Murder of 'Mob Princess' Susan Berman Remains A Mystery

The following is an excerpt from Cathy Scott's latest book, The Rough Guide to True Crime, released by Penguin Books in August. Susan Berman is the subject of an earlier book by Scott titled Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman (Barricade Books), due out in a second edition early next year.

by Cathy Scott

The life of a journalist and author who spent her adult years writing about her mob roots ended dramatically, like a character in one of her books. Susan Berman, 55, was murdered in her Beverly Hills, California, home. She was shot execution-style by an unknown assailant just as New York state police were scheduling an interview about a decades-old unsolved missing-person's case.

Berman’s body was found on December 24, 2000, inside her rundown rented house in the woodsy Benedict Canyon neighborhood, where she lived with her three dogs. The front door had been left wide open – there were no signs of a forced entry or struggle, no signs of a sexual assault, and no items had been stolen from the house.

Susan had lived what she once described as a perfect childhood, despite being the daughter of a Jewish mobster. In the 1930s and '40s, her father, Davie Berman, was part of the same crime syndicate as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and mob kingpin Meyer Lansky. Working with Lansky, considered one of the shrewdest gangsters to ever walk the streets of 20th-century New York, gave Davie the opportunity to learn from the mob's top echelon. After all, Lansky was known as Lucky Luciano’s right-hand man and the mob’s financial mastermind.

As a trio, Berman, Siegel and Lansky pioneered the development of Las Vegas from a sleepy desert cow town to a thriving gambling Mecca. Nevertheless, the gangsters soon found themselves in an uneasy alliance with the Italian Mafia, who moved in on the Jewish mob’s territory. Davie, who co-owned the famous Flamingo Hotel and Casino with Siegel and Lansky, ran the place after Siegel was murdered in 1947 (in the Beverly Hills home of his mistress, Virginia Hill). Only in 1951, after the highly publicized and televised Kefauver Committee hearings of the US Senate’s investigation into organized crime, did the public become aware of the extent of Jewish involvement in the underworld.

Susan was unaware of her father’s underworld dealings until she became an adult, but her Las Vegas childhood was not exactly normal. Her father had slot machines installed in Flamingo Hotel rooms so his daughter could pass the time gambling and ordering room service. Susan enjoyed the life of a spoiled, indulged child. She wanted for nothing. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Liberace performed at her birthday parties. Davie drove fancy new Cadillacs. To his Susie, he was the world. What Susan did not know then was that when mob families were feuding, her family was in danger. During times of mob unrest, Davie piloted Susan away to Los Angeles, flying out of McCarran Field to the Los Angeles airport, and then to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for two or three days. He told Susan they were short vacations. Bodyguard Lou Raskin, a mountain of a man, lived with the Bermans so he could watch over Davie’s precious daughter. Susie remembered the trips as wonderful outings. She fell in love with Los Angeles.

The high-society lifestyle of the “Mafia Princess”, as the media called her, came to an abrupt end in 1957, when she was twelve. That year her father died during intestinal surgery. Only a few months later her mother Gladys committed suicide by taking a barbiturate overdose. Her Nevada childhood would haunt Susan for the rest of her life. In the ensuing years, what Berman wanted most was for her father to be remembered for his contributions to the development of Las Vegas. She wrote about Davie in two memoirs, 1981’s critically acclaimed Easy Street and 1996’s Lady Las Vegas. There was speculation after Susan's death that perhaps digging into Davie’s mob past was what got Susan killed. When police, responding to reports of dogs running loose, found Susan’s lifeless body on the floor of her rented house, they also noticed a 1920s Chicago Police “WANTED” poster for her father. Combined with the cause of death – a single gunshot wound to the back of the head – it was not surprising that detectives wondered if Susan had been whacked by the Mafia. That notion was soon debunked when they realized the mobsters of her father’s era would be between 90 and 100 years old. Moreover, nothing Susan was working on was anything she would be killed over.

One person of interest to the police was Berman’s University of California classmate Bobby Durst. She regularly referred to him as her brother and her best friend. They had much in common. Durst was a multimillionaire and the eldest son of a rich New York real-estate tycoon family. Like Berman, Durst’s mother committed suicide when he was a child, falling from the roof of the family mansion while her son watched.

Durst’s wife, Kathleen McCormack, went missing in 1982; he was questioned about the disappearance but never charged with any crime. In 1999, Kathleen’s parents went to court and had their daughter declared dead, even though no body was ever found. It cleared the way for them to settle her estate. But it also cleared the path for Durst to remarry, which he did.

Questioned about Susan’s killing, Durst told investigators he’d spent the holidays in the Hamptons with his second wife at the time Berman was gunned down. But Durst’s wife, Debra Lee Charatan, did not corroborate her husband’s claim. Durst’s celebrity lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, offered up a different alibi: Durst, he said, was on a plane Christmas Eve day – headed from San Francisco, where Durst owned a home, to New York - when Berman’s body was discovered. About the same time police were arriving at Berman’s home, DeGuerin said, Durst was on a plane. The problem with that alibi was that police said Berman had been dead for two days when her body was discovered, which meant Durst was not off the hook. Instead of providing an alibi for his client, DeGuerin unwittingly placed Durst in California at the time of Berman’s murder, just up the coast from the crime scene. Durst, 57 at the time of Susan’s death, was not charged in connection with her murder.

Three years later he was, however, tried for killing Morris Black, an elderly neighbor of his in Galveston, Texas. Durst had moved to that state for fear of being indicted in New York by the Westchester County district attorney, who had reopened the investigation into Durst's first wife’s disappearance. He lived in disguise, masquerading as a mute woman and renting a $300-a-month apartment. Morris Black, 71, a bad-tempered former seaman, lived across the hall.

Black’s body was butchered and stuffed into garbage bags that were found floating in Galveston Bay. Durst was arrested and charged with murder. He posted a $300,000 bond and then jumped bail, leaving the state and thus becoming a fugitive. He was found six weeks later in Pennsylvania, when – despite having $500 in his pocket – he was caught shoplifting a chicken sandwich, a Band-Aid and a newspaper. At trial, Durst admitted the killing, but claimed self defense.

In a shock verdict, the jury acquitted him.

If Durst had admitted to killing Morris Black, then what about Susan Berman, her friends asked. Could he have killed Susan … and his first wife, Kathleen, too? Medical student Kathleen, 29, was last seen on Jan. 31, 1982. Durst told police he’d put her on a Manhattan-bound train at a Katonah, N.Y., station so she could return to classes in the city the next day. He remained at their cottage near South Salem, Westchester County. Five days later, he reported his wife missing.

At the time, Susan Berman acted as Durst’s unofficial spokeswoman, fielding telephone calls from the media so Bobby did not have to deal with them. The dean of Kathleen Durst’s college told investigators that a woman identifying herself as Kathleen called in sick to school around the time of her disappearance. Friends and family believe Susan in fact made that call; they believe Susan knew too much about Kathleen Durst’s disappearance – and that’s what got her killed. Susan, so her confidants said, could be pushy. Perhaps, they surmised, Susan had pushed too far. After all, she’d contacted Bobby and asked for a loan so she could buy a used SUV. Instead, Bobby Durst sent her two separate checks for $25,000, telling her in a note that they were gifts, not loans. Still, the investigation of Durst by Los Angeles police detectives went cold. Authorities named a second man, Nyle Brenner, Susan’s manager, as a person of interest in the case. That probe too went nowhere.

No eyewitnesses to Susan’s murder ever came forward. Susan’s killer simply escaped into the night. At the scene, investigators found the casing of a spent bullet used in a 9mm handgun. It was the best evidence they had. After Durst was arrested in the Black case and police found a 9mm handgun in the trunk of his car, LAPD investigators traveled to Texas and did ballistics tests on the gun to see if it matched the casing found at Berman’s house. The tests were inconclusive.

According to the lead detective, Paul Coulter, he would have done things differently had homicide investigators been called in to handle the case from the start. His office, however, was not given the case until a few days after a news release was issued – eleven long days after the murder. As a result, reporters across the globe began calling the LAPD for information. That was when higher-ups handed off the case to the Robbery-Homicide unit.

“It’s very difficult, because we weren’t there from the get-go,” Detective Coulter said in a telephone interview. Jerry Stephens, Coulter’s partner on the case, retired in mid-2003. Another detective, Jesse Linn, replaced Stephens and paired up with Coulter in the investigation. Later, however, no one seemed to be investigating the murder. There were no new clues or leads.

The Berman investigation, Case No. 000825485, is now a cold one at Parker Center on North Los Angeles Street, where the LAPD's Robbery–Homicide Division is housed. Berman’s murder was one of 548 committed within LAPD’s jurisdiction in 2000.

When she came of age, Susan was given a trust of $5.25 million – which, over the years, she squandered on overspending and bad investments. She purchased three homes and lost them all to foreclosure. Still, for years she kept up a facade and wanted to be treated as if she had money. She was a wealthy Mafia daughter and a respected writer – but she ended up struggling and penniless, living in squalor while she waited for a big movie deal, until she was shot to death in the back of the head, her murderer never apprehended.

Photos courtesy of CourtTV.

The Thin Line Between Life and Death

by Donna Pendergast

It's been more than 20 years since Joseph Passeno (left) and Bruce (Christopher) Michaels (below right) stunned the suburban Detroit community of Rochester Hills with a gruesome crime that defied comprehension and shocked the public.

After finishing dinner at home on Nov. 9, 1989, Wanda Tarr, 58, was headed out in her Chevrolet Cavalier to meet an insurance client when she was forced out of the car at gunpoint by Passeno, then 17, and Michaels, then 16. They took her to Hawthorne Park in nearby Pontiac, where they robbed her and shot her to death. Passeno and Michaels then used her personal identification to find her home, where they told her husband, Glenn Tarr, that they had abducted his wife. The pair then abducted Tarr and forced him to withdraw money from an ATM. Then they took him to Hawthorne park and murdered him next to his wife's body by shooting Tarr six times.

Passeno and Michaels were arrested shortly after their crimes, when they bragged about their thrill kill to schoolmates. They were found guilty of first-degree murder and multiple other charges in a March 1990 jury trial. They were sentenced as adults to life in prison without parole.

After nearly two decades in separate Michigan prisons, Passeno and Michaels bear little resemblance to the fresh-faced teens they were when they went in. His entire face covered in tattoos, Passeno now looks like a mutant from a carnival midway. Michaels lost the baby face once so at odds with his horrific crimes.

Last week, two companion cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court could have implications for the mandatory life sentences imposed on Passeno and Michaels. The court was asked to consider whether life sentences for juvenile defendants constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the Eight Amendment.

The cases before the court involve two Florida residents, Terrance Graham and Joseph Sullivan. Graham, now 22, was 16 when he robbed a restaurant at gunpoint. After serving a year behind bars, he violated the terms of his probation by committing another armed burglary, breaking into a man's house and robbing him at gunpoint. Sullivan was 13 in 1989 when he sexually assaulted a 72-year-old woman in her home during a burglary. It was the eighteenth crime committed by Sullivan, who is mentally disabled, during just two years. Both defendants were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Arguing before the court, petitioners in the current case cited the 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Roper v. Simmons, which banned executing people who commit capital murder before they reach the age of 18, on Eighth Amendment grounds. Lawyers argued that the logic of that ruling should be extended to life sentences, the equivalent of a slow death in prison for an adolescent. As in the Roper case, lawyers highlighted adolescents' limited cognitive capacities to assess and manage impulses because their pre-frontal cortex, which controls them and recognizes consequences, isn't fully developed.

The court could rule in a number of ways. One key point in the pending cases: neither defendant had committed a homicide. The court's opinion could differentiate between juvenile offenders who kill and those who commit lesser crimes. It also could uphold the two defendants' current sentences or set an age limit for when such punishment is inhumane. It could ban life without parole for all juvenile offenders, affecting thousands of cases like those of Michaels and Passeno.

Robust policy discussions have sprung up debating the potential for rehabilitation and reform of juvenile offenders after maturation of the brain. But what about the cold-blooded sociopath who kills with extraordinary brutality and without remorse? What about when the crime is so serious and vile that denying the offender freedom for the rest of his life is the most appropriate response? An antisocial predator who has spent years or decades in prison is extremely unlikely to be able to reintegrate into society. There is no proven treatment for antisocial personality disorders that will drive an inmate to rape or kill if released. Prisons serve not only to rehabilitate and punish but also to prevent those who are a threat to society from harming others.

As a prosecutor, I have seen the bad and the worst for well over two decades. Yet I'm reluctant to dismiss the possibility of reform. I'm more reluctant, though, to release someone who will create more victims if returned to society. Out of 100 murder trials I have prosecuted, only three involved 16-year old-defendants sentenced to life without parole. All three cases involved chronically violent youthful offenders who committed heinous acts beyond comprehension.

Charging a juvenile with an offense carrying the possibility of life without parole is a decision that should not be made lightly. But as a prosecutor, I want that tool in my arsenal.

Statements made in this post are my own and are not intended to reflect the views opinion or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

A Predator's Playland

by Susan Murphy-Milano

In 1984, Adrian Freeman solicited, kidnapped, and raped a prostitute, for which he was charged, and indicted, in Cleveland. Before that case could be adjudicated and closed, in 1987, he kidnapped, raped, and committed gross personal imposition (forcible rape of children under 13 years old), again in the Cleveland area. Freeman was granted bail in both cases.

In October 1988, he jumped bail and fled to Washington, D.C. For 12 years, he was a fixture on the campus of George Washington University. The students and faculty thought of him as a harmless, homeless man. When someone committed similar crimes, no one looked at Freeman as a suspect.

One day, while Freeman stood in front of an on-campus record store, a GWU police officer recognized him from an FBI most-wanted poster. The FBI picked up Freeman on a fugitive warrant in November 2001; U.S. Marshals returned him to Cleveland, where he plead guilty to the rape and kidnapping of the prostitute and the little girls.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prosecutors were happy to get this case resolved. A judge gave Freeman five years, to be served at Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. While serving his time at this supermax facility, he was kept in isolation, away from his fellow inmates, because prison officials feared other inmates would kill him.

After Freeman was released, he moved to Eufaula, Ala. He is a registered sex offender. Every day, Freeman roams the streets -- and visits the only McDonalds in town. Stop in for a hamburger, and you'll find Adrian Freeman sitting at a table near the alcove of the McDondalds Playland, enthusiastically watching the children.

According to authorities, there is nothing anyone can do -- until he strikes again.

What About the Victim?

by Diane Fanning


Just after 3 AM, on February 6, 2007, United States Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman (right) rolled her luggage behind her as she walked in a light drizzle across the C section of the Blue Satellite parking area at Orlando International Airport. It was the last leg of her journey. All she wanted was to go home. As she reached row 33, the sense of relief she expected to feel at this point in her travels shattered when she realized that the strange woman from the shuttle was following her.

Colleen picked up her pace. The footsteps behind her slapped the wet pavement at an increased speed. She cut across to row 31, moving even faster toward her car. Now the sound of the pursuer's running footsteps echoed in her ears. Don't be paranoid, she thought as she tried to calm herself. The woman is probably just going to her own car and is in a hurry.

Despite the self-assurances, anxiety clutched Colleen's body in its tight grip. Relieved to reach her car, she jerked open the rear door and tossed her bag onto the back seat. She slammed it shut and opened the one in front. Sliding behind the steering wheel, Collen pulled the door shut and locked the doors in one swift move.

Two hands slapped on the window beside her. She flinched. Hearing a jerk on the door handle, she jabbed her key into the ignition.

The sight of the woman outside of her car did nothing to still Colleen's fears. Beneath the raised hood of a khaki trench coat, bushy black hair framed a pinched face. The dark glasses the woman wore in the dead of night obscured her eyes. She looked so much like an inept spy from a low-budget film that it would have been laughable if it wasn't so frightening. Colleen's fear for her personal safety ratcheted up yet another notch.
--excerpt from Out There: The In-depth story of the astronaut love-triangle case that shocked America

When her pursuer (right) was arrested, Colleen's fear was justified. In addition to her disguise, the stalker carried pepper spray, a two-pound drilling hammer, a black buck knife, and several feet of rubber tubing. Initially, police charged her with attempted murder and abduction.

The woman who chased Colleen through the airport parking lot wasn't a crazed nobody but Lisa Nowak, an astronaut who'd flown on a mission into space and was obsessed with Colleen's boyfriend, astronaut Billy Oefelein.

Nearly three years after Nowak -- wearing an astronaut diaper to keep stops to a minimum -- drove from Texas to Florida to stalk and terrorize her love rival, a court has finally decided her fate. Instead of the original felonies, Lisa Nowak plead guilty to third-degree burglary of a conveyance and misdemeanor battery.

Colleen Shipman suffered that night -- and continues to suffer -- from extreme trauma brought on by the attack. She pleaded to the judge: "Please don't be fooled. Lisa Nowak is a very good actress. She turned on her charm and spun a pitiful story. Almost three years later, I'm still reeling from her vicious attack. I know in my heart when Lisa Nowak attacked me, she was going to kill me. I believe I escaped a horrible death that night. The world as I knew it before Lisa Nowak attacked me is gone. I constantly look over my shoulder when I go outside so I can't be a victim to a surprise attack again."

She also told the judge that she suffers from migraines and high blood pressure and can no longer sleep without a light on. She's purchased a shotgun and obtained a concealed-weapons permit. "I have horrible anxiety --especially at night. I have terrifying nightmares of being cut into little pieces. I have barricaded my doors."

The judge seemed unmoved. Although he spoke harshly to Nowak -- "You are to stay totally away from her and have absolutely no contact of any sort. You brought this on yourself. I don't have any sympathy for you in that respect" -- he gave her a light sentence: one year probation, two days already served in jail, a mandated eight-hour anger management class, and fifty hours of community service.

On the one hand, Nowak (right) had no criminal record, led an exemplary life before and after the attempted attack, and lost her hard-earned position as a shuttle astronaut at NASA. She was certainly an unusual and unlikely perpetrator.

On the other hand, did that light sentence devalue Colleen by minimizing the trauma she experienced? The woman who stole her peace of mind and sense of security is free to continue her life without any incarceration. Yes, Lisa Nowak had been an outstanding role model most of her life. She lost the career of her dreams. And she still faces possible military charges by the Navy, her home base since she entered the United States Naval Academy in July 1981.

But Nowak isn't haunted by the image of an attacker coming out of the night to end her life. She is not living in fear of a repeat performance.

I can see both viewpoints on this outcome, but one thing still bothers me. If Colleen Shipman had stalked and launched the same attack on famous and lauded astronaut Lisa Nowak, would she have been sentenced so lightly? Shipman also led a model life and also had no prior criminal record. But she wasn't a celebrity. If, under those circumstances, Colleen would have gotten a more severe sentence -- which I think likely -- then justice has not been served.

What do you think?

Here a Gotti, There a Gotti, Everywhere a Gotti: Fourth Time a Charm for Prosecutors?

by Stacy Dittrich

We’ll see if the fourth time is a charm for second-generation mobster John Gotti Jr., 45. As the jury began its deliberation Thursday on racketeering charges against the Gambino Family crime boss, the same circus-like atmosphere and fears of mob retaliation hung like a thick fog in the courtroom, as it had during the three previous trials involving the high-profile gangster -- trials that all resulted in a hung jury. Like his famed father before him, Gotti Jr. has managed to skirt a judicial system that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to lock him up for the rest of his life. Facing the same fate as his father, John “Dapper Don” Gotti Sr., who died in prison in 2002, Gotti Jr. now waits quietly to see if this particular jury will convict him of racketeering or on two murder charges.

The trial to date has already shown signs of an outcome in Gotti Jr.’s favor, the same problems that plagued the previous trials. Some jurors, fearful of mob retaliation and claims of anonymous threats, have requested to be dismissed, while others are clearly staging their support for the defendant — an act that caused presiding judge Kevin Castel to send two of them packing. His decision caused Gotti Jr.’s mother, Victoria, to have a complete meltdown inside the courtroom, one of many bizarre outbursts and displays by the Gotti family.

“F****** animals!” she screamed at the judge after the jurors were dismissed.

“They’re railroading you! They’re doing to you what you did to your father!”

Even though her embarrassed son tried to calm her down, she continued.

“They’re the gangsters! Right there!” she yelled, pointing at the judge and prosecutors. “The ****** gangsters! You sons of bitches! Put your own sons in there! You ********!”

She was quickly removed from the courtroom but could still be heard yelling in the hallway. Earlier in the trial, Gotti Jr. referred loudly to a prosecution witness as a “dog” and a “punk.” Prosecutors also alleged Gotti Jr. mouthed the words “I’ll kill you” to another witness. However, prosecutors are confident that their star witness, former Gotti Jr. best friend, mobster, and recent rat, John Alite, 47, will be their smoking gun. Unfortunately, Alite’s testimony sounded like it came directly from the "Goodfellas" screenplay.

“When I went to restaurants, I didn’t wait. When I went to shows, I got the best seats,” he testified. “When we went to stores, we got suits custom-made. We got treated like celebrities.

“People looked at me differently and they knew I was somebody. I didn’t have to wait in line at the bakery.”

Alite said he bought “the best of everything,” including $500 Bruno Magli shoes, Rolex watches, gold bars, diamonds, and 24 cars.

Quite frankly, his testimony may be just slightly unbelievable, as the non-Italian son of a taxi cab driver testified in a dirty, gray, sweatshirt and looked like a two-bit street thug. Not to mention, he never testified in the prior trials because he was on the run from his own charges. He only agreed to testify against Gotti Jr. (pictured left) under promises of a lesser sentence from the prosecution.

It will be interesting to see if Gotti Jr. inherits his father’s Teflon. If so, it will even be more interesting to see just how federal prosecutors get a conviction. No matter the outcome, it’s pretty obvious that the theories of mob extinction are debunked. They’re clearly as strong and powerful as ever.

How Crime Victims Become Crime Survivors

by Diane Dimond

It was an overcast October Saturday at the Joint Forces Training Base at Los Alamitos, California. The 7 am start time was daunting, but I’d promised to go. I’m glad I did. It was the annual “Survive and Thrive” 5K run/walk event put on by a group called Crime Survivors. Note that it’s not crime victims – it’s crime survivors. And before you ask, no, I didn’t run, but I did walk.

The woman who started Crime Survivors is Patricia Wenskunas, my hero.

She is a blond dynamo, a catering event planner by trade and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and attempted murder. She speaks gently, but her message packs a wallop: Crime victims deserve consideration, at least as much consideration as the criminal gets. It was a point I heard repeatedly from the crowds who attended this annual event, all touched in life-changing ways. Several participants wore T-shirts with the image of their dead loved one, taken away in a sudden spurt of violence.

Many told me what they’d endured: childhood rapes, adult sexual assaults, domestic violence deaths, or family who were killed by repeat drunk drivers. Several spoke of senseless murder. Every single person said after police arrived to tell them the awful news they were left in a foggy swirl of loneliness. They spoke of how hard it was to heal and discover the pathway to their own recoveries.

“Hi, I’m Diane Dimond. May I ask what brought you here today?”

Juenenne, a woman about my age, silently pointed to the picture of her handsome son, Jake Eric Jackson, on her shirt. Her chin quavered, her eyes brimmed and suddenly there we were – two total strangers standing on a parade field on a distant military base full of victims' rights advocates – hugging each other.

“He was at a club one night. There were a couple of guys disrespecting a young lady, and Jake stepped in to help. One hit him in the face and wrestled with him. One took out a gun and shot Jake in the chest. As he lay dying, the other man kicked him and stomped on him.”

Juenenne had driven nearly two hours that morning from her home in Phelan, California, as a step along her path to recovery. She hoped mixing with others who shared similar pain might ease her sorrow.

Doves Mean Hope

After the speeches, Patricia invited a few family members up to the front to hold and then release beautiful white doves into the overcast sky. As touching music played, Patricia gave a lingering hug to each survivor, and then the doves flew off, one by one, instinctively circling overhead, waiting for the others so they could fly off in unison. Their unity in the dreary sky was inspiring. That’s when I first noticed Mary Ann, who was certainly thinking of her dead son, Jonathan Muse, as she released her dove.

On the walking path lined with three-foot-tall pictures of lost loved ones, Mary Ann and I talked. She’d been angry at her 17-year-old son for getting his 16-year-old girlfriend pregnant. In a huff, he’d jumped on a bike at midnight and ridden off down the street. A carload of gang members happened by and inexplicably shot Jonathan dead. Mary Ann, a nurse who is married to a police officer, was pushing a baby carriage as we talked. Inside was little Shayla (photo below right), the new grandbaby who will never know her father.

“I don’t know what I’d do without this child,” Mary Anne said as she clenched her teeth against the tears.

Juenenne got justice. The two men who killed her son are in prison. Mary Ann has not, and that's part of the problem so many victims of crime face. Their terrible loss is made more burdensome as they try to navigate the justice system. Police are too busy to deliver updates on their cases, court proceedings are confusing, and the parole system is frightening. On this staggeringly long journey to justice, these folks feel victimized again and again.

I wish we could clone Patricia’s Crime Survivors group nationwide. They help educate the public and police about victim’s rights. They push to change laws and attitudes. Crime Survivors donates thousands of adult and child emergency victim bags to law enforcement every year so officers can offer a victim something. The bag contains a list of vital phone numbers, toiletries including a toothbrush, first aid kit and a journal with a pen so victims can write down their thoughts on the road to survival.

Our system simply doesn’t help crime victims. I hope you never have to experience what they’ve gone through, but odds are you might.

For more information on Crime Survivors visit www.CrimeSurvivors.com

A Jew in St. Lou

by Lisa R. Cohen

I write this on a flight to St. Louis, where I'll be speaking today at their annual Jewish Book Festival. OK, my last name is Cohen, and that automatically confers Jewish bona fides - unless you're a British child these days trying to get into an elite private school and your mother is a convert! But other than my roots, what does AFTER ETAN, the 30-year-long (and counting) story of the most famous missing child since the Lindbergh baby, have to do with Judaism?

Turns out, a lot. Etan Patz was Jewish. His parents, Stan and convert Julie (Etan and his siblings wouldn't have been accepted to that British school), liked Israeli names. Etan's sister is Shira; his brother is Ari. Etan's uncle was a renowned rabbi who headed up a large suburban N.J. congregation. Early in the case, authorities learned Rabbi Patz took dozens of children on an annual summer trip to an Israeli kibbutz. The rumors ran wild - a family rift over religious differences? Maybe Uncle Norman had spirited Etan to Israel to bring him up more devoutly?

It was a ridiculous notion, not the least because Uncle Norman was a reform rabbi. But the Israel angle resurfaced repeatedly, after a mysterious photograph of Etan, taken by Stan Patz himself, surfaced in an Israeli magazine a few years after the boy disappeared. An even more bizarre twist? The picture's caption read "Etan Ben Haim" (Etan, Son of Life). No one could ever figure out how or why that photo appeared.

Ten years in, Federal Prosecutor Stuart GraBois, who at the time was just taking over this now-cold case, traveled to Israel with an FBI agent (photo at left) in an attempt to resolve the connection. The two men crisscrossed the country to visit Ben Haim families, knocking on doors and demanding birth certificates for any boy named Etan. All to no avail, and the mystery endures.

Then there was GraBois himself, a man who has relentlessly pursued the Patz case to this day. Despite the French-sounding name, Stuart GraBois was a Bensonhurst boy who celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in Brooklyn, where he'd grown up in a tight-knit Jewish home. There were French roots, to be sure. Before leaving Paris for New York in 1906, GraBois's grandfather had seen first-hand the damage of France's infamous "Affaire Dreyfus," and would often talk to his grandson with deep anger and sadness about the decade-long travesty. The elder GraBois vividly recalled the injustice done to Jewish artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus (photo at right). Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason and imprisoned for four years on the notorious Devil's Island, a French prison off the coast of South America, before his name was finally cleared. His case was immortalized by author Emile Zola's "J'Accuse!"

"That's why we came to America," Benjamin GraBois would tell his grandson. "Because justice is possible. Here you have a chance to go to school to make sure people get treated fairly." As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, GraBois took his grandfather's words seriously.

Over the last several years of this case, Stan Patz and now-former prosecutor Stuart GraBois joined forces against one man, serial pedophile Jose Antonio Ramos (photo below right). And here's where the Jewish ties start to strain credulity. But then, the best non-fiction stories are the ones that read like fiction. Two other unlikely allies also lent their time and effort to make the case against Ramos. These two informants separately approached GraBois, each unaware the other was doing so, because they both knew Ramos from behind bars. Both offered to help extract his confession.

In a clandestine undercover operation, GraBois inserted first one of the men, and then the other, into Ramos’s cell. One played an elaborate con. He passed himself off as both a lawyer and an amateur shrink. He escaped with incriminating evidence against Ramos but almost got himself killed in his high-stakes game. The other was more straightforward, but he, too, feared for his life. By the time he left the shared cell, he was convinced Ramos was a madman.

Their original link to Ramos? Both of them were Jewish, and both had met Ramos at prison religious services or as part of Jewish study behind bars! In fact, one of them later revealed to me that he’d risked his safety to go after Ramos because it made him crazy watching Ramos pretend to be a Jew.

Yes, that’s right, Jose Antonio Ramos underwent a jailhouse conversion. Even though he had Christian pen pals to whom he was still quoting New Testament scripture, Ramos also began wearing a yarmulke and dropping Yiddish phrases. He refused to cut his hair for religious reasons, and demanded the same kosher dietary considerations etc., as the few other Jewish inmates at the prison. He claimed to have discovered – late in life - his own grandfather’s roots as a Spanish Jew.

All of these connections, some more absurd than others, led me to the Jewish Book Festival, here in St. Louis, where I've now landed. But perhaps most resonant for me are the themes, prominent in Jewish history and culture, that this book echoes so fervently: survival under the worst of conditions; a search for justice no matter how long it takes; and the edict former Federal Prosecutor Stuart GraBois continues to live by – Never, ever, ever, ever give up.

Finger Pointing 101

by Kathryn Casey

Some cases linger. Even after trials are long over, they make headlines. It seems that victims and their families will never gain closure.

At times, the twists and turns can be shocking. Even those things we thought were agreed upon are challenged. Consider this situation: A defendant testifies at his trial that he's sure he pulled the trigger. Yup, no one else was in the apartment at the time. Nope, his kind-of-a-girlfriend hadn't been with him and the victim at all that night. She couldn't have done it. Well, my thought is that it's pretty hard to later claim that the girlfriend was in fact the murderer, don't you think?

Yet, that's apparently what's happening in Austin's Colton Pitonyak case, the subject of my true crime book, A Descent Into Hell.

In a nutshell, here's the case: Pitonyak (photo below right) was a privileged kid out of Little Rock who grew up in big houses and went to private schools. He was also brilliant, a national merit scholar finalist with a $150,000 scholarship to the University of Texas's esteemed McComb's School of Business. When he graduated from high school, his teachers predicted Pitonyak would return to Arkansas as a young Donald Trump. Instead, just two short years later, the honor student was flunking and modeling himself more after Tony Soprano.

Enter his would-be girlfriend: While at UT, Pitonyak hooked up with Laura Hall, (photo below left), a bright but troubled young woman who idolized his bad-boy image. She would become Pitonyak's partner in the grisly crime that lay ahead.

The victim in this case was Jennifer Cave (photo above). Like Pitonyak and Hall, Cave was highly intelligent. With long red hair and freckles, she had a keen sense of humor and, friends and family say, a good heart. Yet she, too, lived on the edge, struggling with a drug addiction that she complained felt as if it stalked her. Ironically, the night she died, Jennifer had just worked her first day at an exciting new job and appeared serious about shaking her demons and starting over.

This is, without a doubt, the most disturbing case I've ever covered, forcing me to confront the frightening world of kids, drugs, guns, and violence. Three bright, college-age kids with everything ahead delved into Austin's drug culture and ended up throwing their lives away. In the end, Pitonyak was convicted of murder, and Hall was sentenced to five years for helping him dismember Cave's body, like the gangsters they emulated. After they cut up Jennifer's body in Pitonyak's apartment bathtub, Hall took him on a joyride to Mexico in her green Caddy, cavalierly telling a friend, "That's just how I roll."

So, here's the current situation: As I mentioned above, at the trial, Pitonyak testified that he felt sure he fired the fatal shot. He said that although he remembered little of that night, high on drugs and booze, he had to have, since no one but he and Jennifer Cave were in his apartment that night. His explanation: He hadn't meant to kill Jennifer; it had to have been an accident, but he accepted responsibility.

Now, however, it appears that Pitonyak has changed his mind. Last week, with his chances for a new trial drying up, Pitonyak's attorney filed a new appeal, arguing that Laura Hall is the killer.

That's a switch, isn't it?

What do they have to backup their claims? Pitonyak's attorneys are arguing that two friends who testified Hall was miles away the night the murder took place are mistaken. If so, Hall doesn't have a solid alibi for that night. And they have something else: the accounts of two inmates of the Travis County jail, who reportedly say Laura Hall confessed to Cave's murder during a jailhouse therapy group.

How's this going to end? The unexpected does happen, but I think it's a hard sell. After all, in the courtroom Pitonyak looked the jurors in the eyes and testified that Hall wasn't in his apartment on the night Jennifer died. While I don't fault Pitonyak's attorneys for filing the appeal -- their job after all is to do all they can to get him a new trial -- this is yet another example of how victims and their families suffer not just through the horrific initial loss and the subsequent painful trial, but often for years after, while cases are being appealed. As for Jennifer's family, they insist that they have no doubt that Pitonyak is the murderer.

Photos from the Austin American Statesman

Handwriting Analysis: An Interview with Sheila Lowe

by Andrea Campbell

I studied handwriting analysis extensively and wrote a novel about a handwriting analyst character over 14 years ago, but could never get it published. Today I’d like you to meet our guest, Sheila Lowe, who has managed to do what I could not. (Sheila Lowe, pictured at left)

Q.: Sheila, for readers who don’t know you, could you talk a little about your background as a forensic handwriting specialist?

A.: I started studying handwriting more than 40 years ago while I was in high school, and subsequently spent 10 years reading every book I could find on the subject. Finally, I discovered Charlie Cole, an expert who taught correspondence courses in graphology, which I greedily devoured. I became certified by the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation in 1981 and four years later became qualified in the court system to testify as an expert in the field of handwriting. Dare I use a cliché and say, “the rest is history”?

Q.: What is the difference between graphology and handwriting analysis?

A.: Graphology is the generic term for handwriting analysis; however, the study of handwriting is generally broken into two different areas: personality assessment and handwriting authentication.

Q.: How are these disciplines used?

A.: Graphology is the study of handwriting to learn about behavior and personality—which includes the effects of life experiences on handwriting, as well as of illness, medications, aging, drugs, etc. Another aspect of handwriting analysis is forensic handwriting authentication, which is used in cases involving forgery. So, if you want to get better insight into your own or someone else’s motivations and needs, graphology can help. If someone has stolen your identity and forged your name, you need a handwriting analyst trained in the authentication side. Some analysts do one or the other, some (like me) do both.

Q.: Graphology gets a bad rap; can you explain?

A.: Because there is no licensing and no controls over the practice, anyone can set up shop and start analyzing handwriting after reading a book or two. There are thousands of web sites hawking graphology, many of them by people who would not be able to get a license, if only there were a requirement to get one! They have done a great deal of harm to the field and their clients. Also, there’s long been a misconception that graphology has something to do with fortune telling or occult arts. It doesn’t.

Q.: Will you talk about some of the characteristics an expert can discern using handwriting analysis?

A.: The general categories I cover in a personality profile include ego needs and ego strength, social attitudes, thinking style, fears and defenses—things like that. A lot depends on the purpose of the analysis. If I’m doing a report for an employer who has sent me handwritings of applicants, I would examine the areas specific to the job description. If the report were for a couple getting married, or for a mid-life career change, or for a child custody issue, the focus would be different.

Q.: Let’s get to your writing. What are your books? May we have a mini-synopsis?

A.: I write both non-fiction and fiction books. My non-fiction works are The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis (Alpha), which teaches the gestalt method of graphology and is like a mini course, and Handwriting of the Famous & Infamous (Thunder Bay), which has my thumbnail sketches of the handwritings of 75 well-known people from Galileo to the Son of Sam, from John Lennon to Hillary Clinton, and a whole lot of others. I also write mystery fiction — The Forensic Handwriting Mystery series (Penguin’s Obsidian) featuring forensic handwriting expert Claudia Rose. Dead Write, the third book in the series, was recently released, and I’ve just finished the next book, Unholy Writ, for release next year.

Q.: Who is your protagonist and what type of character is she?

A.: Claudia Rose is a modern single woman entering her forties, who, in the first book, Poison Pen, becomes involved with LAPD detective Joel Jovanic. Her handwriting analysis practice brings her in touch with crimes such as forgery, and using what she knows, she’s better able to understand the people, both good and bad, who are involved. Claudia has a hard time staying detached in cases where kids are in jeopardy, which is the case in Written in Blood and Unholy Writ. She’s warm and compassionate, but she’s learning to be tough when she needs to be. And she’s learning to allow herself to open up in a love relationship — one of her big challenges at the beginning of the series.

Q.: Do you use the misconceptions about handwriting analysis in your books?

A.: Yes. Claudia regularly has to answer the same questions and misconceptions that I do. I hope the series will help clear things up.

Q.: Does your character go into the courts?

A.: In Written in Blood there is a major courtroom scene that is very similar to testimonies I’ve given in my own practice. Claudia has to face the same challenges and stress of testifying that I do.

Q.: On the business side, how did you find a publisher? Did you start with an agent?

A.: I’ve had seven agents, and now I have a good one. I sold my fiction books and the first two mysteries on my own. It’s a lot easier to sell non-fiction without an agent, but I did a lot of studying on how to go about it before setting out. In fact, I read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published, and following its guidelines may have made the difference. I tried for a long time and, as I said, a number of agents, to sell my first mystery, Poison Pen, to a major publishing house. Finally, I had an offer from a small startup publisher, Capital Crime. They got the book reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly. I was lucky enough to get a starred review, which attracted the attention of my then-editor at Penguin, who made an offer for the first two books, and later, two more.

Q.: What can you tell us about your publisher and your experience (e.g., contract, editing, promotion, anything such as that) with them?

A.: Considering my good experience with a small press (for fiction), I encourage anyone having difficulty getting picked up by a large publishing house to try them. You’ll have control over cover art and work closely with your editor. At large houses, you’re likely to get your book cover with a note that says, “Here’s your cover. We hope you love it as much as we do.” Luckily, so far, I have! Regardless of the size of your publisher you will be expected to promote the book yourself (and pay for the promotion yourself). If you’re not willing and able to do that, don’t even bother looking for a publisher. They need to know that you’re willing to invest your (probably small) advance in promotion. That means creating a web site and/or blog, printing bookmarks, attending conventions and speaking on panels, visiting bookstores, etc. One note about bookstores: unless you have a very well-known name, book signings tend to be a waste of time and the big box stores discourage them. It’s often more effective just to do a “drop-in” signing. Call in advance to make sure they have your books in stock.

Q.: Do you have any advice for writers who want to break into the field?

A.: Learn your craft. If you’re writing genre fiction, find out what the rules are so that you can break them. Get into a critique group in your genre, hire a private editor to read your material, and listen to what that editor has to say about your work. Oh, and leave out most of the adverbs (those pesky “ly” words that make the writing weak).

Q.: Is there anything you would like to tell WCI Readers?

A.: Buy books! Whether they’re traditional books that you can cuddle up in bed with, or a Kindle that you can take on a plane (where I’m writing this, on my way to Bouchercon, a mystery convention), support your favorite authors. When someone tells me, “I love your books. I pass them around to all my friends,” I remind them that authors don’t get royalties on borrowed books, and it’s those royalties that allow authors to keep on writing the stories they love to read.

Thank you, Sheila.

http://www.sheilalowe.com/ for handwriting analysis;

http://www.claudiaroseseries.com/ for mystery

Eleven Bodies and Counting

by Pat Brown

The people living in Anthony Sowell's Cleveland neighborhood are appalled and stunned to find a serial killer in their midst. Sowell, a convicted rapist, is now an alleged serial killer (alleged, since we have yet to prove he killed the 11 women found dead in his house and any others who turn up as police tear apart his house; he could have just been maintaining a graveyard for a buddy). They ask how so many citizens could disappear without law enforcement warning that a serial killer was at large in their area.

Even worse: How could so many women go missing right around a violent sex-offender's home -- especially a house that reeked of death so badly that neighbors complained to the city? No parole officer went in to see if there was something amiss. No police detective brought a cadaver dog by to check out the stench.

Is this an anomaly? Is this a particularly bad police department? Is the city totally uncaring about these women because they were black, in a rundown area? No. This scenario occurs over and over across the country, which is why the handling of serial-homicide investigation needs to change.

First, let's look at the police department. Can you say "not enough manpower and funding to handle all their cases"? You bet. Any big city police department is drowning under its caseload. Shrinking tax dollars mean slashed city budgets, including public safety funding. Cities are furloughing officers and hiring no new ones. Detectives don't have the time or manpower to clear backlogs of rape and murder cases, let alone reports of missing people.

Complicate this with the victims themselves. It's unlikely that all of Sowell's victims were drug addicts, alcoholics, or prostitutes (he could have grabbed a church lady coming by with tracts on how to bring Jesus into his life). But the more times the possible victim has disappeared before (off on a drunk, out of town with a boyfriend, off to score drugs), and the longer her rap sheet before she went missing, the more likely it is that an overworked detective won't take time away from rape and murder investigations to spend hours tracking down some woman who is off bingeing in Atlantic City.

Anthony Sowell knows all this very well. He knows which victims to grab: those who are easy to con, and those police are unlikely to look for. Some victims won't go to the police because they have criminal records, or they don't believe the authorities will believe them. Tanja Doss was attacked by Sowell four years ago, but never reported the assault for just that reason. Sowell also knows police don't like to admit there are serial rapists and serial killers in their jurisdictions, because that means community pressure. Serial murder cases are extremely difficult to solve and terribly time consuming. The police are just too tired to deal with more demands.

There are, however, methods which could improve this situation. One is to establish a Suspected Serial-Homicide unit. All missing persons, unsolved rapes and sexual murders go into the unit's database and are monitored. This way someone is paying attention to a map that would, for example, eventually have shown a lot of dots around Anthony Sowell's house. There would also be a dedicated detective or two to link crimes together and pay extra attention to violent sex offenders who have been released back into the community.

We could also use more training in psychopathy for detectives, parole officers, and parole boards. Many are unable to recognize psychopathic manipulation and ploys. Some will think Sowell is rehabilitated (which can never happen with sex offenders) and no longer dangerous if he periodically offers barbeque to neighbors (which Sowell apparently did). Essentially, for many dealing with sexual psychopaths, if they see no evil and hear no evil, the sex offender is behaving himself.

Some people ask if Sowell is one of those brilliant serial killers who are always portrayed like Hannibal Lecter in movies. The answer is no. Most serial sex offenders are of average intelligence, but they get lucky because they grab their victims when no one sees them do it, often pick victims who aren't missed, and their crimes get lost in the excess of criminal activity in the jurisdiction. Investigative methods and training often fail to identify these predators.

Anthony Sowell was one of those who got lucky. His house smelled like dead bodies for years, but many thought the smell came from the sausage factory next door. The owner of the factory went nuts trying to eliminate the smell, spending thousands of dollars replacing equipment, because even he thought the horrific odor might be the factory's doing. What a break for Sowell!

Sowell, a 50-year-old ex-Marine, was previously convicted when he was 30. He received just 15 years for kidnapping, choking, and raping a woman, because a plea agreement reduced the charge to attempted rape. So, actually, Sowell isn't even a convicted rapist, though he is a registered sex offender. Considering the violence the woman faced before she escaped, I bet she would have ended up dead if she hadn't jumped out of a window. I also bet Sowell committed many more crimes before he got caught for this one. Unfortunately, he did his time, and in June 2005 he was released and given another chance at life; another chance to rape and kill.

Sadly, 11 or more women will never get their second chances.

When Loved Ones Do The Unthinkable

by Diane Dimond

There’s a drama playing out in West Babylon, New York that makes you want to go home and tell your family how much you love them. It also makes you wonder how much bad news about your loved one you could accept if he or she did something so horrible it caused seven innocents to lose their lives.

On Sunday, July 26th, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, Diane Schuler got behind the wheel of her red mini-van with five children, all under the age of nine -- including her brother's three little girls -- to return home from an upstate New York camping trip. At some point during the drive, Schuler’s young niece, Emma, picked up a cell phone and called her father. “There’s something wrong with Aunt Diane!” she is reported to have cried.

Diane Schuler had inexplicably gotten on a suburban highway going the wrong way. The horrific head-on crash that followed -- after she drove the wrong way for almost two miles -- killed everyone in her vehicle except her five-year-old son, Bryan. Three unsuspecting men in the other vehicle, a Chevy TrailBlazer SUV, all died. In a split second, eight people were dead in a pile of twisted and burning wreckage barely recognizable as automobile parts.

Flash forward to the toxicology report on this seemingly happily married mother of two. The coroner’s office concluded that Diane Schuler had a blood-alcohol level of .19 – more than twice the legal limit – plus six grams of unabsorbed alcohol in her stomach. In addition, her blood carried 113 nanograms per milliliter of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The medical examiner said the level indicated Diane had smoked weed as recently as 15 minutes before the fiery crash. Translated: Schuler was very drunk and very high at the time of the accident.

Oh, and police report they found a 1.75-liter bottle of vodka in the minivan after the deadly accident.

Police waited until after the dead were buried to release Diane Schuler's toxicology report. After the information came to light, the grieving husband, Daniel, went before the press to categorically deny his 36-year-old wife had an alcohol or drug problem. He revealed he works nights, and their two children were frequently left with a babysitter, but he insisted some sort of unidentified medical problem must have caused her to lose control of the car. “She was a perfect wife, upstanding mother, a hard worker, a reliable person, trustworthy,” he said through his tears, remembering both his wife and his dead two-year-old daughter.

Denial in the face of reality. And a mourning man is left to nurse his critically wounded young son back to health. Your heart goes out to Daniel Schuler, as delusional as he is in the face of overwhelming forensics.

But that’s not all this new widower must face. A flamboyant New York attorney named Irving Anolik has entered the picture to claim “there’s a strong fragrance of criminality” to the crash deaths. He plans to file a civil suit against the Schulers. Anolik represents the family of Guy and Michael Bastardi, a father and son who died in the SUV. Anolik says it is “inconceivable” that the Schulers were unaware Diane had a drinking and drug problem.

“Any person who was aware that she was drinking is an accomplice … whoever sold her the marijuana committed a crime,” said Anolik. “She didn’t just wake up one morning with a drug problem and capable of drinking that much alcohol.”

Anolik has a point, but the whole idea of blaming the family and making them pay for their dead loved one’s actions doesn’t sit well with me. I completely understand the urge for revenge, the need to make someone pay you back for the awful thing that’s happened. But ultimately, it's empty satisfaction.

We’ve become a society of blame seekers. Someone must take the blame for all the bad things that happen to us in life. One person’s bad judgment can't be merely accepted. For some reason, we need to point the finger of responsibility at others and demand money to ease our hurt and our loss. Of course, money doesn’t do either. The dead are still dead, and we still feel the tremendous loss deep in our souls.

But there’s always a lawyer willing to take the case for the promise of 30% of the settlement amount. Almost all the plaintiffs I’ve spoken to at the end of long, grueling, wrongful-death lawsuits say the same thing. In retrospect, they realize the years-long legal process they endured only served to keep their grief fresh. It prolonged the pain and the time it took to heal. The family of the Bastardi father and son were in court recently asking a judge to name an executor of Diane's estate so they'll have something to sue.

Do I think the survivors of the dead in this case deserve something? Yes. They deserve some peace for the awful event that has shattered their lives.

It's not CSI Folks!

by Kathryn Casey

Over the decades, I've spent a considerable amount of time in courtrooms. It’s part of the job. Awhile back, I sat in on a long trial, seven weeks. (There I am below right.) On the first day, I heard a phrase I hear in nearly every trial I attend these days. The prosecutor had the crime scene specialist on the stand, and the D.A. said something on the order of, “It’s not exactly CSI, is it, Sir?”

The investigator said, “No, it’s not.”

It may seem odd that a television program was a topic of testimony in a murder trial, but the CSI-type shows come up more often than not in courtrooms. Prosecutors increasingly feel compelled to defuse the myth, to explain to jurors who watch the sophisticated CBS series and others like it that not all the gadgets and techniques they see in television are gospel, and that even the ones that do exist often aren’t available in run-of-the-mill, budget-strapped cop shops.

What types of crime solving methods? You know, like the holographic facial reconstruction on Fox’s Bones. At times, it can actually be pretty comical. I once had lunch with a homicide cop and a crime scene officer, while they laughed about a CSI Miami episode in which a murder was solved based on an ant bite. Bite evidence is, of course, not unusual. But in this case, the TV sleuths measured and mapped an ant bite on a corpse, reconstructing the little critter’s minuscule mandible, then linked the resulting information not only to a certain species but – forgive me if this is wrong I am getting it second hand – to a specific ant colony. Wham! Crime solved. Wow. I was impressed. But everyone else at the table found the plot less than plausible.

Why is the CSI effect a bad thing in a courtroom? Prosecutors fear jurors who watch such unrealistic, forensic heavy programs may expect too much. They may expect absolute physical evidence to convict.

Of course, there’s another side to the coin. Many defense attorneys object to the CSI comment. Why? For the defense, it’s not usually a bad thing for juries to assume all the stuff on CSI is real world. If they believe the TV show is gospel, jurors figure their local P.D. hasn’t met the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a case without iron-clad forensic evidence. After all if CSI is viewed by many as a real-world guideline for how a crime scene is investigated, what’s to be made of a police department without equipment to measure an ant bite and conclusively tie it to the correct ant hill? Of course that assumes a police department has an unlimited budget, a state-of-the-art lab, and the likes of David Caruso on staff.

Maybe it’s not surprising or new that we’re getting drawn in by dramatic presentations on television and confusing them with real life. I remember the first murder trial I sat through as a fledgling reporter, more than two decades ago. I’d grown up watching Perry Mason on my family’s black-and-white television, and I was shocked that witnesses weren’t allowed to ramble on without waiting for lawyers’ questions and, even more so, that neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney cornered a single witness on the stand and spurred a confession.

Actually, to this day, I’m still waiting to be in a courtroom where a suspect yells out: “All right, I did it!”

Mommy's Little Girl

by Diane Fanning

More than a year ago, I agreed to write a book about a story that dominated the national media. I finished my manuscript in mid-May this year, and it seems like that day was long, long ago. Today, at last, St, Martin's Press releases MOMMY'S LITTLE GIRL: Casey Anthony and Her Daughter Caylee's Tragic Fate.

I kept photos of Caylee in front of me as I wrote. As a mother, I could not comprehend how any woman could carry a baby in her body for nine long months and then, two to three years later, look at the innocent, trusting face and even think of harming her toddler. I thought of my own daughter often as I researched and dug into the facts of this incomprehensible crime.

I really did not want to believe that Casey Anthony -- or any mother -- could murder her own daughter. But after months of immersion in the available evidence and in interviews with people close to the case, I could reach no other conclusion.

So I was gratified by the reviews the book already received, making months of slogging through the muck worthwhile.

Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel wrote of MOMMY'S LITTLE GIRL: "Author Diane Fanning tirelessly recounts the young woman's lying ways, theorizes how Anthony might have disposed of her daughter and concludes that Anthony is 'an individual whose self-absorption and insensitivity to others is a destructive force.'"

Mike DeForest of WKMG-Channel 6 News said in a television book review: "At least for a little while, for people following the Casey Anthony saga, this is basically going to be like a bible for them."

Want additional reading material before picking up the book? See my post, Is Malignant Narcissism the Answer? here at Women in Crime Ink -- or read the first chapter of the book on my website. You can also view video clips of my interview with 48 Hours.

You'll find MOMMY'S LITTLE GIRL in bookstores everywhere today. If you pick up a copy, I'd love to hear your feedback (write diane@dianefanning.com) after you read the book. But whether you read it or not, I am sure you will join me in demanding nothing less than justice for little Caylee.

Money and Murder

by Katherine Scardino

Did you know it costs more than $2 million, give or take a few hundred thousand, to prosecute a capital-murder defendant from the moment of arrest until the jury returns a verdict? That's without the continuing costs of a decade or so of appeals of every death sentence.

Killing a citizen for killing another citizen to prevent the killer from killing again is costly -- and frankly, embarrassing. Many studies find there is absolutely no evidence that executing the “worst of the worst” deters anyone from committing any kind of crime, especially murder. In 1995, a poll by Hart Research Associates found that the majority of police chiefs did not believe the death penalty significantly reduces the number of homicides. In fact, these police chiefs ranked it as the least effective way to reduce crime. The only thing Texas has gotten from all its many executions is a bad reputation and the distinction of killing more people than any other state in the United States, as well as some entire countries.

After 33 years of executions (since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed restoration of the death penalty in 1976), some states are looking at the bottom line: What are we getting in return for executing violent criminals? New Mexico recently backed away from capital punishment. The cost is too great for the return; worse, several prisoners have been exonerated, which can scare even the most steadfast death-penalty supporter. No one can stomach the execution of an innocent person.

Texas is currently in turmoil over the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of setting a fire that killed his three young daughters in 1991. The evidence used to declare the fire arson in 1991 has been found flawed and unreliable by Texas' arson commission in 2009.

It appears that Texas did, in fact, execute a man for a crime he did not commit. Oops! My bad! What else can we say? Well, according to Gov. Rick Perry, right after he replaced three members of the arson commission, Cameron Todd Willingham (photo below) was a “bad man” who deserved to die, right? No, Gov. Perry, you are wrong. Whether Mr. Willingham was a “bad man” wasn't the point. The point is that Texas spent the money to have a jury trial, and presented bad, incompetent, allegedly “expert” evidence about arson -- and that this evidence led a jury to find Willingham guilty of capital murder and sentence him to death.

There are so many flaws in the U.S. capital-punishment system that it's hard to pick just one. It would be nice if capital punishment were eliminated in the United States so we could join the company of the rest of the world's civilized nations. But more likely, it will be because of money, money, money.

Let’s look briefly at the money issue. In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years -- and that's from a Dallas Morning News report back in 1992! Obviously, as of 2009, the cost is even higher. In California, the death-penalty system costs taxpayers $114 million each year, above and beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life. (L.A. Times, March 6, 2005).

The cost of a capital crime -- a crime for which a person may be sentenced to death -- can be too much for some jurisdictions, such as Austin County, Texas. In August in a small, bucolic community halfway between Austin and Houston, four men, all relatives, were arrested, jailed and charged with capital murder in the death of a Houston doctor visiting his summer home there. Austin County hasn't had a capital-murder prosecution in 15 years. The cost of prosecuting these four men for capital murder will be prohibitive. Each of the four defendants is entitled to two defense lawyers, defense experts, and a multitude of other defense expenses.

So: What if smaller counties “Just Say No”? Their resources could be channeled into better schools, more police officers, solving old crimes, building new libraries, etc.

That would leave only the larger jurisdictions prosecuting capital cases. And how could that be acceptable? That would mean if someone committed a capital murder in Harris County, for example, they could be sentenced to death. If the same person committed the same crime in a small county, he wouldn't be charged with capital murder -- so punishment would be determined by where a crime was committed.

That is exactly what is happening in various counties across Texas, making the death penalty even more flawed and inequitable.

The cost of prosecuting a capital case is enormous. The return is small -- so small that all you get back is one executed person unable to commit any more crimes -- and a lot of invoices. Let’s ALL just say no.

Funny, Freaky, Freeing, or Just Plain Irresponsible?

by Robin Sax

Marge Simpson’s "Playboy" pictures are out now in the November issue. It's the first time a cartoon character has been featured on the risqué magazine's cover, and I’ve got to admit -- at first I chuckled. Then I started thinking ... Why? Why Marge? Why "Playboy"?

Marge Simpson is a wife and mother of three kids on Fox's long-running series, “The Simpsons.” The "Playboy" pictures feature Marge (remember, she’s an animated character) sitting naked on a bunny chair, wearing nothing but her signature blue hairdo. The spread also features a story inside called, “The Devil in Marge Simpson.”

There has been much banter about this on the blogs, and I really liked what Hollywood Gossip had to say on the matter:

As a housewife and mother of three, we fear that Marge’s pictorial - which includes a three-page spread and interview -- sets a bad example. What will Maggie [her daughter] think when she gets old enough to use Google? How will Bart’s classmates react to these images? It’s really all the fault of Kate Gosselin. Clearly jealous of the attention that famous mom has received -- Marge set out to reclaim the spotlight. Mission (grossly) accomplished.

Of course this is a tongue-in-cheek post, but it raises an important question: How does this affect the children? As a woman, there’s a part of me that thinks it’s refreshing to see a “regular” (if imaginary) mom on the coveted cover of a major magazine. It’s a nice change of pace from the usual image of impossible perfection we see on every other magazine cover. But how about putting Marge on "In Style", "Harpers Bazaar", "The New Yorker," or even "Parents"?

Why did "Playboy" choose Marge Simpson? What about Jessica Rabbit or Lara Croft or even Betty Boop? If we’re talking about sexualizing an animated character, why not choose one that was created to be a sex symbol? In an age when we worry about kids growing up too fast, we want our public figures to be good role models. So why did "Playboy" need to turn Marge into a sexy hottie when there are certainly enough others to go around?

Some argue "The Simpsons" isn’t really for kids. But I don’t care. Every kid knows who "The Simpsons" are, and most watch it. It appears on regular TV channels, and Marge is a cartoon character with special kid appeal.

The bottom line: I agree with the folks at MTV who said that "Playboy" is probably trying to attract younger readers. I guess that’s where my problem is. You put Marge on the cover, and all of sudden kids are going to pick up the magazine thinking it’s for kids, unaware of what's inside the covers.

Perhaps what makes this even more troublesome is that the cover appears right before Halloween, when we’re smack in the middle of the new trend of overly sexualized Halloween costumes. Remember the good old days of princesses, bulky coats over costumes, and bunny faces? Gone!

Now we see lacy garters, bustiers, and devils in mini-skirts. Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood in Boston, says that corporate marketers are increasingly aiming at girls as young as preschool age as if they were teenagers! Linn, who also wrote "The Case for Make Believe" and "Consuming Kids," said much of it is based on a marketing strategy known as CAGOY, or "Children are Getting Older Younger."

"It's a marketing phenomenon, created by marketers, based on an assumption that children are acquiring the trappings of maturity earlier. There is no evidence of that," she says. Linn said there is evidence, however, that the commercialization of childhood intensifies serious issues like childhood obesity, eating disorders, low self-esteem and precocious sexual activity. It also interferes with imagination and creative play.

So if costumes are sending bad messages, and if over-sexualizing leads to a host of sociological and psychological problems, why open that Pandora’s Box? When will the media and marketers err on the side of caution and start thinking about what’s in the best interest of our children? Yes, this is the same media that criticizes parents for not doing their job protecting their kids. So here’s my question: When will society and the media start doing theirs?

The Monster's Wife, Culpable?

by Contributors to Women in Crime Ink

Police have charged Nancy Garrido along with her husband, Phillip, for abducting and imprisoning Jaycee Dugard for the past 18 years. Both are charged with 29 counts each, ranging from kidnapping to rape. Dugard's stepfather has identified Nancy, a nursing assistant believed to have assisted in the delivery of Dugard's two children, as the woman who snatched his stepdaughter off the street, and police say Nancy (left) was home with the then 11-year-old for five months while her husband cooled his heels in jail on a parole violation. Meanwhile, her attorney maintains Nancy's innocence, saying she too was her husband's victim, kept under Garrido's control.

The question for WCI bloggers: If it turns out that Nancy Garrido is involved in this heinous crime, and if it turns out that she's been a victim of prolonged domestic violence, how much weight should this be given, and should it impact guilt/innocence or sentencing?

Pat Brown: Nancy Garrido deserves to accept full responsibility for her actions. Why? Because she wasn't an innocent girl like Jaycee who might have been snared by an older Phillip Garrido and brainwashed. She was a full grown adult who met Garrido when he was already in prison and she knew he was in prison for kidnapping and rape. She chose to partner with him, and she chose to participate in his criminal activities. She is as guilty as he is for what happened to Jaycee Dugard (left) and her children. I say a life sentence without parole is fully appropriate for Nancy Garrido.

Andrea Campbell: In my opinion, if Nancy Garrido was free to come and go, yet still aided in perpetuating the kidnapping and crime against Jaycee Dugard, and then allowed it to continue with the imprisonment of the children, she should be charged as a co-conspirator. At the very least, it is criminal aiding and abetting.

Kathryn Casey: It appears that Nancy Garrido had every opportunity to turn her husband in and end the nightmare for Jaycee and her family. If that’s true, it’s fitting that she’s held responsible right along with the monster she chose as her husband. What woman marries a man in prison for kidnap and rape, allegedly assists in a kidnapping once he's released, and then sits back and does nothing while he imprisons and violates a child? Should abuse by Garrido against Nancy come in at all? Sure, in sentencing. If Nancy has been victimized by her husband, the jury or judge who hands down the sentence should be able to fully assess the entire picture.

Diane Fanning: Nancy Garrido should be judged solely by her actions in the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. If the state proves--as I believe they will--that she aided and abetted in the crimes committed against Jaycee Dugard and in keeping her captivity a secret for all these years. Then, she should be found guilty of all of that. If there was on-going long-term, verifiable domestic violence perpetrated on Nancy, that should be considered as a mitigating circumstance only during the sentencing phase and weighed against the actions she took or did not take regarding Jaycee.

Susan Murphy-Milano: Nancy Garrido is a full-fledged accomplice and co-conspirator, who in my opinion willingly participated in the crimes against a helpless child. Garrido should receive no mercy and have her lawyer strike from the court record the untruths told about her being a battered woman.

Jaycee Dugard was locked away like a caged animal from the outside world behind a series of fences, sheds and tents in the back of a suburban home. She was brainwashed and raped for years and gave birth to two children, the first when Jaycee was about 14. Those children, both girls now 11 and 15, also were kept hidden away in the caged compound.

I am reminded of Michelle Lyn Michaud, also of Sacramento, sentenced to death for her role in the 1997 kidnap, rape and murder of a 22-year-old student. During the trial, defense attorneys also tried to portray Michaud as a battered woman who would do anything to please her boyfriend, James Daveggio, who also was sentenced to death.

Nancy Garrido is a predator, and the battered-women’s theory is a way to mask and not take responsibility for her heinous crimes.

Katherine Scardino: Nancy Garrido should be judged solely on her own actions - if it is proven that she herself committed a direct criminal act - such as kidnapping, assault or some other direct act against another individual, or an act that is a crime by omission - meaning that she should have taken some reasonable action to prevent a criminal act - such as injury to a child by omission - she will be tried for her own crimes.

If her crime is an act by omission, then it is possible that she'd been so brainwashed or assaulted by this man that she could not take any preventative measures to protect or save Ms. Dugard. That may come in during the guilt phase of the trial - but generally, as Diane said, that information would only be admissible during the sentencing phase of a trial as possible mitigating evidence, just like information about a person's background - i.e., child abuse, sexual assault, beatings, etc. The jury can hear and consider this evidence when deliberating her punishment. The jury can give whatever weight they feel is appropriate to this type of information.

Cathy Scott: If Nancy Garrido was involved in the kidnapping and imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard, then, yes, she should pay. But I do believe some consideration -- even compassion -- should be afforded her if it turns out that she too was a victim of Philip Garrido (above right). The control from such a twisted and sociopathic mind reaches beyond prison bars, which may partly explain Garrido's failure to report her husband once he was jailed.

Silenced

by Susan Murphy-Milano

Two years ago today, 23-year-old Stacy Ann Peterson vanished from the house in the Illinois suburb of Bolingbrook that she shared with her police-officer husband Drew Peterson, her two children and his two sons, whom she'd adopted.

After several months of being stalked and living under her husband's tight, controlling reins, Stacy Peterson told her husband the marriage was over. In October 2007, Stacy met and consulted with divorce attorney Harry Smith -- ironically, the same lawyer Kathleen Savio hired to represent her when she decided to divorce Peterson.

When Stacy failed to show up at her brother's house that late-October day, family members were concerned, especially her sister Cassandra Cales. Just two days earlier, after a cozy family night of movie and pizza, Stacy warned Cassandra that she planned to leave Peterson and said: "If something happens to me, I just want you to know it was Drew." When Cassandra couldn't reach her missing sister, she went to Stacy's house and found the four children home alone, with no sign of Peterson's car. At the Bolingbrook Police Department, Cassandra filed a missing-person report.

Within 48 hours, camera crews and journalists besieged the once quiet suburban cul-de-sac. Peterson, then a police sergeant, gave them a show -- a bizarre public display including personal attacks on his wife and her family in the wake of her disappearance. The national media covered Peterson's act like a low-life reality TV show. Each day as Peterson left his house, journalists shoved microphones in his face, hungry for a sound bite for evening crime or news broadcasts. If you were a resident of Illinois during the first three weeks after Stacy vanished, you saw Peterson served up on local, cable and radio programs like a charred chicken flapping its wings almost around the clock.

To me, it seemed Peterson treated Stacy's life like a dirty rag. In his attempts to discredit her, Peterson made comments such as "You know she came from a broken home," or, "Her mother went missing too, so this is not a surprise." Then I heard Peterson say, "Stacy is where she wants to be." My heart sank as I thought of the boys who'd now lost a mother twice.

Seventeen days after Cassandra reported Stacy's disappearance, the Will County State Attorney's Office obtained a court order and exhumed the body of Kathleen Savio. Savio, Peterson's previous wife, was discovered dead in a bathtub in the marital house in 2004. Suddenly, the media and police focus swung from Stacy's disappearance to a new autopsy into the cause of Kathleen's death. The effort to find Stacy lost its momentum. The ground began to freeze, making the search more difficult for family and teams of volunteers. And the media remained hooked on Drew's public displays and his love life, leaving no time to find answers or enlist the public's help in finding Stacy.

In the months that followed, I met with people who knew Stacy personally. From the moment she married Drew, Stacy worked to knit a loving family environment, integrating Drew's then-estranged family into the couple's new life. From all accounts, she had a kind, warm and giving heart. People's eyes sparkled when they spoke of her. She made friends and family feel welcome. When a guest didn't show up for a gathering, Stacy called urged, "Come on," one relative recalled. "We're holding dinner, where are you? We're not starting until you get here."

Another told me: "Stacy was the glue, and that's why her disappearance is so painful to those of us who knew her."

Stacy Peterson's dream was to be a loving wife and mother, an all-around nurturer. She enrolled in nursing classes at a local college. When Stacy could no longer live under Peterson's heavy-handed control and constant watch, she made plans to leave. But like many women in her position, she made a mistake. She told her husband what she planned before she moved to a place where she'd be safe from him.

Stacy was silenced in the prime of her life. But there can be no silencing of family and friends who will continue to search for her until she is found. A grand jury met for 18 months before handing down an indictment against Drew Peterson for the death of Kathleen Savio.

I believe when that trial begins, the long silence about how Kathleen Savio lost her life will be lifted and the truth about how Stacy died will also be revealed. During the trial, thanks to Illinois' new hearsay law, Stacy Peterson's words will finally be heard.

Dittrich's Murder Behind the Badge: True Stories of Cops Who Kill Makes its Debut

by Women in Crime Ink

Most men and women who aspire to be police officers begin their careers with a noble dream of community service, upholding the law, and helping those in need. Yet over time the rigors and emotional strain of dealing with society’s worst element wear on even the most idealistic officers like a sheet of sandpaper, until their compassion is slowly rubbed away.

A few become corrupted and slip into criminal behavior, directly contradicting their oath to guard the public. Even worse, there are some who hide behind their badges to commit the most heinous crimes imaginable.

In a shocking true-crime narrative that reads like a thriller, former police officer, former detective, and mystery writer Stacy Dittrich tells 18 stories about cops who kill. From the brutal to the bizarre, the senseless to the extreme, these men and women abused their power, took human lives, and are now paying the consequences. Line-of-duty shootings aren't featured within the pages of "Murder Behind the Badge: True Stories of Cops Who Kill." Society typically sees these crimes from serial killers, rapists, and other violent criminals.

Some of the officers killed for love, others for money, and still others because of seemingly trivial personality conflicts. Dittrich profiles, among others:

• New Orleans cop Antoinette Frank, who brutally murdered four innocent people: her own partner, two restaurant owners, and her own father, whom she buried underneath her home.
• 
  Canton, Ohio, police officer Bobby Cutts Jr., who murdered his former girlfriend when she was nine-months pregnant.
• 
  Bollingbrook, Ill., police sergeant Drew Peterson, currently indicted in the death of his second wife, and being investigated for the disappearance of his third.

• California Highway Patrolman Craig Peyer, who pulled over San Diego State college student Cara Knott over a frivolous traffic violation, then murdered her.

• Prince George County, Md., officer Keith Washington, who brutally gunned down two furniture delivery men in his own home for simply being late with the delivery.

• Columbia, Mo., officer Steven Rios, who slit the throat of his gay lover after the man threatened to tell everyone, including Rios’ wife and police chief, of their relationship.

• Gerard Schaefer, one of Florida’s most notorious serial killers, who found it easiest to commit his crimes while working as a police officer and deputy sheriff.

• New York City cop Charles Becker, the first police officer ever executed for the crime of murder in 1915.

With a foreword written by WCI’s own Pat Brown, "Murder Behind the Badge: True Stories of Cops Who Kill" is already receiving praise:

“As a crime victim myself who went on to become a felony prosecutor, police have been a constant in my life for many, many years. They are some of the most honorable people I have ever known. Dittrich exposes the dichotomy between police who fight crime every day vs. those who have become criminals themselves…a real mind twister!” -- Nancy Grace, host of HLN’s The Nancy Grace Show

"Murder Behind the Badge" reveals the dark underbelly of the cop-shop, the evil that can lurk within. Some of these cases you may have heard about, many you have not. Now, learn the inside details of how a murderer gets a badge and is sometimes protected by fellow officers. Only another cop could walk the public through how a psycho gets on a police force in the first place. Only another cop could explain how the mindset of the thin blue line is sometimes so similar to the mindset of the truly disturbed. Author Stacy Dittrich is that cop. This is the book. In the realm of true crime this is a must-have!” -- Diane Dimond, Investigative Journalist/Author of "Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case"

"Murder Behind the Badge: True Stories of Cops Who Kill" is now available for pre-order on line and will be in book stores everywhere Nov. 16, 2009 (Prometheus, Hardcover).

Septic Tank Evidence

by Laura James

Unfortunately, septic tanks sometimes end up holding more than household sewage. Occasionally they have been known to yield the bodies of women who have been murdered, usually by very foolish men who think that nobody will ever think to look in the septic tank. Sometimes it might take a while, but eventually, both septic and murder will out.

Recently I learned that a more mundane sort of evidence can be found in septic tanks, placed there by those making the same foolish mistake of thinking that a septic tank is a good place to hide evidence.

I had my septic tank pumped out recently. The fellow who did this nasty business for me regaled me with a curious story.

Larry explained that he had been the "star witness" in a few divorce cases. I wondered where he was going with this. This was a surprising thing to say, as Larry fit the image of a man who spent all day with septic tanks, not a star divorce witness. He wore a University of Missouri T-shirt. I had asked him if he was from Missouri, as I've been spending a lot of time there lately. "It's just a shirt," he said sheepishly. He proceeded to tell me how he's come to be subpoenaed for the third time to testify.

Women, it seems, flush things down the toilet that they shouldn't, besides tampons. (Flushed tampons cause no end of trouble to public sewer systems everywhere, because the strings never dissolve and they get entangled in tree roots, causing massive plumbing blockages.) There's something else that shouldn't be flushed -- into a septic tank anyway -- and that's a used condom, particularly one that is being flushed by a woman whose husband has had a vasectomy.

Larry the septic tank hauler has had to testify three times now that condoms, when flushed down a toilet and into a septic tank, will float on top until someone like Larry pries off the lid and reveals more than the usual septic tank contents.

Pounding the Pavement

by Kathryn Casey

We spend so much time talking about forensic science these days because it's hard to overemphasize how much it has changed police work. Rarely do I go to a trial where someone doesn't bring up DNA, trace evidence and the like. It's talked about in hushed tones, like the Holy Grail of justice. And it should be. Good forensic science can free the innocent and bring the guilty to punishment.

But we often forget how much of police work remains logic and legwork, covering the bases, putting in the time, thinking the cases through and coming up with ideas. Case in point: Yesterday's sad discovery of the body of seven-year-old Somer Thompson, the Orange Park, FL, girl who disappeared while walking home from school two days earlier. That's Somer pictured above. As many of you may already know, her remains were found in a Georgia landfill, legs sticking out of a mound of garbage. An autopsy is underway, but authorities have already labeled the manner of death as homicide.

Why were the police in that landfill? Did forensic evidence suggest Somer was somehow connected to the landfill? No. In this case, as in so many others, it was a good investigator thinking through the case and making a suggestion that led to a crucial discovery. Sheriff Rick Beseler credits one of his detectives with suggesting that the landfill should be checked. Orange Park's garbage is routinely hauled to this Georgia dump site. Based on that detective's reasoning, that the body might be among the refuse, Breseler told detectives to go through the debris as the trucks brought it in.

"Had we not done that, tons of garbage would have been distributed over the top of the body, and it likely would have never been found," said Beseler.

This isn't an anomaly. Lots of cases come together because of good old-fashioned police work. One comes to mind: the Piper Rountree case, the subject of my 2007 book, Die, My Love. In that case, prosecutors insisted police didn't have a solid case until they produced witnesses who could place Rountree, a Houston attorney, in Richmond, VA, where her ex-husband was ambushed and gunned down in his driveway there. No forensic evidence, no phone leads, nothing suggested how they might find those crucial witnesses. Instead, gumshoeing, walking the streets and asking questions, led investigators to folks who could point at Rountree in a courtroom and say, "That's her. I saw her in Richmond."

Now that little Somer's body has been found, of course, the forensic folks have moved in, combing the landfill for clues leading to her killer. I'm not suggesting that their role is any less important. But they wouldn't be there if not for the good idea of one cop who thought the case through and made a crucial suggestion.

Let's hope the forensic folks and the detectives working the Thompson case get every break they need to find the scumbag responsible for little Somer's death. Anyone who'd murder a child and throw her body in the trash needs to be found quickly and dealt with severely.

October: Cybersecurity Awareness Month

by Robin Sax

Did you know October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month? Although it's intended to teach Internet users about reporting and avoiding crime, I'd never heard about until recently -- and I live in the world of Internet crime and safety! This is actually the sixth year the Department of Homeland Security has marked Cybersecurity Awareness. They put on events and have lots of information on how to stay safe on the Internet. See http://dhs.gov/ for more details. The information on their site is important to review (for those of us who use the Internet – just a few billion of us), and not many of those billion people know where to get the resources or knowledge to implement Internet safety.

For example, do you know where to file a complaint about a crime that involved the Internet? If you answered law enforcement or the FBI, you get partial credit. The actual answer is much more complicated, an entire protocol for where and how to report crimes related to the ever-growing World Wide Web.

To determine some of the federal investigative law enforcement agencies that may be appropriate for reporting certain kinds of Internet crime, please refer to the following table:

As you can see, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) noted quite a lot on this chart. So what is the IC3? I bet you didn’t even know that it existed. In their own words, The Internet Crime Complaint Center “is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). IC3’s mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cybercrime. The IC3 gives the victims of cybercrime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes.”

IC3 seems to give an appearance of some sort of coordinated effort between agencies - at least in the reporting of Internet crime. That is a good thing. But what about before the crime occurs – is there a coordinated effort to prevent the crime. In other words, if someone is reporting a crime it means that most likely someone was already victimized. Is after the fact reporting enough? OR do we need to figure out how to police the Web prior to victimization?

The Internet is the largest city in the world. It literally has portals and accessibility to everyone—adults, children, young, old, thieves, pervs, predators, and hundreds of millions of others. While there may be individual rules and regulations for specific sites, or in specific countries, there is very little “law of the land” -- other than the concept of what is illegal in real life is illegal online as well.

There are many Internet crimes that are readily known due to effective media, astute educators - who take the time to bring information to their school communities, successful public relations campaigns, or from the unfortunate victimization of people we hear about or even our own family and friends.

Most people have heard of -or use- social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and My Space and also know some online lingo (such as LOL, TTYS, etc.). Many people have heard of concepts such as texting, tweeting, sexting, and cyber-bullying. But there are literally of hundreds of aspects of the Internet that we don’t know about…and we may never know about. There is an underground to the Internet, and it can be very scary.

So what do we do? Bury our heads? Pretend it is not happening? Just complain about it? How about we learn about what we don’t know. Staying current with technology is a must our world today. Figuring out what things are worthy of fear and what things are not can save us from a lot of anxiety. It is critical that we keep our knowledge current about Internet “threats” and can be prepared to face them.

And even though I am going to give you some simple steps you take today to be safer on the Internet, the best way to even know what we are worried about is to peruse, search, and click through the Internet. You can't fear something that you don't know about. Don't simply trust the hype, check it out for yourself. For example, many parents fear "Facebook" but I happen to think that Facebook is among the safer social networking sites out there. They actually have a protocol for dealing with hate crimes, pervs, and bullies. They have security and privacy measures and work diligently to address the issues as the site grows. Is every social networking site that way? No way!! And our social networking sites the only place where trouble lurks? No way. There are websites, ad-sites, instant messaging services, and many more avenues where trouble can surface.

So what's the answer? Know what you don't know. I know it seems daunting and time consuming and it can be. But don't let it!!! Chip away with a places, click through, check it out, and if you need help ASK!!! Want to know what your kids are doing online and can't bear checking yourself? There are sources and resources for help. But if nothing else, keep these tips in mind:

For Your Computer

• Make sure that you have anti-virus software and firewalls installed, properly configured, and up-to-date. New threats are discovered every day, and keeping your software updated is one of the easier ways to protect yourself from an attack. Set your computer to automatically update for you.
• Update your operating system and critical program software. Software updates offer the latest protection against malicious activities. Turn on automatic updating if that feature is available.
• Back up key files. If you have important files stored on your computer, copy them onto a removable disc and store it in a safe place.

For Yourself (Habits To Adopt)

• If you get deceptive spam, including email “phishing” for your information (that means a scam site that is looking for you to input your personal information for the purpose of stealing it), forward it immediately to spam@uce.gov. Be sure to include the full Internet header of the email. Also forward the email to the company, bank, or organization that is impersonated in the phishing email.
• Use strong passwords or strong authentication technology to help protect your personal information.
• If your computer gets hacked or infected by a virus immediately unplug the phone or cable line from your machine. Then scan your entire computer with fully updated anti-virus software, and update your firewall.
• If a scammer takes advantage of you through an Internet auction, when you're shopping online, or in any other way, report it to the Federal Trade Commission, at ftc.gov.

For Your Friends, Family, Colleagues

• Use regular communications in your business (newsletters, e-mail alerts, etc.) and in your home (conversations with your partner and children) to increase awareness on Internet safety issues.
• Set up household and workplace rules on issues such as updating software processes, protecting personal information, securing your wireless network, software downloads, spyware, email attachments.
• Make your preferences clear to your friends regarding email “Forwards” and suspicious attachments.

For more tips, visit: http://http//www.staysafeonline.org/top-tips

Bottom line: educate yourself, be smart, be safe online! Treat the online community like a city street – walk where there are lights, don’t travel in a back ally, keep your senses alert, don’t trust strangers, etc. A small amount of preparation will go a long way in protecting yourself and your family!

Crime Clutter

by Kathryn Casey

Ever wonder what a crime writer keeps in her office? Awhile back, I spent the day going through piles of books and stacks of files, trying to whittle down. My husband constructed four sturdy wire shelves in my office closet – a converted bedroom – and I was determined to stow what I need and get rid of the clutter covering every possible surface, including the upright piano I had to have and still don’t know how to play. (It is a great place for stacking books though. The keyboard is just the right width. And maybe someday, if I retire…)

Anyway, all went well until I dug into the wire mesh office organizer I bought at The Container Store about 12 years ago. The theory at the time was that this would help clear up the debris by allowing me to categorize everything in hanging folders. Instead, it’s beneath three feet of newspaper clippings. At one point or another, it seems, I thought knowing about Stonehenge, jet propulsion and tooth bacteria would all help me write mysteries and true crime. Don’t ask. I haven’t the foggiest.

Those were quick throw-outs.

The harder articles to part with are those that offer intriguing theories. For instance, there’s an August 2, 2002 Chicago Tribune article by Ronald Kotulak with the headline: “Scientists ID gene linked to violence.” (A later study at Florida State labeled it the Warrior Gene and linked it to gang membership.) The Chicago Tribune article quoted a report published in the journal Science citing evidence that both genetic and environmental factors influence human behavior. We already suspected this, right? It’s that old thing about how our urges or tendencies are hard-wired, but we may or may not act on them depending on whether or not experience flips the switch, like the serial killer who’s abused as a child. (Of course, then how do we explain serial killers who aren’t abused as children?)

My question: If they found this d**n gene in 2002, why haven’t they found a way to fix it and rewired all of the monsters for us?

Then there's the April, 22, 2007 article "Study of brain may show link to violent acts," by Houston Chronicle reporter Todd Ackerman. Charles Whitman (photo right), the University of Texas UT Tower sniper, had a brain tumor, and, according to the article, Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, showed evidence of a brain-abnormality-induced psychosis. The theory is that when the frontal lobe is damaged it can disconnect the part of the brain that censors impulses. A March 2007 study published in Nature suggests that injuries and abnormalities behind the forehead, two inches into the brain, affect moral judgment in life or death situations, and that those who suffer this type of injury can be more inclined to kill or harm one person to save the life of another. One Houston doc, Pamela Blake, a Memorial Hermann neurologist, released a study in 2004 of Death Row inmates that concluded 40 percent had a frontal lobe injury or impairment. Hmmm. Makes you think, doesn't it? I've got to admit, however, that whenever theories like these pop up I recall the double Y chromosome theory.

You know the one: about four decades ago they tested a sample of the male prison population and found a percentage with an extra Y chromosome, XYY instead of XY. It was suspected at the time that the extra male chromosome increased testosterone levels and made these men more prone to violence, landing them in the slammer. The theory fell apart when other studies discovered XYYers have normal testosterone levels and that men in the general population have approximately the same instance of the XYY pattern. Ah, well.

Okay, back to my stash of articles going into the to-be-kept file.

This final article I couldn’t throw out simply because of the title: “Local ‘Polka King’ goes missing.” The Polka King is 48-year-old Bobby Jones, who was last seen on the night of June 22, 2007. He didn’t show up in El Campo, Texas, for a radio station emcee gig. He’d been acting unusually sad and, according to the article, no foul play was suspected, so maybe there’s no crime to write about. A while later, his car's license plate was found in the Colorado River. But the guy left his accordion behind. Would a Polka King do that? Sounds fishy to me

What About the Crime Post-Blast?

by Andrea Campbell

The government defines a bombing as an incident in which an explosive or incendiary device has actually functioned. There are attempted bombings, of course, and premature explosions. The center of a bombing is referred to as the “seat.” (That's a historic photo of the Los Angeles Times bombing—October 1, 1910—at left.)

I started reading up on what it takes to work a post-blast crime scene, and though I found a lot of good information, I know it didn’t begin to scrape the surface. I guess that’s the wrong metaphor to use, because after a bomb goes off, there isn’t much surface left. Can you imagine going to the scene? There are tons of material called gross physical evidence. Most of the time you don’t know what you’re looking at, even though nearly everything is potential evidence. The debris is shredded, cut, spun, blended, burned, ruffled and any other adjective describing destruction like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Classifying and Typing

A bombing is deliberate or accidental. There are instances where these can be confused. Story has it that a man was charged with causing an explosion; he was in the business of running a grain silo. Anyone who knew anything about volatility should have known that grain dust explosions are common in silos. But back to business. There are three types of explosions: mechanical, nuclear and chemical. An example of a mechanical explosion might be a vessel -- such as a boiler or a propane tank -- under great pressure that gives at its weakest spot, dispersing its contents. Nuclear explosions are created by fission or fusion of unstable atoms, and chemical explosions are the result of either low or high explosives triggered by shock or heat.

A low explosive is typically heat-sensitive material that burns rapidly, about 1,000 feet per second. High explosives, on the other hand, are considered detonations — decomposition of molecules that are forced through a shock wave at about 10,000 feet per second. The difference between the two is significant in helping to understand what has happened; low explosives are more likely to cause a fire than the shorter impulse time associated with high explosives.

Explosives Differ in Other Ways Too

The chemicals needed for low explosions are generally substances such as black powder, pyrotechnic powders, and other fuels. High explosives include materials like dynamite, TNT, and RDX components such as C-4, those usually used by the military and for commercial applications such as imploding old buildings.

Low explosives need a housing or container, because burning produces the gases needed for expansion. High explosives give off their energy as the result of a detonation or shock wave and can be out in the open.

Bombing Materials

Bombs in criminal investigations are often called IEDs, short for improvised explosive devices. The explosive material can be commercially created or homemade. To initiate an explosion the material needs an igniter, which can be as simple as a burning fuse or as sophisticated as a complex electronic device. (The Oklahoma City bombing is pictured at right.)

The activator of the fusing system is put into three basic categories: 1.) time-activated, 2.) victim-activated, and 3.) command-activated. The first uses a time delay, the second is similar to a booby trap, and the third is set off manually, often using a remote-control device. According to GlobalSecurity.org, a person-borne suicide bomb usually employs a high-explosive/fragmentary effect and a command-detonation firing system -- a switch or button the suicide-bomber pushes to set off the blast.

Dr. Kirk Yeager, an explosives forensic scientist at the Federal Bureau of Investigation explainsit quite simply: A bomb consists of an oxidizer and a fuel. An explosion requires oxygen, provided by the oxidizer, and a fuel source, which can be as basic as sugar. A common oxidizer is ammonium nitrate, a primary ingredient of fertilizer. While bombs made with sugar and ammonium nitrate may be less potent than more advanced fuel sources, like TNT, the ingredients are easy to buy and legal to own. It’s interesting to note that the rapid oxidation in a bombing changes the colors of materials such as pipe or steel. (The 2004 Madrid train bombing is pictured above left.)

Working the Scene

A team will have a leader, a bomb technician, a photographer and sketch artist, and an evidence custodian. Depending on the size of the blast area, the team may be augmented by additional investigators.

The borders of a post-blast scene can be tremendous in size. Paul R. Laska, a retired crime scene investigator, says the lead investigator generally looks for the furthest item that can be identified as having originated at the point of the blast. A radius is established based on the distance of that item plus half again.

Search Methodology

Generally, the physical search and evidence collection are organized like a field search, with participants walking an approximate arm’s length (or wing span) apart in a grid, strip or even in a spiral pattern. Most common is the strip-style search, broken down into sectors.

Investigators don’t touch or collect the materials, but mark them out; the object is photographed where it lies. Everything is sketched, and an evidence custodian wearing gloves collects the items and often puts them into clean, unused paint cans, nylon bags, glass vials or sturdy cardboard boxes. The idea is to preserve DNA, fingerprints and explosive residue.

Searches are thought of as being three-dimensional because exploding bits can be lodged into walls, thrown onto roofs — don't forget people tossed into trees — and items driven into the ground. Yeager recalls a car whose pieces landed as high as 75 feet at a U.S. Embassy bombing.

Often investigators will suit up in protective gear including shoe covers to avoid blood-borne pathogens. The scene is monitored for hazardous materials as well.

Collecting and Preserving

Oftentimes the debris will be trucked to another area for examination. It’s taken to a secure facility where pieces can be sifted, examined for potential evidence, segregated, identified and put back together. Dr. Yeager said that he has spent a lot of his time going between different hardware stores, comparing their inventories to bomb components.

General Facts

• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been collecting, storing and analyzing records on explosives and arson incidents since 1976.
• The FBI works on bombings related to terrorism.
• 1997 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 18 U.S.C. 846(b), established a national repository for incidents involving arson and the criminal misuse of explosives.
• The U.S. Bomb Data Center (USBDC) is the sole repository and contains information on more than 180,000 arson and explosives incidents investigated by ATF and other federal, state and local law enforcement and fire investigation agencies.

  According to the US Bomb Data Fact Sheet, which provides overall statistics and information such as event locations, bomb types used, and regional maps, contains the figures listed below. Explosives Incidents in the United States: In 2007: 2,772 explosives incidents, 60 people injured, 15 killed, and 633 referred for prosecution. In 2006: 3,445 explosives incidents, 135 people injured, 14 killed, and 745 referred for prosecution.