Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Department of Twisted Logic

The Joseph Fritzl case in Austria is a horrifying train wreck that I can't stop reading about. But today's story takes the cake, what with Fritzl complaining about poor media coverage from jail:

His criticism of the international media's reporting was published in the German tabloid Bild Zeitung.

"I could have killed them all," reads the front page headline of today's Bild Zeitung. And Fritzl, dubbed a monster by the Austrian media, told his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, "I'm not a monster," according to today's report.

Fritzl is sharing his prison cell with another man who is serving time for taking part in a shooting incident. The men have a TV set and a radio available to them in their cell.

Ah, the delusions of psychopathic grandeur...

Killer Smiles

This week's big true crime story is highly speculative: could a nationwide gang of psychopathic serial killers, linked by a "signature" of smiley face graffiti, be responsible for the deaths of up to 40 young, college-age men assumed to have died from drowning? That's what retired NYPD investigators Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, working in concert with Prof. D. Lee Gilbertson of St. Cloud State University, believe, though they've now run out of money to continue their investigation further, according to news reports.

Steve Huff is skeptical, as am I, for the same reason: it sounds way too pat to be real and more like a thriller narrative. But we also agree on why the story, however far-fetched, has a hint of plausibility:

One thing that made earlier theories of bands of killers using similar methods seem untenable was the lack of easy, fast communication. Were they burning up the phone lines, chatting about the next kill? Were they passing coded messages through classified ads? Possibly, but common sense really said no.

That's one element in favor of the theory of the Smiley Face Gang -- communication:

If this theoretical gang of killers exists and they began working in 1997, they had a still-new tool to work with: the Internet. People had been dialing into online bulletin boards since the 1980s by 1997, and the message board format was already hopping. Kansas serial killer John Robinson started seeking victims online in 1993, and he did it with chat rooms and message board posts.

Robinson could draw victims into his web from California and Indiana, and do it in relative anonymity.

The Web's capacity for instant communication across great distances (chat rooms, forums) would permit the formation of a gang of killers. That doesn't mean it has happened, yet.

However this story turns - my vote is for a mix of murders and accidents and perhaps some distant communication or copycat behavior - I expect to see some variant of the suggested plot in fictional format around 2010 or so.

The Plight of the Unidentified

The AP has an extended piece on the Doe Network, whose mission since its inception in 2001 is to highlight missing and unidentified persons and do their best to resolve such cases:

Today the Doe Network has volunteers and chapters in every state. Bank managers and waitresses, factory workers and farmers, computer technicians and grandmothers, all believing that with enough time and effort, modern technology can solve the mysteries of the missing dead.

Increasingly, they are succeeding.

The unnamed dead are everywhere -- buried in unmarked graves, tagged in county morgues, dumped in rivers and under bridges, interred in potter's fields and all manner of makeshift tombs. There are more than 40,000 unnamed bodies in the U.S., according to national law enforcement reports, and about 100,000 people formally listed as missing.

The premise of the Doe Network is simple. If the correct information -- dental records, DNA, police reports, photographs -- is properly entered into the right databases, many of the unidentified can be matched with the missing. Law enforcement agencies and medical examiners offices simply don't have the time or manpower. Using the Internet and other tools, volunteers can do the job.

40,000. That is a ridiculously large number that has no business being so high. The Doe Network does its part, and eventually the linking of both databases in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS) should as well, but still. Think about that number. Think long and hard.

The Mystery Man of Eastlake

Three years ago I blogged about "Joseph Newton Chandler III", an elderly gentleman who shot himself in 2002 and left behind a slew of troubling questions when the name he lived under for close to 25 years turned out to be a sham.

Now the Cleveland Free Times makes "Joe" their cover story this week, and the portrait that emerges is of a man with serious idiosyncrasies and something very much to hide:

Joe Chandler was quite peculiar. He wore factory-style protective eyeglasses, even outside of work. He stood about 5-foot-8 and looked to be in his 60s, although Mike noticed that whenever someone asked how old he was, Joe always gave a different age. He had larger-than-average hands, with thick fingers. He smelled kind of funny, too, like he didn't bathe often. And he was always making little gadgets.

Joe built himself a white-noise machine that piped static through headphones which he wore at all times. He kept it turned up so loud, you could hear it if you were standing close to him. Joe also wired his TV so that it shut off during commercial breaks and clicked back on when the program started up again; he hated advertisements of all kinds. As a favor to another coworker named Mark Herendeen, Joe once rigged the Madison Fire Department's alarm system so that it turned on the lights in the sleeping area whenever it sounded.

Joe also had a habit of disappearing. Occasionally, he would call [his friend and eventual executor] Mike and explain that he wouldn't be coming to work for awhile. "They're getting close," Joe would say. Usually, he was only gone for a few days, though once he was gone for months.

"I should have suspected something," says Mike, thinking back. "But I didn't. I just thought he was a paranoid schizophrenic or something."

So who was "Joe," really? As much as I still like the idea of him being the Zodiac, it's a longshot possibility that still doesn't really lead to any conclusions. Odds are decent that he could have been the federal fugitive Stephen Campbell, though the "easily explained away" discrepancies (like a six-inch height differential) aren't necessarily so in my mind. It still troubles me that there was no way to extract DNA from any item "Joe" was known to handle, and that his cremated remains wouldn't reveal much even if they were exhumed. So unless someone knows something, the fictitious Mr. "Chandler" seems destined to remain a cipher.

If Someone Wrote This As a Crime Novel

It would be rejected on the grounds of sheer unbelievability.

New York Crimes Past and Present

In this week's issue of Time Out New York I bring up one of the city's most notorious killers, Albert Fish, whose cannibalistic exploits in the 1920s and 30s added a macabre twist to the Meatpacking District's name.

And with the news that the bicycle belonging to the alleged bomber of Times Square this week (as well as two other sites last October and in 2005) has been found, my thoughts again turn to the past - and to Con Ed's least favorable employee, George Metesky.

The Agony of The Feet

Forgive the cringe-worthy title, but this story, set off Gabriola Island in British Columbia, is rather indescribable in its potential for mystery:

Should a fourth human foot float ashore here in the evergreen Gulf Islands off the west coast of Canada, the person who finds it would no doubt want to know the answers to three questions.

Is it a right foot?

Is it wearing a running shoe?

Is the shoe a size 12?

After all, for the first three feet that surfaced on the rocky coastlines of three separate islands in the Strait of Georgia over the last six months, the answer has been yes in nearly every case. The only uncertainty is what size shoe No. 3 was wearing when it was spotted by a boater on the beach of remote Valdez Island on Feb. 8. The coroner’s office, facing a bit of a news media blitz, has yet to say.

“This is the first incident in recent memory where we’ve had three such similar sets of remains come to our attention in a certain time frame and a certain geographic area,” said Jeff Dolan, assistant deputy chief coroner for the British Columbia Coroner’s Office.

Could it be murder? Something's definitely askew but others dismiss the notion. “The whole thing is a scam, as far as I’m concerned, all part of a big joke,” said 80 year old Digby Jones. “If they go to the mortuaries on the mainland, you’ll find some guy laughing his head off.”

(hat tip to EP and JH)

Cornwell Donates to John Jay College

I am starting to come to the conclusion that Patricia Cornwell is the Upton Sinclair of the criminal justice system. Because whatever the opinion is on her current books, there's no question she's crusading about forensic science practice the way Sinclair did about workplace conditions. Now comes this piece of news about my alma mater:

Patricia Cornwell is donating $1 million to a top criminal justice college for a new academy to teach CSI techniques.

The best-selling novelist said she's taking action because she's appalled by what she's seen at crime scene investigations. "I've seen cops walk through blood. I've seen them leave their own fingerprints on a window," Cornwell said in an interview Friday. "I've seen bloody clothing put in a plastic bag, instead of a paper bag, so it decomposes."

Her funding will help start the Crime Scene Academy at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, set to open this fall with training in DNA typing, fingerprint enhancement techniques, ballistics and forensic psychology.

$1 million only goes so far, but it's a good start nonetheless. I just hope the money is matched, and then some, by private and public funding.

NPR Goes Forensic Again

About a month after a three-part series on DNA and Ethics, NPR now goes back to the forensic science well. This time they focus on the FBI's crime-solving efforts, beginning with DNA, moving to voice-recognition and then facial reconstruction.

Where in the World is Belle Gunness?

The answer to the whereabouts of arguably America's most notorious female serial killer is quite simple: she's either buried in LaPorte, Indiana, the victim of a house fire on April 28, 1908, or in the Los Angeles area, where "Esther Larson" died in 1931 awaiting trial on charges of poisoning a man.

But just because it's simple doesn't mean anyone has come close to a definitive conclusion as to what really happened to Belle Gunness. Andrea Simmons, an attorney and graduate student at the University of Indianapolis, is now attempting to do so, as the Indianapolis Star's Dan McFeely reports in some detail:

The answer could be found in the bones unearthed from a Chicago cemetery last month -- and an envelope that may bear traces of the killer's saliva beneath its stamp. In that saliva could be the DNA clue that clinches the identity of those bones. "Is it her? That's what we will be trying to find out," said Simmons, who will be getting help from the Indiana State Police and the FBI crime labs.

Simmons is working on a book and talking with documentary makers who are interested in filming the story. If this DNA test is not enough, Simmons is ready to travel to California to dig up two more graves -- those of Belle's older sister and Esther Carlson, who was accused of poisoning a man for his money in 1931 and who bore a striking resemblance to Gunness.

"I had often wished that somehow we could prove by present-day DNA, to all the naysayers, that it was not Belle in that grave!" said Suzanne McKay, the great-granddaughter of Nellie Larson, Belle's older sister. McKay has spent years researching her relative and is eager to know for certain whether Gunness was buried in that grave.

McKay was also interviewed by McFeely about the exhumation last November and DNA testing on the body purported to be Gunness.  WSBT also covered the exhumation soon after it took place.

In an ideal world, DNA testing would prove conclusively that the body buried in LaPorte is or isn't Belle Gunness. In practice, a 100-year old body will be lucky to yield enough usable material for standard DNA tests (usually from the teeth, but any bones in good conditions help) and more likely, mitochondrial DNA testing, which doesn't have as high a match probability. No matter the results, it seems like an exhumation order in California is in order because of the questionable identity of Esther Larson. And if the LaPorte body is not Belle, then is she Esther? And if so, what was she doing these past 23 years?

Answers, if there are any, won't be available for months, if not years. And they may only confirm the mysterious nature of Belle Gunness's supposed death somewhere.