The film begins as a straight forward tribute to Bagby by his friend.  Shortly after beginning the process, everyone involved find out that Shirley Turner, Dr. Bagby’s alleged murderer, is pregnant with his child.  Kuenne then decides to make video for the unborn child so that he (as we eventually find out) will be able to “know” his father.  As the events surrounding a delayed extradition hearing unfold, Kuenne ends up documenting a story both profoundly moving and, and the same time, monstrously infuriating.

(more…)

If you’re like me, your email in-box gets flooded with messages about all manner of “interesting” topics. Chain e-mail, product offers, please to help the needy expatriated Countess of Ghana recover her billions of dollars in inheritance. For obvious reasons we ignore most of this nonsense as soon as we identify it as such. every once on awhile, however, I receive another email message about Kelsey Smith-Briggs. Each time I do, I read the message and watch whatever videos that it directs me to. I will continue this practice because I want to make sure that I never forget this one little girl.

It seems unlikely that there could be anyone out there who has not heard the story, but in case there is, here are the important details: Kelsey was murdered at age two by her stepfather. After months of obvious physical abuse, local child protective services returned Kelsey to her mother and a few months later she was gone. The official cause of death was homicide by blunt force trauma to the abdomen – her step-father kicked her in the stomach. The story gets even more heartbreaking when you hear that Kelsey’s natural father was serving in Iraq and was about two weeks from returning home when Kelsey passed. Kelsey’s mother and step-father received prison terms nut neither for charges related to murder.

There are many, many details to this story that I won’t go into again here. There are many places to get the full story and I’ve included links to some of them below. One I will mention is that at least one source has pointed out that Kelsey’s biological parents divorced originally because her father was very abusive to her mother. Apparently, Kelsey is the only truly innocent one in the whole sorted mess.

The theme that runs through the Kelsey Smith-Briggs story seems to be the list of people who failed to stop her murder. There was the legal system and child protective services, her mother and other family members, various others who later admitted they saw signs of Kelsey’s abuse and did nothing. (The signs were hard to miss. Several months before her death – and before her mother married her daughter’s eventual murderer – both of Kelsey’s legs were broken!)

No matter how many times I pass a link for something to do with Kelsey, I click on it. If an email comes, I read it. I never want to forget her and her story for as long as I live.

Info on Kelsey can be found in many places. Here area few:

Article on the entire story, including natural father’s past

Wikipedia

YouTube

Even for someone like me who watches very little TV news, the story of Jaycee Dugard was impossible to miss.  Jaycee was 11 years old in 1991 when she went missing.  The search for Jaycee was long and thorough, but unsuccessful.  Her parents, though always maintaining the hope that remains when no proof of death is found, had all but given up hope.

On August 28th, the impossible happened.  Jaycee was found.

Now 29, Jaycee was herself the mother of two.  She and her two daughters, ages 15 and 11, were living in tents with their captor in the back yard of a home in suburban Antioch, California, right under the eyes of a now shocked community and a befuddled police force.

A description of their captor, Phillip Garrido, reads like the resume for a horror movie character.  His father attributes his “crazy” behavior to a motorcycle accident that Garrido had as a teen.  He first began having run-ins with the law at that time.  Between 1978 and 1991, Garrido was arrested multiple times and served prison sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault.  Incredibly, Garrido was on lifetime parole supervision both at the time he first kidnapped Jaycee as well as all through the years she lived with him.  Garrido’s spouse, was also implicated in the abduction.

In the years that Jaycee was with her captors, Garrido continued to have encounters with authorities.  There were numerous calls from neighbors and other individuals surrounding the strange goings on in the Antioch neighborhood.  Garrido was a self-proclaimed evangelist and his religious preoccupation was well known to those he came in contact with.

Ironically, that religious preoccupation is what saved Jaycee and her daughters, if “saved” is the appropriate term at this late stage.  Garrido showed up at a local college campus looking for permits to hold a religious gathering.  This visit began the chain of events that lead to the discovery of Garrido’s nearly 20 year secret.

Check your local listings in the near future for a dramatization of the Jaycee Dugard story – if ever there was a tale meant for made-for-TV-movie it’s this one.  But whether that happens or not, here are some questions that I’d like the answers to:

• How does a convicted sex offender, registered under Megan’s Law, manage to hold a girl captive in his suburban yard for 20 years and escape notice?
• How does the supervised parole system explain itself in light of this horrible failure?
• What is to become of Jaycee and her daughters?
• What penalty does this crime warrant for Garrido?  (Kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, countless instances of rape against Jaycee)

It is also worth noting that Jaycee was not lured into a vehicle with candy or conned into going along with her captors.  Jaycee was being dropped off at school by her stepfather.  He saw the car make a U-turn, stop, and the captors drag Jaycee into the vehicle (that he later described to police).  Jaycee’s kidnapping was not sneaky and devious but brazen.

What can we do to protect our children from that?