Starting in the late 1960s, the word within federal law enforcement circles was that agents working out of the FBI’s Las Vegas office were “freeloading” all over town. They were reportedly receiving free meals and drinks from the very individuals and casinos they were supposed to be investigating or keeping an eye on.

Richard Crane, head of the federal organized-crime strike force in Southern California and Nevada from 1970 to 1975, knew that this conduct, if true, had to be confronted and rectified. Crane complained to Justice Department officials in Washington and an inspection team was sent to Las Vegas to find out what was going on. After a couple of weeks the inspectors left, having supposedly chastised the offending agents. Crane was satisfied — until he began receiving word that the inspection team itself had taken advantage of the available comps! He heard reports that the investigators had enjoyed their stay and left without accomplishing anything; meanwhile, the agents assigned locally were continuing to take advantage of casino largesse. An Internal Revenue Service agent Crane trusted confirmed the allegations. Crane again complained to Washington, but when he left government service in 1975, the problems in Las Vegas continued unchecked.


Jack Keith, agent in charge of the Vegas office from 1974 until 1977, discussed the situation with a Los Angeles Times reporter after his retirement. “The precedent was set by one of the first agents in charge in Las Vegas. When he ate at a casino, he never even signed the check. He just got up and left.”

Keith offered an explanation of why things got out of hand. “The town was a cesspool. The atmosphere permeated everything. The old-timers were part of it and didn’t even know it. No man should have been allowed to stay in that town for more than three years. Some of the agents had been there for ten or fifteen years. I told them there was no such thing as a free lunch and that some day they’d have to pay for it.”

But allegations of taking a few meals or seeing some free shows weren’t the end of it, things got worse. When the Dunes and later the Aladdin were wiretapped, the men being taped were content to discuss golf, the weather, and women. Some of the agents working the taps believed that the lack of productivity was due to leaks originating from other agents. Similar to the situation the police found themselves in, other FBI field offices became reluctant to share information with their Vegas colleagues.

Another complaint to Washington resulted in yet another inspection team being sent to Sin City, in June 1977. This time the investigators weren’t compromised. Within a few months, a dozen local agents were censured, reassigned, or opted for early retirement. This housecleaning set the stage for the success of the battles yet to be waged.

Working for “The Man”

What was it like to work for Allen Glick’s Argent Corporation when it controlled the Stardust and other casinos? One woman who was in a unique position to know shared her experiences in a 2004 interview. To help protect her privacy, I refer to her as “Connie.”

Connie arrived in Las Vegas in August 1969. Within a couple of weeks, the 23-year-old had gotten her first casino job in the payroll department of the Thunderbird Hotel & Casino. She was later transferred to the accounting department, where she made the arrangements for guests who were visiting the hotel on room, food, and beverage comps and handled casino credit for all the junkets. This gave her an opportunity to learn how casinos operated from marketing and customer service standpoints, and to work with some of the best professionals in the field. In 1972, Connie went to work for Circus Circus, adding to her knowledge of the casino business and customer service. In 1976, she accepted a position in the accounting department of Argent’s corporate office, located in the Stardust. This turned out to be a turning point in her casino career.

“In those days Las Vegas was a warm friendly escape for fun and relaxation, a place that catered to your every whim. Customer service was the buzz phrase then. The casinos didn’t care about the ‘bottom line’ in the areas of food, beverage, or rooms. It was the numbers from the gaming operations that counted,” Connie recalled.

“It was truly the best time to live in the city of gambling, entertainment, and twenty-four-hour fun. There was an ambience then that has since been lost, an atmosphere that set Vegas apart as the entertainment capital of the world.”

Connie’s talents were soon noticed by her immediate boss, Frank Mooney. “One morning, Mr. Mooney called me into his office. He said that I was one of his most valued and talented employees and my abilities had come to the attention of others. Frank Rosenthal had contacted him and asked that I be transferred to the marketing department, to work for Martin Black, Argent’s Vice President of Marketing. Mr. Mooney said he hated to lose me, but my outgoing personality made me a natural for the new position and it would be an exceptional opportunity for me.”

Connie accepted the transfer and soon realized that she’d found her niche. “It was an interesting office, to say the least. A girlfriend of one of the well-known wiseguys worked there. Well … she didn’t really work. She spent most of her time filing her nails, but she collected a nice paycheck.

“After about six months Martin Black left the company and I took over his position. In those days, there were no female casino executives in Las Vegas. It was a man’s world and a ‘good-old-boy’ town. Women had their place in accounting, secretarial, or food and beverage service, but never in a decision- making position in the casino industry. I was the first.”

Initially, Connie heard comments from her peers that she had bed-hopped her way up the career ladder. When the more curious ones asked how she’d attained her promotion, she answered, “My brains aren’t in my ass; they’re in my head.” Those kinds of questions quickly faded as Connie proved to be extremely competent in her new position.

Connie worked closely with Lefty Rosenthal and was put in charge of his weekly television show. “It was a delightful challenge and a very exciting experience. I handled all aspects of the show,” she recalled.

“My father was my first mentor and Mr. Rosenthal became my second. He gave me opportunities that no one else would have ever given me. He was a perfectionist in every sense of the word, but a very fair person. He was soft-spoken and always treated me with the utmost respect. I met his wife frequently. She was a beautiful woman and was always a lady when I was around her. I will always hold Mr. Rosenthal in the highest esteem.”

On paper, Allen Glick was the boss of Argent. But one particular incident proved to Connie who the real boss was and how protective Rosenthal could be of those he liked.

“One day I was asked to fly to San Diego to do some editing on our first television show. Upon returning the next day, I was called into Mr. Glick’s office. He wanted to know where I had been and who gave me permission to go. I told him. He was anything but nice as he gave me the choice of never again doing what Mr. Rosenthal asked me to do or being fired. I’m sure my loyalty to Mr. Rosenthal was evident to Mr. Glick. But as a young single mother with two children to support, his words scared me and my mind went into freeze mode. I didn’t know what to do and stewed over it the rest of the day.

“That evening as I was leaving the casino, I passed Mr. Rosenthal and several of his associates, who were on their way to the Moby Dick restaurant, their favorite place to meet in the Stardust. Mr. Rosenthal said hello to me and I replied back, but without my usual enthusiasm or smile.

“After taking a few more steps I heard my name called. I turned around and Mr. Rosenthal motioned me over to him; he wanted to know if everything was okay. I told him no, it wasn’t. I explained about my session with Mr. Glick. Mr. Rosenthal then asked me to come with him to the Moby Dick.

“Inside the restaurant he had the maitre d’ bring a phone to our table. He called Mr. Glick, who had already returned to his home in La Jolla, California. The conversation from Mr. Rosenthal’s end went like this: ‘Good evening, Allen. I hear that you had Connie come to your office today on a matter that doesn’t really concern you. We need to get something straight, Allen. I run things around here; Connie works for me, not you. And if you ever approach her or threaten to fire her again, I’ll break both of your legs. Do you understand? That’s good. Good evening, Allen.’ He hung up the phone and told me I didn’t have to worry about anything like that happening again. From that point on, Mr. Glick never bothered me again. In fact, he didn’t even speak to me.”

For Connie, what had been her dream job ended when Argent was dismantled as a result of the casino skimming investigations. She was a target of the Gaming Control Board for a period of time and was called to testify. She was eventually dropped from the investigation and wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing.

After Argent, Connie opened up the Sundance Hotel & Casino in July 1980 for Moe Dalitz, who owned the Sundance. Connie found him to be a kind man, one with wealth and power, but you’d never know it.

To Connie, her days of working for the “family” were the best of her life. “I have fond memories of those days. It was an exciting, fairy tale experience for me. Unlike the megaresorts of today, customer service was a priority. And that’s the way it should be.”

Next: The Spilotro Era – Part VII 

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By Michelle McKee

The ax has been falling this week at the Discovery Channel as up to 30 people have reportedly lost their jobs due to the failing economy.  David Lohr, a long-time advocate for the missing on his Criminal Report Daily blog, is among those to go.  While it is not the first shake up to go down at Discovery, this one is a major one, and it seems counterproductive to Discovery’s goals to get rid of a journalist and investigative reporter of Lohr’s caliber.  Advertising revenue will be lost if the blog goes down, David’s large fan base will look elsewhere to find their information and, most importantly, the families of those with missing loved ones will have lost an important venue with integrity and crediblity from where they can reach out to others.

This is a major disappointment to readers, and a major setback to the genre of honest and forthright true crime reporting.  No one knows, of course, which direction Discovery and their subsidiary brand, Investigation Discovery, will go without the high-quality people like David Lohr that have been axed, but it almost certainly will not be upward.  Those who are of a mind to express their opinion over Discovery’s cuts can go here to do so.
 
Whether it will do any good remains to be seen, but it certainly can’t hurt to let the powers-that-be know how their readers and viewers think and feel about the decisions that have been made this week.

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By Anthony Flacco



My new book “The Road Out Of Hell is based upon the same serial killer case that spawned the move “Changeling” and exposed one of the darker instances of police corruption in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1920’s.

Even so, I am already on the record as a supporter of the L.A.P.D. and while I have no connection to the department, my understanding has been formed by twenty-five years of living and working in the area. In the course of my true-crime writing I’ve spent ride-along shifts with uniformed officers in the troubled south-central district. I also conducted a long list of interviews with detectives, assistant district attorneys, and officers of the civil and criminal courts.

The sum total has given me a broad view of the work presented to officers on the streets. The thin blue line is much more than the title of Joseph Wambaugh’s seminal book. It represents the essential will of society in the form of heavily controlled and coded behavior on each officer’s part that outlines the manner in which the ruling population prefers to inflict its will upon itself.

We know that the inhibitions we place upon an officer in conflict situations are necessary because they control the human impulse to bully and harm, found in every human endeavor. But here’s the rub: they also carry the built-in problem of inhibiting the officer’s range of choices in confrontations with a suspect, when the suspect has the freedom to choose from the full load of violent criminal responses. It is the distance between the officer’s permitted responses and the blunt reality of an adrenalin or drug-hyped offender, possibly armed, potentially crazy, that represents the span of distance which can be crossed only by personal strength of will and determination.

But that raises the question of motive. What drives the by-the-book officer to perform within those heavy constraints in the face of lethal danger? Something is there that such people value strongly enough to risk great injury or loss of life. A steady paycheck isn’t enough.

The prospect of corrupt profits may inspire the worst among them, but that is of no help in answering the question of overall motive. The fact that corruption and perhaps psycopathy will be found within the ranks of any group of uniformed officers is most regrettable, but says nothing about those who play it straight even when nobody is looking. They are the ones who should compel our point of view on the group. After all, any large group of people will have its share of deeply spoiled apples. Their presence is depressing, but we also have mechanisms in place to suppress them. Which returns us to the question of motive with those who don’t need to be suppressed.

What drives them?

There is only one angle of view that reveals their shared sense of purpose: helping to keep society running and doing their best to keep its denizens safe. Such people feel no shame in the fact that they harbor a clear sense of right and wrong. Moral relativism is for political philosophers. Theirs is the realm of permitted vs. not-permitted, a necessary evil of black and white that represents our general social determination to live in a certain way, with its extreme opposite represented by prowling serial rapists or rioting urban looters.

You can point directly to crooked cops who take bribes and harm innocent citizens, and although I certainly root for them to get busted and to do hard time, I have no interest in their story. It’s old and it’s tired and greed is the most banal of personal drives, an outrage of human character that no one knows how to eliminate. So what? It is never the bad apples that define the crop. You seek them out, eliminate them as best you can, and get on with things.

Compare those failures of humanity to the ones running into the fire-fight, coming through a bolted door and into a darkened space to respond to cries of desperation. Consider the ones standing their ground, out-gunned by maniacs, preventing them from escaping out into the general population. And never forget the ones who must step into the chaotic noise and violence of a domestic assault, knowing that one of the mysteries of the human heart is that the very person whom they are trying to save will sometimes turn against them with lethal force.

Those officers are what is extraordinary about the police department and the about work that we depend upon them to do. If they don’t pull the reckless drivers off of the roads, those reckless drivers will kill the innocent by the carload, perhaps us, perhaps our loved ones. Yet the cops approach every single traffic stop knowing that sometimes a driver will turn lunatic and give a violent response to the prospect of a traffic ticket, or that the normal-looking occupant of the car they have just stopped is about to panic over getting caught for something else.

That is why I say that the only single word that can fairly be pinned onto the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department is the word “heroes.” I don’t use it to cover up the need for a never-ending process of culling the force for rogue behavior. Rather, it reminds us all of those who never went rogue in the first place. The real ones. The ones who will risk themselves at any given moment for the essential human concept of right and wrong. When we fail to honor such people, we fail to honor the best within ourselves. Next time you pass one on the job, if you’re not doing anything wrong, dare to smile and wave. You may be sending a moment of respect to someone who, an hour later, will be staring down monsters from your worst nightmare, fighting to keep them away from you.


Anthony Flacco is the author of the new historical true crime book, The Road Out Of Hell, which has just been released by Union Square Press at Sterling Publishing. It tells the true story behind the murders that formed the basis for the movie “Changeling,” but focuses on young Sanford Clark, the thirteen year-old who was held for two years at the Wineville murder ranch and forced to participate in the most gruesome of crimes. He is also the author of the nonfiction book ”Tiny Dancer” from St. Martin’s Press, which earned high praise from the NYT Book Review, and the true-crime book, “A Checklist For Murder” from Dell Books, which sold to NBC Studios as a TV movie. He has two historical crime novels from Ballantine books, “The Last Nightingale,” nominated by the International Thriller Writers Assn. as Best Paperback Original for 2007, and also the novel, “The Hidden Man,” in 2008, which continued the San Francisco murder mystery series.

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By Michelle McKee

“The truth, however, is not changeable”

- Pat Brown, self-titled criminal profiler, TV taking head regularly seen on Nancy Grace, the Today Show and others. Self-appointed international expert on criminal psychology, behavior profiling, investigational procedure, evidence collection, interview techniques, crime scene analysis, suspect profiling, victim psychology. Frequently witnessed playing the blame game; tends to blame victims for being victims.


The Innocent

“I am writing on behalf of victims of rape […].”

“I began to wonder if Lisa had really been a victim of rape of [sic] this was merely a publicity ruse to sell books and get on the good side of victim’s organizations.
 

- Pat Brown, self-titled criminal profiler

She was walking home from school when she was snatched from a San Antonio, Texas street by two paint sniffing high school dropouts looking for a good time, at someone else’s expense.  Abducted and taken to Corpus Christi, she was held for three days and repeatedly raped by her captors. She was seventeen and this was her first sexual experience.

They had taken her to a beach and while there she managed to escape and run screaming away from them. However, several beachgoers ignored her cries and pleas for help, mistaking her for just another drunken college girl. Her rapists woke up, chased her down and proceeded to tell onlookers that all was well, she was with them. They reclaimed their victim and continued with their assault, again repeatedly raping her.

She was eventually released, but not before a demand for ransom was made. The F.B.I was called in and her father, with several thousands of dollars contained within a briefcase, was flown via helicopter from King Ranch to the beach where his daughter was being held by her kidnappers. Instructions had been given to leave the briefcase in a phone booth, the drop was made and a high-speed chase ensued. Both individuals were caught, charged, went to trial, were convicted and sentenced.

She moved on with her life and for more than 10-years never spoke of what had happened during those three days to anyone. Not until she met a man who would later become her husband. Although she was able to open up to him, she still rarely spoke of it to anyone else, until he began working on a project that struck a cord with her. He was writing a book about a man who had been convicted of raping two women and was inexplicably released from prison ten years early. She decided then that if she spoke out about her rape perhaps it would help other women who had suffered through the similar experience.

She and her husband had been together for ten yeas but were married for less than two.  It was April 2002 and they would be celebrating their second wedding anniversary soon.  They were living in Los Angeles but preparing to move back to Texas. That previous December her husband had suffered an arterial fibrillation and was now also struggling with panic attacks. He wanted to move back home to San Antonio.

On Friday, April 26th; he took her to the airport and, expecting that they’d see each other again in just a few days, kissed her good-bye.  She was going to San Antonio in order to participate in six job interviews. The hope was that she’d be able to find something quickly so that she and her husband could move back home to Texas. She was a business manager / tax attorney / CPA for Ernst & Young and worked as a business manager for several of the top Hollywood celebrities including Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger, Ellen Degeneres, Anne Heche, Dyan Cannon, Charlie Sheen, Paul Reiser, and more. But she willingly gave it all up. Gave up the six-figure income, the high profile career, all so that she could take care of her husband, and because they had decided that hey wanted to try and have babies.

By Saturday night she had two job offers. She would be making the same amount of money that she had been making in LA and would be working 20-hours less for it. However, she never made the return flight back to celebrate her good news with her husband.

At 7pm Sunday night, April 28th, at the age of 38, Lisa Mitchell died at her parent’s home of Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome. She had just returned from an interview and was sitting in bed getting ready to have dinner with her parents.  There was no negative heart history in her family so it came as a complete and utter shock. Her medical examiner, Jan C. Garavaglia (AKA "Dr. G. - Medical Examiner"), was stumped and needed three other M.E.s to confer with her as to what caused her death. Needless to say, everyone was crushed.

“Corey may well have adored Lisa and been an excellent husband. I am just trying to determine if there is any truth that she was a rape victim. ” 


– Remark from Pat Brown, self-titled criminal profiler, in an email to a long time friend of Lisa and Corey Mitchell. The email address for this individual was obtained by Pat Brown through Lisa Mitchell’s virtual funeral site. Under her own admission, Pat Brown culled the guestbook signed by Lisa Mitchell’s mourners.

The Blog

A few weeks after In Cold Blog was launched Corey extended an invitation to me to join as a writer. He said it was only a small spot, just for months that had a 31st day. I was honored to be invited. I still feel that way.  After all, Andy Kahan writes here and Andy is my hero.

I thought Corey was taking a chance by bringing me to In Cold Blog as a writer. He didn’t know me. We had just met and that was only by way of true crime and the Internet.  He had no idea if I could actually write anything beyond a vitriolic email or blog comment. However, for whatever reason, he trusted that I could, and I am grateful for that. Corey was so trusting of me that it wasn’t until after he formerly invited me to ICB and I accepted that he thought to talk to one of his colleagues, someone whom we both knew, and see if they’d be willing to vouch for me. Corey also didn’t have a problem with my assertive and sometimes aggressive, sometimes scathing do not screw with me attitude. Nor did he seem to care that I had a vocabulary of expletives that far outdid George Carlin’s seven dirty words. As opposed to others with a more delicate constitution, Corey didn’t find it made me less of a human being or feel the need to scold me while wagging a finger in my face as though I were a child.

When I initially met Corey I had no idea he had been married before. But then why would I?  There was no reason for me to know and I don’t tend to ask personal questions of others, especially when I first meet them. Not even about their families. So, it wasn’t until I requested Corey as a friend on MySpace and then read a note he had posted to Lisa that I realized he was a widower. While I thought that it was sad he had lost his wife while they were both so young, I never asked him what had happened. It wasn’t my business and if eventually he wanted me to know, he would tell me.

I was dealing with a lot of issues both personal and professional. There were plenty of days I wasn’t able to post. Corey was never anything other than understanding. Even though it seemed that I was never able to fulfill by obligation to him by posting, he was never anything other than kind. Never once did he take me to task or pressure me to put something on the blog. Eight months after inviting me to join ICB, Corey asked me if I would be interested in running the blog for him while he finished his book. That was in March of 2008 and he has never lost faith in my management of his site, nor have the individuals who write here; despite having received emails from author Kathryn Casey stating that being linked to In Cold Blog while I run it is a career killer.

One of the things that I didn’t expect to find when I came to ICB was that authors have their own drama.  The extent that some of these “professionals” will go in order to try and ruin a colleague’s day, or reputation, can be staggering at times. Most of the writers I know avoid being sucked into the drama cesspool.  They find paying attention to any of it to be distracting and counter productive. It takes away from the business at hand, which is writing a story about someone else’s drama.

Becoming involved can also lead to burning ones bridges. When trying to promote one’s book it’s important to network with those who might be able to help you spread the word. Cutting off ones nose to spite their face is not a good idea when you’re an author, even if you believe your colleague is a blood sucking, ambulance chasing opportunist who is draining the life out of the genre. Better to smile and say, “I respect your work,” which literally translated means “I think you’re an untalented pain in the ass.  Having to share shelf space with you makes me want to hurl and the only reason that I’m even acknowledging you is because it’s in MY best interest to do so.”

So, while the wiser writers refuse to take part in any such nonsense, like with everything there’s always two or three people who stand out as exceptions and rather than avoid drama they set about to create it.

The Vilification

“I did not hijack the email. It was on a memorial site on the net.”

“I am not claiming Lisa was not a rape victim. I am just researching the matter to be sure that my concerns are justified in this matter. Corey himself researches the truth behind certain issues and I am sure some family members and friends of those he has contacted also may have been equally upset at such research.”


- Pat Brown, self-titled criminal profiler

The difference that Pat Brown fails to acknowledge in her research of Lisa Mitchell’s rape and the type of research Corey conducts for his books is that Corey is hired to write about whomever it is he is researching. It’s part and parcel of the process. He is paid to write books and in order to do his job he must do research, some of which entails contacting people directly and inquiring if they would be willing to talk to him. Pat Brown has not been hired by any party to investigate whether or not Lisa Mitchell was raped, either before or after Mrs. Mitchell’s death. Pat Brown, a self-proclaimed behavior and criminal analyst, without regard to the impact upon those who have mourned Lisa’s passing, felt that as a stranger she had the right to inquire as to whether or not Lisa’s rape was a lie. She felt justified, based on her self-proclaimed status as a criminal profiler, to intrude into the most painful and traumatic portion of the life of a woman who could no longer defend herself or her husband; a victim who could no longer even utter the words “No. Stop. Don’t.”

Pat Brown willfully used her title as a criminal profiler to justify violating the personal boundaries of both the living and the dead. She set out to investigate Lisa Mitchell of her own accord and she did it because she had a personal issue with Lisa’s widowed husband, Corey Mitchell.

Her vendetta against Corey was such that it compelled her, by her own admittance, to use Internet search engines to find information about Corey, which then directed her to a review for one of his books on Amazon where she discovered that his wife, Lisa, had been a victim of a sexual assault. Pat Brown, the professional, the woman who wants the entire country to trust her, then used the information she found on Amazon about Lisa Mitchell, threw it into Google and was led to the virtual funeral site set up for her by those who were grief stricken by loss. From there Pat Brown read the guestbook and retrieved email addresses for Lisa’s mourners. She then used that information to contact those individuals and ask if their deceased friend had actually been raped or if it was a publicity hoax initiated by Corey for his own personal gain.

There is no justification for Pat Brown to take it upon herself to play investigator and start looking into any aspect of Corey Mitchell’s personal life over his preference in entertainment, his taste in music or what he posts on his blog.  Let alone to stoop to such a disrespectful level and intrude into the grief of others by sending off emails to long time friends of the Mitchell’s inquiring as to whether Lisa, a woman who is no longer even able to defend herself or her husband ,had actually been raped.

When a response from one of Lisa’s mourners was not what Pat wanted to hear she moved on to Corey’s charities. She began contacting those whom Corey had written about supporting. She sent these organizations emails assailing Corey’s character and demanding that they take a stand either for or against him based on his work and his preferences in music and film, ending her emails with a passive aggressive statement, “If [you] do not see this as a problem I would like to know I am overreacting.”

Her behavior has been outlandish at the least, and at the most should be considered criminal when her vendetta driven hate for Corey Mitchell climaxed into her stalking one of Corey’s friends. Not being one to know when it’s time to stop, like an evil Energizer bunny on steroids, Pat Brown kept on going until she was able to identify the woman's real name. She then identified that woman by name on the Women In Crime Ink blog and linked that identification to the pseudonym that she used, without a second thought towards whether doing so could compromise the individual's safety. It didn't matter. All that mattered to Pat was Pat, and her hatred for Corey and anyone who supported him.

To be continued…

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About three miles from Locust Grove in northeastern Oklahoma is a piece of wooded acreage formerly known as Camp Scott. Some say it’s haunted, while Native Americans call it desecrated ground. Justice has seemed elusive for this shocking triple homicide, but Cherokee wisdom suggests that the debt might be paid. This is a tale of murder, shapeshifting, and forces beyond.

More than 140 girls had arrived at Camp Scott on that hot June day in 1977, where each was assigned to one of ten groups for her two-week stay. They’d be in these groups for games, lessons, hikes in the woods, and sleeping arrangements. Each section was named for a Native American tribe – Oklahoma has 37 recognized tribes – and on the night of June 12, the girls went to bed down.

Like most girls camping out, they probably thought up ways to scare each other. In fact, just a few weeks earlier, a hanging stick figure was discovered in the woods nearby. A few who knew each other played hide-and-seek, shrieking with laughter until a thunderstorm broke and pelting rain drove them into their tents. That’s what the watcher was waiting for.

He moved quietly through a counselors’ tent, taking personal items. It was easy to pull up the anchoring stakes and slip underneath a flap, or to silently cut a hole. He looked into another tent, startling some girls, before he headed for the most isolated area – the Kiowa section, where the youngest girls were. A little girl on her way to the shared central bathroom in the dark bumped him and he grabbed her but let her go. Another girl dropped a flashlight near him, screaming when she saw his legs. He fled to the edge of the camp. To his amusement, a counselor assured the girl there was no man in the woods.

Eventually, things quieted down and the rain stopped. He stared at tent #8, so vigilant and woods-savvy he could hear the slight intake of breath as the little girls slept. He timed his breath to theirs. Lori Lee Farmer, 8, Michelle Guse, 9, and Denise Milner, 10, were inside. The empty bunk was for a girl who’d been mistakenly assigned to the Seminole unit. A counselor had told her to stay where she was for the night. Denise Milner had been homesick for hours, but she’d put on a brave face as she rolled out her bag on the north-side cot. The empty one was next to hers. She’d asked the counselor if she could call her mother but was told to wait until morning, so before she’d slipped into the sack she’d written a letter home. She hoped that sleep would blot out the ache as she watched the empty cot.

She didn’t know that a man had just looked into tent #7 and moved on. He was coming for her. She was too young to have learned that the camp director had received and dismissed a threatening note that claimed, “We are on a mission to kill four girls in tent 1.” As she drifted to sleep, he entered and hit her over the head. Denise went unconscious.

Early the next morning, around 6 AM, a counselor walked toward the shower. Under a tree where the trail crossed the road, she spotted a child’s yellow sleeping bag. Nearby was another one, closer to camp. Why were these girls sleeping away from their tent, she wondered, and went closer. She saw Denise on the ground, naked from the waist down, gagged across her bruised face with electrical tape, and obviously dead. She lay face up, with her hands behind her and her legs spread apart. Horrified, the counselor ran for help.

The other girls were woken up, herded in to a quick breakfast, and out for a hike, to get them away from the camp. The girl who expected to join her Kiowa group grew confused as a counselor hustled her away. She did not know that the error that had sent her to the wrong tent the night before had saved her life. Other kids caught a glimpse of the sleeping bags still lying in the woods. Most had no idea what was happening, but when they returned from the hike, they were told to retrieve their gear and return to the bus. When their parents met them it was clear that something was terribly wrong. No one returned to Camp Scott that day…or ever again. Some of these girls, now grown up, describe on cold case chats how the incident is burned into their memory.

Investigators swarmed in, but it was mid-morning before a doctor finally opened the sleeping bags to examine the other two girls from tent #8. The blood on their heads testified to the beating they’d received before being zipped inside their bags and carried from the tent. One had been bound. All three had lengths of cord wrapped around their necks and there were signs that each had been sexually assaulted. An autopsy later would confirm it.

Piecing together a reconstruction based on pools of blood in the isolated tent, detectives theorized that the killer had entered through the back. He’d hit each girl with a blunt implement to keep them from waking and crying out. He’d raped the two youngest girls in the tent, strangling them with a cord before putting their bodies back into their bags. He’d had to carry them past seven other tents to leave them where they were found--150 feet from their beds. So he was bold. Denise may have revived upon his return, and from her footprints in the mud it appeared that he’d forced her to walk to the trail before he’d raped and strangled her. She’d probably been gagged in the tent. A pair of women’s glasses and a flashlight with a cover over the lens were found nearby. There was also a bloody footprint from the waffle-sole of a boot not far from the children’s blood-soaked clothing.

The bodies were removed and a massive manhunt began for the killer. The police soon focused on a local sports hero, Gene Leroy Hart, who’d been in considerable trouble. In 1966, Hart had abducted two pregnant women from a Tulsa club and raped them. He’d pled guilty and was sentenced to three 10-year terms, but got out in less than three. Shortly thereafter, he was convicted of four counts of first-degree burglary and sentenced to 305 years. This, too, was a short stint, as he’d escaped in 1973, managing to survive in a series of local caves where many outlaws had successfully dodged the law. In addition, it was rumored that medicine men had given Hart ancient magic to enhance his ability to hide. The Cherokee believed in such transformations, or at least in the skill of deflecting people from seeing who you really were. In a way, they understood the chameleonic nature of a psychopath.

Investigative teams, dog handlers, psychics, heat-seeking devices, and helicopter surveillance all failed to locate the elusive Cherokee. When a cave yielded photographs that Hart had developed on a job, his presence was affirmed. Inside another cave, from which someone resembling Hart had fled, a phrase was written on the wall, “The killer was here. Bye Bye fools. 77-6-17.” On June 23, Hart was charged in absentia with three counts of first-degree murder, among other things. However, he remained free. Many locals believed he was falsely accused.

Hart was spotted from time to time, and a book on this case, Someone Cry for the Children, discusses an intriguing conversation about his ability to elude the police. One investigator with a touch of Cherokee visited a medicine man named Crying Wolf. He learned that the tribe believed that if Hart had indeed raped and killed the girls, he’d be struck down. No matter where he was, in prison or out, he’d have to pay for such evil with his life. No one had to send him to prison; it would just happen. Crying Wolf offered medicine to facilitate the investigation, and Hart was soon under arrest.

His trial began a year later, focused on two aspects of physical evidence: sperm from the bodies was similar to Hart’s (despite a vasectomy), and Hart’s hair proved microscopically consistent with hair found on the bodies. (This supposed science is now under scrutiny.) In addition, items found in the caves where the photos were discovered had been claimed by camp counselors, and a roll of duct tape there was similar to that used to bind the girls. Women’s glasses had been found near the bodies, and Hart was wearing women’s glasses when arrested. Circumstantially, it made sense to link Hart to the murders, but it was far from a definitive case.

The defense attorney poked holes in the theory and accused the sheriff of planting evidence. In addition, a thumbprint on the flashlight believed to belong to the offender did not match Hart. However, one theory said he’d had an accomplice, so this fact failed to get him off the hook. The town was divided between Hart supporters and those who believed he was guilty.

After 10 days of testimony and different medicine men using their magic, it took the jury only six hours to acquit Hart. However, since he’d escaped before finishing his time on the burglary charges, he was returned to the state penitentiary. About two and a half months later, this wilderness survivor and athletic young man died from a heart attack while jogging. It came as a complete surprise, except to those who believed in higher forces.

In 1989, with the girl scout murders still unsolved, the FBI performed blood and semen tests, but the results were inconclusive. DNA testing, announced in 2008, was similarly disappointing, due to the poor quality of the samples. One girl had told authorities that she’d seen a man in camp that night much taller and heavier than Hart, and like many other who still follow this case, she believes he had an accomplice who got away with murder. That is, of course, unless the “medicine” has tracked him down.


Top left: Denise Milner
Middle right: Michelle Guse
Bottom left: Lori Farmer

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has a MA in forensic psychology from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a master's degree in clinical psychology, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has published thirty-five books, including True Stories of CSI, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronology of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, The Criminal Mind: A Writers' Guide to Forensic Psychology, and The Forensic Science of CSI. With former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, she co-authored The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators among Us, with Professor James E. Starrs, A Voice for the Dead, a collection of his cases of historical exhumations, and with Henry C. Lee, The Real World of the Forensic Scientist. She has been translated into ten languages and has published over 900 articles on serial killers, criminology, forensic science, and criminal investigation. She writes a regular feature on historical forensics for The Forensic Examiner (based on her history of Forensic science, Beating the Devil’s Game) and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting Edge Forensics Took Down Twelve Notorious Serial Killers. In addition, she has published biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz and penned three books about penetrating the world of “vampires” (Piercing the Darkness), ghost hunters (Ghost), and the funeral industry (Cemetery Stories).

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The Horror, the Horror!

October 29, 2009

By Paula Uruburu



Thirty-five years have passed and the eerie eye-like windows are gone (in an attempt to fool the curious, I’ve been told, or deter the more brazen onlookers, a number of whom over the years have pried off shingles from the house or dug up patches of the lawn as souvenirs.) At some point there was also a desire to change the address (by the town or perhaps the latest owners). But let’s face it, anyone who knows the Amityville Horror house on Ocean Avenue can’t be fooled that easily. They know where it is. I know where it is. And I knew the people in it.

Well, to be accurate, I knew Dawn Defeo. Dawn was a year ahead of me in our grammar school, St. Martin of Tours, and she was my recess leader in 1970. Her nickname was “Pudgy” but it was an affectionate one that she embraced. She wrote poetry and stories and encouraged me to write as well. Sometimes she made daisies instead of dots over her I’s when she wrote. I even went to a party at her house that year. It was held in the backyard by the boathouse on the canal that leads into the Great South Bay. I can’t remember now if it was a birthday or graduation party. Time has a way of blurring memory and sometimes turning memories into myth. Some things seem unimportant when they happen, while other events seem to naturally lend themselves to myth. And people, sometimes, allow themselves to be fooled.

I do, however, have a very clear memory of the days and weeks after November 13th, 1974, when Dawn, then 18, along with her parents, her younger sister Allison (13), and two younger brothers, Marc (12) and John (9), were shot dead in their beds in the house on Ocean Avenue. I remember going to the funeral mass and watching from the balcony, where former classmates were allowed to sit, as six coffins were carried into the church down the long aisle to the altar railing, then out again into the waiting hearses. None of us had ever seen anything like it before. There were all kinds of rumors and fearful whispers. Everyone wondered how such a massacre could occur to such a nice normal family. This, we all agreed, was a horror.

And we all agreed that Ronald “Butch” DeFeo, the twisted, sinister, drug-addled oldest brother, had to be the one who had done it. We believed at the time that he had drugged them somehow, maybe with sleeping pills, and went to the local bar, Henry’s, a few blocks away, to wait. Then he went home and killed them all as they slept and ran back to the bar, yelling that he thought his mother and father had been shot.

Once police arrived, they discovered the bodies and saw that the parents had been shot twice, Dawn and her siblings only once.  At the scene of the crime, Ronald began to suggest to police that the murders might have been “Mafia related.” But those who knew the family knew better, and a day later, the only DeFeo family member left alive confessed that he was responsible for the massacre. He told detectives: "Once I started, I just couldn’t stop. It went so fast.” As the weeks and months passed, people guessed at a motive. Some said Ronald believed there was a great deal of money buried somewhere on the property; he claimed at one point that he had tired of his father’s abuse. But this did not explain the killing of the others.

DeFeo's trial began on October 14, 1975. A month later, on November 21, 1975, just before Thanksgiving, he was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder. On December 4, 1975, Judge Thomas Stark sentenced Ronald DeFeo, Jr. to six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. He has been in the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Beekman, New York, ever since.

Of course, that was only the beginning of the story. Police officers and the county medical examiner on the scene at the time were initially mystified by the quickness and number of the killings, and considered the possibility that more than one person had been responsible for the crime. The fact that neighbors claimed to have heard no shots even though eight had been fired (and it was determined that a silencer had not been not used) only added to the puzzle. But no one else was ever charged. Throughout his time in jail, Ronald DeFeo Jr. has given several accounts as to how the killings were carried out, and all of them have been wildly inconsistent, just as all of his appeals to the parole board to date have been turned down.

The events that followed the DeFeo murders were equally mystifying as fact turned into so-called non-fiction and then the film The Amityville Horror -- wherein the hapless Lutz family claimed ghostly apparitions, flying pigs, and bleeding walls haunted their days and nights (desecrated Indian burial grounds and demonic dogs notwithstanding.) Several sequels and one remake later, the Lutz’s story has been widely disproved as a cruel hoax or clever marketing.

The mythologizing, of course, continues, and for nearly forty years, what happened in the house on Ocean Avenue still fascinates those who want to know the truth as well as those who simply want to be fooled. But the horror lingers.

Paula Uruburu is an Associate Professor and former Chair of the English Department at Hofstra University on Long Island. A specialist in American Literature, women’s studies, film history, and 19th and 20th Century American popular culture, she is the acknowledged expert on Evelyn Nesbit. Paula has acted as a consultant to A&E, PBS, and the History Channel.

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by Corey Mitchell

Robert Springsteen IV and Michael Scott, featured in my 2005 book, MURDERED INNOCENTS, were released as Travis County prosecutors moved to dismiss charges against the two men for the murders of Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and Sarah and Jennifer Harbison.

According to the Austin American Statesman, Judge Mike Lynch "has ordered that a continuance in the case to conduct further DNA testing... not be considered." In essence, the prosecutors decision allows the door to remain open for any future potential trial against the two men.

I will post in more detail as I learn more about the decision.

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One night, I found a letter published online. You may have already read it here, on In Cold Blog. It was a letter written by a killer himself, which revealed for the first time the true identity of his victim in a public forum; my identity. He had finally spoken my name to someone else and it was no longer just my story anymore, it was our story.

The stories differed in their content and presentation regarding the horrific events that occurred the night of Thursday April 12, 1990, but the foundation of the story was the same. Yes there was an attack in Mt Shasta California by a serial killer. His name was Keith Hunter Jesperson, The Happy Face Killer. And, yes, it was a physical attack on a young mother named “Dawn” and her four month old infant.

Almost one year ago, I stumbled upon some answers that I had been searching for throughout the years. I knew that my memory had served me well, though my mind tried protecting me from those unthinkable moments that I endured so long ago. Over the last 20 years I had searched off and on to find just the right piece of evidence to evoke the fight within me, the piece of evidence that publicly linked me to the crime scene and to the killer.

I had stories that I rarely shared; I remembered the odd looks I would always receive once I began telling them. No one believed me. They seemed to others to be far fetched stories, and with the way tragedy seemed to unfold concurrently in my life, I can understand that it would be hard for anyone to accept it all as the truth. I had endured so much pain and tragedy in my short life at that time, a ton more than most people do in an entire lifetime.

We all come to these places for different reasons. Some of us who write these stories are surviving our own sordid pasts, sorting through the shrapnel. Some of us are in search of the hard cold truth, trying to make sense of a world where vicious and vile acts occur in all areas of the spectrum, even stealing the lives away from our family members, our friends and yes even away from our children. We come to this place for the answers our minds can not find in our own rational thoughts. Because these acts are not natural to us, we can not fathom their existence. So we search for the truth, trying to find resolution or understanding of the events that can never be justified.

Unfortunately some people look at personal tales of pain, trauma, and yes, even death, in order to find a means of entertainment. Taking a trip into the dark places and using the gripping pain others are forced to endure, as a means of pleasure seeking. They view these stories much like a campfire tale or a nightmare with no actual reality for their basis of being told. While those of use called survivors and victims bare our souls to bring the truth of our demise alive on the pages you read. Remember this is our own personal Hell, our real experiences. Suffering is not a myth but a very real demon that some of us spend each day performing our own exorcisms against.

I have taken myself and dredged through my experience a million times, much like placing egg on a piece of French Toast. I have covered it up with a thick coating, completely hiding it from view. I have changed it from its unnatural state and made it into something completely different, something palatable. I have sugar coated it with fine confections and smothered it in sweet maple molasses so that it is tasty and digestible to others, so that they would be willing to indulge in it… but not today. No, for the first time I am scrapping the layers of sweet digestible coating from it, and uncovering it as the foul bitter bread that it is. When I place this on the plate in front of you with out its sugared coating will you still be willing to excitedly gobble it up like before? Will the truth make it too ugly for you to accept it for what it really is, instead of the luscious lies that are so much easier to swallow?

I wonder, will you continue reading my story once the truth becomes uncomfortable and vile? Will you be willing to hear the truth about the ugliness that many prefer I hide away from plain sight, or will you turn away from me in disgust because the flavor of what it truly takes to survive having your life shattered is just a little too bitter for your tongue?

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By Marek Fuchs



Unfortunate souls who met pitilessly violent ends are written about early and often in our society, where true crime books are stalwarts of the book industry. But nearly 50 years to the day after the November 15, 1959 murder of the ill-fated Clutter family in Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote to write “In Cold Blood,” simultaneously starting the modern true crime genre and setting its unreachable standard, the verbal flow of blood should be plugged long enough to ask an essential question: do these books have any redeeming value?

If the only function of recounting true crimes is to titillate with moments of suspense or dark voyeuristic thrill, the efforts do not rise past the level of mawkish and, as such, serve no larger purpose.

Indeed, writing about the Clutter murderers probably failed to help—at least when considering the fate of society past bookworms. After all, the Clutters were killed for no good reason and Capote’s best wild guesses at why career chiselers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith degenerated for a night into mass murderers failed to inform in any way that could advance understanding of such crimes enough to prevent them. Capote tried to delve into what laid siege to Dick and Perry’s misshapen minds, but he either missed the mark, or the truth did not help. Inarguably, murder rate have risen steadily with the popularity of the true crime genre which stretched from “In Cold Blood” to Vincent Bugliosi’s “Helter Skelter” on to regular offerings these days from the likes of Ann Rule and a stable of other best sellers, to say nothing of the television version of true crime, with forensic specialists solving real crimes nightly.

While awareness may occasionally solve social ills, airing America’s bloody laundry has not served to quell its long gathering tendency toward criminal violence. In fact, if anything in the half century since the Clutter murderers, murder rates have risen in accord with the true crime genre.

But few thought true crime books were social engineering projects in the first place, which probably brings us, as always with books, back to the personal. Appropriately enough, that’s where “In Cold Blood” began and ended: with the Clutters. There was a mom, dad, teenage son and daughter--Bonnie, Herb, Kenyon and Nancy, all trapped in that stark white farmhouse that terrible night.

At this point, even those who knew Kenyon and Nancy, high school students with long futures ahead of them, have lived out the bulk of that future. They are well into their seventh decade and have, understandably, only vague wooly memories of their long-ago friends.

But even at this late date, there is one place where the memories of the Clutters does not dissipate, where their struggles and successes, warmth and grace and ambitions are as vibrant and alive as ever.

That’s in the true crime book, inspired by their viciousness that ended their lives.

There was Herb, the father who, all knew, would have fought to the death if he had an inkling. Herb “cut a man’s-man figure,” as Capote put it, with “teeth unstained an strong enough to shatter walnuts.” He was disciplined and charitable and a credit to his community, a Kansan with a perfect sense of where he stood. Then there was Bonnie, his wife, who too often took to crying in her pillow, but always hoped against hope to lift her depression, seeking regular help. There was also Nancy, the “popular and pretty,” daughter, who had just played Becky Thatcher in a high school production of Tom Sawyer. She was in love with Bobby Rupp, a good boy. You can’t forget Kenyon, the youngest Clutter, but already taller than his father, with a talent for woodwork. His most recent creation was a mahogany hope chest.

Sure enough, hope was gathering in the Clutter home as November 15, 1959 fast approached. Bonnie thought she finally had a bead on her depression—nothing but a misplaced vertebrae—and if this was found to be the case, Herb knew, he could address the Thanksgiving table with “a blessing of unmarred gratitude.”
Thanksgiving would, of course, not come for the Clutters that year, or ever again.

But like every good true crime book, In Cold Blood brings the victims back to life. All their proclivities, all their triumphs and sadnessness, all the workaday little details of their lives are alive, if only on the page and just for those fleeting moments when you are reading. It’s not perfect, but it’s the only life they have.

Marek Fuchs wrote “A Cold-Blooded Business,” called “riveting” by Kirkus Reviews, after covering the story for several years as a reporter for The New York Times. When Fuchs is not writing, he produces book trailer videos for other authors. When he is not writing or filming, he serves as a fireman in Westchester County, New York. You can find out more about this author by visiting his web site at marekfuchs.com

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In Cold Blog founder Corey Mitchell (pictured left) recently cycled 75 miles to help fight Multiple Sclerosis (MS) at this year's MS 150 Ride to the River from San Antonio to New Braunfels. Unfortunately, a torrential downpour cut the first day's ride short and completely cancelled the second day. (The picture of me is from the Wildflower ride held in April 2009).

That disappointment aside, the true goal of the ride is to raise money to help find a cure for MS. If you would like to donate money to help fight MS you can sponsor Corey as a rider at his personal MS 150 website. All donations go to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Each rider's individual goal is $300. I have already raised $185 and need your help me to raise more with a generous donation.

For every $25 donation you make, I will give away a signed copy of any of my Kensington/Pinnacle books, which include DEAD AND BURIED, MURDERED INNOCENTS, EVIL EYES, STRANGLER, and PURE MURDER. To receive this gift, please e-mail me your name, mailing address, which book(s) you would like, and the inscription you want in your book(s) to truecrimewriter@aol.com.

Thank you for your help during these tough economic times for attempting to find a cure for those afflicted with this devastating disease.

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Obama and Me

October 26, 2009


The first time I really thought about Barack Obama becoming President of the United States was in January 2007, when I saw him and his wife, Michelle, on “60 Minutes.” She was asked about her fear of her husband getting assassinated -- if he ran for the White House and got elected. Her concerns around this subject were tangible, in her body language and her words. She was clearly afraid that something tragic could happen to him and their family, not to mention the rest of the country. Watching this program, I could only imagine what conversations the two of them must have had around this issue, and how intense the pressure could have been on him not to run. Obama himself seemed much cooler on this topic than his wife, as if he’d seriously considered his demise in the past and then put it out of his mind. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do for himself or America if were too consumed by the possibly of a tragic scenario. He hadn’t come this far by limiting himself and his dreams. This interview has stayed with me become more relevant in recent months, when some right-wing extremists have openly called for his murder and others in the mainstream have been just about as irresponsible.

What also struck me watching the “60 Minutes” episode was that Obama and I had some things in common, even though I was white and he was half-white and half-black. I was raised by rural white people from Kansas and basically so was he, even though he didn’t grow up there. We were both exposed to elements of racism inside our own extended families, and he’d honestly and eloquently talked about this in his national speech on race in the winter of 2008. What had been driven into me as a child, for better or worse, was that I was supposed to be polite to other people and try to understand their point of view, even when they seemed foolish, stupid or offensive. I was not to make scenes in public, regardless of what I was feeling, but to lock all that inside and swallow hard. My job was to be a bridge-builder between those who didn’t get along with each other, instead of taking sides. Most people, I was taught, were reasonable and I should extend the others the benefit of the doubt.

In the first eight months of Obama’s presidency, I’ve sensed him struggling with all these dynamics -- after being compared to Hitler in the national media, blamed for wanting to build concentration camps for those who disagree with him, and charged with trying to destroy the United States, while he’s attempted to dig the country out of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and tried to reform health care. I can’t help wondering what Michelle says behind closed doors about the viciousness of his opponents, and I wonder how he manages not to lash out at anyone. Maybe it’s because of that Midwestern influence. Mostly lost in all the talk about him being the first African-American president is that he’s also half white, and that half is not urban-based. Like me, he has small-town, rural roots, and was probably taught as a youngster that you’re supposed to get along with others, even if they seem crazy.

I have mixed emotions about how he deals with those who stick outrageous labels on him. Sometimes, I want him to drop his politeness and fight back publicly, but other times I sense that this wouldn’t play well across much of America, especially in the heartland, and he’d be doing just what his enemies want him to do. We can only hope that Michelle’s fears are never realized and he remains unharmed. But assuming that all his critics are rational or reasonable is a mistake. One wonders if Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize this month has made him even more of a target. Pray for his safety.

Stephen Singular is the author of nineteen books which range in topics from high-profile crimes and social criticisms, to business and sports biographies. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado. You can find out more about this author by visiting his website at stephensingular.com

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Wrestling Evil

October 23, 2009

By M. William Phelps

On July 7, 2009, M. William Phelps’s tenth true-crime book, CRUEL DEATH, drops. It is the story of thrill killers Erika and Benjamin “BJ” Sifrit, those snake-loving, Xanax- and cocaine-snorting Hitler fans who committed one of the most heinous crimes of the past ten years.

The following is an expanded version of the book Author’s Note.



Throughout my years of writing true-crime, I’ve always drifted away from the more gruesome cases. Granted, every murder is an act of evil; every untimely death a tragedy. But I have not waded in terribly bloody waters, if you will excuse my frankness. I have generally written about those murders we tend not to cringe at—those deaths which have been quick and (God willing for the victims) painless.

That being said, as I began work on CRUEL DEATH, I knew it would involve a certain amount of horror I had not yet covered: the brutal dismemberment of two human beings. What I didn’t know was that this act of savagery by the killers was only the beginning. What I uncovered while researching and writing this book—some of which has not been yet reported—affected me in ways I had never experienced, in all of my years reporting on murder. There were times when I had to leave the book alone for a day or two to catch my breath and think about things. Now and then, as you write these books day in and day out, you can get caught up to a point where some of what you’re doing doesn’t seem real. Yes, I used dozens of interviews, thousands of pages of court records, trial transcripts, photographs, police reports, military reports, depositions, interviews with the perpetrators, and scores of other documents to write this book, a process of which becomes, at times, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. But here, within the pathos of this case, the way the victims were treated before, during and (especially) after death was so profoundly evil and cruel—there are not enough adjectives in the English language to describe the treatment these victims endured—that as I wrote about it, a part of me began to drift into a despair I had never experienced while writing true-crime. It made for an incredibly bumpy road—emotionally. There were days when I had to put this project aside, due to the graphic nature of what I had uncovered, and work on something else. There were also days when I thought I could not go back to it.

I have never written—or read—true-crime for its shock value. To me, the process has always been about exploring the lives of people, telling the victim’s side of the story, and getting to the core of what makes murderers do the incredibly evil things they do. My goal is always to tell the most complete, unreported story I can find. In addition, I search for those stories I believe need to be told. With that being said, part of my hope in publishing CRUEL DEATH is that readers get the metaphor I feel is entirely implicit throughout the book: that the people we meet throughout an average day—passersby, smiling strangers, the man and woman sitting next to us on the beach, the couples we might “hook up” with at a club, etc.—may not be who they claim to be.

BJ Sifrit was honor man in a class of seventeen Navy SEALs; a quiet, clean-cut, wholesome looking twenty-something from Texas. Erika was from a loving, caring, wealthy family; a business owner; an all-American high school basketball player.

It was easy to trust these people. Why wouldn’t you?

This story proves, however, that anyone can fall victim to the face of evil. The victims in this case—Martha “Geney” Crutchley and Joshua Ford—were smart, hardworking, middleclass people on holiday in Ocean City, Maryland, when they crossed paths with Erika and BJ. Meeting, they were four adults having a “good time” while on vacation. It all seemed so harmless.

What remains clear to me is that the horror Erika and BJ perpetrated against two wonderful, kind, and loving human beings in Ocean City on that Saturday night before Memorial Day in 2002 is, at its core, a depravity of such gargantuan proportions that the true nature behind these crimes can never be fully explained, understood, or accessed emotionally. It’s hard to really wrap our minds around what happened in that bathroom and the subsequent days when Erika and BJ were running around Ocean City seemingly celebrating their crimes. As summer bears down on us here in America, keep in mind that the world is not what it was twenty or even ten years ago—and the people you will meet this summer may not be who they claim to be.

To read an excerpt from CRUEL DEATH, click on either of the photos!


M. William Phelps is the author of several books,including: Perfect Poison, Lethal Guardian, Every Move You Make, Sleep In Heavenly Peace, Murder in the Heartland, Because You Loved Me, If Looks Could Kill, I’ll Be Watching You, Cruel Death (2009), Deadly Secrets (2009), Nathan Hale, and Failures of the Presidents

This post originally appeared on In Cold Blog June 25, 2009 

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By Simon Read

Harry Jackson — a small-time burglar — became the first person jailed for a crime based on fingerprint evidence. A jury heard the case at the Old Bailey — London’s Central Criminal Court — on Sept. 13, 1902, after Jackson pleaded not guilty to stealing billiard balls from a home in South London. At the crime scene, Jackson left an imprint of his left thumb on a newly painted windowsill. The print had been discovered and photographed by one Detective Sgt. Collins, who searched Scotland Yard’s then-small collection of fingerprints taken from known criminals. A match surfaced based on a visual comparison of the print’s looping pattern to those prints in the index. Police quickly nabbed Jackson — a 41-year-old laborer — who, upon conviction, received a seven-year prison sentence.

Three years later, on March 27, 1905, Mr. and Mrs. Farrow were attacked and killed in their shop on Deptford High Street in a crime dubbed “The Mask Murders,” so named because the killers left masks made of black stockings behind at the scene. Investigators who searched the shop found an empty cashbox with a thumbprint inside. Detectives with Scotland Yard’s Fingerprint Department inspected the box. They photographed the print and set about the laborious task of going through the Yard’s ever-increasing print index, which now boasted 80,000 sets of finger impressions. Their search, however, proved futile — but a break in the case soon evolved when police, acting on statements from witnesses, arrested two brothers named Albert and Alfred Stratton. Once in custody, their prints were taken and compared to the one found on the cashbox. It was a match with Alfred’s right thumb. The brothers’ fates were decided. After being convicted of murder at the Old Bailey, the two were sent to the gallows.

Fingerprinting, of course, was another leap forward in the evolution of crime-fighting technology. I’m a fan of historic true crime — that is, after all, what I write about! The books I’ve written thus far focus on crimes from the 1930s and 1940s. Each month, here on IN COLD BLOG, we’ll travel back through time and look at some of the more infamous murders that have stained the annals of criminal history. It should be a fun — and dark — journey. To whet the appetite, let’s take a look at one particularly gruesome killing right now.

In August 1842, Scotland Yard established its Detective Branch. In those early days of homicide investigation, detectives responding a scene were forced to handle evidence with their bare hands. Clues found near a body — whether it be a bloody knife, a torn piece of clothing or human hair — were collected by finger and wrapped in a piece of paper or deposited in an envelope for safe keeping. Forensic science being what it was back in those days, there was no way of knowing how the handling of such evidence compromised its quality. Such methods continued until 1924, when the Yard introduced its “Murder Bag” in the wake of a particularly bloody murder.

The crime scene was a seaside bungalow in Eastbourne. What detectives found in the four-bedroom home following a phoned-in tip was horrific even by the most brutal standards. Before detectives even entered the house, they could smell something foul drifting from it on the breeze. Aside from the bedrooms, there was a sitting room, a kitchen and a scullery. The violence that had occurred within the house left no room untouched. A thick trail of blood ran from the sitting room. It crossed the hallway and passed through a bedroom into the scullery, where boiled human remains were found in a saucepan and a tub. Detectives discovered a blood-smeared saw in one bedroom, while fragments of torched bone littered the fireplaces in the sitting and dining rooms. Blood on the lid of a biscuit tin found in the kitchen drew the attention of one detective. Opening it revealed a heart and other internal organs crammed inside. In another room, investigators came across a large trunk from which the awful stench that permeated the place seemed to originate. Prying open the lid, detectives found a woman’s dismembered body.

Famed pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury responded to the scene to help search for missing body parts. When the pathologist entered the bungalow, he was horrified to find one detective using his bare hands to scoop up mounds of rotting flesh and deposit them in a bucket. Spilsbury gave the detective a quick dissertation on the health hazards associated with such an activity and asked the policeman why he wasn’t wearing rubber gloves. The detective gave Spilsbury a puzzled look and told him he never wore rubber gloves. Since the Murder Squad’s creation seventeen years prior, this was how things had been done. Spilsbury made a note to bring this up with the proper authorities back at the Yard. He then began his own crime-scene examination. Over the course of the day, Spilsbury and detectives retrieved more than 1,000 pieces of bone fragments in the bungalow’s fireplaces. The stench of decomposing flesh in the residence was so strong that Spilsbury set his workstation up outside. The woman’s body had to be pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle. An autopsy eventually revealed that the victim — later identified as 34-year-old Emily Kaye — was three months pregnant when she was hacked to death. Spilsbury would later admit that the barbarity of the crime and the condition of the victim made the Kaye murder one his most disturbing cases.

Kaye’s killer — Patrick Mahon, a married man who had an affair with Kaye and panicked when he learned she was pregnant — rendezvoused with the hangman for his deeds. In the wake of the case, Spilsbury met with Detective Superintendent William Brown — chief of the Murder Squad — and shared with him his concerns regarding detectives handling human remains with their naked hands. Brown and Spilsbury’s consultation resulted in the Murder Bag, a kit that was to be carried by all detectives responding to a homicide. In the bag were rubber gloves, tweezers, containers for evidence, a magnifying glass, swabs and other items useful for the collection of evidence. Over the years, the Murder Bag’s contents would evolve with the advancement of investigative techniques and forensic methods.

Until next time, feel free to visit me at http://www.simon-read.com/.

First posted at In Cold Blog on June 25, 2007

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For those of you In Cold Blog readers who aren’t familiar with my work, I thought I would share the opening of my latest book, Twisted Triangle, which is hot off the presses. It’s available on Amazon now and will be in bookstores by May 1, if not before.

After the excerpt, I’ll tell you a little about how I came to tell this fascinating story:

Margo Bennett was barely one step inside the lobby at the Prince of Peace United Methodist Church when the door to the sanctuary burst open to her right. A man, dressed in black and a stocking cap with eye holes, leapt in front of her. He was holding a gun.

“Margo, don’t fight me on this,” he commanded.

She recognized the voice instantly. It was her estranged husband, Gene, a former FBI agent, just like her.

Margo reacted instinctively, raising her hand and shooting a stream of pepper spray toward his head. As she saw him stagger backwards, she knew that she’d hit him, she hoped in the face. She also knew she had only a split second to run for cover before he’d come after her.

Racing into the office of her minister, the Reverend Edwin Clever, she dove for his desk in the corner. She landed on her hands and knees, scrambled behind the short end, and turned her body toward the doorway.

Still holding the pepper spray in one hand, she dug frantically in her purse for her gun. Gene, looking for an advantage, poked his head around the door frame several times. Each time he did, she sprayed him—once, twice, three more times.


By the fifth spray, she noticed that the stream had significantly less force. She was scared that Gene had noticed, too. But by then she’d gotten her finger curled around the trigger of her .38.

“You’re not going to kill me, Gene,” she said. “I am not going to let this happen.”

Gene stuck his head around the doorway again. “I don’t want to kill you, I just want to talk to you,” he said, as if he were to sound sincere. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have had you any time.”


“If you wanted to talk to me,” she snapped, “you could have called me on the phone. I’m not coming out. You are not going to do this.”

Crouched behind the desk, Margo pointed her gun at the spot where she’d last seen Gene’s head. A stack of letter trays was partially obstructing her view, so she knocked them onto the floor with one swipe.

“What do you want to do, get into a shootout?” Gene asked. The feigned sincerity had evolved into irritation that his ploy wasn’t working. “We can get in a shootout and see who’s the best shot.”

“I don’t care Gene, I am not coming out there.”

“Edwin has got explosives around his waist. I’ll kill us all. Come on, let’s talk, or we’ll all die,” he said, the frustration in his voice rising. “Do you want to die?”

“You want to blow us up, blow us up,” she said. “But I’m not coming out there.”

She could see her minister in his secretary’s office, sitting in a green leather chair with a beige cloth bag over his head, his hands cuffed behind him, shackles around his ankles, and a bulging fanny pack around his waist.

“Edwin, are you all right?”

“I think so,” he replied, his voice quiet and shaky.

Margo’s adrenaline was high, and her fear had been overtaken by a clear focus and the drive to survive. Her choices would not be clouded as they were when Gene had attacked and abducted her three years earlier, in 1993. He could kill her as far as she was concerned, but she wasn’t going to let him break her like he had the last time. She’d rather die than let him touch her again.

That’s just the start of Chapter 1. If you want to read more, Twisted Triangle should be available at your local bookstore, or for those of you who want immediate gratification, here’s the Amazon link. Now, for a little back-story.

The story of Margo and Gene Bennett originally caught my interest when I read about it in Vanity Fair in 1997. At the time, I was working on my first crime novel, (Naked Addiction, which just came out a few months ago, and yes, I know, it took a long time). I was also an avid reader of Patricia Cornwell’s forensic thrillers and, to give you a sense of pop culture history, Ellen DeGeneres had just come out on national TV.

A budding true-crime fan, I enjoyed the Bennett story because it had so many sexy components: Two married FBI agents involved in a love triangle with Cornwell, a best-selling crime novelist who wrote about FBI agents and the serial killers they profiled. And then to find out that Cornwell’s affair was with Margo, the female agent—now that was intriguing.

Margo’s affair with Cornwell became national news after Gene’s divorce papers, detailing the affair, were released to the media only days after was he arrested for trying to kill Margo. Gene, a former undercover agent, spoke to one or two local reporters and then let his lawyers do the talking from there.

Because Margo wasn’t speaking to the media back then – I am the first journalist and author to tell her exclusive story – only Cornwell’s side of the story was disseminated, along with her widely-quoted remark about their romantic involvement: “It wasn’t even two trips over the rug.”

After reading most if not all of Cornwell’s early books, I appreciated learning about the ironic parallels between her fictional and personal lives: Her female protagonist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, was having an affair with a married FBI agent whose name was Benton Wesley, and Scarpetta’s niece was a lesbian. I wondered whether Cornwell’s real-life affair with an FBI agent preceded Scarpetta’s fictional one. (Bennett, Benton – coincidence?)

But as an investigative reporter, I wanted to know the real story.

Then, in 2005, Poisoned Love, my first book, about the Kristin Rossum murder case, had just come out when my agent called to ask if I’d be interested in writing a book about the Bennett case with another former FBI agent, John Hess. I jumped at the chance.

I started interviewing Margo in October 2005. We spoke on a regular basis for hours at a time until I finished the book in August 2007. This included one particularly long weekend session in my living room, when I plied Margo with Cabernet so she would feel more comfortable telling me about her interactions with Cornwell (I'm being facetious here -- Margo bought the wine so it was a fully voluntary effort), and a particularly difficult morning when she described being kidnapped by her then-estranged husband Gene, moment by moment.

And now here we are.

Twisted Triangle is an inspirational story of one woman’s struggle to survive and her triumph over an abusive husband an internal battle over her own sexuality. The book provides all kinds of new and exclusive information about Gene Bennett’s two court cases and takes you inside the personal life and careers of this FBI couple.

Caitlin Rother, a Pulitzer-nominee who worked as a investigative newspaper reporter for nearly 20 years, is the author of four books, Body Parts, Twisted Triangle, Naked Addiction, and Poisoned Love, and is the co-author of Where Hope Begins.

This post originally appeared on In Cold Blog April 16, 2008

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By Harry MacLean

The Supreme Court can't seem to make up its mind on whether to hear the appeal of James Ford Seale who was convicted in 2007 for conspiracy and kidnapping in the murder of two black youths in southwest Mississippi in 1964. ("The Past Is Never Dead, the Trial of James Ford Seale and Mississppi's Struggle for Redemption"). The conviction was overturned and then reinstated by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, on a 9-9 vote. The 5th Circuit then asked the Supreme Court to review its decision--itself a rather strange request--and the Court was supposed to decide on October 5th, the "First Monday in October." The case slipped, along with another case, to the 12th, and now the 19th has come and gone.

In the meantime, the Court announced that it would hear the other case, involving the rights of Guantanamo detainess, a few days ago, but said nothing about Seale. This leads one to speculate that there must be a serious split on the Court about the case, and that there might be some horse trading going on.

The case is important because it turns on the issue of which statute of limitation applies on these race murders from the sixties. If the Court holds that the statute for a capitol crime applies, then the Justice Department can continue to investigate many of these old cases. If the Court holds that the six-year statute controls, then the books on many of these cases will be closed forever. The Justice Department estimates that about 30 cases will be affected.

Wouldn't we love to hear the arguments going on in the conference room?

Harry N. MacLean is an Edgar Award winning true crime author. You can find out more about Harry and his books by visiting his website at HarryMacLean.com.

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In Cold Blog is a true crime blog founded by best selling author Corey Mitchell, and is written by award winning journalists, authors, criminal justice professionals and others.

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