Tom McMahon

Third-Generation Kennedys: Really Stupid

From Hyman Hayden:

The Martha Moxley case is unusual because the man on trial, Michael Skakel, is related to the Kennedy family, and because the crime took place more than 25 years ago, when both Skakel and Moxley were 15 years old. Subsequently, Skakel became an alcoholic, and entered an abuse treatment center where, according to Coleman, Skakel confessed to killing Martha in a jealous rage when he saw her making out with his brother. This proves Skakel is an idiot. Why not just kill his brother? That way, he'd have a better chance with the girl.

January 7, 1973: The End of New Orleans Cop Killer Mark Essex

Mark Essex gunned down 19 people, including 10 police officers. From trutv.com:

In the cockpit of the helicopter, Pitman was aware that the policemen had discovered the sniper's hiding place. He eased the big helicopter away from the roof as if he were pulling out. It was a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

With the pipe under him split open and the helicopter again flying away, Essex dropped to the floor of the alcove and picked up his rifle. He charged out onto the roof to fire another couple of parting shots at the retreating aircraft. Then the searchlight hit him.

After dropping away from the hotel, Pitman had reversed direction and slipped back over the building. He swept his searchlight across the roof. "I saw him come out of the dark," Pitman says. The gunman was caught out in the open, 30 feet from the Gravier cubicle. The sniper snapped his rifle up to his shoulder. Pitman saw a flash and a red-hot ball rocketing up toward him. The gunmen's round slammed into the transmission housing just above the cockpit. Pitman knew the helicopter had been hit. He didn't know how badly or even how long they could stay in the air, but he held the big bird steady over the hotel as the policemen in the back adjusted their line of fire. They were 10 feet off the roof and less than 50 feet from the sniper.

"We were looking eyeball to eyeball at him," Saacks says. With a fresh magazine in his M-16, Saacks opened fire. "I just walked the bullets right into him."

When Pitman's searchlight finally caught Essex out in the open, the elusive enemy that the police had been chasing for a week was finally exposed. Policemen who'd crouched for hours in open windows and on rooftops all around the Howard Johnson's started shooting.

Mark Essex's body convulsed beneath the fusillade of police bullets and collapsed onto the roof. His Ruger .44-caliber Magnum carbine lay beside him, broken into pieces by the hail of gunfire.

"He was hit a number of times," recalls Pitman, in a bit of understatement. An autopsy later revealed Essex had been struck by more than 200 bullets.

"The guy was so shot up he had to be picked up with a scooper," says Eddie Rantz, who was perched on a nearby building, armed with a .30-caliber carbine, and who took part in the volley of shots that finally brought Essex down.

O.J. and Nicole

O.J. and Nicole

Dominick Dunne, RIP

Tina Brown:

One of the many things I loved about working with Nick was the joy he took in the process of reporting. He loved the mechanics of a scoop, the scheming to get access, the romancing of sources, the chance encounters that led to a new lead. It was always amazing to me the weird Irish luck that seemed to follow him around on a story. He would be sitting on a plane and the murderer’s ex lover would introduce herself or trying to track a lead and find just the person he wanted in the waiting room of his dermatologist. He knew he had some sticky magic that drew stories to him. Even in his last days at a clinic in Germany, who should be in the next room waiting to be debriefed but the ailing Farrah Fawcett. (“Isn’t that just so typical of me,” he told me wonderingly when I saw him afterwards.)

Just Wondering: Do Burglars Now Have A Free Shot At The Home Of Race-Baiting Harvard Professor Henry Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

The story: here, here, and here. The official PDF police report lists his street, and Switchboard.com fills in the details, which anybody could then enter into Google Maps to get a nice view of the neighborhood.

What's to prevent a white burglar from putting on some shoe polish and breaking into Professor Gates' house? I mean, even if the neighbors see it, who's going to report it? And even if they do report it, do you think the Cambridge Police are going to rush right over there as fast as they can?

And when that happens, you can bet Professor Gates will charge "racism" about that too.

Attention Appleton, Wisconsin City Attorney James P. Walsh: I Have Photographic Evidence of Madison, Wisconsin Resident Michael Leon Urinating On The Grave of Joseph R. McCarthy in St. Mary's Cemetery In Violation of the Appleton Municipal Code Sec. 10-45

Attention Appleton, Wisconsin City Attorney James P. Walsh: I Have Photographic Evidence of Madison, Wisconsin Resident Michael Leon Urinating On The Grave of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in St. Mary's Cemetery In Violation of the Appleton Municipal Code Sec. 10-45

This photograph is also found here:

Michael Leon's Blogger Profile

As you know, The Municipal Code of the City of Appleton, Wisconsin reads:

Sec. 10-45. Urinating or defecating in public.

No person shall urinate or defecate outside of any designated sanitary facilities, upon any sidewalk, street, alley, public parking lot or ramp, park, playground, cemetery, or other public area or upon any private property in open view of the public or in the halls, rooms without restroom facilities, stairways or elevators of public or commercial buildings.

(Ord 139-01, §1, 8-20-01)

I am forwarding this information to City Attorney James P. Walsh of the City of Appleton at the email address found on his web page, which is [email protected]. 

I would encourage others so inclined to email Mr. Walsh as well.

How Democrat Arlen Specter Helped A Murderer Escape Justice

The crime:

A Drexel student who lived in the apartment below Einhorn's recalled a "blood-curdling scream" and heavy banging one night in the fall of 1977. In a neighborhood of frat houses and party hounds, the student downstairs thought nothing of it. But the odor that followed within weeks was impossible to ignore, as was the putrid, dark-brown liquid that oozed down through the ceiling from Einhorn's apartment. The tenant and his roommate tried unsuccessfully to clean it away, then called the landlord, who called plumbers. Einhorn stubbornly refused to let the workers into a padlocked closet just off his bedroom.

The private detectives turned it all over to police, and on March 28, 1979, at 9 a.m., homicide detective Chitwood knocked on Einhorn's door. Once inside, he headed straight for the locked closet. He pried it open with a crowbar and immediately smelled a "faint decaying smell, like a dead animal." Next he sprang the lock on the steamer trunk. The newspapers inside were dated August and September 1977. Under them was Styrofoam packing material. Chitwood scooped through it until he came to something he couldn't identify at first, and then it was clear. A hand. A human hand. He scooped some more, and as he did, Holly Maddux slowly emerged. Einhorn stood by, impassive.

Democrat Arlen Specter's role:

Einhorn was a celebrated leftist and is credited with helping found Earth Day. He also had strong ties to Philadelphia elites — a group of people Specter was cultivating for his prospective Senate campaign when he agreed to become Einhorn's lawyer.

At an arraignment, the government demanded a $100,000 bail for Einhorn. Before Judge William Marutani, Specter called this "excessively excessive" and insisted on a reduced figure. Marutani wondered if Einhorn might "split for parts unknown." He mentioned Norway as a possible destination. "I have to disagree with your last statement," replied Specter. "Anybody is as likely to go to Norway as anybody else." Through the future senator's efforts, Einhorn's bail was dropped to $40,000. The accused man only had to put out ten percent of it in cash to secure his release.

As things turned out, Specter was proven correct: Einhorn didn't flee for Norway. He went to Sweden instead, slipping out of the United States shortly before his murder trial was scheduled to begin. Einhorn remained a fugitive until 1997, when police found him living in France under a phony name with his Swedish wife. He was eventually extradited to the United States. In 2002, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

When The Mob Ran Las Vegas

An excerpt from Denny Griffin:

Customers who were caught cheating the casinos met different fates, depending on whom they had plucked and for how much.

“At my place on the Strip, we didn’t go for the rough stuff,” Mickey said. “You might mess a guy up a little and he comes back later with a gun, or goes to the cops or the Gaming Control Board. The main concern was recovering our money and making sure the cheater knew he wasn’t welcome back. But the cheats didn’t know that when they got hustled off to the back room. I’m sure a lot of them thought they’d never be seen again.”

“Usually they’d offer to give it up [the money],” Mickey continued with a smile. “They weren’t very wise-assed or resistant at that stage of the game. But sometimes we’d make them lose it back. I remember this one guy who’d taken us for ten grand. We told him he could resolve the matter by going to a roulette table and staying there until he lost every dime. It was made clear to him that we’d be watching. After he’d lost his winnings he was to get out and never come back, not even to use the restroom. The guy couldn’t agree fast enough. He dropped the money he owed us, and a thousand of his own for good measure. We never saw him again.”

Sammy’s experience with cheaters at a downtown casino was slightly different. “If it was only nickel-and-dime stuff we’d just toss them. But if they took us for anything substantial, they’d be in a cast or on crutches for a while.”

None of the roughed-up cheaters ever returned looking for revenge either. “Before we turned them loose, they understood what would happen if we ever saw them around again.”

What Does This Say About Us?

From the true crime blog In Cold Blog:

In the next 60 seconds -- and before you read any further in this post -- list as many mass-murderers and serial killers as you can ... ready ... set ... GO!

How many did you get? 10? Watch more TruTV.

20? Not bad.

30? Impressive.

OK, here's another little test for you, and this one is a little harder: In the next 60 seconds, name as many victims of mass- or serial killers as you can. Ready ... set ... GO!

Oh c'mon, if every name you came up with was killed by the Manson Family, that's no better than the devoted readers of Mommy Blogs! Pre-schoolers wandering through the true-crime section at Borders can do better! ICB readers are the cream of the crop! What? You couldn't name a single victim of Bundy, Dahmer, BTK, Gein, Gacy or the Ripper?

OK, forget that test, let's try another one: In the next 60 seconds, name as many survivors of mass- or serial-killers as you can. Ready ... set ... whaddya mean you're not even gonna try?? C'mon it's just for fun. Please?

Barack Hussein Obama's New Election-Winning Model

From Winds of Change:

So we have a new election-winning model before us, being demonstrated to its best advantage under ideal conditions by - I think it has to be said - a political genius, a man who has seized and used a decisive advantage in the money race, exactly where his side of (left, relatively radical) politics has been so disadvantaged till now that it's been denied a chance to show its worth in government. Key elements of the new model are:

• Overwhelming mainstream media support (including lack of interest in his illegal activities)
• A vast money advantage intentionally boosted to an unknowable but likely large extent by foreign and other illegal donations
• Government funded mass partisan support
• Intimidation and suppression of criticism.

The first two elements are key. The second two elements, despite being perhaps more inflammatory, are peripheral. They merely leverage a great advantage in what one candidate can get away with.