True Crime Headlines, 4/04/08

This won't be the only kind of entry in this blog from now on, but I liked the one I posted yesterday, so expect "True Crime Headlines" on a regular basis. I haven't arranged the headlines in any particular order. I may also add to the entry throughout the day.

Please clearly reference the story you're discussing if you post a comment below.

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"Marine missing; authorities investigate her husband"

The lede: "A Long Island woman who left New York to become a Marine has gone missing in California, and military authorities are investigating her disappearance as a possible kidnapping by her newlywed husband, a fellow Marine..." [NewsDay.com]

The last time anyone saw Margaret "Maggie" McMahon, she was on her way to do some paperwork to legally change her last name. She and fellow Marine Pfc George "Kevyn" Reid were married in January of this year. Reid is also missing. There's been no activity on Maggie McMahon's MySpace page, but her husband or someone with access to his profile logged in as recently as yesterday. NCIS and civil authorities are investigating.

Maggie McMahon's profile: http://www.myspace.com/paymyway
Kevyn Reid's profile: http://www.myspace.com/kevyn015

Part of Kevyn Reid's "About me": "[...] I like to think of myslef (sic) as a fun, outgoing, charming, smart, talkitive (sic), friendly person. Though many tell me I am different. They say I come off cocky and arrogent (sic).If you really know me then you know I am 99% joking and 1% serious most of the time. Not to say I am childish because I am not. I am going to Iraq this summer. I hope this will help me get a better job. Needless to say Im (sic) not happy because where I work now is fine. I am always a happy person, I never seem to find myself upset or depressed. I *always* wear a smile!"

"Woman Set Ablaze At Mobile Home Park"

The lede: "ORLANDO, Fla. -- Deputies in Orange County are looking for clues after, they said, a woman was set on fire Friday morning..." [WESH.com]

Steve's rewrite of the lede: Deputies in Orange County said they were looking for clues after a woman was set on fire Friday morning... Come on, people. Basic writing ability matters.

Only the basic details of this gruesome story are available at the moment. A number of men dragged a woman into the woods near a mobile home park and set her on fire. She has 3rd degree burns over most of her body and is -- obviously -- in critical condition. Police are on the scene with choppers and K9 units.

"If King Had Lived, What Now?"

The lede: "The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover..." [ABCNews.go.com]

Call it what you want -- assassination, homicide, whatever -- 40 years ago today, in Memphis, Tennessee, a great man was murdered by a small man with a gun. Perhaps because I'm 40 now, I was struck for the first time by the fact that the great man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was only 39. In the article linked above, AP writer Allen G. Breed wonders what could have been.

"Police: Texas teen tried to flush newborn"

The lede: "BAYTOWN, Texas - Authorities in Texas said a baby born to a 14-year-old girl in a school bathroom was alive before she tried to flush it down the toilet, killing him..." [MSNBC.com]

There are no words. Seriously. Nauseating comes to mind, but that's about it.

"Web missive leads to big gun seizure"

The lede: "Calin Chi Wong's biggest mistake wasn't owning rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, or even telling Homestead police about it..." [MiamiHerald.com]

Apparently, Calin Chi Wong wanted to be the next Seung-Hui Cho. Writing on a message board as "thehumanabc," Wong referenced the Virginia Tech massacre from April, 2007, saying he had "no choice" but to do "what Cho did."

Even though he allegedly made such a dramatic threat, Wong's bond was only $7500, and he's a free man at the moment.

Extras:

• Link to a message board discussion about "thehumanabc" possibly scamming someone out of $4500.
• Wong also used the screen name koya5o3. His photobucket account is... interesting.
• Calin Wong's Koya5o3 user profile at AR15.com.

"Police raid Texas FLDS compound"

The lede: "EL DORADO, Texas (ABC 4 News) - Police and state officials have been involved in a raid or a siege at the FLDS Church compound near El Dorado, Texas where polygamous followers of Warren Jeffs live..." [ABC4.com]

Warren Jeffs according to Wikipedia: "Jeffs gained international notoriety in May 2006 when he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on Utah state charges related to his alleged arrangement of extralegal 'marriages' between his adult male followers and underage girls..."

The El Dorado Success is also covering this developing story.

True Crime Headlines, 4/03/08

The following are links to some crime stories currently in the news. Feel free to discuss any of them in the comments on this entry. Please be clear as to the story you're talking about when you do. I may add to this entry throughout the day today.

(If this looks a little Fark-like, well -- that is one of my favorite websites. Heck, I even have a TotalFark subscription...)

"Death of UW-Madison student from Marshfield likely homicide"

The lede: "Police are investigating the death of a 21-year-old Marshfield woman as a homicide..."

The victim was 21-year-old Brittany Sue Zimmermann, who was majoring in medical microbiology and immunology. According to police, Zimmermann's murder may have been "a random act." I'll be watching this story with an eye to writing a longer post if enough information becomes available. Watch for growing coverage of the murder in the national media if there isn't a quick resolution to the case.

Extra: Brittany Zimmermann's MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/zimmerbritt

Quote from Brittany's page: "My interests include my boyfriend, my cats, hanging out with friends, reading books and articles about infectious diseases, cooking, and running the UW-Madison branch of Global Wardrobe."

Zimmermann had one friend on her MySpace profile aside from the ubiquitous "Tom." That friend's own page is private, but her headline reads, "I love you Brittany. We will be together again, RIP."

Related story: "Unsolved deaths rattle Wisconsin college."

"Burned body looks like homicide"

The lede: "A man's badly burned body was found behind a house near the Florida Mall on Wednesday and was likely a homicide victim, Orange County investigators said..."

Don't "burned bodies" absent a source of burning like a house fire usually look like homicides? Not necessarily, I guess. I had an acquaintance who committed suicide by setting himself on fire in 1988, so I'll cut that headline writer some slack.

"Linehan sentenced to 99 years"

The lede: "Just before a judge sentenced her to 99 years in prison, former stripper Mechele Linehan fought back tears and spoke for the first time in court..."

The story of the exotic dancer who became a presentable soccer mom before a murder plot from her stripper days came back to haunt her sounds like good fiction, but this deadly tale was true. If there isn't a book or documentary out about this case in the next year or so, I'll be amazed. At the very least, it has "Lifetime Movie of the Week" written all over it. Check out the Wikipedia stub article on Linehan for a brief overview of the case.

"Experts Doubt 3rd-Graders Would Have Carried Out Waycross Attack"

The lede: "Criminal and child psychiatry experts say it's doubtful third-graders in south Georgia accused of plotting to attack their teacher would have executed their plans..."

When stories like this hit the news I feel like I want to remind anyone who knows that I live in Georgia that I was actually born and raised in Tennessee. That said, the now-infamous 3rd-grade death plot happened in Waycross, and I do live just north of Atlanta, a long ways away. Yeah. That makes me feel better.

"Former Thai refugee held in girl's death"

The lede: "A former Thailand refugee was held Thursday as the killer of a 7-year-old girl found slain only a few feet from her South Salt Lake, Utah, home..."

Hser Nay Moo, the 7-year-old daughter of immigrants from Myanmar, disappeared last Monday. She was found Tuesday inside a residence not far from her family's apartment. There isn't much else to say. As is always the case when a child is murdered, the story is too sad for words.

"Man Accused of Cover-Up in Ricin Probe"

The lede: "The cousin of a man who may have been sickened by the deadly toxin ricin has been accused of failing to report that the substance was being illegally produced..."

I wrote about the very strange case of graphic artist Roger Bergendorff and his unfortunate experience with toxic ricin here. I'm still amazed at how people wanted to spin this odd story into some sort of politically-charged tale about a potential terrorist attack. With the arrest of Bergendorff's cousin Thomas Tholen (detailed in the article linked above), it seems more obvious than ever that this was a weird but completely domestic story.

A Progressive Interview with Gregg Olsen, Author of A COLD DARK PLACE

Gregg Olsen, friend of The True Crime Weblog and co-author of the popular true crime blog CrimeRant.com, has published his second novel, A COLD DARK PLACE.

After several best-selling true crime books, this is Gregg's second entry into the suspense/thriller genre (his first, A WICKED SNOW, was published in March, 2007).

A COLD DARK PLACE is a haunting tale of serial murder that ranges across decades. I've read the book and it's hard to put down. Gregg tells a riveting story and his protagonist, Emily Kenyon, is a vividly-rendered, vulnerable and believable heroine. Here's a quote from the Amazon listing for the book:

When a powerful twister hits the little town of Cherrystone, Wash., former Seattle homicide detective Emily Kenyon checks in on the Martins: she finds their home demolished by the storm, and three of the four family members murdered by a demented killer. Suspiciously missing from the carnage is older son Nick, but is he a witness or the murderer? And Emily soon finds that her teenage daughter, Jenna, has run off with Nick in order to help him clear his name. What Emily doesn't know is that the Martin family deaths are connected to a series of murders going back two decades, and are linked to a case from her own past whose tragic outcome ultimately drove her out of the Seattle police force...

To get the word out about A COLD DARK PLACE, Gregg is doing a progressive interview, where he answers questions across several blogs about his work.

TRUE CRIME WEBLOG: I don't assume that inspiration comes straight out of the headlines. I know inspiration can come from anywhere. But how often is your fiction influenced by true crime stories? Any examples of true stories that played a role in building your novels?

GREGG OLSEN: There's a spark of reality, that is, real crimes, in all of the novels I've done thus far (I just turned in thriller number three -- HEART OF ICE). If you think about it, almost every great fictional crime story has sprung from real life. The classic of the last generation, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, most surely came from the story of Ed Gein (Yup, he skinned his victims). I'm sure you can think of a dozen others. I guess, I'm guilty of 'ripping from the headlines' just as much as the next guy. My first book had a Belle Gunness tale spun into modern times (I talk about that on Clews today) and there are threads of other crimes worked into the narrative of both A COLD DARK PLACE and the next one coming in 2009.

What I find most interesting is that I'm finding out ways to deal with the things that were done to me as a boy and that stuff is finding its way into my fiction. So in a way, I'm ripping off my own life, not the headlines, per se. I bet novelists across America are guilty of that one. You write what you know, correct?

Right now, I'm working on book four and I can assure you that I was inspired by Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, who raped and murdered young women in Canada. I am fascinated by the idea of people drawing another person into their evil madness, as Paul did with Karla. Or was it Karla who spun a web around Paul? Hard to say.

And since you brought it up, I loathe the idea of TV eating up good stories and good concepts for stories (fiction or true crime) as they fill all the Law & Order slots with the crime of the week. I've seen so many ripped from the headlines, that I feel my eyes are in shreds. Seems like a lot of good books aren't being written because we've been teased with the essence of a story over and over -- without really digging in.

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The next question for Gregg came from true crime writer Corey Mitchell.

Corey asked Gregg, "How has the transition from true crime author to mystery author worked out for you, from the writing perspective and from the marketing perspective?"

To read Gregg's answer, just go here: "Gregg Olsen: From True Crime Writer to Mystery Man."

To purchase the novel, click below.

Caught on YouTube: A Crime in Progress? *UPDATED*

**SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST**

An early morning tip sent via my contact form led me to an odd YouTube video. It appears to show a young man who is obsessed with a woman of roughly the same age. While there are no names attached to the video, it looks as though he (or someone with access to his tapes) is posting footage made while stalking. I was able to find at least 5 other videos of similar material, there may be more.

Rudimentary edits have been made to the videos, adding in music and occasionally a voice. The overall effect is pretty damned creepy.

The music sounds home-made, and the male voice insists over and over that he will never quit stalking this woman. As is often the case with stalkers, the narrator says the whole thing is about love and fidelity.

It's hard to know what to do with this strange find, as locations are difficult to determine from the videos. And of course, it may just be an attempt to hoax yours truly -- that's happened before. Any cybersleuths who have a clue as to what I should do next, please let me know. I've even attempted to e-mail the owner of one of the accounts posting these videos to no avail, but I'm open to other suggestions.

I wasn't able to embed this, possibly due to a problem with blogger, so here's a direct link to the first video sent to me via the contact form. See what you think.

UPDATE

The following has actually been at the bottom of this post all along, but in a fit of orneriness I decided to make it white -- therefore you wouldn't have seen it unless you used your mouse to highlight text. I've converted it to normal black text.

You've been RickRoll'd! HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S FROM THE TRUE CRIME WEBLOG!

Now, if you don't know what a "Rick Roll" is, follow the link above. Back to your regularly scheduled crime blogging tomorrow.