Homicide
He used to sit beside me in the office humming
the theme from the original Star Trek.
He was handsome, smart, very funny.
He explained at his trial that the knives in the drawer
were screaming at him
“Kill her!”
© Copyright 2010
Homicide: November 3, 1948
HOMICIDE: November 3, 1948
‘She was standing there, hands in her back pockets, leaning against a tree. Bold as the sun. The top three buttons of her blouse were undone. Even though it was almost noon, the moon was smitten. I stood there confused and burning up in the shade.’
Marshall Johnson, 32, Eau Claire roofer, has admitted in a signed statement the slayings of Raymond Smith, 18, bank clerk, and Gertrude Bauman, 17.
‘I was just returning from a hunting trip. I must have startled them as I stepped out of the shade. The boy came toward me. There was a scuffle. I pushed the kid onto the grass and shot him. The girl started to scream so I shot her too. She looked good with blood on her blouse. I smiled. The boy got back up again and I shot him two or three more times. The girl wouldn’t stop crying so I finished her off.’
The bullet-ridden bodies of the couple were found October 24 near a golf course. An autopsy declared that the girl had been raped. Sheriff Thompson said that portions of Johnson’s statement were withheld in order to clarify some points in the case.
‘Sorry for what happened. Really made a mess of it this time. All a mystery to me. I knew what was happening but I just sat back and watched. Watched myself murdering. Didn’t seem to be any crime in watching. Never raped her. No way. She was covered in blood. Ask the cops. There wasn’t any blood on me. ‘sides, everyone likes a good killin’ now and then.’
Homicide: May 23, 1934
HOMICIDE: May 23, 1934
“The eight year trail of murder and robbery of Clyde Barrow, dangerous bandit of the southwest was ended Wednesday morning at 9:15 o’clock beside Bonnie Parker, his woman companion in crime, in a hail of bullets from a sheriff’s posse, fifty miles east of here, near the Sailes community, in Bienville parish, several miles from the town of Gibs land.
So many days waiting for this moment. Bonnie, a lonely woman would sit at the table smoking a cigar and writing bad poetry. She would look up at Clyde standing in the doorway looking out into the night and wonder how she’d come to this fate – bored to death and wanted across the southwest.
“Whatdya wonna do?” Clyde would ask without turning around.
Bonnie shrugged.
Both fugitives were killed the next day. Instantly, before they could fire a shot. Their bodies and automobile were riddled with bullets. They drove into a posse’s ambush, arranged by the former captain of the Texas Rangers, Frank Homer, who had followed Barrow’s trail relentlessly and by Sheriff Henderson Jordan of Bienville parish.
“We had a look at her after we were sure they were dead. Someone hoisted up her dress. She weren’t no different than other women.”
In his arms one night Bonnie tried to keep Clyde warm. He couldn’t stop shivering. “I’m so scared,” she thought she heard him say but pretended she hadn’t. She looked at her nails. Broken. Her arms ached. They hadn’t slept for 3 days. Bonnie looked out the window of the cabin at the full moon and imagined that there were couples just like them all over America.
Homicide: February 14, 1912
HOMICIDE: February 14, 1912
The hottest summer in years has not slowed down the spread of the rebellion in Mexico as shown by dispatches tonight. Bodies in ditches, pile up in garbage dins, half covered in dust. Blood like dust in the sun. The wicked look of peace.
The rebels have overrun Laguna district in Coahuila and appeared in the states of Durango, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato. Widows and the midnight wail. Flies. Swarming the moon. Priests and old women filling the wells. Young girls fainting. Loins giving birth to targets.
In the south, Zapatistas continue their campaign and in Guerrero followers of Salgado are showing remarkable activity. Proclamations dangling from trees. Torn, shredded, flayed. Print martyred to lead.
The government has repeatedly said the Salgado uprising is practically ended. Bullet holes in cement walls. Blood running down. As if the walls were bleeding. As if the walls were the innocent victims of the revolution.
Homicide: July 1, 1971
HOMICIDE: July 1, 1971
‘Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney who failed to prove a conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy, was arrested yesterday on federal charges of taking payoffs to protect illegal gambling operations.’
Kennedy had a smile on his face that morning. That smirk that said he was putting one over on you. His face was puffy. Jowls too early for a young man. Hair bushy and always falling in his eyes. Bald men don’t become presidents.
It was a perfect day. The sky was clear. There was a breeze off the lake. A woman wept at a bus stop. And a bus door open and a bus emptied. A horse wandered aimlessly through a hydro field. Young girls huddled together, hugging. The chocolates in the variety store window were melting. Newspapers in their boxes which no one bothered to read. A terrible stillness. And the memory of a widow. A bullet in the Dallas sky, caught in a freeze frame. Suspended. Forever.”
‘Garrison, released on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond pending a July 9 hearing said in New Orleans that he was framed. He had expected it since he first started investigating the Kennedy murder. “But being arrested was better than being shot.”
Homicide: July 2, 1921
HOMICIDE: July 2, 1921
“There were tears in his eyes. A cigarette in his mouth. The clock on the wall was sleeping. Behind him the old man cleared his throat. And spit into an ashtray.
Horror was dumb. Blind and bitter fury rose to every lip. The terrible stain. The awful deed. Garfield had been shot.
“Can we make the final edition?” the old man asked.
Shrugging his shoulders he pulled open the top drawer of his desk and removed a bottle of whiskey, took a slug and handed the bottle to the old man.
Garfield left behind him the burden of this great office. He was just setting forth to the scenes of his young manhood, where he had toiled and striven to become what he was. Pleasant farewells were upon his lips and in his heart.
The old man swallowed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and put the bottle down on the desk.
“They’re always the same, these assassinations. The victim is always Lincoln. The assassin is always Booth. It is a drama performed by the gods. We are merely the flies swarming over the corpses.”
He turned to the old man, looked at him for some time then turned to the half empty bottle on the desk.
“Let’s pretend it never happened.”
Homicide: May 20, 1910
HOMICIDE: May 20, 1910
Captain Andrew Towart, 14 year old, of the ‘Young Websters’ faced Harry Becker, the fourteen year old pitcher of the ‘Young Twilights’ for the decisive ball in a game of baseball in a vacant lot at 149th Street and Gerard Avenue, the Bronx, late yesterday afternoon.
“It was a full count with two out. I was determined to drive the next pitch down Harry’s throat.”
The ball, a small leather-covered sphere of twisted rubber bands, shot toward the batter and a moment later whizzed hack at the pitcher, burying itself in the pit of young Becker’s stomach.
“I just stood there looking at Harry. His face turned this awful white. Harry was dead. His ghost threw the ball to first base.”
Becker sank to the ground. When the two teams reached him his eyes were glazed, and he died before an ambulance from the Lincoln Hospital reached the diamond.
“The cops dragged me into a room and grilled me for three hours. I told them I was just trying to drop down a bunt.”
Homicide: January 18, 1950
HOMICIDE: January 18, 1950
At 1 A.M. today, swarms of Boston police officers streamed out of police headquarters.
“The street had so much blue on it, I thought the sky had sprouted holes.”
Hours earlier two cars, both shiny black, had carried seven masked men, each of them weighing about 180 pounds away from Brinks Inc. where they had stolen $1,000,000.
“We was having lunch when they walked in. Harry refused to open the safe. They put a hole in his stomach. His ham and cheese sandwich came spilling out.”
Detectives and uniformed police swarmed into the railroad stations, bus terminals, and hotels to watch for anyone acting suspiciously or appearing as if they were on anything but legitimate business.
“We picked up a kid in a movie theatre who cried that he hadn’t shot anyone. He was fourteen years old. His name was Oswald.”
The robbery was so neatly executed, Captain John D. Ahern of the special service squad said, that it must have been engineered by the cream of the criminal world. “They was only in the office for twenty minutes and then raced up Prince Street where they disappeared off the face of the earth. Strange sightings were spotted in the sky that night.”
For weeks there was silence. And then bodies began to show up all over Boston. One in the harbor. One in a dumpster. Two on hooks in a meat packing plant. Two others in bed with each other. Six in all.
“There were two conclusions we could have reached. The seventh man had killed the other six and kept the money. Or, we had miscounted.”
Homicide: July 4, 1988
HOMICIDE: July 4, 1988
Unusual formations in the Cydonia region of Mars – including a massive rock shaped like a human face – may have been carved by a lost civilization, four American scientists said yesterday. A former astronaut said a photograph taken of the Martian surface in 1976 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Viking spacecraft looks like a Negro, twenty to twenty five years old, wearing a black leather jacket and considered armed and dangerous.
Richard Hoagland, founder of an organization of scientists called The Mars Project, said he has studied the photo for years and has discovered that in addition to the face there is a complex of unusual objects that he calls a city and believes could have been built by intelligent design.
“We’ve known about the face for a decade now. But it was dismissed when someone pointed out how much the face resembled Malcolm X.”
Brian O’Leary, a former astronaut and an expert on Mars, said that a year earlier he had been in touch with Soviet space scientists, who were preparing to launch the first of two probes to Mars, to examine the area where the face appears. He said the Soviets reported back to him that indeed the rock was a face and that in its forehead there was a bullet hole.
Homicide: August 10, 1988
HOMICIDE: August 10, 1988
U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz adjusted the sleeves of his somber gray suit, smiled nervously at the security guard who sat opposite him in the long black limousine. “I hate motorcades. All Americans over thirty live with the nightmare of Dallas. I look around waiting to see Jackie sitting beside me with that hideous looking hat, and that suit jacket and skirt and that dumb vacuous smile on her face. I keep expecting John Connelly to turn around to say something cryptic. I keep expecting the sunlight to stab me in the eyes.”
On Monday, Foreign Minister Guillermo Bedregal said both the attack on Shultz’s motorcade and a bombing at the U.S. Embassy commissary in La Paz were the work of cocaine traffickers. “We dragged in all the usual suspects. But the Americans were not satisfied. We were sure that the leftist guerrilla group Omando Simon Bolivar was responsible but officials from the State Department kept talking about conspiracy, and the mafia, and the C.I.A., and Oliver Stone, and a group of radical homosexuals working out of New Orleans. Your country has a fetish for conspiracy. Some things are just acts of God.”
The commando group, which described itself as ‘anti-imperialist’ in calls to news agencies claiming responsibility for Monday’s blast, was behind at least two other bombings in Bolivia since April, 1987.
“Shultz did not move when the gun fire began. We threw ourselves on the floor but he sat there, motionless. I thought it was American bravado but Shultz told me later that he was playing his part. History had taught Americans a disquieting truth. We are all targets.”
Homicide: March 29, 2018
HOMICIDE: March 29, 2018
At 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday the great beast opened its mammoth mouth and swallowed the city of Vancouver. For what seemed like an eternity the entire city had disappeared into the great chasm in the earth. And then, suddenly, the planet belched and the city, broken but not destroyed was vomited back onto the surface.
Premier Robinson, holidaying in Hawaii, said the quake was: “the worst disaster the province has ever suffered. There is nothing to compare with it. But the people proved once again that nothing can keep them down.”
Miraculously Vancouver counted only seven confirmed fatalities early this afternoon and three serious injured — and an untold number of missing. Across the province and up and down the Pacific Coast, where giant tidal waves battered the shorelines, the death toll mounted -perhaps as high as 60. Hard hats and helmets were the Easter parade headgear attire, as the big cleanup task got under way. Vancouver mayor, Sandra Kelly, seeking re-election on a law and order platform declared from her party headquarters: “How long are decent citizens expected to tolerate such flagrant flaunting of the laws of nature? The planet must be made to understand who is boss.”
Homicide: August 16, 1965
HOMICIDE: August 16, 1965
As police and sheriff units desperately tried to contain the six-day-old race riots, white snipers today were reported riding in the Los Angeles harbor area. Shortly after midnight, Anthony Meyers and Edward Walter Cornejo, both 21, were arrested in the San Pedro area on charges of shooting at inhabited buildings.
“We didn’t take this country from the Comanche’s just to give it up to a bunch of Jungle bunnies.”
An hour later, at 10th Street and Pacific Avenue in San Pedro two Juveniles were arrested after police stopped their car. A search of the vehicle uncovered a pellet pistol.
“It just seems that there’s no place for us anymore. Mad. Makes me mad. Why am I being blamed for everything? Why do they hate me? Every time you turn on the tube all you see is them. The gays, the blacks, the latins, women. They get all the attention. It’s like I don’t exist. I’m here. I’m worth something. Makes me mad. Makes me want to kill something.”
Homicide: October 5, 1957
HOMICIDE: October 5, 1957
Angry students and other Poles battled police, security troops and militia in Warsaw streets last night in the second violent anti-government demonstration in two days. The street battling rolled up to the doors of Communist Party headquarters, where the Central Committee was reported in emergency session before the demonstration was smashed.
Unlike the fighting of Thursday night, which was confined to an area around Polytechnic School, the violence this time spread to three sections of Warsaw. And for the first time other Poles joined the 2,000 students in their defiance of government force.
The demonstrators hurled bricks and shouted “Gestapo, Gestapo”, a reference to the Nazi secret police. They tossed back gas bombs thrown by the police. Government forces beat the demonstrators with rubber truncheons, scattered them with tear gas and noise bombs and finally restored order after five hours of fighting.
Homicide: January 8, 1997
HOMICIDE: January 8, 1997
One of possibly three sniper-arsonists who terrorized a five-square block area of downtown Montreal in a continuing 12 hour shooting spree was killed by police bullets fired from an armored RCMP helicopter at 10 p.m. Sunday.
“He was hiding in a cubbyhole when the guns from the helicopter and marksmen on the roofs of surrounding buildings opened up on him. The poor bugger rushed out from the concrete cubicle to fire and was ripped to pieces. Chunks of him flew into the night and over the sides of the building spraying the onlookers below.”
As the siege of the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in downtown Montreal continued officials were reluctant to state who was responsible for the massacre but it is known from reliable sources that a group of militant homosexuals calling themselves EKWAUL has claimed responsibility. Another, up to this time unknown group called OFC (The Organization for a Free Canada) has also claimed credit.
“It was all on the tube. They must have had cameras in the copters. I thought it was a promo for a movie. It made me sick. But I couldn’t change the channel.”
Homicide: January 23, 1995
HOMICIDE: January 23, 1995
Walter Gentile was feeding lettuce to other tropical fish Monday night in the 607,500 litre aquarium of the Red’s End when the 54-kilogram shark attacked his left arm.
David Power, general manager of the popular Halifax nightclub, described the incident. “He seemed to lose his balance. Slipped on some lettuce. As soon as he hit the surface the shark was on him. When the other sharks in the tank smelled the blood they went into a feeding frenzy. Other divers began to fire on the sharks but the spilling of more blood sent the sharks into a greater frenzy.”
Patrons of the popular nightclub were stunned.
“My wife started laughing. She thought it was part of the show.”
“It was neat,” twelve-year-old Shirley Basset giggled.
“I was eating shark at the time,” forty five year old Charlie Hays of Atlanta, Georgia explained. “I swear, the steak leaped off the plate and went for my throat.”
Because the body of Mr. Gentile could not be reassembled, all the sharks in the tank were shot and buried in a common grave in a private ceremony attended only by the Gentile family and close friends.
Homicide: May 6, 1985
HOMICIDE: May 6, 1985
To mute the storm of protest that rose from President Reagan’s austere wreath-laying ceremony Sunday at the small military cemetery in Bitburg that holds the gravestones of German war dead and SS troopers, a visit was scheduled at a concentration camp where 50,000 Jews and gentiles were put to death.
“Those responsible for these… atrocities will be hunted. And hunted found. And found tried. And tried convicted. And convicted punished. And punished… well” – the President’s message to those who accused him of ignoring the Nazi horrors.
Reagan, in one the most controversial acts of his presidency, spent only eight-minutes in silence at the Kolmeshohe Cemetery in Bitburg with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on a dank, gray day. The President spoke a few words in private to the Chancellor.
“Helmut, you don’t think anything really happened here, do you?”
And then the two men left.
Homicide: July 5, 2004
HOMICIDE: July 5, 2004
The body of John Lyons, a researcher and economist involved in the talks for the entry of Canada into the American union, was found in his apartment in southeast Washington. Lyons reportedly killed himself Tuesday by inserting wires that ran from an electric outlet into his mouth and turning on the power. He is the sixth member of the Committee for Unification reported to have killed himself – the ninth committee member to die in Washington in mysterious circumstances in recent years.
The American government offered their condolences to the Lyons family. Officials from the Canadian government apologized but would not comment on rumors that Lyons may have been a spy for a third party.
Lyons’s widow Ann has been reported as saying the pressure of his secret work may have caused him to take his own life. “John never talked about his work. But sometimes in the middle of the night he would be startled awake in a cold sweat. He’d be shaking all over. There were also the phone calls. At all hours. Asking for him. It was a woman’s voice. Her voice was weak and quivering. And on the verge of panic.”
Homicide: December 11, 1936
HOMICIDE: December 11, 1936
Wallis Warfield Simpson sat erect in the hard straight back dining room chair waiting for her unthroned king. Today she knew before the world learned that the monarch had given up his imperial charge in order to make her his bride. From her villa of Lou Viei in Cannes, France she had been in telephone communication with London that morning.
Her hand gripped tightly the thick oak arms of the chair. Her eyes were strained and dry. A nerve twitched below her left eye. “It was as if we had been murdered in our sleep,” she muttered through clenched teeth.
Outside eight French detectives and officers from Scotland Yard and London stood guard. Dusk was falling. Lengthening shadows fell across Mrs. Simpson’s bedroom windows, which looked out upon a lighthouse standing sentinel-like in Riviera Harbor. The howl of a neighbor’s dog echoed across the bay.
Homicide: May 12, 1998
HOMICIDE: May 12, 1998
Hurricane Peter weaved a path of destruction up the southeast coast of the United States today. Following the path of its brothers Paul and John it left a trail of carnage unprecedented in modern times. The fierce 190 mph winds wreaked havoc on whatever remained standing from the furor of the two previous storms of the last week.
At the same time as Peter lashed at the east coast of Florida, New York City was still being thrashed by Paul. Almost all east coast cities have been abandoned though this effort had been hampered by the condition of highways blocked by fallen trees and hydro lines.
In Mississippi Governor James Michael flew to Pass Christian where searchers scouring the hurricane-battered areas found a ton of bodies. “The stench of death was everywhere,” one volunteer remarked.
All along the coast damage was extensive. Housing developments had been wiped off the sides of hills; ships have been forced ashore or sunk; water supplies have been contaminated; mass burials have taken place and there seems no let up in the storms. Word that yet another hurricane is heading toward the area has left many depressed and fearful.
Vice President Nathan Webster after a helicopter tour of Georgia and South Carolina said the damage left by the hurricanes would almost “defy the imagination”.
Homicide: October 20, 1976
HOMICIDE: October 20, 1976
Shortly after 6:30 a.m., as dawn broke over the Mississippi River near Luling, the terrified screams of the doomed pierced the early morning silence. The Prince George ferry, loaded with cars, trucks and freight headed toward the West Bank when it suddenly slowed up. In the next moment the prow of a second ship loomed over the ferry’s deck. The ship hit the Prince George, drove it upstream and flipped it over immediately.
“I was sitting in my pickup, listening to the local news, half asleep, still fuming about an argument I’d had with the little woman the night before when I turn around and see this great black ship coming out of the morning mist. There were no markings on the ship, no sign of life. It seemed to come right out of the river and hang over the ferry. Suddenly my pickup and several other vehicles were thrown into the river. Most of the folks had their windows up against the cold biting winds of the river but I kept mine down that morning. I was trying to stay awake. I guess that’s what saved me. Some how I was thrown to safety. When I reached the shore and came to my senses I could hear the screams and shouts of terror from those trapped inside their cars floating briefly before they slipped beneath the water. A few moments later the Prince George went under and the river was once again calm and empty. The mist rose. No Prince George. No survivors. And no black ship.
Homicide: May 19, 1980
HOMICIDE May 19, 1980
Suddenly, the sun was gone, the blue sky disappearing behind a riptide of boiling gray clouds. Heat lightning danced in jagged bolts overhead. Trees swayed and the ground shook. The daylight turned to darkness. Mount St. Helens had blown her lid.
Jess Baker of Battle Ground: “The birds just went to sleep.”
Bob Harju of Vancouver, Clark County: “God, it was quiet out there.”
Bob Brotmiller looking up at the boiling gray clouds churning out of Mount St. Helens: “It was like an atomic explosion. But there was no sound. This was the face of God.”
Kathy Anderson who was directing a U.S. Forest Service replanting crew on the side of the mountain just four miles below the summit, described an awesome scene of flashing lightning bolts, a boiling cauldron of volcanic ash billowing out of the crater: “I felt as if my consciousness had been turned inside out and I was condemned to look inwards for the rest of my existence.”
Her colleague John Morris: “I kept thinking, this is it, this is the end of everything.”
Homicide Now And Then 