The Murder of Ira Yarmolenko

[A version of the following was first posted to the True Crime Tumblelog. I decided it was more appropriate to this site.]

UNC Charlotte student Irina "Ira" Yarmolenko has been found murdered in Mt. Holly, NC. The pretty 20-year-old student's body lay beside the Catawba River, her vehicle close by. The Ukrainian-born Yarmolenko had lived most of her life in the U.S. She was a writer, poet, and photographer.

Readers of Dreamin' Demon have turned up Ira Yarmolenko's online journal:

http://a-new-pen.greatestjournal.com/;

Her photobucket account: CtrlCopy;

and her Facebook: Ira_Yarmolenko.

I found what may have been Yarmolenko's running profile at FavoriteRun.com.

Death has no sense of fair play. And it is perhaps wrong that we take notice sometimes of a particular death if it is violent, if the victim was young, and beautiful.

If I get a glimpse of what the victim was like in life it sometimes stings, no matter how objective I'm supposed to be. That brief vision lodges in my head, unsettling me.

Ira Yarmolenko was unique. Of course I didn't know her, but I feel certain she was special. In a blog entry posted on 8/17/2006, Yarmolenko wrote the following -- the passage supports my feeling that a bright spark has been extinguished:

this is me swimming in de nile. this is me being hyrogliphic (sic). this is me, trying a balancing act of trying to figure out what to do for the rest of my life, and how not to complain, and how to get excelent grades, and how to keep my family intact. it is not my job, of course, but someone has got to do it. this is me thinking about how to be someone worthy of my own respect...

Authorities say Yarmolenko was asphyxiated. The investigation is ongoing.

This post will be updated and revised.

[Big hat-tip to Morbid, Imp, etc. at DD.]

DC Madam: Let's Just Cut the Crap, Shall We?

Deborah Jeane Palfrey probably had every intention of killing herself. She may have actively planned her exit from at least April 15 onwards. In an earlier post I noted arguments for Palfrey having been murdered, and attempted to remain neutral. I can no longer do so.

There is a concerted effort afoot to re-cast Palfrey's death as a homicide. I wouldn't normally bother addressing this, but even a site as high-profile as the Huffington Post has given it some play, which is a bad sign. This conspiracy theory is going -- has probably gone -- viral.

On April 30, 2007, I wrote about the DC Madam scandal for the site then known as CrimeBlog.US. I titled my post, "D.C. Madam Madness: Just say, Anal sex!"

I noted some reasons why Palfrey seemed less than truthful when she said through her lawyer that her escort service, Pamela Martin & Associates, was an "adult sexual fantasy [service] which stayed within legality, much like going to a strip club."

For Palfrey, it seemed a crucial argument to make -- she had no knowledge of sexual activities between her employees and their clients. If it happened, she contended, it was between the customer and the escort.

When she was convicted of racketeering and money laundering last month, Jeane Palfrey officially lost her argument. But in my post made in April, 2007, I cited easily-found statements on the Web, statements made years ago, that clearly described the nature of Palfrey's business from a customer's point of view:

Please don't ask Ms. Julia [Palfrey's pseudonym when booking appointments by phone -- Ed.] if she has anyone who speaks Greek. Some of them do, and you just have to ask them when they are with you! Funny thing, if you use the terminology "Greek", most of them don't know what you are talking about. Just say: "Anal sex". I am sorry the one I used to see which offered Greek, is no longer there. And, some of the Ladies are there only for a short time (few months!).

Message board posts from dudes calling themselves "Capt. Fred" were not used in court. They were interesting, though, because Jeane Palfrey began to paint herself as some sort of martyr soon after the government shut her down, maintaining a pained and studied pose of complete innocence at all times. It was a pretty hard act to buy when it looked as though the nature of her business was an open secret to the guys reading USASexGuide.info 5 years ago.

After this story first broke, Palfrey worked to re-direct attention back to the men who partook of the services she offered. This made sense -- prostitutes aren't prostitutes unless they have customers, and it's illegal to purchase sexual favors in many states -- but it was self-defeating; if Jeane Palfrey's services were legal, as she insisted, then why would anyone care about the numbers found in her "42 pounds of customer phone records?" Such information might be valuable gossip, of course -- but it wouldn't always end a politician's career.

Of course Pamela Martin & Associates was a high-class call girl service. Yes, the service had some high-profile customers. Jeane Palfrey was inadvertently admitting this by making her phone records an issue in the first place. She may have believed that some names behind that list of numbers would come forward and defend her, say, 'of course it was on the up-and-up' -- even though such a notion would run contrary to the typical behavior of most politicians.

Given that Palfrey was running an escort service aimed at DC power players, another question comes to mind. Were any of those power players motivated enough to kill her?

Palfrey made the 42 lbs of phone records available more than a year ago. Ever since the day DCPhoneList.com went live, reporters and bloggers have been eagerly plugging every possible combination of numbers they could find into the thing. At one point I found a list of politicians' phone numbers on a Usenet post made in 1995 or 1996 and systematically entered each one into the site -- I had no significant results at all. I can't recall a story since April, 2007 about another blockbuster phone number in Palfrey's phone records. There have been hints and allegations about politicians as prominent as current VP Dick Cheney, but no one has produced conclusive proof.

Politicians in the U.S. don't usually have someone covertly killed over rumors that can't be substantiated through hard evidence. If they did, a lot of political bloggers and a goodly number of print and broadcast journalists would be dead right now.

Considering how high profile the DC Madam story was in the Spring of 2007, the fact that Palfrey's conviction in April this year was a page 2 item at best in most papers made one thing clear -- the story didn't really have legs anymore. Jeane Palfrey's phone records have yet to really yield a killer set of digits. In the grand scheme of things in Washington, she was a minor, faceless player at best, without much to offer the news outlets that initially seized her story with gusto.

To anyone in power in Washington, Jeane Palfrey wasn't important enough to kill.

Alex Jones doesn't believe that. Jones is a conspiracy theorist. He believes that 9/11 was an inside job, that a globalist cabal used Al Qaeda to ram the planes into the towers in order to decimate the old world order and bring about a new one, where national boundaries were erased, among other things. Everything that points back to Jones's worldview -- or the one that he is selling to his audience -- is grist for his mill. To that end, he'd interviewed Ms. Palfrey quite a bit in the past year or so, and considered her a friend of his radio show.

For it seems like it might make perfect sense to Alex Jones that the monolithic, evil government might have some sort of Kafkaesque plan afoot to off poor ole Deborah Jeane. Conspiracy theorists are egosyntonic in nature -- their beliefs are often in complete harmony with their outlook, and to question what they believe is anathema to them. Conspiracy theorists are bent towards justifying and defending their theories, not questioning them. (The HuffPo post about this tragedy gave surprisingly uncritical play to Jones's site in reference to the then-developing "homicide" angle.)

Today, writer Paul Joseph Watson published this article on Jones's PrisonPlanet.com:

"Overwhelming Evidence Points To Murder Of DC Madam."

That's right -- overwhelming evidence. More evidence than mere mortals can truly comprehend.

Read the article's subtitle: "'She insinuated that there is a contract out for her and I fully believe they succeeded,' says Condo manager..."

Yep. Watson's (and presumably Jones's) overwhelming evidence comes in part from statements made by Palfrey's condo manager.

Quotes from the article, emphasis added:

The manager said that Palfrey had told him of her fears that a contract hit was out on her life.

"She insinuated that there is a contract out for her and I fully believe they succeeded," he stated.

[...]

Palfrey is on record as warning that any "suicide" would just be a cover-story for murder as far back as 1991.

"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me," said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her...

Watson doesn't linger over this point, yet it is crucial. Jeane Palfrey was specifically referring to what she feared might happen if she were jailed for the charges she was facing in 1991. She wasn't playing Pretty Woman meets Nostradamus, referencing a possible conviction 17 years in the future. Palfrey feared that the San Diego police were out to get her and that they could do it while she was incarcerated. Her assertions from 1991 are meaningless when referenced now. They're irrelevant to her suicide on May 1, because Jeane Palfrey didn't know what would happen to her in 2007 and 2008.

And even though her time in prison surely wasn't a picnic, Palfrey did indeed serve 18 months on the California charges. No suicide, no homicide. She got out, and went right back to doing what she'd done before.

Jeane Palfrey probably found a kindred spirit in Jones and those who might agree with him, like Mr. Watson, who ended his article with this:

The knowledge that Palfrey had about members of Washington's elite being involved in and using her escort service for the purposes of hiring prostitutes would have been enough to end scores of careers and wreck the lives of countless influential power brokers. This alone, allied with Palfrey's on the record statements, demand an immediate and thorough investigation in an attempt to bring to justice the murderers of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Palfrey was in her fifties and facing decades in prison. She was probably indigent, or nearly so -- the government surely confiscated any assets she acquired through her business. Her conviction told the world that the court believed she was lying all along. She wasn't an innocent businesswoman, she was a madam running an illegal prostitution service.

Forget what she told Alex Jones about not committing suicide or what Palfrey may have said to author Dan Moldea about doing the deed -- look at her circumstances, and what little we know about her past and personality. She had previous convictions for similar crimes. Even after suffering what must have seemed the worst to her at the time, a prison sentence, Jeane Palfrey went back to running an escort service. When the authorities moved in on her for this, she became, for a time, one of the most high-profile accused criminals in the news. Always self-contained, poised and articulate, she spoke to major news magazines, to print journalists. In addition to Alex Jones's radio show, Palfrey even went on Coast to Coast AM, the internationally popular paranormal-themed radio show made famous by Art Bell, currently hosted by George Noory.

Then it all fell away, as she was pronounced guilty on April 15. She'd do no more guest spots on Coast to Coast about being bullied by the feds; probably no more newsmagazine segments would be devoted to her. Jeane Palfrey would face a prison cell and a number. It'd be a grim prospect for anyone, and drive the most sturdy personality to the edge. To a vain personality, someone who believed herself to be so important that the government might even bring its covert forces to bear against her because she might know a dirty secret, or be some kind of threat -- to someone like that a slow fade from the public eye to gray obscurity behind prison walls would be worse than hell on earth.

I think Jeane Palfrey just couldn't face it. Though I'm not aware at this writing of them being made public, notes she left behind probably said something to that effect. It is difficult to give much credence to those who say she 'seemed fine' prior to May1. The psychological mechanisms that influence suicides are still hard to figure out, but a few common patterns have turned up over the years.

With people who make a decision to take themselves out and then begin to plan for the day, something unusual frequently happens -- they seem much happier. In a way, someone who commits this kind of suicide is happier than before. Frequently, they put their affairs in order -- sell things, give items away, write wills, etc. This kind of suicide can be particularly cruel to the loved ones left behind -- they have been lulled by the change in demeanor into thinking things are improving. Jeane Palfrey's behavior may have matched this type of suicidal pattern. Nothing seemed wrong to others because in her mind, nothing was wrong. She knew what would happen next. Her organizing, cleaning, putting affairs in order was easily interpreted as Palfrey getting ready to go to prison, when it is just as likely that she was doing what someone resigned to self-slaughter often does -- take care of business to minimize the mess they left behind.

No, this was most likely a straightforward tragedy, born out of a personality disorder, frank mental illness or a combination of both. And Palfrey mostly created her own circumstances. There are select places, after all, where prostitution is legal. Palfrey never went to those places. She chose to try and run under the radar and trade where the feds were thicker than any other place on this continent -- Washington DC. She played with fire and ended up badly burned. So this self-made woman stayed true to form. Rather than go to prison, she left on her own terms.

It won't happen, but I say let Deborah Jeane Palfrey and her damn phone records lie. It's over.

Additional link/resource: ::Hopeline:Suicide::

(NOTE: It's inevitable that some people may think they know my politics after reading a post like this. Be assured the chances are you don't. In some respects, in fact, my politics may be closer to Alex Jones's -- who appears to be a libertarian -- than to your own. On an unrelated note, I'd feel remiss if I didn't point readers to a recent guest post by new contributor Larkin Vonalt. If you'd rather not deal with the politically-charged nature of this post, check out Larkin's achingly well-rendered portrait of a modern American tragedy.)

Does the number of unsolved murders in the White Mountains strike anyone as odd or disproportionate?

A very short post. Here's the link someone raised in a Franconia/North Country topix forum just now. Frankly, I'm overwhelmed. Sixteen (16) above the Laconia parallel? Given the population density and the nature of what most of these people were doing -- you know, like hiking as opposed to gang warfare -- it doesn't seem right to me. Could be a deeper problem up there. I know of more than these too, including last fall's Kelly Gorham, in which a Grand Jury convened but apparently no indictment issued and no more news available. Here is the 2005 TrueCrimeWeblog coverage on Maura Murray's case from Steve that considers a possible nursing link and more about Maura and a bloody knife from Reporter Maribeth Conway here or you can visit my blog and run a word search for "bloody knife."

TrueCrimeMagazine.com: What do I do?

All the content that was formerly at CrimeBlog.US -- including comments from readers -- is now at TrueCrimeMagazine.com. There's a couple of extra posts there, made since I began using that URL, detailing a couple of my favorite historic true crime stories, too.

As some regular readers might know, that site is currently not being updated, partly because I don't usually have the time. This nags at me, because I own the space, and because even without my paying the site much attention, it still can get up to 1,000 visitors a day. Bloggers and webmasters can tell you that typically, a site that's not updated is a site that loses visitors. TrueCrimeMagzine/CrimeBlog.US simply didn't lose that many, which does make me kind of proud.

Today one idea for further use of TrueCrimeMagazine.com occurred to me -- I would make the site a repository from here on out for only what I thought was the best stuff I or any contributor had to offer. With the writers' permission, for instance, I might post Seamus McGraw's recent, stunning guest entry, "The Executioners' Song." I'd also add Larkin Vonalt's excellent piece published earlier today, "The End of the World." I'd add entries of my own that I feel really live up to the standards I set for myself.

In addition to that, I might put out a new call for submissions -- from journalists who want to flex some crime writing muscle but can't find a paying taker for the story, for instance.

Those are just stubs of ideas, though. This post is to ask for reader recommendations, suggestions. Leave them in the comments, or send me a brief message through the contact form, including your correct e-mail address (brief for the first message because there is a character limit in the contact form's text box). I'll write you back and you can give me your feedback via regular e-mail, then.

The End of the World, by Larkin Vonalt

(Larkin Vonalt is a writer living in Ohio and until today she was simply a long-time reader of the True Crime Weblog. This well-written contribution is thoughtful, detailed, and tells one of the saddest true crime stories you may ever read. Though her first post here is sad, Larkin's jump from the comments section to a blog post is truly most welcome. I'm sure you'll see why I say that once you read the following. ~ Steve Huff)

On a warm spring afternoon, Maple Hill Avenue is alive with activity. A man edges his lawn, a small boy pedals his Big Wheel the length of a short driveway, a woman up the street is planting flowers. Somewhere a radio is playing and Brenda Lee's voice floats on the soft spring air: "I can’t understand/I can't understand how life goes on the way it does…" The winding tree-lined street is home to well-kept houses set in tidy yards. Number 642, near the crest of the hill, is not unlike its neighbors in that respect. Less than two years ago, it was a very different story.

July 13, 2006 was a warm and damp Thursday. Just before one o'clock the young mother living in the small brick ranch house ran outside to the neighbors'. Her house was on fire; her children were trapped inside. When the afternoon was over, her baby girl was dead, her young son airlifted to a Cincinnati hospital. The boy died two days later. By that time his parents had been arrested -- his mother for murder and aggravated arson, his father for rape of a child under ten. A juvenile court judge allowed the father to remain free just long enough to see his young son draw last breath.

*****

Heather Boyd of Kokomo, Indiana and Doron Silverman of Indianapolis met online in 2001. Heather's mother, Debra R. Boyd, in an interview with the Dayton Daily News, described the young couple as "soul mates." Kokomo is only 60 miles from Indianapolis, the couple soon met in person. In July 2001, they married at the courthouse and moved into the Indianapolis home of Doron's adoptive parents, Martin and Deanna Silverman. He was 20; Heather had just turned 19 and was two months pregnant.

Only 4 foot 11 inches tall, and a little plump, Heather Silverman is childlike. Classmates at Taylor High School describe her as "really nice" and "sweet." Doron Silverman had a juvenile conviction at age 13 for molesting a 5-year-old child. His adoptive sister, Batya, had leveled an accusation of rape against her brother. There is nothing to indicate that Heather was aware of her husband’s history. However, Batya's enmity towards her brother and his wife is evident in statements she made to the press.

"They lived in my parents' home while they were married and while she was pregnant with Mikel," Batya Silverman, 22, told the Dayton Daily News. "My parents provided them with everything." Her infant nephew, Mikel, born February 2002, shared her bed at the Silverman home.

"From the day I got back from Israel [where she had spent her freshman year of college -- Ed.] Mikel was sleeping in my bed. Heather blamed not wanting to be with him on postpartum depression. But she did not bond with that child."

Doron Silverman had worked at Chuck E. Cheese's Restaurant in Indianapolis, where he repaired and maintained computer games. Doron was hired when the same job opened at a Dayton franchise, so the little family moved there.

They settled on the south edge of Dayton in the predominantly white West Carrollton. Though considered a suburb, West Carrollton, established 1815, retains its own identity and small-town atmosphere. Many young families make it their home. Doron and Heather bought their house on Maple Hill for $93,000.

Heather found a job at Meijer's grocery store a few miles away. She worked until August 2005, when morning sickness from her second pregnancy forced her to quit. Heather developed an online presence, creating profiles on MySpace as mystic_kitten82 and on Grab.com and health.exercisefriends.com as babkitten7. She also had a largely unused profile on stupidvideos.com. Her favorite video was of a dancing cat.

On the Grab.com profile, she posted that she was "A stay-at-home mom with one child and one on the way. I also sell Avon." In one section, she detailed her desires to "Support our troops, save animals, eat vegetables, sing, Be a Great Mom, relax, cook, find friends, play computer games." The site also reveals that she was looking for friendship and that she hoped that "The world will one day realize that we are destroying our children’s only chance for life by destroying the world." She posted five photographs of her son, Mikel. The couples' daughter, Keylee Selena, was born March 6, 2006 in Dayton.

On Memorial Day weekend, Doron, Heather and their children went to Indiana to visit family and attend the Indianapolis 500. Arrangements were made for Mikel to stay overnight with his Aunt Batya and her boyfriend, Joseph Farber.

Court documents allege that after spending the afternoon swimming at the pool in his Aunt's apartment complex, Mikel was getting ready for a shower when Batya Silverman noticed him "pulling on his penis." Batya claims that the child, while pointing to his penis, said "Poti, put your mouth on it." "Poti" was the child's nickname for his aunt.

Farber was called into the room. When he asked the child about the remark, Mikel did not answer. Farber launched a series of questions: had Mikel seen that behavior in a movie, or had he seen his parents engaged in "such behavior?" In each instance, Mikel said he had not. When Farber asked the boy where he'd learned the behavior, Mikel is reported to have said, "Daddy did it. No more talk."

Batya Silverman was an undergraduate student in social work and had just completed a class on techniques for interviewing children. The next day she sat Mikel down with pens and a notebook, serving him lunch while she questioned him about the events of the day before.

Batya testified at an evidentiary hearing that after revisiting the queries her boyfriend made, she and Mikel had this exchange: "'Do you do it to daddy too?' And he said, 'Yes.' And I said, ‘Well, what do you do to daddy's pee pee?' And he didn't respond to me. So, I asked him, 'Do you kiss it?' And he very clearly replied, 'No, I lick it.'"

Batya Silverman asked her boyfriend to watch Mikel, and went to her parents' house to await her brother's return from the Indianapolis 500. Heather and Doron arrived to an impromptu "intervention" with Batya, Deanna Silverman, Cindy Rottinghouse (Doron’s biological mother) and Pam, a friend of Cindy's.

According to court documents, Batya confronted her brother with what Mikel said. When Doron didn't respond, she accused him of molesting her years before. Doron said that he didn’t remember molesting Batya and he fled the house with Heather following, Batya on their heels. Heather asked Doron if he had "done anything" to Mikel.

"Maybe I did, I don't remember these things," he said.

The Dayton Daily News reported that the day after the "intervention," Heather Silverman characterized her mood as "angry" on her MySpace blog.

"If I collected my tears thru my life they would fill the Grand Canyon," she wrote. "Be kind to others, be good, don't lie, don't injure, always ask before accusing, always love and care, never ever yell it never helps."

In a collective decision, Cindy Rottinghouse took Keylee and Mikel for a week, intending to hand them off to Deanna and Martin Silverman for ten days "so that the children would be safe, and Doron could get help," Batya Silverman testified. However, on June 5 Batya discovered that the children had been returned to their parents rather than following the prescribed plan. She called Childrens' Services in Montgomery County, Ohio.

Based on Batya Silverman's complaint, Childrens' Services enacted a "safety plan" for the Silverman family, which forbade Doron Silverman's presence in the home, and also stipulated that he "not be around children." Silverman continued to work at Chuck E. Cheese, as his job maintaining gaming systems didn't require interaction with children. He moved from the Maple Hill house to a Red Roof Inn in a neighboring town.

Five days after her call to Childrens' Services, Batya Silverman complained to the West Carrollton police department. Detectives Mark Allison and Robert Bell launched an investigation, starting the next day with a visit to the Silverman home. They spoke with Heather, who agreed that she and Doron would appear for questioning at the West Carrollton police department the next day.

Heather and Doron were interviewed separately, Heather first. Some specifics of the interview with Doron Silverman have been contested in Silverman's appeal to the state Supreme Court, though initially both parties agreed that Doron Silverman "admitted to having Mikel's penis in his mouth while in the bathtub with him and to fondling his son."

Bell testified in a hearing in the Montgomery County Court that Mikel "would crawl over (Silverman’s) naked body like 'a jungle gym' and sometimes touch his father's genitals." Silverman told the detectives he was so distressed by his behavior with his son that he sought counseling and avoided seeing his son naked. He also offered that he would have to resign his job at Chuck E. Cheese as he was "sexually interested" in the children he observed there.

Doron Silverman left his job the very next day, June 14. He met with the restaurant manager, explaining that he was under investigation, due to a "child abuse" complaint made by his "in-laws," and that Childrens' Services stipulated that he was "not to be around children."

Later that day, detectives appeared at the Silverman's motel room, wanting to search his laptop computer. They were rebuffed, according to an affidavit filed in the case. On June 21 a search warrant was issued and police searched the couples' house, vehicles and motel room. Among the items seized were cell phones, a computer, a video recorder, computer disks and a "nanny-cam" that was in one of the bedrooms.

Twice the West Carrollton police department interviewed Mikel Silverman. Jeffrey Rezabek, Heather Silverman's attorney in the child abuse case, stated that after both interviews there were allegations that the boy was being "coached." The "safety plan" put into place by Childrens' Services was due to expire Thursday night, July 13. Rezabek believed Childrens' Services planned to seek custody of the children at a hearing, as caseworkers felt that Heather would not sign another "safety plan."

In the days leading up to the July 13 deadline, Heather went online to ask for prayers. The Dayton Daily News quoted writing from her My Space page: "I ask of any (and) all to pray for our family. It is being ripped apart and I'm gonna lose everything." She did not disclose exactly what was going on, but her distress was clear.

On a rainy Thursday a caseworker from Childrens' Services visited the Maple Hill house to tell Heather that a hearing was scheduled in Juvenile Court that afternoon at 3 p.m. The agency would be seeking custody of the children. Heather was reported to be "cooperative" and mentioned that she might bring her attorney to the hearing.

Heather Silverman then set out candles in the bathroom. Later she told investigators she was preparing to take a shower. Wrapping gasoline soaked rags around the lit candles, she closed the door. The Dayton CBS affiliate reported that she closed the children inside the bathroom, but this was never confirmed in print media or in any court document; it may have been a leap made by the television station.

News reports state that Heather helped her son to the front door, where he was rescued by J.W. Lunsford, a mover working in the neighborhood. Lunsford grabbed the boy and ran across the street with him. Mikel sat on the grass in shock, his body and clothing smoking. Heather Silverman was treated at the scene for burns on her hands, said to have occurred while she was trying to extricate Keylee from her infant seat. Sarah Busby, a neighbor, tried to get into the house to save the baby, but was prevented by flames and smoke. Her mother, Pattie, across the street, made a desperate call to 911.

Mikel, 80 percent of his body covered with second and third degree burns, was airlifted to Shriners Hospital in Cincinnati. Despite many attempts, no one could get to Keylee Silverman and she burned to death inside the house. Her tiny body was removed after the fire was extinguished.

On Friday, the police department issued an arrest warrant for Heather Silverman. She was taken into custody at her son's hospital bedside. On Saturday, a warrant was issued for Doron Silverman on the child rape charges, but he was allowed to stay with Mikel in the child's last hours. He was said to be holding Mikel's hand when the boy died.

Batya Silverman learned of her nephew's death by reading about it online, even though Cincinnati is only 110 miles from her residence in Indianapolis. She told Dayton reporters that she believed Heather had killed her own children to prevent Batya from "getting" Mikel.

Cathy Mong, of the Daily News, wrote that Batya "painted a picture of Heather and Doron as parents who were cold and aloof, manipulative and emotionally needy, a mother and father who never bonded with their children." Along with unsubstantiated charges that the children were malnourished, the aunt told the reporter "Neither of them deserved a child so exceptional," and that "(she) would have gone there and died for him."

In sharp contrast, Debra Boyd remembers her daughter and son-in-law as attentive and interested parents. Her recollections are of a doting couple, devoted to their son, and thrilled with their new baby girl. Though both families saw the couple frequently, and Batya Silverman described her family as "supportive" of her brother, all were absent when the chips came down.

In the months after the fire, numerous Internet groups turned their attention to the Silverman tragedy. One group, VOCA (Voices of Children Alliance) engaged in ending what they see as Gestapo tactics of childrens' welfare organizations, decided that Heather Silverman had killed her children 'pre-emptively," to prevent their loss to the system. A white supremacist group blogged, "Jewish Parents Rape and Kill Children." (Doron Silverman's adoptive parents are Jewish, but Heather and Doron are not.) On sites like Websleuths and Mydeathspace, posters called for the rape, mutilation and murder of both Silvermans. The D.A., Mathias Heck, issued a statement calling the Silvermans "evil and twisted" and cast aspersions on the media for their "sensationalist" coverage.

Heather Silverman's case was assigned to Christopher Tucker, a public defender. She was examined by two independent psychiatrists, found to be not competent to stand trial, and remanded to Twin Valleys Behavioral Health Center for six months.

Doron Silverman stood trial in December 2006 and was found not guilty of rape, but guilty of gross sexual imposition on a person under thirteen years of age. He was sentenced to five years in prison. In February of this year, the state Supreme Court heard his case on appeal, overturning his conviction on the basis that the testimony on Mikel's behalf was hearsay made by an admittedly hostile witness. He has been released from custody.

Heather Silverman was re-examined a year ago and found to be competent. Her trial was to begin this week. However, on April 23, she went before the court and pled guilty to the murder of her two children.

Now there are only questions. Was Heather Silverman planning to immolate herself in the fire as well? Were her actions some kind of terrible manifestation of post-partum depression? Did she kill her children to save her husband? Even if we know the answers, it doesn't change the facts.

Two small children are dead. A woman who wanted to be "a great mom" has committed a terrible crime and will say no more. A man convicted of gross sexual imposition on his four year old son walks free.

And in the Silvermans' old neighborhood, the radio plays Brenda Lee:

Why does my heart go on beating

Why do these eyes of mine cry

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world

It ended when you said goodbye.

Links:

• Heather Silverman's MySpace profile has been deleted;
• Doron Silverman's profile: http://www.myspace.com/mystic_mc;
• Batya's MySpace profile;
• Photographs from Dayton Daily News;
• Slide Show of Silverman children;
• Ohio Supreme Court Decision Overturning Conviction.

DC Madam Suicide... or not?

In the previous post I took a skeptical view of the so-called Smiley Face Gang, a hypothetical cabal of serial killers supposedly taking out fine young men all over the country by dunking them in local bodies of water.

This time I'm not going to give an opinion. I'm just going to present what's out there, and see what you think.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, was found guilty of racketeering and money laundering on April 15 of this year. She faced serious prison time. [Be sure to follow the links for back-story.]

Palfrey apparently committed suicide on or about May 1, 2008. Her body was found in a shed next to her mother's residence in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Using nylon rope, Palfrey hanged herself from the ceiling of the shed. The Associated Press reported that Palfrey left at least two suicide notes for family members. The wire service also quoted a Tarpon Springs PD spokesperson who indicated that Palfrey's mother saw "no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved."

I am not the first to notice the following, or think it was worth noting.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey said in the early 1990s that she feared for her physical safety if incarcerated.

In 1991 Palfrey was facing trial in San Diego, charged with pimping, pandering and extortion. She didn't show for her trial and sent the judge a letter that read in part, "If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized [...] rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me."

Jeane Palfrey felt that the San Diego vice squad responsible for her arrest had "a vendetta" against her.

In that case, she was eventually sentenced to 18 months in jail anyway, and she survived.

And anyway -- her "prediction" of being suicided was in relation to the pending charges in San Diego. It was based on her apparent fear of the San Diego PD vice squad. It wasn't some mystical forecast of her death today, made some 17 years in advance. That much seems obvious.

Since Palfrey's suicide was reported earlier today, PrisonPlanet.com has claimed that Palfrey pointedly said she would not commit suicide after the racketeering trial in April. The site posted mp3s to that effect. PrisonPlanet says the mp3s are of Palfrey "clearly" stating "she would not commit suicide."

As PrisonPlanet notes in the article linked above, no less than Time magazine has published an article online in which author Dan Moldea stated that Palfrey told him "wasn't going to jail, she told [Moldea] that very clearly." Moldea said that Palfrey said "she would commit suicide."

I can't vouch for the veracity or the accuracy of what is published on PrisonPlanet.com. It's quite popular, but it is also run by Alex Jones, who is a noted conspiracy theorist. One of Jones's pet obsessions is the idea that 9/11 was part of a globalist effort to establish a new world order. Jones has also worked to repeal the Patriot Act, a worthy cause to anyone who believes in the freedom of speech. Still, I do think that you should take everything published by Jones with a grain of salt.

Was Deborah Jeane Palfrey a paranoiac and narcissist with an antisocial streak? Her efforts to avoid jail in the early 90s might support such an assessment. While cops can certainly have a vendetta against an accused criminal, Palfrey seemed to believe a large portion of the SDPD was against her. That would be a pretty paranoid yet vain view of things, since there were surely plenty of other, more serious lawbreakers to be found in San Diego at the time.

Or could Palfrey perhaps have something in common with Russian journalists and whistleblowers like Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko? Many felt that Palfrey had more dirt on high rollers in DC than anyone truly knew -- even though a lot of sleuthing has been done in her phone records for quite some time now with no truly stunning results. It is widely believed that the Putin regime has been behind the murders of several journalists, especially investigative reporters seeking the truth behind Putin's policies and goals.

Even though Deborah Jeane Palfrey was certainly not a journalist, she still was in a position to know the secrets of some truly powerful people. Did one of those powerful people seek to shut her down once and for all?

Or is that exactly what she might want us to think?

Post your thoughts below. Please keep it civil, sane, and on-topic. Personal attacks and verbal abuse will not be tolerated.

Additional links:

"'D.C. Madam' Is Found Dead, Apparently in a Suicide." [NYT]
"DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey Dead in Suicide." [HuffPo]
Added on 5/02/08 -- Many thanks to Willoughby Mariano at the Orlando Sentinel for linking this post from her Orlando Homicide Report.

The Smiley Face Killers: An Opinion, Subject to Change

UPDATE AT THE END OF POST

This is an editorial about the so-called "Smiley Face Gang," and the murders they may have committed. So far, I'm not buying it.

So far.

I get tips regarding crime stories in the news all the time. Recently, I've received a number of e-mails with links to variations on this story:

"'Smiley Face Gang' Linked to 40 Murders."

I linked that story because it is more concise than many of the articles I've read so far. Quoting:

As many as 40 young men believed to have accidentally drowned may actually have been murdered at the hands of a vicious gang of killers.

That's the conclusion reached by a group of retired New York City detectives who have spent the last 11 Years connecting the deaths...

Retired NYPD investigators Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, working in concert with Prof. D. Lee Gilbertson of St. Cloud State University, believe they've uncovered a pattern of murders going back to 1997. That was when young Patrick McNeill vanished after a night out drinking in New York City. McNeill's body was eventually pulled out of the Hudson River, his death declared a suicide.

Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson believe that as many as 40 similar deaths in the 11 years since McNeill died may be connected.

Gilbertson told NBC that "This is a nationwide organization that revels in killing young men."

Kevin Gannon said that he believes this organization is "specifically targeting a small, narrow group of individuals," namely healthy young college guys in their 20s. Race isn't an issue for the killers, if they exist. Most of the victims have been white, but not all.

Generally, this gang is just going after young dudes out on the town. They supposedly use drowning as a method to both kill and conceal. Then they sometimes leave a smiley face spray painted somewhere nearby. Gannon and Duarte say they've found this surreal signature in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Another reason this story is getting attention is the fact that at least one of the mysterious deaths possibly attributed to the Smiley Face Gang has indeed been declared a homicide.

Univ. of Minnesota student Chris Jenkins vanished on Halloween night, 2002. His body was found in the Mississippi River in February, 2003. Jenkins's death was initially declared "undetermined" and the case closed. However, after tests were done in 2006, the Minneapolis PD re-opened the case as a homicide and apologized to the Jenkins family.

Other families who lost their sons and brothers in a similar way are beginning to support Gannon and Duarte's theory.

This is a compelling story, no doubt about that. How could you ignore it? Fine young fellows in the prime of life meet their end in the night, in the water, at the hands of a shadowy cabal of killers. In the morning, only a macabre smiley face somewhere near the scene of the crime marks what happened there.

Sounds like a short pitch for a new suspense novel, doesn't it?

That's part of my problem with what Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson propose. It sounds too much like fiction. Granted, there will always be crime stories that are even stranger than fiction. It's rare when one sounds perfectly suited to the work of Thomas Harris or Jonathan Kellerman. I guess in one sense, I'm just talking about the smell test. For me, this story hasn't passed it, yet.

Two retired NYPD cops certainly lend weight to the tale. After all, both Gannon and Duarte have investigated everything on their own dime -- that's impressive and lends them further credibility.

At the same time, though -- serial murder isn't typically a group activity. There have been couples, of course -- Paul and Karla, Doug Clark and Carol Bundy -- but there is a lot of truth to the stereotype of the loner working in the shadows and the dark. Serial killers keep their counsel and they blend into society. Dennis Rader was a family man who was a bit prickly and obsessive-compulsive, but he remained free from police scrutiny for 30 years after he began killing as BTK. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was a typical schmoe working at a factory job. He kept to himself and a had a penchant for prostitutes, but DNA outed him for the monster he truly was.

Neither man (and there are many other examples I could cite) was what you'd call much of a team player. While Rader was involved with his church and the Boy Scouts, he wasn't necessarily the guy on the team -- he was usually in a leadership position, which likely suited his pathological narcissism just fine (in fact, it may have kept him from killing more than he did). Rader didn't want to be the guy who passed the ball. He wanted to be in charge, making all the jump shots and calling the plays.

Serial murder seems like a pretty poor choice for a team sport. Eventually, someone has a little more vestige of a conscience than other members of the team, and they talk. That was how Charlie Manson and his Family were brought down -- they were the closest thing to a serial killing team in modern history. But someone not in on Charlie's grand plan did some talking, and the Family's house of cards fell down.

But so far, I'm just talking about my gut reactions and what I know of serial murder in general.

Another problem I have with this story is that it resembles other stories from the past that were eventually debunked to one degree or another. If not debunked, at least subject to a lot of skepticism.

In 1988, Maury Terry published The Ultimate Evil. He linked The Process Church -- an outfit some see as Satanic (click the link to read the better-than-average Wiki on this "church") -- with the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, the Zodiac Killer and Charles Manson. While Terry's book was well-written and seemed thorough, it never made it out of the true crime/conspiracy theory pigeonhole -- meaning that only those already disposed to believe in far-reaching and terrifying conspiracies among evil people think Terry's work is the gospel truth. Most others take it with a grain of salt. Has it been thoroughly discredited? I don't know. I know Terry's theory has never been proven.

When Dennis Rader decided to resurrect BTK in 2004 and he began sending out new letters and packets of evidence to police, a slew of theories about BTK and his possible connections to other killers could be found all over the Web. Frequently they incorporated BTK into Terry's wide-ranging band of killers. A guy named Ken Mosbaugh even managed to get Wichita TV station KSN to buy into his theory (mostly borrowed from Terry and some Zodiac theorists) that BTK was linked to Zodiac, Son of Sam, and Manson. Eventually Mosbaugh must have been debunked (Dennis Rader's arrest probably helped), and KSN removed all trace of their report from their website. You can still read the article in question here, on a message board where someone copied it into a post.

Some folks were even sure BTK and Zodiac were one and the same. Dennis Rader's arrest scotched all of that speculation. His real status as a Lutheran dog catcher in Park City, Kansas lacked a certain glamor. He'd never been part of any group of like-minded psychos at all. Rader might have admired what the Zodiac did, emulated the still-unknown California psychopath, but that was as far as it went.

One thing that made earlier theories of bands of killers using similar methods seem untenable was the lack of easy, fast communication. Were they burning up the phone lines, chatting about the next kill? Were they passing coded messages through classified ads? Possibly, but common sense really said no.

That's one element in favor of the theory of the Smiley Face Gang -- communication.

If this theoretical gang of killers exists and they began working in 1997, they had a still-new tool to work with: the Internet. People had been dialing into online bulletin boards since the 1980s by 1997, and the message board format was already hopping. Kansas serial killer John Robinson started seeking victims online in 1993, and he did it with chat rooms and message board posts.

Robinson could draw victims into his web from California and Indiana, and do it in relative anonymity.

The Web's capacity for instant communication across great distances (chat rooms, forums) would permit the formation of a gang of killers. That doesn't mean it has happened, yet.

I have some issues with the linking of the smiley faces to the crimes, too. How far away were the faces from the victim's point of entry into the water? Was there a way to determine when the faces were painted? How was each dead man's actual entry point into the river or body of water determined? In Chris Jenkins's case, the water in his body was tested to find out where he'd been thrown (or fallen) in.

Television interviews with Gannon and Duarte are sometimes confusing. They frequently allude to knowing much more, even mentioning "witnesses," only to turn around and say they can no longer afford to fund their investigations and the FBI needs to take over. They've gone public, yes... but the story remains maddeningly vague.

Overall, this may be a case where I will learn more and realize that something immensely strange and unprecedented truly is going on.

In fact, you could come back to this site and find I've come around completely to Gannon, Duarte and Gilbertson's way of thinking.

After all, here in the South, we've recently had strikingly familiar disappearances -- familiar to anyone who has followed the deaths now allegedly linked to the Smiley Face Gang:

"Missing in Georgia: Justin Gaines" -- Justin, age 18, vanished after a night of drinking on November 1, 2007. He hasn't been found yet. If I had to guess, I'd say someone whom Justin thought he knew caused his disappearance. Still, he was athletic, a college student, and he vanished after a night of drinking.

HelpFindKyle.com -- Kyle Fleischmann, age 24, disappeared November 9, 2007 after a night of drinking at the Buckhead Saloon in Charlotte, NC. Like Justin and most of the victims now attributed to the Smiley Face Gang, Kyle was athletic, attractive, and had been out drinking.

Could this "gang" have moved South? Branched out? Or is there something more basic at work -- something having to do with youth, inexperience, and perhaps too much alcohol, on occasion?

For me, the jury is still out on the theory of the Smiley Face Gang. Count me among the skeptics, in general.

But my mind is still open. Hell, even as I was writing this, it occurred to me that one of the smiley faces found in Gannon and Duarte's investigation had a cross between the face's button eyes. That triggered a mental image from news footage of Charles Manson's trial in the early 70s in LA. At one point, Manson and all his followers who were not incarcerated shaved their heads and carved crosses in their foreheads. After I imagined that, I remembered Manson saying in interviews since he was convicted that his followers were still out there. Who the hell knows? Manson tends to speak in vaguely menacing terms most of the time, but perhaps he's been stating more concrete truth than anyone has realized. Maybe his followers have gone deeper underground than anyone realizes.

See? It isn't hard to go down certain roads, once you start.

State your case, your thoughts in the comments below. Lively discourse is welcome; flaming and insults are not.

UPDATE

If I had time I'd write another post, but for now I wanted to make a note:

"FBI disagrees with river drownings theory."

The following is a quote from the article:

The FBI says there’s no evidence to support a reported link between serial killers, and the river drownings of 40 college-age men in the Upper Midwest...

FBI Agent Richard Kolko told reporters that the Bureau took a look at information provided by Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte and concluded that most of the deaths in question "were alcohol-related."

Let's admit it -- even the FBI's skepticism won't dissuade die-hard conspiracy theorists.

Other sources:

"The (smiley) face of a killer?" by Mike Celizic, for TODAYShow.com.

Repeat and fade away: Nashville songwriter accused of murder

Rich Fagan singing on The Nashville Network in the early 90s.

If I have biases when it comes to the stories I choose to cover in this blog, one of those biases is in favor of stories from my hometown. Like the following...

Nashville, TN -- Police arrested 61-year-old songwriter Richard William Fagan on Sunday for the murder of his manager and roommate, Gaetano Thomas "Tom" Oteri. Oteri was the father of comic actress and Saturday Night Live alum Cheri Oteri.

Police arrested Fagan Saturday on a DUI charge. After he made bond on Sunday, a mutual friend of the men called the authorities, concerned because the house the men shared was in shambles and Tom Oteri wouldn't answer the door.

On entering the home at 204 Burgandy Hills Road, Oteri was found dead from a large slash to his wrist, allegedly caused by a knife-wielding Fagan.

Cops found Fagan still with his bail bondsman. He was interviewed and subsequently taken into custody.

Fagan's website could be found at http://www.ofmusic.com/. The "O.F." stood for "Oteri-Fagan."

Rich Fagan's biography was published there. It told of his early life growing up in Philadelphia. A hard life, at that. His father died when he was 3. His mom raised Fagan in the projects. She earned a living cleaning homes and offices. Fagan's bio says that while his mother worked, he "ran wild in the streets." Music entered his life when he was 14 as some kind of salvation.

At 21 Fagan was in Vietnam. He got in trouble there, going AWOL and getting busted for having "pornography."

A period of homelessness followed his discharge from the military, but by the mid-1970s Fagan was married with a kid. The marriage, his bio says, ended in 1975 due to substance abuse.

Around this time, he met Tom Oteri. From Rich Fagan's biography:

Philadelphia music entrepreneur Tom Oteri heard of Fagan's talents and invited him to a recording-studio audition. Fagan arrived two hours late and drunk, toppling over three beer cans and a terrarium. Quipped Oteri, "I like the act so far. If he can sing, we’re taking him with us."

Fagan arrived in the Music City in 1986. It was a period of transition for Nashville and the Country Music industry. Dreamers like Rich Fagan had been coming to the city for years, guitars strapped to their backs, but the conservatism of the Reagan revolution sparked a renewed nationwide interest in Country. Fagan was hitting Music Row at just the right time. He knew it. Again, from his bio:

"I also thought, 'You know what? This is a small enough town for me to chip away at.' If you're broke, it's a lot easier to be broke in Nashville than broke in L.A. Even before you get that first song recorded, you feel good about yourself. The songwriting community here does that for you."

Something about the partnership between Rich Fagan and Tom Oteri must have worked, and worked well. Every reference to Oteri on Fagan's website was glowing. From Oteri's bio page:

Many years ago when Fagan was down and out (see Fagan bio), it was Tommy who took him him and put him on a path to songwriting stardom. Rich was once a street-person, even a drugged-out alcoholic, who now is a highly-disciplined and successful writer. I know Rich would be first to credit Tommy for that transformation...

The biography went on to talk about Oteri's charity work for Alive Hospice and the high regard in which he was held by family and friends.

Rich Fagan wrote novelty music in addition to country and rock. He'd written songs for musician comedian Cledus T. Judd. He referenced this in his bio, saying, "I think that I'm kind of high strung and buggy, and humor lets that come out in a good way. That's what makes me be all right and not some nut. Besides, I like being irreverent."

Whatever happened between Tom Oteri and Rich Fagan last Saturday night was probably born out of alcohol and one of them being a little "high strung and buggy."

It was an everyday tragedy occurring between two men who were anything but everyday people. That much seems clear.

The city that Country built is anchored to a bedrock of songs written about such things.

(This post may be updated and revised.)

Sources, links:

• WSMV.com;
• Tennessean.com;
• The Associated Press;
• OFMusic's YouTube account.
  

Sarah Ellen Procter, Charged with the Murder of Charlotte Whale, 5/28/1888

The Old Bailey, London's main criminal court, has published all court proceedings between 1674 and 1913 online. True crime historians everywhere have begun to salivate as surely as Pavlov's dog drooled at the ring of a bell.

I've already taken a "found poetry" approach to a few recent posts in the True Crime Tumblelog. This is in no way intended to be frivolous, but a re-structuring of how one might look at a given story. A found poem is all about taking existing text and presenting it in a way that alters the reader's view of the subject. Where a crime story is concerned, it can be a route to deeper meaning, learning something more profound about the human experience in general.

Just in case you think this is an odd approach coming from a true crime blogger, well, it isn't. Not from me, at least. My first published work was poetry. Three pieces were published in an anthology of Nashville-area poets who congregated around an iconic downtown establishment for many years (only paid in copies of the book, but that's par for the course, much of the time). Another poem I wrote 20 years ago was once highlighted in the Poet's Market by one publisher as an example of precisely the sorts of submissions he wanted from others.

I first published this in the TC Tumblelog, but I felt it was a bit long for that site -- I try to keep tumblelog entries brief, in keeping with the format as most people understand it.

Here's some found poetry from the Old Bailey proceedings referenced in the title of this entry -- in keeping with my understanding of the form, I've made no alterations to the text short of leaving out some words and punctuation -- enjambment sometimes takes the place of punctuation in what you're about to read...

ELLEN CALLOW:

I knew the deceased, Charlotte Whale,
She lived with me last summer
She arrived that day with the prisoner
I had seen the prisoner before
but did not know much of her

She said she would rather
Be in the same place as Charlotte Whale

HENRY CALLOW:

Half past 8 on the Tuesday morning
my wife came into my room
in cones sequence of what she said

I saw Whale lying on the bed
with her head
very much injured;
she was alive,
lying on her left side
with her face towards the wall
I saw that the skull
had been injured
I at once dressed
went downstairs,
and there
saw the prisoner
sitting on a chair

She said I done it,
I meant doing it;
I owed her a grudge,
I know I shall swing for it

GUILTY of the act charged,
but being insane
To be detained
during Her Majesty's pleasure.

KingCast says of course the NYC Police were acquitted in the killing of Sean Bell because police almost never do any wrong in America.

Here is the BBC coverage.

CRUCIAL UPDATE: My buddy Columbian Cokane blogger shows us how they handle a similar situation with a white guy in Rhode Island when he goes to score cocaine and rams his car into a police cruiser. As noted in the comments section, No shots fired.

UPDATE: "I could have been Sean Bell." Exactly. And any one of us could have been Brian Noakes in Corvallis, Derek/Hale in Wilmington, Liko Kenney in Franconia or Michael Isreal in Hamilton, Ohio. Sometimes we extract some measure of Justice by working together. Just real people trying to get to and fro.

Let's get real: First, Police have the toughest job in the World. As a former AAG and even as a private practice attorney involved in litigation for them and against them, no one is going to tell me otherwise.

Let's keep it real: Sometimes they make mistakes, and when they do, the government, from the top down (it was a bench trial of course) almost always protects them, coddles them unless the conduct is sooooo extreme as to shock the conscience. Think of the rape and sodomy of Abner Louima, with a side of Perjury to boot.

After the verdict a spokesman for a police union, Patrick J Lynch, told reporters it proved that police officers could expect "fairness" when in court.

He said that Bell's death had been a "tragedy", but said that for police officers out on the streets there "is never a script - they deal with circumstances as they come" and sometimes made mistakes.

KingCast says 50 rounds ain't no mistake. They were shooting to kill. And as I recall from reading early accounts of this tragedy they were plainclothes officers trash talking Bell and his friends and when they opened fire Bell having only a vehicle to defend himself with, tried to ram a car and do whatever he could to stay alive. Mr Bell was no troublemaker, he was a hard-working father and lover.

Here is a comment from Sean Bell's father, William Bell. Below is a solid comment from someone who is probably an LE in that story:

All police officers are trained before being issued a gun. No where does the training call for an officer to empty and reload his side arm without first assessing the situation before continuing to fire. These guys followed and attempted to execute the occupants of that car. No backup was called prior to the shooting. Why couldnt they box in the car and wait for backup? They deserve to hang. No ones life is worth more than another. No special treatment for cops.

As far as it not being a race issue…i think no one knows what its like to be black or hispanic in this city unless they are black or hispanic. Racial profiling is real. Whites dont believe it because they are not the victims of it.

*********

Similarly, a rogue cop like Franconia, New Hampshire's Bruce McKay "made mistakes" forever and got away with bloody murder, look at his legacy, and the NH Goverment, led by Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, is there to try (and thankfully fail) to name a road after him. Then they cover for a dangerous instrumentality named Gregory W. Floyd, whom I believe murdered Liko Kenney. This was after Kenney, forcibly backed into a corner with a 3-ton Tahoe and a can of mace -- all against Police procedure -- shot McKay. Then Floyd goes home with Liko's Kenney's live round in his pocket and the AG tells us they have no fingerprint analysis that could tell us whether Floyd actually was the one who loaded that clip in Liko's gun.

Thankfully we have won the right to inspect the original dash cam video to see if that provides us any more information in this tragedy and we will be doing that just as Liko would have turned 25 years of age.