The Very Strange Disappearance and Death of Loic Rogers

Mark Rogers walked his son Loic out into the dark of an early evening in Kalispell, Montana. It was around 6:45 p.m. on Thursday night, January 25, 2007. Mark left Loic there and went back in the house owned by his friend, Tommie Cates, leaving his 3-year-old son unattended for only a moment.

When Mark came back, his son was gone.

That's the story Mark Rogers has been telling about his toddler's disappearance.

Today, sadly, it is being reported that Loic JM Rogers's body has been found.

The Daily Interlake published this article on Friday: "Day two looking for Loic."

Loic's mother Ariel Rogers was interviewed for the piece written by reporter Candace Chase. Ariel said she and husband Mark, who are separated, were to take polygraph tests Friday afternoon at the request of the FBI. Federal agents wanted to be sure the parents had nothing to do with their son's vanishing.

Ariel Rogers told the paper there was no "problem at all" with taking the polygraph, and she seemed to be speaking for her husband as well.

A family spokesman said Mark 'wasn't feeling well' and that this was why he gave no interviews.

Reports from authorities referenced by the Interlake article about Mark Rogers's explanation of events on Thursday were... interesting. Mark apparently stated that once on the driveway, he told his 3-year-old to go ahead and get in the van. So, as his 3-year-old was getting in the van, in the dark, Mark Rogers went back inside the house.

Rogers had no explanation as to why he didn’t go that extra mile and put the boy in the van himself.

Ariel Rogers said in the interview that she and her husband were battling over their 3 kids. During their separation, Mark had been given custody.

Ariel Rogers also said, "We love our children. He (Mark) would never do anything to hurt our children."

This is a MySpace.com search for the name "Mark Rogers" in the Kalispell, Montana zip code, 59901.

Two results came back, essentially empty profiles, at first glance. Both were for a 32-year-old Mark Rogers who gave his Astrological sign as Cancer.

The owner of one profile last logged in on January 12 of this year. Info left on the page showed he'd attended Columbia Falls High in Columbia Falls, MT, and graduated in 1993. This Mark Rogers had only created the profile on January 7.

This profile for Mark Rogers in Kalispell was created on January 13. The last login was on January 23, just a day or so before Loic disappeared.

Incidentally -- both profiles state that the owner doesn't want kids. This is MySpace.com's default setting for all profiles. Don't read anything into that.

I've seen members of the mainstream media make much hay of this detail in a person's online profile. If you know how MySpace actually works, to single out that "don't want kids" on a MySpace profile is just foolish. All that means is the owner didn't fill out all the forms yet.

To me, it might be much more significant that the profile owner last logged in just a day or so before Loic Rogers disappeared. It leads me to wonder why -- was there info he didn't want seen by the public? If so, why was he removing it a good day and a half, two days before his name would hit the news?

Could be moot, if it isn't the Mark Rogers who walked little Loic out of that house a few nights ago.

The Mark Rogers who says he left his 3-year-old on an icy driveway in the dark and cold, to see himself into the car.

There is a Websleuths.com discussion of this case, and a press conference will be given in Montana today, at 3 p.m. Mountain Time.

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m. ET

According to various reports from readers as well as the thread at Websleuths.com, Loic Rogers is said by police to have drowned in a septic tank on the property where he disappeared. Police in Kalispell appear to still be investigating, but at the moment, suspicion that Loic's death was more than a terrible accident seems to be minimal.

And maybe it was just that -- an awful accident. There are factors that still don't make sense.

-- It was no doubt dark, and cold. Most 3-year-olds I've dealt with (and as a father to 5 I've dealt with a few) hate being out in the cold too long, even if it's snowing.

-- How was Loic able to get the top off the septic tank, which apparently had a cover? My family had a septic tank, and it was practically a vault laid in the ground. Eventually we even buried the doors and my Dad fashioned a drainage system.

-- How long, really, was Loic alone after his father went back in the house? I will also be the first tell you I know how fast three-year-olds can move. I've underestimated the speed with which all my kids can get in trouble at times.

I imagine questions will linger about this child's death for some time. And no one will suffer from wanting those answers than his family and the good people in Kalispell who tried to find the boy.

UPDATE, 1/28/07, 12:18 a.m. ET

From the AP/CBS: "Toddler Found in Septic Tank":

The body of Loic J.M. Rogers was found late Friday, and an autopsy showed that he drowned, Meehan said.

"This is a tragedy," Meehan said.

It was unclear how the boy got into the septic tank, and the manhole-sized lid was closed. [Flathead County Sheriff Mike] Meehan did not classify the death as a homicide, but said investigators do not believe he could have climbed into the tank and put the lid back on himself. An investigation is continuing...

The portion in bold was my emphasis -- that the boy could have opened a closed septic tank, possibly in freezing weather, made no sense to me at all.

This story seems to be migrating from a tragic missing persons case to a truly weird death investigation.

Additionally, for an example of a very thoughtful and informative comment, read what "Ty P" posted to this blog entry, here.

UPDATE, 1/28/07, 3:51 p.m. ET

In the comments left on this entry, EPS pointed readers towards a Topix.net discussion about Loic Rogers's disappearance and death.

While you can be anyone you want to be on the Web, often the question I ask when someone claims to be an insider where a story like this is concerned is this: what do they have to gain by claiming to be who they are?

In the discussion EPS linked, a person claiming to be Loic Rogers's grandfather in Missouri has been posting messages about the case, and what an impostor would have to gain from doing this is not clear to me. Certainly the sympathy of others, but how satisfying could that really be if you are not who you say you are?

Anyway, I acknowledge that it is easy for people to say they are someone else online. That said, the most recent Topix.net post by the man saying he was "grandpa" had one striking thing in it:

I'm not at liberty to discuss much of this situation, due to the ongoing investigation.

The oldest grand[d]aughter Indica has told us a different story than what has been said by Mark.(the father)

To me, there is no way in hell that Loic could have gotten in there by himself, and then closed the lid. Besides the time line involved.....one to two minutes before the search began, and no small tracks.

We live in a different state, so we did not get to see the news conference either. The info we are getting is from the rest of the family, and what we can read on the internet.

Ariel, and Amber are our nieces, and daughters. We got [guardianship] of them when they were eight, and five. We raised them! Loic was very much our grandson. So please don't think I'm just another crack pot.

I want to thank all of the searchers, and others who have given so much!

I emphasized the part I found most interesting in "grandpa's" post. Photos of the search for Loic in Kalispell showed that there was still plenty of snow on the ground. In-depth articles by the local papers indicated that the kids at the home where Loic disappeared and was then found were playing in the snow around the house, and this made any tracking of the boy's tiny footprints difficult.

Still, would the kids have been playing right around the septic tank? Would they have played in that area enough to really disturb the snow? Septic tanks, as you'd might expect, have an odor. If they are well-made, it usually isn't obvious until you're right on top of the tank. Such an odor would be a kind of warning to even little kids that they might not want to play in that area.

Loic drowned in that tank. What was the last thing he saw? Was there a face he'd formerly trusted peering down through the manhole-sized cover, in that last instant before a deeper darkness fell?

George Horner, Absconded Sex Offender

George Richard Horner, a 26-year-old registered sex offender, is on the run tonight.

On Friday a 6-year-old girl was allegedly abducted by Horner. The former resident of Maurice, Louisiana had been staying with the girl and her mother in Maricopa County, Arizona, and good old George offered to take the girl to school.

The little girl and Horner vanished for a time, long enough for an Amber Alert to be issued. Eventually, the child was found walking through a neighborhood in Casa Grande, about 20 miles from her home. Authorities say she may have been sexually assaulted.

More information can be found here.

Even though articles about this Horner and this abduction state that he was supposedly on the way from California to Louisiana, just staying in Maricopa for a short time, Horner's MySpace says he lived there:

http://www.myspace.com/nypho85232

Male
26 years old
Maricopa, ARIZONA
United States

Last Login: 12/12/2006

Comparisons between published photos of Horner (link goes to his Louisiana Sex Offender Registry page) and the photos found on the MySpace profile show the same man. Additionally, Horner helpfully gave his height and build on his profile, and those match his registry listing, as does his probable Astrological sign. Horner apparently last logged into MySpace on his 26th birthday, and the George Horner on MySpace stated that he was a Sagittarius.

A young woman who on her own page gives her age as 18 was the only person who left comments on Horner's profile. Between July 28 and July 30 she posted 41 times.

This young woman has no mention of Horner on her page now, but her last MySpace login was on January 22, and on the 24th a friend of hers left the following comment:

OOOH SHiT YOU GO GiRL...YOU GET YOUR MAN!!! i'M HAPPY YOU iN LOVE. KEEP HiM HAPPY AND HE'LL KEEP YOU HAPPY =]!!! SPEAK SOON. MUCH LOVE...

(Though it is obvious who this girl is once you click through to Horner's profile, I'm holding off on directly linking her or naming her for the moment.)

The 18-year-old friend of Horner's who was so avid in posting comments on his profile for a few days in July may have discovered his status as a registered sex offender and lost interest. Or perhaps their relationship became more secretive. A Google search on her screen name called up a cache of her profile page made in November, 2006, and George was still her #1 friend.

I had to wonder. The girl gave a location in Tennessee -- could it be that George Horner is as likely to be headed to Tennessee as Louisiana?

It's a question worth asking.

Especially since the guy has already been convicted of sex with a minor once, and now may have gone deeper into his perversion. The minor he assaulted before was a teen; the girl abducted early Friday was probably in kindergarten.

So take a look at George's photo and the photos on his MySpace, paying special attention to the captions -- just click the smaller image above, on the left. It would seem that George wrote those captions with an audience in mind -- likely the 18-year-old in Tennessee.

Take a look, because that's a face that needs to be seen behind bars as soon as humanly possible, if the man is guilty of assaulting a six year old.

Additional Crime Blog Coverage:

• Lost in Lima Ohio: "George Horner."

UPDATE, 1/27/07, 6:01 p.m. ET

George Horner (this has already been posted in the comments left for this entry) has been arrested.

No other details have been released yet, but at least he's off the street.

I know others feel this way, so I don't mind saying I'd like to know if George has encountered a little girl named Marissa Graham in the last couple of weeks, as well.

Deathmaker

It wasn't a typical start to the day for residents living near the 3200 block of Sherman Court in suburban Nampa, Idaho.

A naked man was walking through the neighborhood on a Wednesday morning. This would have been unusual on any day just about any place, but it was especially strange here considering the likely temperature on a typical January morning anywhere in Idaho.

The 26-year-old man's name was Brent Eugene High.

Naturally somebody called the cops. The police stopped Mr. High, and after some questioning it became clear there was a crime scene somewhere close by.

According to Nampa assistant police chief Leroy Forsman, that crime scene was "gruesome."

Nampa, Idaho, population just over 100,000, had its first homicide investigation of 2007, and it was a twofer. Found bludgeoned to death in the 3200 block of Sherman Court were two males -- men whose names have not been released as of midnight, January 25, 2006.

Brent Eugene High was arrested. He sits tonight in the Canyon County Jail, charged with two counts of first-degree murder. ^{1, 2.}

It is not yet an axiom that a name in the news, a name like Brent High's, will lead a websleuth to a profile on MySpace. Some names are too common, and plenty of people still do not live their lives online.

In this instance, a search of that domain for the name "Brent High" yielded just a handful of results, and only one was 26 and from anywhere in Idaho:

http://www.myspace.com/130034989.

The MySpacer listed his astrological sign as Gemini. That information dovetailed with the birthdate for the only Idaho-based Brent E. High, age 26, that I could find in public record database searches on the name.

The person who made the profile, (last log-in on November 17, 2006), well -- he was pretty kooky, and he loved Everquest. Everquest is a popular "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" (MMORPG) that's been steadily drawing new users since 1999.

This Brent High said he was from Idaho Falls, Idaho, which is nearly 300 miles away from Nampa. The database searches I ran gave an address for Brent High in Idaho Falls at one point, then in Boise, which is only 22 miles from Nampa.

Under "About Me," he wrote:

FU guys, lol J/k but really if you got a problem with my site then STFU Muwahahahahahahah hehe TEEHEE TeeHEHEHE...

Then, under "Who I'd like to meet," Brent High posted:

That on EverQuest that Trained me that one day back in 2001. Ya i got a Screen shot of that , no not really im not a dick like some of you all. But im a asshole heheh...

For his headline, the quote by the profile pic on all MySpace profiles, Brent High wrote:

EQ Saryrn Brentos DeathMaker's Myspace Bitches !!!

Working with the assumption that a man found naked near the scene of a gruesome double murder might be a bit odd in general, like the creator of this MySpace page, I felt this profile held information worth searching. Specifically, the name "Brentos Deathmaker."

It's a clever, if morbid play on the slogan for Mentos -- "the freshmaker." Clever enough to be pretty unique.

Brentos Deathmaker had an Everquest profile, of course. It showed his total time played was 403 days and some change. He'd last updated the profile on January 18, and was last online using that profile on the 19^th.

Removing the space between the first and last name -- BrentosDeathmaker -- yielded a number of results. On xfire, for instance, the Deathmaker had logged 130 hours playing Battlefield 2.

I didn't find any of this remarkable in the way you might think. That the man played online games was immaterial to me. If I was looking at profiles for the same Brent High sitting in the Canyon County Jail charged with a gruesome double murder, I did wonder why he had so much time to play the games.

Then I took a close look at the BrentosDeathmaker user profile for a game titled, "End of Evolution":

Age:
26
Location:
Idaho,USA
Interests:
Everquest,BF2
Occupation:
Disabled SSI , Playing Games is my job !

I couldn't help but think that the disability would turn out to be a mental illness. My guess would be paranoid schizophrenia.

Sometime in the last few months, Brent High the gamer on social security disability had a huge life change.

Posting to a forum at TheSteelWarrior.org, he gave a breakdown of what was going on, and why he was leaving Everquest. The point to the post (Yahoo's cache -- to read the original required a login for the site) was to sell his Brentos Deathmaker character:

Broke up with lillyanna after 12 year relationship now im 26 yrs old. Living with Heffe...hauled all that my exe didn't take to the dump , with the clothing on my back and what little I owned Ie a cmputer left.....and now have a property manager handling my home in that city....to make a long story short. Now that im in the Same Metro area as my RL brother , and friends i'm looking to sell Brentos account and be done with EQ. played it for years and no reason to talk to lillyanna at all we have no kids and the break was rather clean she wants to use illegal drugs and thats fine she can OD for all I care..but after 7 years im honeslty rdy to just be done with EQ......turning now to god and Jesus away from sin and wicked people ie drug abusers , I feel bad for her but what can I do she isn't my wife so I have no legal hold on her she wouldn't take me for husband doesn't want to bring life into the world I would at least like the possiblity to have a son or
daughter I would love either that god sent me. Well we all got to do what we got to do. so maybe in time god will bless me untill then may god bless my exe and help her see and get off the drugs as I can't help and at that time myself good bye i've moved on .....there alot of great peeps in EQ and what not brentos is a decently geared tank with max AA atm i'll continue to play him untill I fine someone who is willing to buy him off my hands. Looking for happiness in all the right places I suppose so im optomoistic. Asking 1800.00 for Brentos guildy or not this is RL business looking to use that along with what i'll get from renting my home ect..... to buy a Steet bike to get around town with... if your self or anyone you know wants to investe into this Warrior let me know

well Email me Brentostankfly@hotmail.com
IM me also via this email
or call me on the phone XXX-XXX-XXXX
if your seriously interested in Brentos we'lll work out the details I look forward to hearing from you...

The Deathmaker posted a shorter message here, at RealPoor.com, a site that has forums where gamers can trade, buy, and sell characters.

Brent High, or "Brentos Deathmaker" was a still-young man on disability, who even joked that gaming was his "career." Yet here he was, trying to sell the character he'd used to represent himself online for so long.

Incidentally, he mentioned moving to a "metro" area. In Idaho, that typically means Boise/Nampa. So Brent High/BrentosDeathmaker may have been in Boise by the beginning of this month.

"Brentos Deathmaker" posted the RealPoor.com message on January 15, 2007. The upheaval described in the longer message on the SteelWarrior site was recent.

I believe Brent High spent several years forging a life in the fantasy worlds of Everquest and World of Warcraft. It was his way to pass the day when he had nowhere else to go, since he was on disability. In this instance, it may be that the games actually provided him with a sort of stability.

With the severing of a relationship, Brent's brittle fantasy world began to shatter.

And it just may be that in one night, Brentos's self-created name -- Deathmaker -- went from a morbid joke to a horrific reality.

Any updates will be posted below.

UPDATE, 12:45 p.m. ET

The Idaho Statesman has a good article about this double-homicide here. They have yet to pick up on this angle of the story -- how Brent High's online presence may have given some insight into what was going on with him, but I'd be surprised if they didn't happen onto this info eventually.

The names of the murder victims have not been released as of noon today.

UPDATE, 4:41 p.m. ET

The details of the murders Brent High is accused of committing are not fully known, but what the Idaho Press-Tribune publishes in an update is pretty awful:

Magistrate Judge George Soughworth said Thursday that suspect Brent High is accused of torturing two men in Nampa Wednesday and then killing them by striking them with a "sharp, heavy object in the face and or body."

Soughworth said in a video arraignment that the murderer of two men committed the crime "to fulfill some sadistic desire."

The bodies of Brandon Johnson and an unidentified man were found in the 3200 block of Sherman Court on Wednesday...

This story is even more chilling than it seemed.

A Ladawn Johnson lives at 3220 Sherman Court in Nampa, so it is likely this was the address where the double homicide occurred.

UPDATE, 5:16 p.m. ET

Brandon Johnson may have been Brent High's stepbrother. Again, from the Press-Tribune, another update:

Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said officials are "99 percent sure" the victim is Brandon Johnson, stepbrother of suspect Brent High, but there are "still things we need to do" to confirm that he was indeed the victim.

De-Geus Morris said she is also "99 percent sure" about the identity of the second victim but is not releasing the victim's last name until his identity is confirmed and his parents are notified. DeGeus Morris did say the second victim's first name may be Randy...

This news renders the posts made by Brentos Deathmaker about his move to the same metro area as his brother more ominous than they seemed before.

It is also apparent that law enforcement doesn't believe the man they have in custody is insane, but more likely a stone-cold psychopathic killer. I base this on the "sadistic desire" statement from the previous update.

Further updates to follow.

UPDATE, 1/26/07

The Idaho Statesman has an article detailing just how insane and awful the murders of Brandon Johnson and "RB" may have been:

No suspected motive for the killings was revealed in the affidavit, and Nampa police have not disclosed a motive or other details. High seemed lucid during the hearing and answered the judge respectfully. Family members at the hearing appeared distraught; one woman cried softly. They declined to comment as they left the courtroom.

According to the affidavit:

• Both victims were found in pools of blood — BJ on a bed in the master bedroom, RB face-down in the kitchen. Blood spatter and other evidence indicate RB "had been followed and struck throughout the home."

• A single-blade ax was found in the toilet, blade down. Blood and hair were found on the ax head and blood on the handle.

• Bloody footprints led from RB's body to a bathroom, where police found blood-soaked jeans, other clothing, shoes that matched the footprints, and High's wallet.

• Blood was smeared on closet doors and spread on the floors, ceilings and walls in the hallway, entryway and living room.

• High's hair was wet when officers stopped him, as if he'd taken a shower. Cowdery said he examined High and saw flecks of red on his ear that seemed consistent with blood spatter. High's left hand, particularly around his knuckles, was yellowish and dark.

BJ's wife told investigators that High had been living with the couple at the home on Sherman Court for about a month. She said her husband and RB were asleep when she left the house about 6:16 a.m. Wednesday, but High was awake.

Officers responding to a report of a naked man found High several blocks from the home around 9 a.m. When officers interviewed High, he continually made comments about the Bible, religion, God and Jesus Christ, they said in the affidavit...

Religious delusions, walking naked through the cold... this man was sick. It just remains to be seen as to whether or not he was too sick to know that what he did was wrong. It will be the difference between life in prison or the death penalty or life in a psychiatric hospital.

Sources (other than original research):

1. "Naked man arrested for double Murder," Fox Channel 12, KTRV, Boise/Nampa/Caldwell.

2. Wikipedia entry on Nampa, Idaho.

Dakota Fanning and That Damned Movie

Before I even start, I should point out that the rape scene in Dakota Fanning's new movie, Hounddog, is not a new thing in "mainstream" cinema. In 1996, Anjelica Huston directed the relentlessly depressing Bastard Out of Carolina, and that movie featured a then-12-year-old Jena Malone's character being raped by her stepfather, a character Ron Eldard played with real viciousness. There was controversy over that movie just as there is real controversy about Fanning's new movie. I'm just surprised that people forget this sort of thing.

What's difficult for me when it comes to writing about this issue is the fact that I detest censorship. I majored in a performing art in college and I've been involved in the performing arts since I was 9.

Freedom of expression in both entertainment and literature means a great, great deal to me.

I usually can't advocate censorship of acceptable mainstream entertainment.

But that begs the question of what is acceptable mainstream entertainment.

By all accounts, Hounddog is an acceptable mainstream movie, overall. While the early reviews all state that the now-infamous scene where Fanning's character is raped by a 20-year-old man is deeply disturbing, one article I read this morning pointed out that you really don't actually see what happens.

Fine.

You're reading a crime blog, though, so you have to know I've got a certain angle on this story.

Click the following:

"Lindsay Ashford"+"Dakota Fanning"

It's a Google search. You only get one page of results at the moment, but that's enough.

Lindsay Ashford is the free-speech poster perv for men all over the world who believe they should legally be allowed to have sex with girls Dakota Fanning's age and younger.

At the bottom of the first page of results you find three results, two of them blogs or profiles run by the same guy. One hit is a weblog run by a self-proclaimed "girl-lover," who says his site was inspired by Ashford. The blog entry in question mentions "positive" portrayals of "girl-love" in Hollywood. I will not link the blog or do anything past the Google search, but this quote from the blogger in question should be noted:

For example, in the early stages of the 'gay revolution' if you will, the mantra was "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." It was found to be very confrontational and ill-recieved [sic], and so the movement changed their tactics. They dropped the mantra, and created gay and lesbian characters on tv and in movies who were kind, wise, and the first people you should approach if you have a relationship issue. Everyone remember "Carter" on Spin City? Nuff said. ;)

The question I have, though, is how can we use a similar strategy? The first idea I had is to convince celebrities to make child-love friendly comments, which is actually going on already. Everyone remember the Olsen Twins? (Like we could forget.) And of course Dakota Fanning. These and others are openly commented on by pundits and talk show hosts. Even Carlos Mencia on Comedy Central commented on older guys who are attracted to younger women (though, admittedly, the message presented was half-negative, half-positive, as is much of Mencia's comedy)...

Since I'm staunchly straight-but-not-narrow, I could really go on about how deeply offensive this guy's attempt to compare the struggle for gay rights to pedophile rights really is, but that isn't the point of this particular blog entry. Suffice it to say, the gay friends I've talked to about this particular subject would like pedophiles to know: leave them out of it.

What I'm getting at is this -- there is a certain segment of society out there who will perceive Hounddog as catnip.

It will not matter to them that the filmmakers and the young actress perceive the movie this way:

[Director Deborah] Kampmeier said it took her a decade to get the film made, largely because of the rape scene, but cutting it was a compromise she was unwilling to make.

"This issue is so silenced in our society. There are a lot of women who are alone with this story," she said.

"When you're shooting a film, it's the images you line up next to each other that create a story," Kampmeier said. "If you have a hand hitting the ground, Dakota screaming 'stop' and you see a zipper unzip _ that creates a rape."

Dakota Fanning isn't a woman. She's a child. And pedophiles the world over are already well aware of her. I just quoted one before the passage above, after all.

It doesn't matter to the "girl lovers," Ms. Kampmeier, that your movie portrays rape as terrifying, or that nothing obvious is shown on-screen. It doesn't matter to the pedophiles that this movie may meet the technical definition of a movie that is acceptable to show in your local cineplex. None of that matters to people like the blogger I quoted.

What matters to pedophiles focused on young girls is they may be able to go to a regular, everyday theater and watch a depiction of Dakota Fanning being violated.

The pedophiles, Ms. Kampmeier, will not suspend disbelief. The guy who has a Xanga and a MySpace showing up in that first Google search I embedded, the guy who lists Lindsay Ashford among his heroes and Dakota Fanning among his favorite actors -- guys like that will take it where they can find it.

While the rest of us might watch such a movie and by the time the rape scene is onscreen be so involved in the story we are horrified, there are men out there who are not as bumbling and stupid as the crew of ball-cap-wearing Zima-bearing creeps plucked off the street during each Dateline "To Catch a Predator" episode. A class of sexual predator not stupid enough to download child porn, not dumb enough to troll chat rooms.

These guys are accustomed to seeking out their fantasy material in seemingly innocuous places. All you need to know is that "child model" sites exist to know this. These are websites with outwardly acceptable (legal) photos of children. Kids in regular clothes, kids in swimsuits. But most of the time such websites are created just for pedophiles.

Dennis Rader, the BTK Strangler, was not just a child predator when he murdered at least 10 people over the course of 30 years. Most of his victims were adults, save two of the first four he murdered in January, 1974 -- Josie and Joey Otero were 11 and 9 when Rader murdered them.

However, one bizarre perversion of Rader's discovered after his arrest was his habit of clipping images (he called them "slicks") from catalogues, often images of young girls in swimsuits or other revealing clothing. Rader used these to masturbate.

That's one example of what I'm talking about. Rader took what he could get. He took perfectly normal images and converted them to his use.

Those images used by Rader were innocent, no one would ever task the photographers who took the photos for the way Rader used them. In Hounddog, a filmmaker has intentionally portrayed an instance of sexual violence against a child. People less homicidal than Rader, but potentially as perverse will notice. If you think they won't, you're an idiot.

If you search the terms "Dakota Fanning" and "girl lover" you get over 600 hits. A good number of these hits are men who admire the likes of Lindsay Ashford discussing either just the actress herself, or lately, this particular movie. What does that tell you about why a movie like Hounddog deserves the criticism it has received? Free speech and unfettered artistic expressions are great. But there is a point where devotion to making a "statement" must be tempered by understanding the context in which that statement is being made.

That simply wasn't done here.

I don't think Deborah Kampmeier or Dakota Fanning's parents were truly aware of what they were dealing with. I have a feeling -- and I'm probably being charitable -- that they weren't thinking past the rarified audience potentially found in the seats at the Sundance Festival.

I have a feeling they never thought to just Google-search Ms. Fanning's name and the term "girl lover."

Deborah Kampmeier seems to have framed the making of this movie as some sort of heroic struggle on her part, the artist working hard to make her statement over the course of a decade. And that's fine, if it makes her feel better. The truth is, though, there's a reason some movies don't get made with any speed, a reason movies stall in production, sometimes.

There are very good reasons for the outrage being expressed about this movie, and why a guy like me, who abhors censorship, would join the chorus.

See, I wouldn't go see this movie for another reason, one I've already alluded to -- if Hounddog makes it to the megaplex down the street, one chief reason to not go see it would simply be this: Who the hell is sitting beside you? Or behind you?

Or in the rear of the theater, where no one can see them?

UPDATE, 1/25/07

The Smoking Gun has an excerpt from the script for Hounddog. The script was also written by director Deborah Kampmeier.

I'll withhold further comment for now... except to note that script directions appear to be written in dialect, Kampmeier dropping the 'g' in words that end with "ing."

There is something deeply, profoundly irritating in that, to this southerner.

Updates, Two Major Stories

I will try to keep this update brief, but two stories I've followed closely -- one for nearly two years, another since the middle of this month -- have interesting developments worth noting...

"Shawn Hornbeck May Have Helped Abduct Ben Ownby"

I've been waiting for something like this to come out. It will give the perverse contingent out there who desperately want some solid reason to back up the contention Shawn was complicit in his own captivity something to really chew on.

KMOV out of St. Louis reported in the article I linked that Shawn Hornbeck was allegedly made to help Michael Devlin abduct Ben Ownby. Furthermore, a gun and duct tape were used in Ben's abduction.

Sources close to the investigation told the TV station that Shawn was forced to grab Ben and force him to the floorboard of the white Nissan.

This doesn't change anything about how I view this case. Manipulation and bargaining were probably part of Shawn's captivity from the very beginning. The media may treat this as some revelation of deeper, more perverse twist in the story -- to me it's a completely expected, and very sad wrinkle in the overall tale.

See, I could almost guarantee you that the boy abducted off the road in October, 2002 would never have conceived of such a thing.

And this revelation, to me, simply compounds the already obvious evil behind the alleged acts of Michael Devlin. You NAMBLA supporters -- because whether you know it or not, your opinions fully support the North American Man-Boy Love Association party line on "relationships" such as the one Devlin may have had with Shawn -- can keep sending your nasty e-mails or leaving your comments asking your slyly worded questions about Shawn's behavior and you'll still be wrong to the point of being pretty sick yourself. If Shawn did help abduct Ben as alleged, that actually just proves to me that there was no relationship between him and Devlin that could be recognized by a normal human being. "Boy-lovers" contend these "relationships" are consensual. That's been the sick core to arguments made by people supporting the likes of Bill O'Reilly all along -- that Shawn somehow "liked" being held captive by Michael Devlin.

I've never heard of a consensual relationship where one person would let another do something like kidnap a 13-year-old boy at gunpoint. No, that came from Shawn Hornbeck being an abused victim and captive whose reality had been controlled, and thus forever altered by Michael Devlin.

That he may have been compelled by Devlin to help abduct Ben Ownby only makes me feel worse for both boys.

Joseph Edward Duncan III Confessed to Other Murders

Thank you to a reader named "Summer" who sent me notice of this development. It's covered in this blog entry in part because in my mind, predators like Duncan and Devlin may fit into the same category... however, we are now learning just what a vicious animal Duncan is, in unwanted detail, and we won't know this much about Michael Devlin for some time to come.

Jules Hammer, blogmistress of Jetd63.blogspot.com, her regular readers and I have known some of this since 2005, but seeing it in a legal document is still profoundly disturbing.

The document found at the other end of the link above is United States of America v. Joseph Edward Duncan III, the Government's "notice of aggravating factors and intent to seek the death penalty."

The aggravating factors? Duncan murdered Dylan Groene in front of his sister, Shasta.

He did even worse, actually. He tried to make Shasta feel as if she were participating in her brother's murder -- just like we've learned Michael Devlin may have made Shawn Hornbeck participate in abducting Ben Ownby. That's one of the extra details I've known since 2005 -- and no, I didn't want to know.

In the court document linked above, you can also read that Duncan told prosecutors he killed Carmen Cubias, 9, and her 11-year-old half-sister Sammiejo White in Bothell, Washington in July of 1996. Duncan has already been charged with the murder of Anthony Michael Martinez in California in April, 1997.

Two men who preyed on children. Men who wanted to possess them, abuse and control them, in Duncan's case, kill them. The real monsters that lurk among us. At the moment, one man, Michael Devlin, is still only alleged to have done these things.

It's taken more than a year, but we're finally seeing confirmation as to the swath cut by Joseph Edward Duncan through many lives over the years.

Stories like these aren't merely "true crime stories."

They're more like true horror.

(NOTE: For the best blog coverage of the Duncan case, especially the latest developments, see this entry at The Cellar.)

The Continuing Abuse of Shawn Hornbeck

If it were not for the comments and e-mails I've received, I'd leave this alone.

But people want to talk about it.

I've weighed in several times on Bill O'Reilly's statements about abducted Missouri teen Shawn Hornbeck. Any doubts I'd ever had that O'Reilly was a soulless bastard were cleared up by what he said on January 15th, and he's done nothing in statements since to change my mind.

Now it looks as though the media giant paying Bill O'Reilly's salary is jumping into the fray with both feet.

News Corp is beating the hell out of a low-to-middle-income family from Missouri who just got back the son they surely must have thought was dead and gone, whether that family admits it or not. Shawn Hornbeck is alive, and there is little doubt in anyone's mind that he's also probably emotionally damaged in a way very few of us could even begin to understand. Still, his being alive is a miracle.

Have Shawn's parents, Craig and Pamela Akers, made some mistakes since their boy came home?

Yes. This will seem a rather contrary position to some readers, but I think it was a mistake to put the boy on Oprah, even though Oprah is one of the most compassionate public figures out there, and her handling of the Akers and Shawn was pretty low-key. I have to agree with the editorials slamming that move, even the one published in the News Corp-owned New York Post.

Nothing this family has done has merited O'Reilly's words, nor what the Post has published today.

Before I go on, I should point out something -- Fox News, O'Reilly's home network, has always been very kind to me. They've had me guest on several shows over a period of two years, and the producers and hosts I've dealt with were always great. I've been very aware of this since I started touching on the O'Reilly part of this story. I'd be surprised if they ever call me back at this point.

But sometimes you have to call 'em as you see 'em -- a stance I figure Bill O'Reilly would agree with, in and of itself.

A reader named "windy" wrote me last night. Some quotes from windy's e-mail:

Tomorrow morning the headlines will read - Shawn Hornbeck's natural father was a convicted sex offender, apparently in a statutory case (rape down to attempted sodomy), this according to Fox in a big, smiling, drum-rolled, make you wait an hour for this big earth-shattering scoop, kind of thing. I could not believe it, the way they set it up, that was it. I am scratching my head trying to figure out how that is even remotely connected to anything, or even how they could paint it as something meaningful (...) I'm sad to know, and figured as much, that Shawn would personally have to hear people say such things about him, actually I'm very angry. I'm a republican, now what am I supposed to watch on T.V.??? (...) I actually liked the way one of the other news channels was covering this whole story very much, can't remember which one, but that just blows my mind because I usually won't listen to "liberal media", but I'm just all messed up over this one. Fox also misquoted Shawn's post to the foundation's website TWICE this week, and I called and e-mailed them both times because it made a big difference the way they were reading it (when are you gonna stop looking for your son?)

Then this morning, Terry wrote me an e-mail:

I would like to know your feelings Steve about these interviews that the New York Post did with Devlin and also the revelation from the same newspaper that Shawns biological father was a sex offender. In my opinion it is the media continuing to abuse this boy who must already be at such a low ebb.

With the caveat that New York Post is indeed a tabloid, let's look at today's infractions, the articles referred to above.

"VICTIM'S FATHER SERVED TIME AS A PERV " -- that's the title of the piece published today about Walter C. Hornbeck, Shawn's deceased biological father.

The article itself is actually pretty straight-ahead reporting, fairly objective in tone:

The man who fathered kidnapped teen Shawn Hornbeck was a convicted sex offender who did three years in a Missouri prison on drug and sodomy charges, The Post has learned.

The late Walter Hornbeck was 60 when Shawn was born to him and his wife, Pamela Akers. He had little contact with his son, Akers said...

I ended the quote where the article should have ended. Because really -- what's the point? Walter Hornbeck possibly having been a pervert falls into the realm of mildly morbid coincidence, yet if you combined the onslaught of promos on Saturday night by Fox News talking heads with the screaming headline, the Post, and I assume its parent company, apparently feel this is BIG NEWS.

It isn't.

And now Shawn Hornbeck, likely a pretty normal kid when he was kidnapped at 11 and then most likely brutalized off and on for the following 4 years, has a New York-based tabloid with international reach shouting from the rooftops that his bio-daddy was a groper and a toker.

I thought Fox News and News Corp in general were fond of the heartland, of the "flyover states." Don't they believe the conservative consumer base to which they cater is mainly there, in states like Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma? At the moment, this very powerful media giant seems to be working hard to ensure the rest of us that everyone in this particular story is either trailer trash themselves or at least related to trailer trash.

As someone who grew up in the south, in a similar neighborhood to the one from which Shawn Hornbeck was snatched, I'm naturally very disturbed by this.

I just didn't see the point to the article about Walter Hornbeck. It seemed a cheap, pointless shot, in spite of the straightforward newswriting under the lurid headline.

More disturbing was this: "I AM STILL TOO SCARED TO TELL MY MOM AND DAD, 'KIDNAP' CREEP ADMITS." The 'Kidnap' creep being, of course, Michael Devlin, age 41, the man who allegedly snatched Shawn while he was riding his bike in October, 2002. And he's still "too scared." Poor, poor baby.

I'm going to quote what I think are telling portions of the article, with some added emphasis:

Devlin agreed to two 15-minute interviews in a holding area at the Franklin County jail here, during which he talked about his lack of interest in sex, his passion for poker and video games, the amputation of his toes and his solitary confinement in a 10-by-7 foot cell.

But he refused to talk about the criminal charges he's facing, squinting his eyes and fidgeting in his chair when asked about the four years he allegedly held Shawn captive at his apartment in Kirkwood, Mo., and his alleged snatching of Ownby on Jan. 8.

"I will not discuss anything related to the case," he said...

So, he has no interest in sex? Would you, if you allegedly possessed child pornography and were presumed by many to be a child molester, admit to a female reporter that you were interested in sex, at all?

During the first sit-down on Friday, Devlin appeared red-faced and bleary-eyed and seemed downcast.

"I feel nothing," he said. "I hide my emotions from other people. I hide the way I feel."

Anyone else find the reporter's descriptions of Devlin's demeanor so far to be strangely sympathetic in tone? This isn't the basic journalistic objectivity found in the article about Walter Hornbeck -- words here seem more carefully and purposefully chosen, and indicative of a stance.

As for Devlin "feeling nothing" -- I suspect that is one of the most truthful statements the man will ever make in public. The rest of his statement might also be a source of sympathy, but for me, he spoke a likely fundamental truth about himself, then tried to couch it in words that made him seem simply repressed, not potentially psychopathic.

More:

Devlin, who grew up in Webster Groves, Mo., in a middle-class family, said, "I had a normal childhood - it was happy as far back as I can remember."

He recalled having taken family vacations, including a visit to Yellowstone National Park - his favorite place - and a road trip with his parents to New York City when Devlin was a small boy...

Oh, (wagging finger) you all remember now, Mr. Devlin was a small boy, once. Why, he even went to New York.

Amazing. The ultra-conservative News Corp now seems to have done a complete one-eighty on men accused of kidnapping little boys, men who may very well be major sexual predators. This article by Susannah Cahalan might as well be a post at TalkLeft, the liberal weblog that covers crime-related political news. Cahalan's article ultimately steers away from being a "puff piece" about Devlin, though -- it doesn't quite go the extra mile of implying he's a beleaguered, misunderstood weirdo deserving of some sympathy. But the hints are there. Cahalan sketches a large, unhealthy guy who is shy, deferential to his parents, and lonely. The overall tone is quite sympathetic.

While Mr. Devlin is entitled to all the 'allegedlys' we can give him until his day in court, it is easy for me to perceive the articles in the Post, Fox News's trumpeting of the articles on-air, and Bill O'Reilly's disgusting statements last week as part of a whole. A whole that could very well have been created the moment O'Reilly thoughtlessly opened his mouth on January 15 and spewed his irresponsible blather to Greta van Susteren about how Shawn Hornbeck probably "enjoyed" his time with Devlin.

But then again -- could O'Reilly be that important to News Corp, that beginning with his words on the 15th, other outlets run by the company began a press to not make the man look so ridiculous? That's hard for me to grasp. Yet here they are, telling us with something like smug assurance that Hornbeck's bio-dad was a perv, too, and Michael Devlin is a big, lonely schmoe with missing toes, who had it pretty good for the last 4 years.

It was borderline exploitation to have Shawn Hornbeck on Oprah. A mistake, but one I can understand. If you've ever dealt with booking producers for news shows of any sort, you have some idea of how persuasive they can be.

But I don't think it rose to the level of abuse, perhaps only because it was Oprah, and say what you will about the woman, it's on the record that she knows what it's like to be abused.

The reporting of this story by News Corp-owned outlets since January 15, 2007, though -- that's risen to the level of bullying, abuse. It's astonishing, and inexplicable.

See, I never deny being a conservative. I do say that my views are not by any stretch uniformly conservative. I know very few people who are totally party-line with one viewpoint, anyway. My most conservative views all deal with criminal justice. And for me, that has always meant that support and care are ensured for the victims of crime. The victims of crime have endured enough already. To have a legal system that ignores them, turns the tables on them, neglects them -- that's unconscionable.

Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck are victims. Being kidnapped by anyone, taken by force, is a crime. Moreover, they are children. He's 15, but legally, Shawn Hornbeck is a child.

So why then is the universally-acknowledged conservative Fox News and its sister paper, the Post, assisting in the continued abuse of a boy who has most likely already dealt with 4 years of the same? Is Bill O'Reilly that important to them?

Why were people like O'Reilly so outraged by O.J. Simpson's book, and not by this story?

I don't know all the answers to those questions. I just have an opinion, one guy's opinion.

And my opinion is that Shawn Hornbeck is still being abused by the media, and the worst offenders seem to be mouthpieces of News Corp.

I think viewers of that network and readers of that paper should take note, and act accordingly.

After this entry, I will cease making much comment about the case. This kind of ranting isn't why I started crime-blogging -- it just isn't as interesting as digging into crimes that might have some evidence of who, what, why, left online. With entries like this, I revert to being like every other blogger on the Web, mouthing off because I'm pissed, and my weblogs have been popular because I did much more than that. I will certainly touch on any major developments in the Ownby/Hornbeck kidnapping case, but I'm tired of opining on what the bloviators like O'Reilly say about this. It makes me a little ill.

But the comments are yours. Have at it.

(NOTE: It's Sunday. This is sometimes the day I like to take a break from all crime all the time. If you'd like one, click through to my personal weblog, and this entry, where I introduce a pursuit of mine that may surprise you, in spite of my past.)

UPDATE 1, 1/22/07, 2:44 a.m.

I was about to turn in when I decided to follow a link sent by a friend.

Seems the NY Post, or at least Susannah Cahalan, may have some explaining to do: "Jailhouse interviews spur probe by sheriff." From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Devlin's attorney Michael Kielty said the New York Post reporter gained access to Devlin only through deception. The reporter visited the jail and signed a visitor's log noting she was "a friend," never identifying herself as a member of the media, Kielty said. She then told Devlin she "was just a local college student interested in the case," Kielty said.

"It's wrong. It's just underhanded," Kielty said.

(...)

Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said his office would investigate how the interviews occurred. He also said he plans to discuss the matter with county prosecutor Robert Parks. Toelke noted that anyone can request to meet with a jail inmate. Visitors sign a visitors list and state their relationship to the inmate. Inmates can accept or refuse the visit, Toelke said.

Kielty said he was told no media would be allowed to talk to Devlin without the attorney's approval. Toelke said he did not know whether that was true, but planned to find out today in meetings with staff.

But Cahalan never identified herself as a reporter, according to Kielty and Toelke...

The article goes on to quote a journalism professor, who says that getting an interview by using deception "raises profound ethical questions."

D'ya think?

So, the jailhouse interview with Devlin basically just stinks no matter how you slice it.

My complete lack of surprise is probably obvious.

Charlie's Storms

I am re-posting this because CBS 48 Hours re-aired their special on Charlie Brandt tonight.

This blog entry was originally published by me at another weblog I began when having problems with a previous independently-hosted domain. I posted the original entry on October 4, 2005. Portions of the following story have been fashioned into narrative form, using known facts of the case. I've edited the following for this re-post.

Ice Storm

It was January of 1971. Ilse Brandt relaxed in a hot bath as the world turned to ice outside. Ilse's husband Herbert was shaving at the basin nearby. Ilse was pregnant, and perhaps the hot bath helped with the various aches and pains that strike most women later in pregnancy. The Brandt family, Herbert, Ilse, three daughters and a son, had just returned from their yearly trip to Florida.

While there Brandt and his son Carl had hunted game, but the trip had been marred by the death of a family dog. The animal was old and ailing, so in what was perhaps an act of mercy Herbert Brandt shot the dog -- putting it out of its misery.

Carl didn't take this well.

Most 13-year-old boys wouldn't. The relationship between a boy and his dog is part of pop culture, it is a core component in some classic movies and TV series, like Lassie.

Carl didn't collapse in grief -- he did something about it.

News reports from 1971 indicate that Carl Eric Brandt used a German Luger that icy day in Indiana to shoot both of his parents. Ilse Brandt died in the tub. Herbert Brandt was found nearby, barely alive. He survived.

Carl also tried to kill one of his sisters. The gun was out of bullets, so he tried to strangle her.

Carl stopped when his sister told him that she loved him.

Though detectives at the time latched on to Carl's rage and grief at the death of his dog, Carl said the following to a judge during a hearing about the crime, "I didn't really want to(...) It was like I was sort of programmed. I hesitated, but the next thing I knew I had shot them(...)It was like I was forced to do it," Carl said. "I couldn't really control myself."

In May, 1971 a grand jury determined the boy was not "criminally responsible" for the act.

Carl Eric Brandt spent about a year in psychiatric treatment. Then he was returned, remarkably, to his father's care.

The grand jury that found Carl not criminally responsible did look ahead, though. A warning was made to the future; "It is possible that such antisocial conduct could repeat itself..."

The Rainmaker

At one time Sherry Perisho had been a beauty queen. By age 38 Perisho lived in a boat near Big Pine Key, Florida, and she called herself the Rainmaker.

On July 19, 1989, the Rainmaker was discovered floating, dead, in the ocean.

Sherri Perisho wasn't the only woman found dead in the area whose manner of death was so mysterious and gruesome. The following article by Barry Klein was published in the St. Petersburg Times on August 12, 1989, titled, "Killings shake town: 2 brutal murders are talk of Big Pine Key." From the article:

About the only thing the two women had in common was that neither had a heart when residents of this small island community found their bodies.

Investigators say someone cut out the heart of 38-year-old Sherry Perisho, a transient who lived in a 6-foot rowboat not far from where a shocked fisherman found her body floating in a channel on the evening of July 19.

They are less certain about what happened to the heart of 20-year-old Lisa Sanders, a Michigan native who had courageously battled leukemia for most of her life...

Sherry Perisho had lived in Big Pine Key for just over a year. Nightly she would pack her things in her little rowboat, then sleep there as the boat drifted in shallow waters.

The night Sherri was murdered, a man carrying a serrated knife waded into the water near the sleeping woman. The moon was still nearly full. If there were no clouds that night, the moon likely shed a silver light on the water. The killer slit the Rainmaker's throat and made an incision between her pelvis and breastbone. He removed her heart.

Leukemia victim Lisa Sanders may have suffered an even more horrific end. She was stabbed in the head, then a rope tied to her neck. Her killer attached the rope to the bumper of his vehicle and dragged her at least a half-mile. Then as her corpse lay on a dirt road on No Name Key, it was ravaged by carrion eaters.

For various reasons, including the tenor of the times (the term "satanic panic," a phrase created to describe alleged instances of satanic ritual abuse, was coined in the 1980s to describe a slew of unfounded news stories about supposed instances of satan-worship-inspired murders) it was at first feared that both women had fallen afoul of some sort of satanic rite. The moon had been full the night before Sherry Perisho was killed, and some sort of devilish "markings" were found near the site of Lisa Sanders's death.

That theory was refuted 15 years later, when it was discovered that a quiet, polite, unassuming man named Charlie Brandt lived near both murder scenes.

Charlie Brandt, who had been born to Herbert and the late Ilse Brandt, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, as Carl Eric Brandt.

Hurricane Ivan

On August 31, 2004, a large tropical wave flowed off the west coast of Africa. At first it wasn't well-organized, and didn't register on the radar of forecasters at the National Hurricane Center as a system to watch.

By September 1, that had changed. Upper level wind shear decreased and allowed the cloud tops of the loose confederation of storms to swell. Bands of clouds began to aggregate around a central core of low pressure. By September 2 a tropical depression formed. Soon the storm acquired a name: Ivan.

On September 11, Ivan was a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale of intensity -- the deadliest of all storms. At that point it was unclear as to whether Ivan was a danger to the Florida Keys. As the Keys can become completely inaccessible during such storms, they are often evacuated purely as a precaution.

Among the residents of the Keys driving north around that time were Teri Brandt, age 46, and her husband, 47-year-old Carl "Charlie" Brandt.

They were heading for Maitland, Florida, and 390 Hickory Drive in a suburb named Druid Hills Park. There they would be riding out the storm with Teri's niece, Michelle Jones, age 37. Jones, a sales executive for the Golf Channel, a sports network based in Florida, had a 1,908 square foot home complete with a pool.

Charlie Brandt was fond of his niece. In fact, a co-worker of Brandt's said the man spoke often of his beautiful niece. Charlie had a nickname for Michelle -- "Victoria's Secret."

No one, including Michelle Jones and Teri Brandt, seemed to have any idea that they were in any danger from Charlie Brandt. It seems that no one knew of Carl Brandt, and an ice storm some 33 years before in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Everyone knew Charlie. Charlie was polite, a bit shy, friendly, well-liked.

By September 14, it was clear that Ivan was no longer a danger to the Florida Keys, or to central Florida. Ivan made landfall just west of Gulf Shores, Alabama, on September 16, a still-deadly category 3 hurricane.

Though the Florida Keys had been out of harm's way for days, Teri and Charlie Brandt were still at Michelle Jones's home at 390 Hickory Drive in Maitland, Florida.

Teri lay dead from stab wounds on the sofa. Charlie hung from a bedsheet in the garage.

Michelle Jones was dead in her bedroom.

Carl and Charlie

"It was like I was sort of programmed..."

In the bedroom of the Brandt home in Big Pine Key, investigators found a poster on the back of a door. It depicted the female anatomy; the skeletal system was exposed on the left side of the body. Elsewhere in the same house they found Victoria's Secret catalogues, all addressed to Charlie Brandt.

On Charlie Brandt's computer, police found evidence that Brandt had visited websites that addressed fetishes with death, and "erotic horror."

Unassuming Charlie Brandt was a mask. Behind that mask another man lay in wait. A man who eroticized violence, who enjoyed gore, death, dismemberment. A monster. One that apparently was truly born many years before in an ice storm, in Indiana.

"It was like I was forced to do it..."

Charlie Brandt killed Michelle Jones with a single stab wound to the chest. He had stabbed his wife Teri repeatedly, viciously, but one single jab to Michelle Jones's heart with a kitchen knife was all he needed to take her life.

Investigators felt it was a practiced move.

Then Charlie removed Michelle's head. He placed her head on the bed so it faced her body. He brushed his niece's hair from her face.

Charlie's work took some time. He removed Michelle's breasts and her left leg. He cut her chest cavity open and removed internal organs, including her heart. According to police, all this was done with a skill that indicated Charlie had past experience.

Before he killed himself, Charlie Brandt cut apart Victoria's Secret bras and underwear, and left them scattered around Michelle's bedroom.

"I couldn't really control myself..."

The first law enforcement officers to arrive were physically sick upon finding the horrific scene.

"...Such antisocial conduct..."

Perhaps 26 women over the span of 30+ years. That's how many victims authorities believe could have fallen prey to the man behind the mask that was Carl "Charlie" Brandt, including Sherry Perisho and possibly Lisa Sanders. As of October 1, 2005, authorities had constructed a 35-page timeline of Brandt's movements across the years. They were examining whether or not Brandt could be linked to crimes as far away as northern Europe. His signature? Dismemberment, the removal of the head and/or the heart.

If Carl "Charlie" Brandt did commit that many murders, he would rank among the more prolific serial killers of all time. He would also be in the relatively small group of mass killers who never actually got caught. His toll of victims would be nearly 5 times that of another famous serial killer whose real name is not known for sure to this very day -- the Zodiac Killer.

Who was Charlie Brandt? Obviously not the man people thought they knew. Maybe he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe Charlie Brandt was telling the truth to the judge after he murdered his mother -- he didn't want to do it, he just felt compelled.

At 13, Carl Brandt was not yet "Charlie" -- that came after his stay in the psychiatric institution -- and he killed his nude, pregnant mother in the bathtub. Brandt didn't succeed in killing his Dad, nominally the target of his rage due to the elder Brandt "putting down" the family dog while in Florida, yet he was so determined to kill his sister that he went after her with his bare hands.

The evidence of Brandt's merging of violent, destructive impulses with his sexuality was found on his computer, and in the connection between his nickname for Michelle Jones and the Victoria's Secret underwear and catalogues.

Such a connection was being made inside Brandt before January, 1971. And as ice encrusted the powerlines and trees outside his family's home in Fort Wayne, that synthesis of the most potentially savage human impulses occurred inside Carl "Charlie" Brandt's mind. As surely as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa 33 years later transformed into a huge category 5 hurricane named Ivan, around the empty center of Carl Eric Brandt was formed the mask named Charlie.

Even as Ivan roared ashore a deadly-enough category 3 storm in Alabama and the western part of the Florida panhandle, a perfect storm finally spun itself out at 390 Hickory Drive, in Maitland, Florida.

If it were the first time such a thing happened, perhaps it could be considered an anomaly.

In 1980, teenaged Joseph Edward Duncan III was put in prison for 20 years. He committed a sexually violent crime against a younger boy, raping him while holding a gun to his head, among other things. The highly intelligent Duncan began to acquire computer skills while in prison, and by the time he was released in 2000, he brought the finished mask of "Happy Joe," or "Jet" into play, attending the University of North Dakota in Fargo as a computer science major. There he built websites, designed programs, went scuba-diving with pals from his workplace, Invie Consulting, and even wrote at least one weblog, Blogging the Fifth Nail.

In early July of 2005, Duncan was arrested with 8-year-old Shasta Groene in his company. He had allegedly killed her family in Coeur d'Alene after stalking them with nightvision equipment, then kidnapped Shasta and her brother Dylan. He took them to the woods of northern Montana, and there is alleged to have committed some of the most horribly cruel acts imaginable against the children, before killing Dylan.

Since Duncan's arrest there has been speculation, and in one case evidence, linking him to other unsolved murders of children that occurred while he was a free man. Duncan may have considered these acts "getting even" with society. Or, more likely, he just liked to torture, mutilate, rape, and kill boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 10.

A few years before Ilse Brandt lay bleeding in her bathtub, a very tall teenaged boy named Ed killed his grandparents on their California farm.

Like the 13-year-old Carl "Charlie" Brandt, Big Ed Kemper [crimelibrary.com link] was declared mentally ill and sent to an institution. There Ed learned how to make nice, after a fashion, and when the 6'9" Kemper finally returned home, his psychiatrists were sure he was no threat to society. Ed set about perfecting his 'gentle giant' persona, and by the time he murdered, mutilated, and raped his mother and her best friend, he'd already been practicing on coeds in his hometown of Santa Cruz, California. Ed had more in common with Charlie Brandt, it seems: both were fond of combining decapitation and dismemberment with their killing. The day two doctors declared Big Ed officially no longer a threat to anyone, he had body parts in the trunk of his car.

Both Brandt and Kemper first killed relatives, authority figures, both of them used firearms the first time.

Both men ended with killing family members or people known to them -- Kemper his mother and her best friend, Brandt his wife and niece. Kemper turned himself into police, Brandt committed suicide.

If authorities are even partially right about the time between Charlie Brandt's killing of his mother and his final slaughter of his niece and wife, Teri, then Charlie, just like Ed Kemper, had a lot of practice by the time he was done.

We have been able for many years to see storms coming via satellite and radar. Predicting where they will land is still an imperfect science, but it improves every year. Many times, when nightmarish crimes like those committed by Charlie Brandt occur, everyone says they just didn't see it coming.

Maybe that isn't always true.

As surely as someone at the National Hurricane Center issued a notice to all concerned once Ivan officially became a hurricane, a grand jury gave the future a warning about Carl Eric "Charlie" Brant in 1971. Much like the most violent storms, he was a void himself, empty of humanity inside his center, hollow and unnaturally still, but violent and deadly when a victim was in his sights.

Like the storm that was coating the trees, cars, and houses of Fort Wayne, Indiana with cold that January in 1971, he was made of ice.

---

The following articles and websites were invaluable in constructing this entry:

• "Murder-suicide probe points to 26 slayings" -- article in the Orlando Sentinel, written by Gary Taylor, published October 1, 2005.
• "Jump-starting a fight" -- article in Orlando Weekly, online edition. The article gives basic information about Michelle Jones's residence at 390 Hickory Drive in Maitland, Florida.
• Tropical Cyclone Report from the National Hurricane Center on Hurricane Ivan, by Stacy R. Stewart.
• "Deadly rage seen in Brandt" -- from KeyNoter.com, article by Robert Perez and Melissa Harris.
• Serial Killer Index entry about Carl Brandt -- site maintained by Elisabeth Wetsch.
• Katherine Ramsland's article on Ed Kemper at crimelibrary.com.