Solving old crimes (or not)

On the trail of some rough riders

It's always possible to shed light on some very old crimes -- even those more than a century old. Some sixth-grade students (!) opened their own inquiry into the death of a barkeep in 1902 in a rowdy night at the saloon and point their little fingers at the U.S. Army Third Cavalry.

Riding The Klan, again

Florida Identifies Suspects in 1951 Murder of Civil Rights Activists - Fifty-five years after the murder of two civil rights activists in the southern state of Florida, the state attorney general has identified four men as suspects. The murder of Harry Moore and his wife Harriette occurred during a time of bitter racial divisions in the United States. The couple died in a bombing of their Florida home on Christmas Day in 1951....

Cornwell's art

I don't care what the Ripperologists say, I liked Patricia Cornwell's book on the Ripper case. She fingered artist Walter Sickert in her book and did an admirable job of proving he was a sick man. But the Ripper? Anyway, come to find out she spent Three million pounds on Sickert art trying to match DNA from a Ripper stamp to the DNA of the artist. This is such a breathtaking example of a researcher obsessed beyond description with solving an old crime case that I can hardly believe it and yet I love it. Imagine being so swept up by your research passions that you let passion take hold of your hand and guide you to sign your name on a series of very large checks. She's an inspiration. News came this week that Cornwell donated her collection of Sickert art to Harvard University, saying, “I wanted it to be a gallery where scientific examination of the Sickerts can continue.” Well, that's not likely pending some sort of scientific breakthrough, but she had to do something with it, and here's hoping it's tax-deductible.

Mr. Klass is wrong

Do sex killers leave ransom notes?

Mark Klass, who lost his daughter Polly to a monster, has been appearing on television a lot lately, as he has always made it plain that he suspects the Ramseys had something to do with the murder of JonBenet. On a Court TV program on Tuesday afternoon, he said a principal reason for his steadfast finger-pointing is because of the ransom note. He made the assertion that sex killers don't leave ransom notes.

He actually declared in no uncertain terms that this has never, ever happened in the history of crime, and that the presence of the ransom note means it could not have been a sex murder.

Unfortunately, the remark went unchallenged. Any time you hear someone say "this has never happened before in the history of crime," what follows, ninety-eight times out of a hundred, is bunk.

Consider:

--A killer left a ransom note when he took Suzanne Degnan, 6, from her home in the middle of the night on January 6, 1946. Her dismembered body was found the next day. A child molester named Richard Thomas confessed to the murder, though notorious killer William Heirens also confessed to the killing. In either event, it was clearly a sex murder and not a kidnapping, regardless of the note. See the Court TV Crime Library -- which Court TV anchors and guests should consider reading.

--Marian Parker, 12, was snatched in 1927 by someone who sent ransom notes to the family. But kidnapping wasn't the motive; the "kidnapper" collected a ransom and delivered the girl back to her family -- she had been killed and her body desecrated in a classic case of Lustmord or lust murder. See an excellent summary by Mark Gribben.

-- Clark Handa, age 3, was kidnapped from his own home in 1984. A ransom note was left behind. Clark has never been found, and no one ever tried to collect any ransom for his return. cite

For the Free Father Robinson Club

The Toledo Blade reporter who covered the Robinson trial is writing a book. The title of the book is going to be Sin, Shame, and Secrets: Murder and Cover-up in the Catholic Church.

In other words, we should not actually expect the book to explain how the victim got some other man's blood underneath her fingernails and on her underwear. But there's another book in the works, so I hold out hope. How's this for a title: Speculation, Supposition, and Superstition: Why Science Couldn't Save Father Robinson.

You know what the prosecution's answer to this DNA evidence was? They said the amount was miniscule. As if the amount is relevant -- the point is a man's blood did not spontaneously generate underneath the murder victim's fingernails and on her underwear. And if they want to continue to argue that the blood must have come from some accidental source after the fact, I say prove it. Because common sense is evidence, too.

Toledo was awash in pre-trial publicity before Father Gerald Robinson was convicted of murdering a nun. It's worth harking back to the words of one of the men who brought us State v. Robinson -- the detective whose "one-man crusade" was said to have brought about murder charges. In an article published before the trial in the Toledo Free Press, the retired detective accused police officials of covering up for the Church in not bringing charges earlier. Consider his remarks:

Nobody wants to hear about this case because it is so ugly — it involves a priest killing an old woman. Even the media wants this hushed up.... The department always had ‘go-to' guys who would take care of embarrassing problems for the Church. The only reason this case finally got properly investigated was that a new generation of ‘young Turks' came along and looked into it after I kept bugging them.... there are a lot of people in the police department who give me the cold shoulder now.

Hmm wonder why.

The coverage of the Robinson case from Court TV, which was extraordinarily favorable to the prosecution (devoting seven separate articles to the prosecution's case; the defense got two. Hm), is being used by BishopAccountability.org which is in the business of "Documenting the Abuse Crisis in the Roman Catholic Church." The Court TV article being reproduced on the BishopAccountability website is headlined Woman Credited for Events Leading to Gerald Robinson Trial.

Credited. Huh. If you read this article, you might be led to think this woman was simply a brave abuse survivor.

"For years, she had kept her allegations largely a secret, but the haunting after effects, she claimed, had driven her to seek intensive, and expensive therapy. At last, she brought her story of abuse she endured years earlier to the Diocese ...."

Nowhere in the article does Court TV actually acknowledge just how grotesquely bizarre the woman's accusations are -- or the status of her civil suit seeking money from the Diocese, for that matter. Per the Toledo Blade, she accused priests of committing murders of infants. She accused priests of performing an abortion on her. She accused priests of performing Satanic orgies, forcing children to have sex with one another. She accused priests of performing rituals in which they penetrated her with a snake. No journalist can purport to cover the accusations of this woman, no journalist can credit her for anything, without specifying her most outlandish accusations.

That's enough of that for one day. I'm going to go kick the cat.

Comments

[holytoledo]

Sorry -- you are wrong on some facts here. There are two Jane Does. The Jane Doe whose bizarre allegations were brought to the attention of law enforcement is not married. The Jane Doe in the civil case is married. Her spouse is referred to as "Spouse Doe"

Here is the docket for the civil case.

http://www.co.lucas.oh.us/ClerkDockets/Docket.asp?selCaseType=CI&NumberSearchCriteria=200502755&StartDate=&EndDate=&selParty=0&submit1=Continue+%3E%3E%3E