Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

After Andre: A Review of Cropsey (2009)

As children, Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio were among many who scared others and themselves with an urban legend given fictional life with the name of Cropsey - a maniac living in the woods who, with hook or meat cleaver or knife or machete, depending on the teller and the region, would emerge from the shadows to lure kids to their deaths in gruesome fashion. On Staten Island, where Zeman and Brancaccio grew up, Cropsey took on extra resonance thanks to the lingering ghosts of the Willowbrook State School, where mentally ill and developmentally disabled children resided and whose oft-horrific treatment was uncovered by Geraldo Rivera's 1972 expose for WABC-TV.

Such is the groundwork laid for CROPSEY, Zeman and Brancaccio's documentary on where fact meets fiction, where legend meets truth, and where the whispered-about bogeyman came to life in the form of Andre Rand, convicted of kidnapping two children - one murdered, one whose body was never found - and long suspected in the disappearances of several others. And while I exited the screening room tonight in a state of deep thought, I was troubled less by the case and of Rand than of the film's framing and presentation.

When Zeman and Brancaccio stuck to source material and primary interviews, CROPSEY was riveting. Whether showing clips of the filthy squalor of Willowbrook - long abandoned to decay in the woods - depicted in Rivera's documentary, current-at-the-time television coverage of the investigations into what happened to the missing children, or talking with family members, former law enforcement agents and those who had some tenuous connection to Rand, the film's power was unmistakable. These were children who disappeared and whose remains may be buried deep in the ground below and surrounding Willowbrook, and chances remain strong we're never going to know the whole truth of what happened.

But by framing Rand's alleged crimes in the context of an urban legend, CROPSEY unwittingly shoots itself in the foot. The real story has enough open-endedness and troubling questions that asking the audience to view it akin to a horror movie cheapens the entire concept when if anything, more investigation was necessary. And while I admit my own biases probably come into play, CROPSEY spent a little too much time going down blind alleyways. Raising reasonable doubt about Rand's guilt is perfectly fine, in light of the lack of physical evidence to tie him to the kidnappings and (probable and actual) murders. But the minutes spent theorizing about a connection to some sort of Satanic cult - especially in tossing off a reference to "Son of Sam" when David Berkowitz all but admitted it was a crock of shit devised to augment what was a more typical motive for serial murder rooted in insecurity, sexual dysfunction and outsized rage - could have been better spent on a litany of questions that ran through my mind.

For example: Zeman and Brancaccio's need to frame their movie around the urban legend that brought them to the cases came at the expense of unearthing who, exactly, Andre Rand is. It's not his real name: that is Frank Rushan, and while we're privy to a clip of the name-change document, no explanation is given as to why (or even a comment that "no explanation was given as to why.") They do track down his sister - obscuring her face from the camera in an understandable need to protect her identity - but what of school records, old yearbooks if they exist, or even the original record of arrest from 1969, when Rand was picked up for sexually assaulting a 9 year old girl in the South Bronx? Perhaps there's a deliberate metaphor to obscure Rand's background since Staten Island's general public never got to hear him speak in open court, and there is a single recording of Rand's voice left on Zeman's answering machine - the net result of a months-long letter-writing campaign by the filmmakers to secure an interview - but that seems like speculation.

And though the only fleeting reference was someone held up an old newspaper clipping about the "Unlucky Seven" children who went missing in New York City during the 70s and 80s, it was impossible for me not to compare Andre Rand with Jose Antonio Ramos, the longtime prime suspect in the disappearance of Etan Patz 30 years ago last month. Both Rand and Ramos lived transient lives, setting up makeshift camps in out-of-the-way places that were still well within reach of urban dwellings. Adults viewed their respective physical appearances and demeanor with suspicion - the drooling perp walk from Rand's 1987 arrest for Jennifer Schweiger's kidnapping and murder remains an indelible image, as is Ramos's mug shot from roughly the same time period - and yet somehow, they attracted kids to them with some degree of charisma and favors (one witness who testified at Rand's 2004 trial on kidnapping Holly Ann Hughes in 1981 described seeing Holly being enticed by a man with his face covered, holding out candy from his green Volkswagen, and never seeing the girl again after that.) And both Rand and Ramos are fond of playing games, whether dancing around their alleged crimes in letters, inviting people up to come interview them only to turn them down at the last minute, and generally maintaining some illusion of control over those who desperately want to know what happened to these children. And most importantly, the likelihood of physical evidence linking them to their alleged crimes turning up is exceedingly slim at best.

As a film, I view CROPSEY as a victim of its intentions, felled by the need to fashion a narrative that fuses fact and fiction. As a way of getting more and deserved attention about the lost children of Staten Island - Alice Pereia, Holly Ann Hughes, Tiahease Jackson, Jennifer Schweiger and especially 22-year-old Henry Gafforio, whose 1984 disappearance has been hardly written about anywhere (shockingly little information is available online), even as he made an eerie appearance in a newsclip when Holly disappeared three years before - and providing even a cursory glimpse into the unfathomable mind of Andre Rand, CROPSEY is mandatory viewing, even as it raises far more questions than can possibly be answered.

Photo credit: Jin Lee/Staten Island Advance

American Girl, Italian Nightmare, and a Update on Mario Spezi

Saturday night on CBS, "48 Hours" will air a segment on the ongoing trial of 21-year-old Amanda Knox, who stands accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher on November 2, 2007 in Perugia. The case has provoked a considerable amount of media attention and notoriety ever since prosecutor Giuliano Mignini accused Knox of murdering Kercher in the midst of a drug-filled sex orgy gone wrong, and the piece, by Peter Van Sant, asks some equally provocative questions about whether Knox is being falsely prosecuted for the crime.

Douglas Preston will also be interviewed on the show, for he has firsthand experience of Mignini's tactics as it related to his work on the book that became the NYT bestseller THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, co-written with Mario Spezi. And here I have frustrating and sad news to report. Three years ago, Spezi was arrested, accused of being a conspirator in the Monster of Florence case, and though he was eventually released - and Mignini reprimanded for his actions - things have worsened for Spezi since the book came out last summer, when he flew to New York to participate in various promotional appearances with Preston (including a panel I moderated at Bryant Park's lunchtime reading series) who reports the following in a email sent around today:

Mignini just a few weeks ago filed a new round of charges against Spezi. These include murder (yet again), as well as disturbing public order by means of the press, “vilification” of a public figure (himself), and using the press to obstruct justice. These charges stem from the fact that Mario, in his capacity as a journalist, wrote pieces critical of Mignini’s investigations in the Knox case and in the Monster of Florence serial killings.

In addition to ruining the life of an innocent American girl, Mignini’s persecution has now brought Mario Spezi to the brink of ruin. Despite a long and honorable career, Mario has trouble finding work because newspapers are afraid to hire a journalist charged with murder. His home has been searched by police and his papers seized. His health has been affected; last year he nearly died of a pulmonary infection which his doctors thought was partly due to an immune system compromised by stress. The legal bills have left him economically devastated and close to losing his home. He lives in constant fear of arrest. The police have tapped his telephone and bugged his car, videotaped his movements, and questioned his family and friends.

Because, of course, it is far easier to take the complex, conspiracy-laden route and accuse an honorable journalist of outlandish crimes than it is to prosecute the likeliest suspect, whom Preseton and Spezi identified in their book.  What angers me most is that just after our panel ended, I spent some minutes chatting with Spezi about the Kercher/Knox case, expressing my disbelief that Mignini's theories would be taken seriously after the Monster of Florence mess but never thinking Spezi would be caught in the vortex anew.

So here I am, full circle from a little over three years ago. One can only spread the word, yet again, so that Spezi will be left alone once and for all, justice can be served and Mignini's fixation on Satanic rites and needless persecution can be quashed.

UPDATE: Preston's editorial appears at TheWrap.com.

New Report Calls for Forensic Science Overhaul

Yesterday the National Academy of Sciences issued a lengthy report, two years in the making,on the current state of forensic science. It should not come as a surprise, that they found "serious problems" with the field. The report, according to NPR's Morning Edition, which did a segment on it today, "cites key deficiencies — such as the lack of mandatory certification programs for forensic scientists and the lack of standards for analyzing and presenting evidence. The study calls for new science research and major reforms to fix the fragmented, decentralized system." Not to mention that up to 80% of forensic laboratories are overworked and understaffed, and the "CSI Effect" means juries expect DNA and when they don't get it, they don't convict. It all adds up to the recommendation by the NAS that forensic science ought to undergo a serious overhaul.

Nothing brings the point home like Radley Balko's latest article in Reason Magazine, part of an ongoing series looking at Missippippi medical examiner Michael Hayne and how his less-than-stellar practice has led to innocent people on death row. One of them might be Jimmie Duncan, convicted of murdering 23-month-old Hayley Oliveaux in 1993 in part because of the presence of bite mark evidence. But as the video linked in the piece indicates, that evidence - conjured up by one Michael West - is beyond suspect:

The full 24-minute video opens with Michael West's initial examination of Haley Oliveaux's body on the night of December 18, 1993. He notes several injuries, but at no time does he mention the presence of possible bite marks on Oliveaux’s right cheek. The video itself shows no sign of bite marks, scrapes, or abrasions on the cheek.

At the 4:55 mark, there's a cut in the original video, representing the break between West's initial exam on December 18, and a follow-up bite-mark analysis on December 19. After the break, West stands over Oliveaux's body, which now contains a striking red abrasion on her right cheek—an abrasion that wasn't there before. West then takes the plaster cast of Jimmie Duncan's teeth and pushes it into the scrape on Oliveaux's jaw. Over the next few minutes he jams, drags, and scrapes the dental mold across Oliveaux’s cheek 17 times. For the entire 24-minute video, West uses Duncan's teeth mold on Oliveaux's skin more than 50 times....

...When asked how abrasions on Oliveaux's cheek not present when the video begins could later appear, [Ventura County Deputy Medical Examiner Michael] Bowers answered, "Because Dr. West created them. It was intentional. He's creating artificial abrasions in that video, and he's tampering with the evidence. It's criminal, regardless of what excuse he may come up with about his methods." Bowers added, "You never jam a plaster cast into a possible bite mark like that. It distorts the evidence. You take a photograph, or if there are indentations, you take an impression. But you don't jam plaster teeth into them." After viewing the video, Bowers submitted an affidavit for Jimmie Duncan's defense.

As shocking as that story is, I also understand why change may not be as forthcoming as the NAS hopes it will be. Creating new standards for established techniques, or tossing them out altogether, will be a costly, laborious, combative practice, one requiring a great deal of discussion and committees and hand-wringing. Forensic science funding has been difficult to obtain in the best of times, and these times are anything but rosy. Bad apples also don't mean the techniques themselves aren't useful, and DNA evidence is not always practical and necessary in every criminal case. And as I've said here any number of times, forensic science has moved more in the direction of repetitive specialization and away from the larger picture - which is problematic because looking for the larger story often yields the real one, while the telling detail means the forest gets lost for the saplings.

The report is the #1 topic of discussion at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences' annual meeting taking place in Denver this week, but I, like many others, hope some concrete ideas on how to tackle the issues highlighted by the NAS emerge from those who work in the field, on the ground level and further up the ladder.

Howard Unruh: America's First Modern Mass Murderer

On September 6, 1949, Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed thirteen persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden, New Jersey.

Yesterday, January 21, 2009, Unruh turned 88 years old. He is still alive, a resident of Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. He wasn't always there, having started out his incarceration among the mentally ill in the high-security Vroom Building (now Forensic Psychiatric Hosptal), but got transferred to Trenton in 1993 - long after any possibility of criminal charges were put to bed - and has been there ever since. 

The first paragraph paraphrases the opening sentences of a remarkable example of grace under narrative pressure by the eminent New York Times reporter Meyer "Mike" Berger (1898-1959). The 4,000-word piece, which had Berger get on a train to Camden the morning of the shootings, interview 50 people in town and get back to the city in time to write his piece and make his deadline in a little over two hours, won him a Pulitzer for local reporting. Sixty years later it more than holds up as a chronicle of chaos and terror, as a snapshot of a deranged young man, possibly suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder but just as equally an environmentally-made psychopath, and as a memorial to Unruh's victims, running the age gamut from 2 to 63.

There are a number of reasons why Unruh's crimes fascinate me. He lives on, sequestered away from the world and likely in severe decline. Before him there were serial murders and mass murders but Unruh essentially created the template for lone gunmen "going postal" or shooting up a school, and for carrying out a grudge with epic, bloody, senseless gunfire. Most of his descendants in mass killings turned the gun on themselves, were shot dead by police, or were sentenced to die in prison - or by the government's hand. And the biggest reasons are that he's never talked publicly since that September 6 morning, and we have no real sense beyond stray appearances at annual reviews as to his current state.

There is no getting around what Unruh did. He ruined the lives of an entire town and ripped families apart with the bullets from his Luger. HIs last reported public words, per the Berger article, were "I'm no psycho. I have a good mind. I'd have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough." But six decades later, I wonder why he's outlived so many - and whether there's anything to glean from it other than the cruel randomness that is this universe, and that it truly is the quiet ones to watch out for.

All The Suspects Are Dead Anyway

So earlier this week, police in Hollywood, Florida closed the Adam Walsh case. 27 years after the six-year-old was abducted from a shopping mall and murdered (though only his head was found, a couple of weeks after the kidnapping), which eventually transformed his father John into a criminal justice advocate and TV host, police claim that the killer was their primary suspect all along, Ottis Toole:

[Police] declined to be specific about their evidence and did not note any DNA proof of the crime, but said an extensive review of the case file pointed only to Toole, as John Walsh long contended.

"Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect," said Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner, who launched a fresh review of the case after taking over the department last year. "Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect."

Toole had twice confessed to killing the child, but later recanted. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies. Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam.

In other words, to quote the Broward-Palm Beach-area blog The Juice, "This is either some great detective work... or it's a police chief eager to close an infamous, mangled, 27-year-old child abduction case." Because the question that must be asked is: Why now? There's no anniversary tie-in, there's no new physical evidence, and there's no reported information that something compelling may have happened off-camera to warrant such a definitive announcement. How, exactly, is naming the primary suspect as a killer "closure" when there's more than a speck of doubt someone else could have done it?

As for that someone else, I have my qualms about Jeffrey Dahmer as a viable suspect, but they are the same doubts I have about Toole: neither struck me as likely candidates to murder little children. But both were situational opportunists whose victims did not adhere to narrow categories (though Dahmer did not kill women.) And it seems odd that Hollywood police would ignore evidence, even though circumstantial, that raises some degree of doubt on what might have happened.

Then again, if Dahmer - or anyone else -  had been named Adam Walsh's "official" killer, critics would be screaming that they should have considered Toole a more likely suspect. But putting a false lid doesn't mean the case is really closed, and no matter what the Walsh family says publicly, I can't really see them believing in the mythical beast named closure.

This Must Be a Movie

It even has third-act plot twists:

PORTLAND, Ore. - When Susan Kuhnhausen returned home from work one day earlier this month, she encountered an intruder wielding a claw hammer. After a struggle, the 51-year-old nurse fended off her attacker by strangling him with her bare hands.

Neighbors praised the woman for her bravery, and investigators said they believed the dead man — Edward Dalton Haffey — was burglarizing Kuhnhausen’s home.

But after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband — Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. — to kill her.

Although if it was a movie it would turn out the hitman and the woman actually knew each other previously, but right, this is real life...

Questioning the Reliability of DNA Testing

The LA Times runs what it wants to think of as a serious investigative piece on the reliability of current DNA testing practices. And while there's plenty of investigation, it's also plenty alarming:

State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.

The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.

In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches -- each seeming to defy impossible odds.

As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI's DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation's genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny.

But here's the thing: A nine-loci "match" (because forensic scientists don't use those terms in court and are cautioned against ever using those terms) is not and can never be as statistically significant as a 13-loci match. And the way Troyer ran her searches created results that don't tell the whole story:

Bureau officials say critics have exaggerated or misunderstood the implications of Troyer's discoveries.

Indeed, experts generally agree that most -- but not all -- of the Arizona matches were to be expected statistically because of the unusual way Troyer searched for them.

In a typical criminal case, investigators look for matches to a specific profile. But the Arizona search looked for any matches among all the thousands of profiles in the database, greatly increasing the odds of finding them.

As a result, Thomas Callaghan, head of the FBI's CODIS unit, has dismissed Troyer's findings as "misleading" and "meaningless."

In other words, Troyer wasn't looking for one needle in a haystack, but searched all haystacks for all possible needles and then was "shocked" to discover the presence of more than one needle in a haystack. Which isn't to say that DNA testing standards should remain at the status quo, especially as techniques improve and detection levels grow ever smaller, and the FBI (and other state and local crime labs) figure out how to improve interpretation and minimize what are often catastrophic errors with forensic evidence. But there is an easy, albeit time-consuming from a validation standpoint, way to get around this: bump up the number of loci required for statistical significance.

The Case of the Fake Fed

The town of Gerald, Missouri was one of many small towns struggling to overcome the scourge that is methamphetamine. So when a stranger with a Federal badge came to town, the higher-ups welcomed him with open arms and the arrest rate went up. WAY up. Then everything came crashing down, as the NYT reported yesterday:

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood — mainly from television — to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s antidrug campaign abruptly fell apart after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

Mr. Jakob, 36, is now the subject of a criminal investigation by federal authorities, and he is likely to face charges related to impersonating a law enforcement officer, his lawyer said.

There are a ton of questions, like why Jakob would go to such lengths to impersonate a federal agents, how so many were taken in, and who gets first dibs on turning this into a novel. (Thanks to SP for the link)

And how many crime novels ended with this particular plot twist? Exactly

But lo, it happens in real life, too:

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- A Macedonian journalist jailed on suspicion of murdering at least two women in crimes he wrote about for his newspaper has been found dead in his cell, police said Monday.

Vlado Taneski, 56, had been charged with two murders and was being investigated for the death of another woman and the disappearance of a fourth. He was jailed Sunday after a court ordered him held for 30 days pending the conclusion of the investigation.

Police became suspicious after Taneski published articles about the crimes in a national daily newspaper that contained details police had not released to the public.

Police spokesman Ivo Kotevski said the journalist is believed to have committed suicide early Monday, but an investigation was being conducted.

"He was found dead with his head in a bucket of water," Kotevski told The Associated Press.

More on the killings from Sky News and, for those who can read Macedonian, Utrinski Vesnik.

While She Slept

The Washington Post Magazine's Laura Wexler has written an excellent profile of Jody Arlington, an accomplished DC career woman whose childhood trauma, under her birth name Jody Gilley, is being laid bare to the public as a result of Kathryn Harrison's new book WHILE THEY SLEPT: AN INQUIRY INTO THE MURDER OF A FAMILY:

Arlington is a communications strategist specializing in festival and entertainment public relations. She managed publicity for the Sundance Institute in 2006 and 2007 and has been Silverdocs' public relations manager since 2004. Her contacts in the documentary film world run deep. She types an e-mail on her BlackBerry and hits send. Problem solved.

Leaving the theater after the meeting, Arlington sets a pace so rapid that it borders on a run. "I feel like if I slow down, I'll lose my balance," she says. It's an observation that also applies to the way she's lived since she ended one self and determinedly set out to create another.

Her re-creation has been successful. She has been a manager at public affairs firm Burson-Marsteller and a vice president at communications firm Fleishman-Hillard, as well as chief of staff of President Bill Clinton's National Campaign Against Youth Violence. She is now building a thriving entertainment division at communications firm Weber Merritt and is one of the founders, and the director, of the Impact Film Festival, which will, for the first time, present films dealing with key social issues to lawmakers, candidates and delegates at the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer.

Arlington has also created a satisfying personal life in Washington. She is married to Franck Cordes, director of marketing and administration for the Foundation for the National Archives, and has a circle of loyal and loving friends who make up what she calls her "found family." On weekends, she wears her auburn hair in pigtails and knocks around Georgetown. She drinks Starbucks lattes, reads trashy novels as well as serious literature, watches movies in bed on a jumbo-size, flat-screen TV. She is both ambitious and goofy. She laughs often. She is, as she says, "shockingly normal."

The odyssey of Harrison's book began when Jody wanted to write of her survival after the murders, and it's something she still hopes to write. "Even if she risks fracturing her carefully constructed life," Wexler writes, "Jody Arlington may still, one day, give voice to her own story." And if she does, I want to read it. (via)