CM Print 041313.indd

April 15, 2013
Vol. 2 Issue 4
Table of Contents
A Beautiful Monster:
The Fascination with
Oscar Pistorius
Bradley Manning:
Patriot or Traitor?
April 15, 2013Vol. 2 Issue 4
Publisher
Joe O’Connor
by Don Fulsom and Avi
[email protected]
Editor
J. Patrick O’Connor
[email protected]
Authors
J. J. Maloney
H. P. Albarelli Jr.
Jane Alexander
Betty Alt
Scott Thomas Anderson
Mel Ayton
Joan Bannan
Dane Batty
Scott Bartz
Bonnie Bobit
Gary Boynton
John Lee Brook
Patrick Campbell
Amanda Carlos
James Ottavio Castagnera
J. D. Chandler
Ron Chepesiuk
Denise M. Clark
Kendall Coffey
Peter Davidson
Anthony Davis
Scott M. Deitche
Michael Esslinger
Steven Gerard Farrell
Don Fulsom
Mark S. Gado
Mary Garden
Oliver Gaspirtz
Erin Geyer
David A. Gibb
Anthony Gonzalez
Dennis N. Griffin
Randor Guy
Charles Hustmyre
John F. Kelly
David Kirschner, PhD.
Barbara Kussow
Doris Lane
Jason Lapeyre
2
Ronald J. Lawrence
David Lohr
Lora Lusher
Lona Manning
Hal Mansfield
Peter Manso
David Margolick
Jessica Mason
Allan May
Paula Moore
John Morris
Richard Muti
Tim Newark
Denise Noe
Lt. John Nores Jr.
J. Patrick O'Connor
John O'Dowd
Robert Phillips
Liz Porter
Mark Pulham
Joe Purshouse
Patrick Quinn
Randy Radic
Michael Richardson
Ryan Ross
Eponymous Rox
Anneli Rufus
Laura Schultz, MFT
Cathy Scott
Fred Shrum, III
Ronnie Smith
James A. Swan, Ph.D.
John Tait
Marilyn Z. Tomlins
Claudette Walker
Robert Walsh
Phillip K. Wearne
Sandra Wells
Evan Whitton
Peter L. Winkler
Daniel B. Young
By Binoy Kampmark p.3
D.B. Cooper –
Myth or Man?
McClelland-Cohen p.5
Dirty Laundry: Cold
Case 84-137640
by James R. Melton p. 9
by David Keller p. 7
The Legend of
Tex McCord
(aka Roger Caryl)
The Great Pretender
by Kim Walker p.11
Subscribe to Crime Magazine at:
by Michael Volpe p.13
http://crimemagazine.com/subscribe
A Beautiful Monster: The
Fascination with Oscar Pistorius
Oscar Pistorius’s rise to world
fame was as unlikely as his
arrest for the shooting death
of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
By Binoy Kampmark
It remains to be seen whether this
will become a crime of its own
singular description, or yet another
point of comparison in terms of
previous acts of brutality. Will it be
deemed South Africa’s O.J. Simpson
trial, with its lashings of bloodlust
voyeurism that finds form in evidence, exposures, and innuendo?
The suggestions are that this has
already begun, despite the fact that
the trial is scheduled to start on
June 4. The alleged murder of the
model and self-appointed spokeswoman against domestic violence
Reeva Steenkamp by the Parlympian Oscar Pistorius is something
the analysts and commentators find
magnetic. More than bullets were
fired the day Steenkamp was killed
behind the locked door of the Blade
Runner’s bathroom.
What stands out here is that Pistorius betrayed the image he was
bestowed with. Some of this was
his doing, others distinctly not. The
evolution of a cult figure involves
tweaking and adjustments. The
processes behind that are not always clear. A series of catalysts are
required, and adulation can rapidly
turn to loathing. He, for instance,
became the defiant model on the
“I am the bullet in the chamber. Just do it”.-- Nike sports advertisement featuring
Oscar Pistorius
sporting field, and invariably off it.
He was superhuman, yet not human in attempting to deal with his
physical limitations. For the first
time in Olympic history a sporting
personality competed against full
bodied athletes on their own terms
after a battle against officialdom.
This was muscle against adversity,
physical triumph as a moral value.
Pistorius, who told arriving police
he shot Steenkamp suspecting an
intruder, has fed an insatiable appetite for public consumption and
media frenzy. Pistorius is no longer
an accused so much as a freak being, a cipher for anxiety, frontier
mentalities and sanguinary lust.
He overcame disability, but did so
mechanically through the use of
“blades.” He showed a history of
previous violence. He had a liking
for military gear and fantasies of
confronting intruders. He has now
been deemed capable of anything,
and shooting Steenkamp may end
up being an all out symbol of national psychoses, an act undertaken
as a violent, anti-social impulse in
a violent, anti-social community. If
that be the song of the land, then
sing it.
The Superhero
Pistorius became a talismanic
athlete, a meritocrat of sorts. Clare
Forrester, writing in the Jamaica
Observer (February 27, 2013), gives
a sense of that levelling, and ultimately transcending power. “Here
was the supreme poster child for
courage and determination, whom
Grenada’s 400 metres gold medallist at the London 2012 Olympics
Kirani James described as “special
although he had finished last.” But
in so doing, he did not merely
become the man who triumphed
on the field but off it. He was the
person who challenged the ruling
by the International Association
of Athletics that he could not run
3
with other athletes on the basis that
his Flex-Foot Cheetah prosthetic
legs gave him an unfair competitive advantage. It was a statement
against physical segregation in the
sport. It was also a stance that got
the scientists chatting. He became
more than the model athlete, but
a model person, the odds in the
lottery of life overcome with mind
numbing determination.
It was not merely that he was fast,
but he was the world’s fastest double amputee, speedy despite that
impediment. Accounts of his early
years seem in awe, as if bearing
witness to the exploits of a divine:
unable to walk as an infant, born
without fibulas, legs amputated
below the knee when he was a mere
11 months old, and competing at
12 with other boys in rugby (Scientific American, Jul 24, 2012). In
a cover story, the New York Times
Magazine described him as “The
Fastest Man on No Legs.” The aura
of immortality was stretched even
further by suggestions by a German
team in 2007 that Pistorius used
25 percent less energy than natural runners. Blame it, it seemed,
on Össur, the Icelandic company
behind the prosthetic. Hilmar
Janusson, executive vice president
of research and development at
the company, certainly did his bit
to add to the reputation. “When
the user is running, the prosthesis’s
J curve is compressed at impact,
storing energy and absorbing high
levels of stress that would otherwise
be absorbed by a runner’s ankle,
knee, hip and lower back.”
The debate about the physicality of
Pistorius, its potent power, even its
dangers, a mixture of machine and
man, of prosthetic being and superhuman effort, was well in place
4
before the killing of Steenkamp. He
troubled the scientists, the sports
officials, the administrators and he
startled his fellow sporting personalities. A star-studded scientific
team investigated this seemingly astonishing physical anomaly. Peter
Weyand, a physiologist at Southern
Methodist University, Rodger Kram
from the University of Colorado
at Boulder, and Hugh Heer, himself a double amputee and known
biophysicist, “measured Pistorius’s
oxygen consumption, his leg movements, the forces he exerted on the
ground and his endurance” (Scientific American, July 24, 2012).
The Journal of Applied Physiology
published their findings, noting
that Pistorius was “physiologically
similar but mechanically dissimilar.” Here was a beautiful monster
at work.
The public comments to the article
in the Scientific American are also
revealing. Should a sports person,
in fact, have an advantage in becoming prosthetic in competition?
What is deemed a disadvantage
– amputation – is superseded by
mechanical improvements. One
blog post wonders whether the
Pistorius precedent is an unhealthy
one, effectively encouraging athletes to amputate themselves and
become “blade runners” where
physical exertion was reduced by
virtue of technological trickery. “I
would not like to be discouraging,
but artificial legs would seem to
not have a place in the world’s top
physical competition” (Post on July
24, 2012).
He was, in effect, of this world, and
yet of some other. He was “Blade
Runner,” a creature of scientific,
if not pure mythology, a term of
reference that was itself suggestive:
Was Pistorius himself a reminder of
a dystopian robotic tradition, one
that was half expecting Rick Deckard to turn up and “retire” him?
Doing no right
Pistorius found himself in the
company of dethroned demigods.
Lance Armstrong, who at one point
was not only considered invincible
but squeaky clean, found his own
character diminished after allegations of dope taking prior to his
victories at the Tour de France.
His stoic front of denial seemed
like an affirmation of innocence
rather than concealment of guilt,
for a time. But resistance receded,
and mortality was admitted. The
condition of deposing the idealized seemed ubiquitous – the voice
behind the children’s series “Sesame
Street,” Elmo, was accused of sexual
misconduct. Saints were being
scratched and found to be sinners.
The Brown Daily Herald (February
25, 2013) put it in a trite fashion.
“When we create these superhuman
personas – whether athletes, musicians or the like – we lose sight of
the realities of being a person with
both strengths and flaws.” Avoid,
advised the news outlet, any form
of deification.
From here on in, Pistorius could do
no right. He broke an unspoken social contract. He has become stuck
in a nightmarish morality tale, unleashing interpretations like abundant puss from a boil. The Daily
Mail, the UK’s top muck machine
after Rupert Murdoch’s unscrupulous The Sun, reported that a herbal
remedy in tablet form was found in
the bedroom of the accused containing 23 ingredients, among them
Pistorius Continued p. 15
Bradley Manning: Patriot or Traitor?
A whistleblower hero to some,
a traitor to others, Private First
Class Bradley Manning faces
a life sentence for turning
over hundreds of thousands of
diplomatic cables and intelligence reports about the United States’ mission in Iraq and
Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, the
anti-secrecy Web site operated
by Australian Julian Assange.
by Don Fulsom and Avi
McClelland-Cohen
Private First Class Bradley Manning
U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning
is cooling his heels in a military
prison in Leavenworth, Kansas,
where he awaits a military trial for
breaching national security by leaking classified war intelligence. The
most serious charges are violating
the Espionage Act and aiding the
enemy.
Prosecutors preparing to try Manning say they will also introduce
evidence showing that Osama Bin
Laden himself requested some of
the reports Manning is accused of
leaking.
If convicted, the 25-year-old Manning—whose trial is set to begin in
June 2013—could be imprisoned
for the rest of his life.
An Army intelligence analyst,
Manning was arrested in Iraq in
May 2010 and accused of disclosing hundreds of thousands of
diplomatic cables and intelligence
reports—as well as one video of a
military helicopter attack. Most of
this information was furnished to
WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy Web site
operated by Australian computer
hacker Julian Assange.
In February 2013, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 charges
related to the misuse of classified
information. The Washington Post
reports Manning is expected to be
sentenced to 20 years in prison on
those charges.
Manning entered the guilty pleas
in a crowded courtroom in Fort
Meade, Maryland—where he
vehemently defended his decision
to divulge sensitive documents.
The private said he hoped his leaks
would prompt a national debate
about what he called America’s
fixation on “killing and capturing
people.”
Yet Manning’s reasons for leaking have been ruled off-limits
at his coming court-martial. A
U.S. military judge has ruled that
the soldier’s motive is not a valid
defense. The London Telegraph
notes, however, that Manning’s motive could well be considered as a
mitigating circumstance at sentencing—if the private seeks leniency
after a conviction.
Before looking more closely at the
Bradley Manning story, a quick
note on quotations: much of the
information presented in this article comes from chat logs between
Bradley Manning and a variety of
conversation partners. These quotes
will not be edited for spelling,
grammar, or punctuation. To avoid
burdensome notes, designations of
[sic] will not be included.
Just who is Bradley Manning? He’s
a young gay man from a broken
home who turned to the Army for
a chance to succeed. He became a
private who dared to talk back to
his superiors—always questioning authority; a hacker, in the pure
sense of the word; a leaker—in
fact, the largest leaker in history. A
5
whistleblower hero to some, a traitor to others.
Those facts are far less important
than the true questions raised by
Manning’s story: When is it appropriate for the government to
keep secrets? At what point should
one—or is one compelled to—release secrets to which one is privy,
for the good of the people? What
means are justified to do so? And
what, if any, should the punishment
be for such a leaker? The answers
are elusive in their subjectivity, but
by examining the story of a young
Army private who became a legendary whistleblower, one cannot
help but ask such questions.
Before continuing, it is important
to distinguish between the terms
“hacker” and “cracker.” The phrase
“hacker” has colloquially come
to mean what the term “cracker”
actually encompasses: an individual
who uses technological means
to access secret information for
malicious purposes—for example,
stealing credit card information or
accessing private e-mail correspondence. A “hacker,” however, is not
necessarily accessing such information for untoward reasons, and may
even have a noble goal: for example,
to help correct a flaw in security
programming—or to free information.
Small of stature, Manning was not
a particularly athletic child, but he
was incredibly bright and excelled
in academics to the point that some
noted he might be too smart for his
own good. Politically aware from
a relatively young age, Manning’s
belief set was decidedly interventionist during his adolescent years,
and, like many teenage boys, he felt
drawn to the military.
6
Manning and his dad, Brian, were
not particularly close. The elder
Manning was verbally abusive to
his family—but the father did introduce his son to the C++ programming language at a very young age,
and the two bonded over computers. It was, after all, the 1990s, and
the Internet was rapidly emerging
as the newest and most intriguing
of technologies.
It was not unusual for young Bradley to be overcome with bouts of
rage—a trend that would continue
through his time in the Army.
His home life was far from idyllic, and when Brad was 11 years
old his parents divorced. During
this tumultuous time, the Internet
offered him sanctuary unavailable
anywhere else. He learned several
more programming languages, and
grew quite an affinity for personalizing the programming of the
video games he played—his earliest
hacks.
In the fall of 2007, after spending
years wandering aimlessly (though
he finished high school while living
in Wales with his mother, he never
took the exams necessary to apply
to university), Bradley succumbed
to his father’s pressure and went to
see a military recruiter; he enlisted,
seeing the military as his last best
chance to get a college education—
he wanted to study physics.
From the start, it was far from
smooth sailing for Private First
Class Bradley Manning. He was
chronically tardy, talked back to superiors, and as a result was almost
always being berated or ordered to
do push-ups. Eventually the Army
had enough of Manning, and he
was on the brink of being released.
But during his time in the discharge
unit, he persisted, insisting that he
wanted to continue his training.
The Army allowed him to, and in
2009, Brad and his unit deployed
to Iraq, where he served as an “all
source” intelligence analyst. He
would be privy to some of the most
top-secret information there was
regarding the United States’ war
efforts.
Manning, stationed at Forward
Operating Base (FOB) Hammer,
spent his days working in the Sensitive Compartmented Information
Facility (SCIF) where he analyzed
mountains of information regarding the insurgency. The SCIF was
less secure than its name would
lead one to believe: soldiers made a
habit of watching movies or playing
games, and—more seriously—writing data to CDs (all of the above
being against regulations); this last
bit would allow Manning to later
smuggle hundreds of thousands
of classified documents out of the
SCIF on a disc labeled “Lady Gaga.”
Brad did not take what he learned
lightly. In a March 8, 2009 chat log,
he expressed to a friend, “I’ve got
foreign affairs on my mind constantly now. Mexico’s spiraling violence, Pakistan’s instability, North
Korea’s rhetorical posturing… blah
blah blah. One of the bad parts of
the job, having to think about bad
stuff.” He began to realize that there
was no bright line defining allies
and enemies, and the situation in
Iraq was actually painted in shades
of gray.
Early in Manning’s time overseas,
he was assigned a case in which
Iraqi citizens were detained for the
Manning Continued p. 18
D.B. Cooper – Myth or Man?
In November 1971 the only unsolved hijacking in U.S.
history occurred when an unidentified suspect commandeered a commercial jetliner and held its occupants for ransom. The case evolved into an American
legend almost overnight because, as the authorities
maintain, the culprit escaped by skydiving from the
tail of the jetliner mid-flight with the ransom money
tied around his waist. If that wasn’t machismo enough
it was also reported that he had bailed out at 10,000
feet into a nasty winter storm over impassable mountain terrain at night while wearing only a lightweight
overcoat, business suit and slip-on loafers; or did he?....
by David Keller
Introduction
On Thanksgiving day back in 1971
America woke up to the telling and
retelling of the astonishing exploits
of an innovative and daring outlaw
that the world would soon come
to know as D.B. Cooper. The now
infamous extortionist had actually
provided the name Dan Cooper
as he commenced his dramatic
plan to hijack a commercial airliner and hold its passengers and
crew for ransom. The debonair
initials were errantly submitted by
a correspondent under pressure to
make deadline and by the time the
discrepancy had been discovered
the swooning American public had
heard it so often that retraction was
pointless; besides the court of public opinion had already ruled that
D.B. imparts a certain mystique
befitting a death defying swindler.
The news broadcasts continually
replayed what little information
they had; that the previous day an
unidentified man who had given
the name Cooper to
the airline ticket agent
had gone on to boldly
extort $200,000 in cash
from Northwest Orient
Airlines. He then evaded capture
by leaping from the tail of the
jetliner mid-flight with the cash
tied around his waist. If that wasn’t
machismo enough, it was soon
learned that the brazen skyjacker
had bailed out at 10,000 feet into a
nasty winter storm, over impassable
mountain terrain, at night, wearing
a lightweight overcoat, a business
suit and a pair of slip on loafers.
As they sat down to roast turkey,
cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie,
Americans across the nation saved
room for all the makings of what
would soon become a modern day
American legend.
The Official Version of Events
According to authorities on the
scene and firsthand eye-witness
accounts the mild mannered extortionist/hijacker calmly comman-
D.B. Cooper
deered Northwest Orient Airline’s
flight 305 out of Portland, Oregon
the day before Thanksgiving, November 24, 1971. The clean shaven,
non-descript, overly average looking guy politely requested $200,000
in cash, four parachutes and a lift
to Mexico City. He then inexplicably decided to bail (literally) on
the ride sometime before they had
to stop in Reno for gas. The larger
than life events that unfolded on
that November day were officially
reported as follows:
In the early afternoon hours of
November 24, 1971 an unidentified male suspect entered Portland International Airport and
approached the ticket counter of
Northwest Orient Airlines. After
waiting patiently his turn in line
the suspect was cordially greeted
7
by Northwest ticketing agent Hal
Williams. The apparent business
traveler requested a one way ticket
on flight 305, scheduled to depart
Portland for Seattle at 2:50 PM
(PST). The traveler gave Williams
the name Dan Cooper and Williams promptly punched up the
ticket, added the name Dan Cooper
to the flight’s passenger manifest,
and handed Cooper the ticket along
with a boarding pass for flight 305
adding, “Enjoy your flight,” as the
stranger strode away.
Cooper was assigned the aisle seat
18c near the back of the passenger cabin. Shortly after the plane
got underway the suspect passed
a folded note to flight attendant
Florence Schaffner who, thinking
he was making a pass at her, tucked
the note away unread. On a subsequent pass down the aisle Cooper
once again gained her attention to
suggest that “she had better read
the note, I have a bomb.”
Schaffner proceeded immediately
to the galley area near the plane’s
mid-section and opened the handwritten note to read; “I HAVE A
BOMB. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT
NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BEING
HIJACKED.” Stunned, the young
and inexperienced flight attendant
quickly showed the note to fellow
flight attendant Tina Mucklow,
who ventured a quick glance down
the aisle at the man seated in 18c.
Mucklow then urged Schaffner to
comply with Cooper’s instructions.
She assured Schaffner that she alert
senior flight attendant Alice Hancock of the situation adding that,
“everything will be okay if we just
do what he says.”
Florence took a deep breath and
8
tried to collect her thoughts. She
struggled to recall the training
from flight school; be professional,
stay focused and remain calm. She
summoned all the courage she had
and returned to row 18 where she
reluctantly sat down next to Cooper. The suspect told her to take out
her order pad and write down the
demands he dictated to her.
He wanted $200,000 in negotiable
American currency, four parachutes (two front-packs and two
back-packs) and a refueling truck
on stand-by in Seattle before he
would allow the current flight to
land and “no funny business!” he
added. He told her that there would
be more instructions to come but,
that “that is all they need to know
for now.” He gestured towards the
cockpit. She asked to see the bomb
and he opened the briefcase that
was on his lap enough to reveal
what appeared to be a sizable explosive device.
Ms. Schaffner quickly delivered
both notes to Captain William
Scott in the cockpit. Scott promptly
notified SEA-TAC (Seattle- Tacoma
International Airport) air-traffic
control of the developing crisis. The
flight controllers at the airport immediately involved airport security,
which then contacted the Seattle
police, who in turn notified the FBI.
The FBI wasted no time in contacting the president of Northwest
Orient Airlines, Donald Nyrop, at
his home and inquired as to how he
wanted them to proceed. Without
hesitation Nyrop responded that
the company wanted full compliance with the hijacker’s demands
and preferred that no attempt to
intervene be made.
The authorities scrambled to meet
Cooper’s demands as the controllers placed the plane into a holding
pattern over the Seattle-Tacoma
area. Captain Scott announced to
the passengers that an unspecified
mechanical problem had developed during their short flight that
would delay their arrival in Seattle.
He assured them that the problem
was not serious, that the delay was
merely a precaution and that there
was no need for concern. Florence
Schaffner returned to the back of
the plane to find that the suspect
had moved to a window seat in the
same row and had donned a pair of
dark wrap-around sunglasses.
Shortly before 5:30 p.m. (PST) the
controllers at SEA-TAC notified
Captain Scott that all of the hijacker’s demands had been met and
a brief 10 minutes later at 5:40 p.m.
(PST), Northwest Orient Airline’s
flight 305 touched down at SEATAC International Airport and
taxied to a stop on a well lit runway
ramp. Almost immediately a tanker
truck arrived to refuel the plane,
but the ground crew encountered
difficulty in getting the jet to take
on fuel. Cooper began to grow uneasy, suspicious that a double cross
was in the works. A lone Northwest
employee cautiously approached
the back of the plane and delivered
the four parachutes and the ransom money. Flight attendant Tina
Mucklow met the employee at the
base of the aft air-stair, a narrow
staircase that could be deployed
from under the tail of the aircraft.
As she struggled to tote the money
and the parachutes on board, a succession of tanker trucks succeeded
in getting the plane refueled.
Cooper Continued p. 21
Dirty Laundry: Cold Case 84-137640
For survivors, cold case
investigators and the public,
solving old homicide cases
offers the perfect win- win
situation. Beyond the altruistic benefits, though, cold case
squads provide a goldmine of
good ink for law enforcement
agencies. So what's the ultimate bad ink? Botched investigations. Lawmen will go
to great lengths to hide their
dirty laundry – such as Harris County Sheriff 's Office
Case No. 84-137640.
by James R. Melton
W
hen Joe Floyd Collins awoke
on October 12, 1984, he was
exactly six weeks shy of his 46th
birthday. Life expectancy tables
generously offered him another
32 years on earth. On that autumn evening, as the sun sank
over the Southeast Texas prairie,
the squeeze of a trigger instantly
changed the prospect of a long life
into the reality of an early grave.
For the middle-aged man some
knew as Floyd and others called
Joe, luck was fast running out. But
the robber who shot him had the
unexpected good fortune to gain
the oddest bedfellow — the Harris
County Sheriff 's Office.
Fumbling and stumbling from
the outset, Texas's largest sheriff 's
department all but guaranteed a
killer would get a free pass and
Joe Floyd Collins's murder would
wind up quickly — and quietly —in
the cold case bin.
Even a quarter of a century later,
Sgt. Eric Clegg said he had searched
all of the Harris County Sheriff 's
Office’s cold cases from the 1980s.
He couldn't find records of the
one-of-a-kind robbery-murder at
a liquor store in Huffman, a mix of
suburbs and farms at the county's
far northeast corner. In 2009, Clegg
was one of two sergeants assigned
to the cold case squad.
A year later, presented with the
victim's name, a date, crime details
and the actual Harris County Sheriff 's Office case number, 84-137640,
the sergeant acknowledged the
case's existence and reopened the
investigation.
Over time many reasons emerged
to explain why Clegg would seek
to keep the cold case locked in the
deep freezer and out of public sight.
And he may have inadvertently
revealed in a 2011 news story that
most likely he knew the case's status
and whereabouts all along.
Today case files and other official
records detailing Joe Floyd Collins's murder remain off limits to
this writer's eyes. But a review of
the few available documents, along
with recent witness recollections,
provides ample information to lay
bare the string of Harris County
Sheriff 's Office blunders that torpedoed and sank the investigation
into the liquor store owner's death.
The Murder of Joe Floyd Collins
On that fateful fall day, it was mere
chance that Joe Floyd Collins was
working at all. Usually an employee
ran his store. But Floyd had recently fired the clerk and could not find
a stand-in for that Friday.
So he worked alone at his County
Line Liquor, aptly named because
the store occupied a 12-by-24-foot
maroon portable metal building
beside Farm-to-Market 1960 in
far northeast Harris County, just
90 feet from neighboring Liberty
County.
9
In the 1960s and 1970s, “Nineteensixty” was truly the Promised Land
for the Houston area's unbounded
opportunity and explosive suburban growth.
But that explosive growth had
never spread east of Lake Houston.
So County Line Liquor remained
a forlorn outpost on a weeded
postage stamp-sized lot squeezed
between FM 1960 and the Union
Pacific Railroad tracks.
It shared far more with nearby
bucolic Dayton, 12 miles farther
east in Liberty County, than bustling urban Houston, 30 miles to
the southwest. Although the nearest
business was at least a mile away, it
still seemed the ideal location for
attracting thirsty customers from
neighboring Liberty County's dry
Precinct 4.
County Line Liquor's isolated location also made it a perfect target
for a predator to strike with little
fear of detection. For Collins, the
shotgun he kept hidden behind the
counter seemed to level the playing
field. So he took his chances.
Despite Floyd's buckshot bravado,
an emboldened gunman fired a
single bullet into his stomach,
grabbed the day's receipts — $30 or
so — and abandoned the bleeding
victim on the floor of his store.
In Huffman on that Fridayin October, the sun set at 6:53 p.m. In the
twilight just after 7 p.m., customers Henry Zarsky and wife Norma
from Liberty County's nearby
Eastgate Community stopped by
County Line Liquor. They were
heading home after inspecting one
of Henry's soybean fields.
10
Henry entered and walked to the
cooler, grabbed a six-pack and
hoisted it onto the counter. To
his surprise, he spied Floyd lying
mortally wounded on the floor in a
spreading pool of crimson.
Hurrying to the door, Henry frantically summoned Norma. She called
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office.
Then the bleeding liquor store
owner asked Norma to call his wife.
So Norma dialed again. She passed
on the urgent news to the victim's
wife at her home in the Tanner
Settlement near Hull in far northeast Liberty County. The message
touched off a desperate race — a
race that would have no winners.
Patricia Ann Collins, the wounded
man's wife, dashed more than 30
miles diagonally across most of Liberty County, driving through three
townsand countless traffic signals,
to reach the liquor store.
She arrived to find no ambulance,
no emergency medical technicians,
no patrol cars, and no lawmen. Just
a trio of somber onlookers. And a
dead husband.
Somehow, when getting the address
right meant life or death, the Harris
County Sheriff 's Office apparently
dispatched emergency responders
to an area almost 10 mileswest of
the liquor store.
Such a dispatching error would
spell disaster for paramedics and
investigators alike — and for Joe
Floyd Collins who would bleed to
death awaiting help.
All along, that help had been available no more than four minutes
away at Houston Fire Department
Station 65, just 3.43 miles from
County Line Liquor and the dying
Joe Floyd Collins.
If Station 65 had gotten a call to the
crime scene, emergency technicians
might have been able to stanch the
loss of precious blood, infuse vital
fluids, minimize the effects of shock
and summon a Life Flight helicopter.
So Floyd mighthave had a chance
to live. Those chances can't be independently assessed now because the
HCSO, through the Texas Attorney
General's Office, blocked release of
Collins's autopsy results.
Deputies were not at the liquor
store either. So the crime scene
was not secured in a timely manner, possibly allowing onlookers to
contaminate the store's interior and
exterior areas.
But a single clue recovered at
Floyd's autopsy — the bullet that
took his life — should have been a
real game-changer. It offered both
a path to solving the crime and a
second chance for the snake-bitten
Harris County Sheriff 's Office. This
thimble-sized glob of lead promised to be the Holy Grail needed to
unravel the mystery of the murder
of Joe Floyd Collins.
Yet the tattletale clue was only half
of the puzzle. Solving the riddle
required finding the weapon that
fired the fatal bullet.
Cracking the Cold Case
Collins's murder case had lain
frozen for 25 years when, in 2009,
an informant contacted the Harris
Cold Case Continued p. 33
The Legend of Tex McCord
(aka Roger Caryl)
Roger Caryl was a tragedy in the making. Bullied in high school, he set off after graduation to
become a cowboy in the Wild West. In short order he was broke and on the verge of being fired
from the only ranch where he ever worked when he gunned down four people. A massive manhunt pursued him from Montana to Florida.
by Kim Walker
Let me tell you the story of Tex
McCord. He began life as Roger
Caryl and early on became a denizen of Mount Zion, Illinois. The
welcome sign at the village limits
promised “a glowing past and a
brighter future,” but not for Roger.
It was the same setting where nearly
every day of high school Roger suf-
fered the indignity of his books being jerked, thrown and kicked from
his hands. Papers floated down
three flights of stairs, sent careening
kung-fu style, just like our TV hero,
David Carradine.
Roger Caryl’s one yee-haw happy
hey-day each year was the annual
Fall Festival, where he insisted
people call him “Tex” and he became sheriff for a day. He wore a
badge and boots and had the power
to arrest people and put them in a
phony hoosegow. Tex quickly made
up for lost time and exacted vendettas worthy of a Louis L’Amour
novel.
The night he graduated high school,
11
Roger Caryl told his parents he was
going camping in southern Illinois.
Instead, “Tex” followed his life-long
dream and moved west.
There he would re-invent himself
on a dude ranch in Montana as
Tex McCord, after a fabled 19thcentury bandit. Seventeen-year old
Caryl told people he was a Vietnam
vet and a U.S. Marine. He claimed
to be an experienced cowhand from
a large ranching family in Texas.
The Legend
The next time his hometown heard
of Tex McCord was when four innocent people wound up dead one
Sunday morning on the Whitetail
Ranch outside Helena (TEENAGER
SOUGHT FOR FOUR KILLINGSHELMVILLE, Montana. UPI,
October 9, 1973).
According to sources, the bloodbath happened in the ranch house
kitchen, where Tex returned home
after several days on the range to
find someone had “messed with
his dog.” So he killed them. In his
home town paper, friends expressed
surprise at the Caryl’s violent outburst. “Roger loved everything. He
loved animals, and he loved trees…
”But those accounts were only
partly correct.
The truth was that Roger Caryl was
in trouble. He’d wrecked the ranch
owner’s truck, and was ordered to
dig a grave for the owner’s dog. Caryl had shot and killed the owner’s
dog – not the other way around –
only days before he started killing
people. Tex was about to be kicked
off the only ranch where he’d ever
lived, and he was teetering on the
edge. It was the last order John
Miller would ever give Roger Caryl.
12
When Tex strode into the ranch
kitchen that morning he was carrying a shotgun and holding a revolver and had two knives in his belt.
Tex’s employer, 23-year-old John
Miller, was holding his baby. Miller
shoved the baby onto a table and
ducked under it. Tex shot Miller
on the way down, and again in his
hiding place while Miller’s wife, Roberta, watched in horror. When the
cook, 62-year-old Ruby Judd, tried
to wrestle the weapons from Tex, he
shot her dead. Roberta claimed Tex
tried to kill her too, but missed.
Two men already lay dead outside –
Samuel Akins, 42, and his 18-yearold son, Stephen.
And this is where the story intertwines with yours truly. For you
see, I was one of the boys who
made “sport” of Roger, kicking the
books from his hands and teasing
him without mercy for wanting to
be Tex McCord.
The Manhunt
In January of 1974, mere weeks
after the killings, I was running
sound on a film location in Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida. The crew went
to a local club one night, and on the
way to the restroom I was shocked
to find hanging an FBI wanted
poster for escaped convict, Roger
G. Caryl, aka Tex McCord.
The “legend” was growing. An exEagle Scout, McCord had made his
way across the Continental Divide
with only a Buck knife. Highway
checkpoints set every two miles
across the rugged Rockies, and 140
volunteer “vigilantes,” were not
enough to contain him. The FBI
poster warned McCord was sighted
in the Ft. Lauderdale area, and
should be considered armed and
dangerous.
Back at Mount Zion High, friends
of Tex were petitioning the governor of Montana, Thomas L. Judge.
There must be some mistake. Roger
was a good ole’ boy, and he must be
taken alive, etc., etc.
Roger’s father, James Caryl, said
something else again, “If they have
to shoot him, they just have to… I
hope they get him before he hurts
anyone else...”
But within days, as the dragnet was
thought to be tightening around
his boy, Roger’s father changed his
mind. His dad now hoped Roger
would live long enough to tell “his
side” of the story.
Meanwhile, a small group of friends
gathered in a dorm room at Watterson Towers on the campus of
Illinois State University-Normal.
Twenty-eight floors above the
Illinois prairie, the towers were
the highest dorms in the world,
and freshmen who lived there
were among the highest on earth
– which in 1974 was saying something.
On this evening, an ominous storm
cell crept across the western sky like
black carpet-bombing of Cambodia.
The students gathered that night
were all graduates of Mount Zion
High School. They knew Roger
Caryl, and they knew Tex McCord.
They knew he had escaped with six
weapons ranging from a Derringer
to a 7mm-magnum bore rifle with
Tex Cont. Page 40
The Great Pretender
Dr. Donald C. Arthur parlayed a number of bogus
academic degrees into an extremely successful career in the U.S. Navy, rising all the way to surgeon
general of the Navy. He even had the nerve to wear
a combat action ribbon as part of his official uniform at his retirement in 2007 despite never having been involved in combat.
by Michael Volpe
The book Stolen Valor was released with some fanfare in
1998. It detailed a bevy of individuals who falsely claimed
combat action, especially during the Vietnam War. Since
then, the Stolen Valor team, led by B. G. Burkett, has
gained a reputation for exposing hucksters who falsely
claim to have been in combat. Those individuals include
Brian Leonard Creekmur, who falsely claimed to be a Navy
Seal and sniper. Another individual exposed by the Stolen
Valor team was Bill Hillar. Hillar falsely claimed to be a
Green Beret and wound up being sentenced to 21 months
in prison as a result.
In 2005, the Stolen Valor team
began investigating Dr. Donald C.
Arthur, then the surgeon general
of the U.S. Navy. That’s because Dr.
Arthur was seen wearing a combat
action ribbon as part of his official
uniform at his retirement in 2007
even though there was no record
he’d seen combat.
The official record of the U.S.
Marine Corp lists no combat experience for Dr. Arthur, and this
combat experience was not listed in
his official naval transcripts submitted to the House Armed Services
Committee, when he submitted his
transcripts to qualify for retirement
pension pay.
In November 2005, B.G. Burkett
asked Navy Admiral Mike Mullen
to investigate Dr. Arthur regarding
a host of degrees he’d claimed to
have earned. Dr. Arthur claimed he
had a law degree, a medical degree,
and even a Master of Arts Degree.
The whole thing seemed suspicious and Burkett urged Mullen to
look more closely. When Admiral
Mullen’s investigation didn’t seem
to bear fruit, Burkett took his
concerns to investigative reporter
Russell Working of the Chicago
Tribune.
Working had made a name for
himself investigating so called diploma mills. Diploma mills are universities that either give out wholly
bogus degrees for money or require
only that the individual take a very
light load, not worthy of a degree.
A number of people in the military
were being caught using some of
Dr. Donald C. Arthur
these diploma mills to pad their
own resumes. On October 1, 2008,
the Chicago Tribune published
Working’s expose showing that two
of the degrees Dr. Arthur claimed
to have gotten over a 14-month period in 1992 and 1993 were frauds.
One degree was a Juris Doctorate,
or law degree, from LaSalle University in Louisiana. This school was
one of a number run by James Kirk,
who operated a number of these
diploma mills during the 1980s and
1990s.
The other was Ph.D. from American Century University. This
university was also found to be a
diploma mill.
In an interview with Working, Dr.
Arthur said that the degrees were
13
put on his official resume in error
but said the errors were innocent.
“In interviews, Arthur acknowledged that in the early 1990s he
took ‘some courses from two places
that are unaccredited.’ He said LaSalle had given him papers indicating the school had been accredited.
‘I could say I was naive, but I was 40
years old. And I didn't understand
completely what was going on.’
“As for the master's, which first appeared in his bio for his 1978 medical school yearbook, Arthur said,
‘I was in a master's program, but I
did not graduate. I do not have a
master's degree.’”
Arthur made it clear to Working
that his career was not advanced as
a result of these degrees.
"The only thing I was hired to be
surgeon general for was my MD,"
he said.
Working’s expose led to a follow-up
investigation by Josh Goldstein of
the Philadelphia Inquirer. Goldstein found that a previous Master’s
Degree in genetics was also in Dr.
Arthur’s resume fraudulently. This
one was from Northeastern University in Boston, a fully accredited
university. In this case however,
Northeastern showed no records of
Dr. Arthur attending when Goldstein contacted them.
Dr. Arthur sat down for a 75-minute interview with Goldstein in
conjunction with his piece. Dr.
Arthur declined to address his purported combat action and instead
said, "I'm an honorable person who
has led an honorable life.”
Dr. Arthur was also defended dur14
ing his interview by Anthony Coletta, president at Mainline Health
where Arthur worked at the time of
the interview.
“Anthony V. Coletta, Bryn Mawr's
medical-staff president, said he was
surprised to learn of the questions
about Arthur's degrees. Coletta said
Arthur has had a positive impact
on patient care and had addressed
‘sometimes difficult situations with
doctors’ over his 14-month tenure.”
Arthur also defended the two degrees he earned from non-accredited schools.
“Arthur said that he did extensive
course work to earn both the law
degree and the Ph.D. and at the
time believed the schools had ‘appropriate accreditation.’”
Arthur ended his interview with
Goldstein by suggesting questions
about his past were being made by
people attempted to stir the proverbial pot.
Arthur said the controversy was
behind him.
“‘The pot-stirrers want to keep
bringing things up – calling my
friends, calling my family, calling
everybody I am acquainted with
and making all manner of accusations," he said. "Quite frankly, I'm
done.’”
It should be noted that Burkett
asked Mullen to first investigate Dr.
Arthur in 2005. Dr. Arthur retired
from the Navy in 2007. Both the
Tribune and Inquirer investigations
concluded after Arthur retired.
That’s important because here’s
what Mike Mullen said at Dr. Arthur’s retirement in 2007.
“(He’s a) sort of a renaissance man.
His résumé says a lot. BA, MA, JD,
PhD, and of course, MD – he’s got
more degrees than a thermometer.”
More False Claims – Operation
Desert Storm
Beyond those investigations, other
public records show Dr. Arthur
has made several other dubious
claims that couldn’t be verified. For
instance, he claimed that in 1991 –
while deployed to Saudi Arabia to
support Operation Desert Storm
–he was involved in direct combat,
even though he was supposed to
be part of a medical unit. Arthur
began wearing a Combat Action
Ribbon sometime after the first Iraq
War, though there are no official
records that he was ever actually
awarded this ribbon by the Navy.
A near six-month investigation
of Dr.Arthur by Crime Magazine
found that Dr. Arthur was lying,
cheating, and defrauding almost the
entire time he was in the military.
Crime Magazine obtained evidence
that shows that not only was Arthur
never in combat but he wasn’t even
attending to his own duties while
he was stationed in Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Frederick M. “Skip” Burkle is a
doctor and a physician. He is currently a senior fellow and scientist
at Harvard University. He’s a Vietnam War Navy veteran, and in 1991
he was a Navy reservist, called up to
serve in Operation Desert Shield.
Dr. Burkle was assigned to head up
the medical base in Saudi Arabia
in February, 1991. This base would
house all those soldiers who were
Pretender continued p. 44
Pistorius Continued
“pig testicles, pig heart, pig embryo
and pig adrenal gland, cortisone,
ginseng and other botanicals.” The
QMI Agency ran with the headline,
“Substance found in Oscar Pistorius home contained pig testicles.”
The resume of Pistorius the demon
figure expands. He is suggestively
half-human, ingesting substances
that would boost performance,
transforming him into a sexually
rapacious creature and narcissistic
sports star.
A striking parallel to this is O.J.,
America’s own celebrated satyr,
a vicious channelling for primal
violence, the mad man who can do
no right. He overdosed on cocaine,
claimed an article for the National
Inquirer, and abused his girlfriend
Christie Prody. He might have
been acquitted, but that is a mere
technicality. He has fed a collection
of perceptions.
The cover of Time, almost crude in
its suggestiveness, brings about this
transformation in full. From “man
to superman to gun man” it suggests, showing a less than human
Pistorius, legs absent yet entirely
capable on his prosthetic supports,
a menacingly strong torso taut at
the ready, a monstrosity that may
kill, necessarily or otherwise. The
athlete would not be out of place in
Greek mythology, a centaur, a Lapinth perhaps chiselled on a metope
of the Parthenon and then carted
off to the British Museum. This is
the true mythologising of violence,
and Time does its best, through the
piece by Alex Perry, to draw out the
figures of rape and murder in South
Africa, a land populated by such
beasts of violence.
Two separate surveys
of the rural Eastern
Cape are cited by
Perry, revealing that
27.6 percent of men
surveyed admitted
to being rapists, with
46.3 percent of victims
being under 16. For
those interested, figures
on abuse of other age
groups are also documented. “What really
distinguishes South
Africa from its peers in
this league of violence
is not how the violence
rises with inequality
nor its sexual nature
– both typical of place
with high crime – but
its pervasiveness and
persistence.” This is
South Africa as a sick
patient, one howling for
Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius
help, but like Pistorius,
survive. I always win.”
a centaur run wild, a society exceptional for its violent proclivities.
At the end of the article printed
in The Australian describing PisThe latest news on his state of mind
torius’s alleged mental state are a
has also fed the idea of the doomed
series of numbers for those with
character struck down by the Gods.
“depression” (contact Beyond Blue);
Mike Azzie, a friend of the athlete,
those with “emotional difficulties”
claimed on the BBC3 documen(contact Lifeline); and those with
tary Oscar Pistorius: What Really
what can only be presumed to be
Happened? that the man is “on the
mixture of them (SANE). From
verge of suicide.” He is now moving
deification, Pistorius has become a
into that other facet of transformacase study in mental ruination, the
tion – into the world of the mad.
violently mad.
“He has no confidence in his tone
of voice and he is just a man that is
Domestic violence
almost like someone that is walking
around in circles and doesn’t know
Another suggestion in the Pistorius
where he is going.” This does not
affair, pitches Jina Moore in The
dent his confidence, if the docuAtlantic (March 1, 2013), is that of
mentary is credible in any sense.
domestic violence with its accomTo a senior officer who explained
panying apologetics. For Moore,
to Pistorius on being arrested that
this is less cultural than individual,
he “could go to jail for a very long
a context lost in the broader pictime,” his reply was dismissive. “I’ll
15
ture of the man and his times. She
implies that grand narratives may
not have a place in dealing with
Pistorius. She is not sure, but she
suggests it. It’s the man’s problem,
and violence is to be found less in
a milieu than it is to be found in
Homo sapiens, or at least this male
specimen. Where, she complains,
was the domestic violence specialist
in Perry’s story for Time?
In this view, Moore pinches a
thread that has grown in the literature on domestic violence, taking
issue with readings such as those
of Michel Foucault of the Pierre
Riviere case. The bone of contention here is whether such violence
can be given the collective brush.
In Riviere’s case, a 20-year-old
Normandy peasant slaughtered
his mother, sister and little brother
with a pruning hook in June 1835.
His father was spared, largely
because the killings were done to
liberate him. “I have just delivered
my father from all his tribulations.
I know that they will put me to
death, but no matter.” His death
sentence was commuted by the
King, largely due to the intervention of Parisian psychiatrists.
The impressions the killer left
about his mother were vicious. His
parents lived apart. The elder Riviere was considered of “mild and
peaceable disposition” while his
mother was considered oppressive
and manipulative. He feared that
French society had fallen into the
Oscar Pistorius
16
hands of women since the Revolution. He was plagued by nightmares
of incest. In the events of such
killings, suggested Foucault, one
could not neglect the sensationalist
criminal literature of the time, nor
the state of the medical profession
in treating the “mentally ill” with
their competing “discourses.”
Fellow participants in the famous
seminar Foucault convened on the
subject of Riviere’s killings, published in I, Pierre Riviere, Having
Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother (1975), had
their own take about the violence.
Jean-Pierre Peter and Jeanne Favret
praised Riviere as a rebellious figure
who revolted against the exigencies of peasant life yet demanding
the state kill him justly “and not let
him rot.” This was crime as justified transgression, an act on the
part of the socially invisible. That
he should be denied death because
of faulty “psychiatry” lay in the false
promise of bourgeois humanism.
the limitations of one with disability, be it mental or physical.
Not so, claimed subsequent critics, who could detect a more than
lurking sexist undertone, a praise of
domestic murder. Could the case
have simply been one of standard
domestic violence turned murderous? Julie Marcus scolds Foucault
for ignoring gender in the case,
discounting the killer’s fears of
female incest and female animals.
For Marcus, Riviere was effectively
a mother-hating killer. The Pistorius example may nod at something
in that direction, if one is to take
Moore’s position. His past has been
dug up; his behavior has been seen
in light of other celebrities who
have succumbed to gendered brutality. His copy book is blotted.
The views of Pistorius’s father,
Henke, were a perfect illustration
of that sentiment. Evading matters
directly concerning the case of his
own son, he preferred to place the
blame on the shoulders of the ANC
government. A spotlight was shone
on the vast array of arms owned
by the Pistorius family. “Some of
the guns are for hunting and some
are for protection: the hand guns.
It speaks to the ANC government.
Frontier themes
Look at white crime levels, why
protection is so poor in this counPistorius seen as a collective expres- try.” According to the Afrikaanssion of violence, the internalised
language newspaper Beeld, Henke,
fears of a race on the run, has been Oscar’s grandfather Hendrik, and
a popular theme. The Economist
his uncles Arnold, Theo and Leo
editorialised (October 7, 1995) in
owned an impressive collection of
sharp fashion on the Simpson trial, 55 shotguns and handguns beusing a title that might as well apply tween them (Telegraph, March 4,
to South Africa, albeit with qualifi- 2013). ANC spokesman Jackson
cation. “Two nations, divisible,” it
Mthembu retorted accordingly,
suggested. Themes of division for
rejecting “with contempt” the claim
the paper were based on growing
that the government was indifferent
polarization. Was Steenkamp a vic- in protecting the white population.
tim of South Africa’s own polarized “Not only is this statement devoid
communities, the collateral sacrifice of truth, it is also racist. It is sad
in a terrified, gated community?
that he has chosen to politicize this
tragic incident that is still fresh in
Pistorius’s justification was one
the minds of those affected and the
of self-defense, making the home
public.”
seem a vicious, internalised frontier
needing an aggressively vigilant
Crime rates, it might be argued,
regime of protection. If the auwere kept artificially low during the
thorities of the day don’t fulfil that
era of apartheid, when the white
role, private citizens will. “Nothing regime patrolled white areas with
like getting home to hear the wash- keen scrutiny. Segregation may
ing machine on and thinking it’s
have been formally repudiated
an intruder to go into full combat
under the South African Constiturecon mode into the pantry,” posted tion, but the instinctive reactions of
Pistorius on Twitter in November.
division have not. Official politi17
Students of women’s studies have
certainly found the Pistorius case
befuddling. Rosemarie GarlandThompson, professor of women’s
studies and English at Emory
University, saw Pistorius lumped
in with other unsavory company,
a reverse pantheon of the fallen:
Mike Tyson, Charlie Sheen, Kobe
Bryant, Mel Gibson, Jovan Belcher
“and perhaps most controversially
of all, O J Simpson… As our collective image of him shifts from
admired athlete to girlfriend killer,
something important has been lost”
(Al Jazeera, March 14, 2013).
Garland-Thompson’s legitimate and
well spotted fear is that the contagion of violence, the suggestion of
angst-driven misogyny, might be
linked to the anger, the frustrations,
What is revealing about GarlandThompson is that the law does not
so much matter less than the issue
of “identification.” Referring back
to the O J Simpson trial, she was
reminded of the reactions of her
own class when raising the case.
Some supported a verdict of guilty
against Simpson on the basis of
history’s injustices against women.
Others in turn supported a verdict
of not guilty on the basis of black
injustices in the country. With such
perceptions, facts recede into a dim
distance. One is guilty or innocent
less on evidence than on identity.
The Afrikaners find themselves
in electrified gated communities
conducting a war with the natives
in manner both metaphorical and
actual. This is a conflict which
has never stopped since the Boers
settled.
cal statistics show a fall in crime in
South Africa by 31.8 percent from
2004-5 to 2011-12, with the murder
rate dropping by 27.6 percent (BBC
News, March 5, 2013).
It is ironically fitting then that the
killing should happen against one
from the same community, notably
soon after the victim Steenkamp
would tweet that she “woke up in a
happy safe home this morning. Not
everyone did. Speak out against the
rape of individuals.” (This tweet,
incidentally, riled Moore, who
considered it the myopic twaddle of
a confused individual ignorant of
sexual assault.)
In South Africa, discussion around
Pistorius’s alleged wrong doing
have assumed the form of a parable.
“He will have to live with his conscience,” advanced Steenkamp’s father, Barry. “But if he is telling the
truth, I might perhaps be able to
forgive him one day. However, if it
didn’t happen as he tells it, he must
suffer. And he will suffer; only he
knows” (Sunday Times, February
24, 2013). But the Pistorius affair
reveals that the ingredients for his
downfall were already present.
Despite being a double amputee,
he was a superhuman creature, a
variant of primitive mythology and
science fiction. He was all powerful, yet prone to weakness. He was
violent and to be feared. He was
courageous but ultimately weakened by misogyny. And finally, he
became a victim, even before the
court has judged his innocence, of
cultural interpretations.
18
Manning Continued p. 18
crime of distributing “insurgent”
literature; it turned out the pamphlets were an academic critique of
Prime Minister Malaki. Manning
would later cite this incident as an
early indicator to him that all was
not right in the Iraqi occupation: “i
had an interpreter read it for me…
and when i found out that it was
a benign political critique titled
‘Where did the money go?’ and following the corruption trail within
the PM’s cabinet… i immediately
took that information and *ran*
to the officer to explain what was
going on… he didn’t want to hear
any of it… he told me to shut up
and explain how we could assist in
finding *MORE* detainees…” This
incident struck a deep chord in
Manning: “i had always questioned
the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that
was a point where i was a *part* of
something… i was actively involved
in something that i was completely
against…”
Manning’s superiors believed that
he might be buckling under the
pressure that comes with a highlevel security clearance. Due to his
emotional outbursts, on more than
one occasion—even prior to his
deployment—a superior recommended that his security clearance be revoked. But the Army
was strapped for skilled analysts,
and Manning was allowed to slip
through the cracks.
In the meantime, Manning made
up his mind.
The leak was easy, once Manning
tracked down Julian Assange (or
at least, a way to interact online),
founder and head “hacktivist”
at WikiLeaks, one Web site in
a movement to free any and all
information—“freedom of information activists,” as Manning called
them. Said Manning later, “No one
suspected a thing… [I] listened and
lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltrating possibly
the largest data spillage in American history.”
On April 10, WikiLeaks released
perhaps the best known of the
three-quarters of a million bits of
information it had reaped from
Manning’s data mine, the Apache
helicopter video titled “Collateral
Murder.” The video (which can be
viewed here: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0)
depicts American soldiers shooting at and killing a dozen Iraqis,
wounding others—including two
children—in the process, which
they carried out as routine.
In May 2010, Manning made contact with Adrian Lamo, a former
inmate of the federal government’s
correctional facilities (he had a
penchant for breaking through
cyber security systems to access
secret information, though he
would typically inform the owner
of the system afterward), apparently
looking for someone to confide in;
Lamo had recently been profiled by
Wired magazine, and the troubled
private reached out to what he
thought was a kindred spirit. Lamo
gave Manning every indication that
he should be trusted—“I’m a journalist and a minister. You can pick
either, and treat this as a confession
or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal
protection.”
Manning introduced himself as “an
army intelligence analyst, deployed
to eastern Baghdad, pending dis-
charge for ‘adjustment disorder.’”
It didn’t take much prying to get
Manning to open up. He told Lamo
of a “database of half a million
events during the iraq war” and
260,000 diplomatic cables “explaining how the first world exploits the
third, in detail, from an internal
perspective.”
Little did he know (though perhaps he should have suspected),
but with every line Manning typed
he was providing the government with more evidence against
him—because Lamo turned on
Manning, betraying him—despite
his assurances—to the FBI. Lamo’s
motives and subsequent shunning
by the hacker community could
be a subject for an entire article in
and of themselves, but the chat logs
between him and Manning provide
valuable insight into the young
private’s thoughts.
Manning told Lamo he had given
classified files to a “white haired
aussie” (Julian Assange), and
referred to the leak of a classified diplomatic cable published
by WikiLeaks. He even bragged
a little: “[Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and several thousand
diplomats around the world are
going to have a heart attack when
they wake up one morning, and
finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in
searchable format to the public…
everywhere there’s a US post…
there’s a diplomatic scandal that
will be revealed.”
Lamo asked Manning what his
ultimate goal was. Manning responded, “god knows what happens
now—hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms—if not,
then we’re doomed—as a species—I
will officially give up on the society
we have if nothing happens—the
reaction to the [“Collateral Murder”] video gave me immense hope;
CNN’s iReport was overwhelmed;
Twitter exploded—people who
saw, knew there was something
wrong… --I want people to see the
truth…regardless of who they are…
because without information, you
cannot make informed decisions as
a public.”
Despite often discussing his emotional strife with Lamo and others,
Manning was clearly not motivated
by blind anger or a need to act
out, but by a desire to provide vital
information on what actions the
government was taking ostensibly
on the public’s behalf. He pointed
out to Lamo that he “could’ve sold
to Russia or china, and made bank,”
but he didn’t because “it’s public
data […] information should be
free—it belongs in the public domain—because another state would
just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge—if
it’s out in the open… it should be a
public good.”
On May 29, thanks in large part to
Adrian Lamo, Bradley Manning
was placed under arrest.
In July, WikiLeaks published the
“Afghanistan War Diaries,” a vast
series of logs from the information
Manning had provided, and three
months later the “Iraq War Diaries”
followed. For the most part, the
compendium confirmed what the
public already knew: the wars were
being fought through wastefulness,
abuse of power, and systematic lack
of oversight. As a result, atrocities
occurred, such as the attacks portrayed in “Collateral Murder” and
other leaked videos.
The diplomatic cables also leaked
by Manning via WikiLeaks were,
for the U.S. government, mostly just
embarrassing. That said, Amnesty
International hails the boondoggle
as a primary catalyst for the selfimmolation of Mohamed Bouazizi
that sparked the Tunisian uprising,
and thus the Arab Spring (which, it
should be noted, the United States
government has publicly supported
as a push for democracy).
A statement by Amnesty’s secretary
general says, “The year 2010 may
well be remembered as a watershed
year when activists and journalists used new technology to speak
truth to power and, in so doing,
pushed for greater respect for human rights. It is also the year when
repressive governments faced the
real possibility that their days were
numbered.”
During this time, the press took a
detour on a story about Julian Assange’s Swedish arrest for sexual assault, and the leaker responsible for
freeing all that information sat in
the Quantico Brig under MAX custody and on Prevention of Injury
(POI) watch, which allowed guards
to keep him in solitary confinement, under constant and immediate surveillance, and to strip him
naked, among other regulations
to which other prisoners were not
subject. He was kept in restraints,
and whenever he was moved from
his cell the entire complex would
lock down.
The government has taken steps to
not only investigate but to punish
Bradley Manning, such as seizing
the computers of Manning’s friends
and supporters, keeping Manning on POI status for an undue
19
period of time despite the numerous psychiatric recommendations,
and even subpoenaing Twitter for
information regarding users associated with WikiLeaks. Partially as a
result, there has been a massive outpouring of support for Manning.
Rallies and protests have been held,
the Bradley Manning Support Network founded, and funds raised for
his defense.
Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs,
reports on his blog that—beginning
in May, 2011—conditions have
improved for his client: “PFC Manning is now being held in Medium
Custody. He is no longer under
Prevention of Injury watch and is
no longer subjected to harsh pretrial confinement conditions.”
Far more than what will become
of Bradley Manning, a more important question is: what should
become of a whistleblower whose
alleged criminal behavior opens
eyes and—maybe—even sparks a
revolution?
The fate of whistleblowers will
inevitably become clearer as the
Obama administration continues
to vigorously prosecute them at all
levels—far more, in fact, than any
other president in history. What
Bradley Manning had to share may
just be the tip of the iceberg.
For the Obama administration to
play hardball with Manning is right
out of President Nixon’s playbook
when it came to dealing with the
most famous whistleblower in
U.S. history, Daniel Ellsberg—who
leaked the “Pentagon Papers” in
1971.
The 7,000 pages of classified material the Pentagon official leaked
20
to The New York Times showed
that the government had lied to
the Congress and the public about
the progress of the unwinnable
Vietnam War. Charged as a spy,
Ellsberg went on trial and faced 115
years behind bars. But the charges
were dropped in 1973 because of
gross governmental misconduct
and illegal evidence gathering. Part
of the reason for the dismissal of
the charges was based on the breakin at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist on Sept. 3, 1971, by agents in
the employ of the White House.
to whistleblowers/leakers--i.e., to
react harshly.”
Ellsberg, who is now one of Manning’s strongest supporters, sees
great parallels between his case and
the young private’s. As the elder
leaker said of his current leakerhero: “I was that young man; I was
Bradley Manning.”
Leigh, David. "How 250,000 US
Embassy Cables Were Leaked."
The Guardian. Guardian News and
Media, 28 Nov. 2010. Web.
In an interview with CNN, Ellsberg
adds: "I was willing to go to prison.
I never thought, for the rest of my
life, I would ever hear anyone willing to do that, to risk their life, so
that horrible, awful secrets could be
known. Then I read those logs and
learned Bradley was willing to go
to prison. I can't tell you how much
that affected me."
American University Professor
Chris Edelson—a constitutional
law expert—agrees: “I do think
there are similarities – Ellsberg,
for one, said that he thought Julian
Assange was receiving much of the
same criticism he had received.
In terms of Manning, the government's treatment of him seems
way over the top. I believe the
UN special rapporteur for torture
expressed concern over the conditions of Manning's incarceration.
I think the case also reflects the
Obama administration’s approach
Background References
Greenwald, Glenn. "The Strange
and Consequential Case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and
WikiLeaks." Salon. 18 June 2010.
Web.
Hansen, Evan. "Manning-Lamo
Chat Logs Revealed." Wired.com.
11 July 2011. Web.
Nicks, Denver. Private: Bradley
Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets
in American History. Chicago, IL:
Chicago Review, 2012.
Van Buren, Peter. "Obama's War on
Whistleblowers." Mother Jones. 12
June 2012. Web.
Cooper Continued
Back inside the nervous demeanor
of the suspect had given way to
paranoid suspicion. He cursed
that the parachutes that had been
delivered were “completely wrong!”
Apparently officials at SEA-TAC
had reached out to nearby McCord
Air Force Base for the parachutes
not realizing that standard military
parachutes are opened by static
lines that must be attached directly
to the aircraft. They are designed to
deploy immediately upon departure
from the aircraft; not desirable if
one intends to bailout of a commercial jetliner at 10,000 feet.
Cooper angrily insisted that he was
being double crossed. He wanted
manually deployable parachutes
such as those used by skydivers and
he wanted them right now or else!
The suspect threatened to detonate
the bomb. Members of the crew
tried to calm the agitated suspect
down. They assured him that it
was a simple mix-up – completely
unintended and added that it could
be quickly remedied.
Back in the control room at SEATAC agents scrambled to locate a
source for the sport parachutes that
the suspect demanded. Using a local telephone directory they quickly
contacted a skydiving school in
the area and made the necessary
arrangements with the owner. In
a hurry to assist authorities with
their unspecified emergency, a staff
member at the school inadvertently
included an inoperable classroom
dummy parachute as one of the
reserve parachutes requested. Apparently no one involved, including
the hijacker, noticed this potentially
fatal oversight.
While everyone
waited for the replacement parachutes to
be delivered, Cooper
dictated his next set
of demands to Florence Schaffner. He
told her that he wanted
to be flown non-stop
to Mexico City and
stipulated some odd,
but very specific flight
parameters including a demand that the
aft air-stair remain
deployed on take-off.
After some objections
and negotiations with
the flight crew the
destination and safety
concerns were resolved.
It had been agreed that
the aft air-stair would
be secured for take-off
and that they would
need to land at least
once to refuel the plane
as Mexico City was
beyond the jetliner’s
maximum flight range. It was decided that Reno, Nevada would be
the most suitable location to refuel
the plane.
At that point Cooper agreed to
release the 36 passengers along
with two of the three flight attendants. The freed passengers and
flight attendants exited through the
regular forward port side exit and
descended down a truck mounted
mobile stairway and out onto the
paved runway ramp. After the
replacement parachutes had arrived
around 7:30 p.m. (PST) the Boeing
727 was cleared for takeoff and the
jetliner raced down the runway in
Seattle and was back in the air and
headed south. The plane reached
the stipulated altitude of 10,000
feet and leveled off. Cooper gave
Tina Mucklow, the remaining flight
attendant one last directive; draw
the curtain that separated first-class
from coach on her way to the cockpit, which is where Cooper had ordered all of them to stay, and “don’t
come out!” She reported to authorities afterwards that the last time
she saw the suspect he was near
the back of the plane and appeared
to be tying something around his
waist. She drew the curtain across
the aisle as he had instructed and
continued on into the cockpit.
Around 8 p.m. the four captives
felt the air pressure inside the cabin
suddenly drop. A red light on the
control panel in front of the captain
flashed on indicating that the aft
exit had been opened; a moment
21
later a second light came on showing that the air-stair under the tail
of the plane had been deployed, and
a few minutes following that the tail
of the aircraft lurched discernibly
upward. The air-stair indicator light
went out briefly and then came
back on and remained on.
The four crew members stayed in
the confined space of the cockpit
as ordered for the remainder of the
flight. The jetliner finally touched
down in Reno, Nevada at 10:15
p.m. trailing a spectacular cascade
of sparks down the length of the
runway. The aft air-stair was indeed fully extended as the aircraft
touched down.
Authorities on the ground immediately surrounded the plane with
their guns drawn. Captain Scott
made several attempts to raise the
suspect over the cabin intercom but
there was no response. After several
heart-pounding minutes the four
22
wary crew members crept cautiously out of the cramped cockpit
to discover that Cooper was nowhere to be found. When they saw
that only two of the four parachutes
remained and that the aft air-stair
had been deployed they assumed
that he had jumped from the plane
during the flight. The indicator
lights on the cockpit control panel
are monitored by the in-flight data
recorder so investigators were able
to establish that the suspect likely
exited the aircraft at 8:13 p.m. when
the air-stair indicator light had
flashed off and then come back on.
Presumably this had been caused
by the hinged stairway as it rebounded like a diving board when
Cooper had leapt from it.
A subsequent search of the aircraft by the authorities found the
two remaining parachutes, one of
which had been opened for reasons unknown, and the suspect’s
narrow black clip-on tie with a
mother-of-pearl tie-tack attached to
it. Beyond the minor damage done
to the air-stair upon landing there
was nothing on or about the aircraft
that would indicate the dramatic
course of events that had unfolded
on-board that day.
All eye-witnesses that had had any
contact with Cooper in Portland,
in Seattle and now in Reno, were
interviewed immediately by investigators. Police artists were summoned and multiple sketches of
the suspect were compiled. Several
exhaustive ground searches were
conducted over the following weeks
and months, in and around the
approximated bailout zone, but no
trace of the suspect or the ransom
money was found. The FBI announced a short time after Cooper
disappeared that all 20,000 individual bills that had been included in
the ransom had been photo-copied
and the serial numbers documented. The Bureau also made it known
that this list of the serial numbers
had been distributed to authorities,
banks and high cash volume businesses across the nation.
To-date, the only bills from the
ransom money that have ever been
recovered were found nine years
after the fact, on the banks of the
Columbia River, by an eight yearold boy on a camping holiday with
his parents. The found money, three
out of the original 100 bundles of
$20 bills, was severely deteriorated
from exposure to the elements. The
FBI forensics lab would ultimately
determine that the recovered currency, still in its original sequence,
accounted for $5,800 of the missing
money. Authorities maintain their
belief that Cooper, whoever he was,
did not survive his suicidal escape
attempt. However, they have not
recovered any direct evidence of his
demise.
ma-Seattle area such that he could
identify landmarks from the air and
he also commented accurately on
the approximate drive-time from
nearby McChord Air Force Base
to SEA-TAC, which may suggest
that he could have a U.S. Air Force
military service record.
Additional Observations
The suspect reportedly had no
visible identifying marks, tattoos,
scars, moles etc. He was clean
shaven and tidy in appearance. He
spoke coherently without hesitation
or any discernible accent, in American English. He gave indications of
a detailed knowledge of the Taco-
The suspect ordered and consumed
two bourbon and soda cocktails
while on board and smoked Raleigh filter tipped cigarettes. He
seemed to have more than a casual knowledge of the operational
capabilities of the aircraft; specifically that the aft air-stair could be
safely deployed while in flight and
23
the minimum safe air speed and the
wing flap configuration needed to
maintain that speed while maintaining the sub-cruising altitude of
10,000 feet.
Beyond what has been described
above no further information
related to the suspect or his actions
on that day can be positively confirmed. Authorities still maintain
their belief that the suspect did in
fact exit the aircraft at approximately 8:13 p.m. on November 24, 1971
with the ransom money somehow
attached to his person. His demise
is presumed largely on the basis of
the prevailing weather conditions
outside the aircraft at the time of
his alleged departure; the virtually
impassable terrain along the flight
path; and the suspect’s apparent
lack of any practical knowledge
related to skydiving. The absence of
any hard evidence to support this
conclusion has not deterred the authorities in their position and these
facts as reported remain the official
version of events.
The Alternate Version of Events
The hypothesis that Dan Cooper
may have never really existed at
all and that this crime was in fact
a carefully orchestrated inside job
planned and executed by members of the crew has been widely
circulated in the past; but such
conjecture is problematic if it were
indeed the case. The non-existence
of Cooper would have created a
discrepancy in the passenger count.
Meaning that the number of passengers released, plus one (Cooper), would not correlate properly
with the number of names listed
on the flight manifest, or with the
number of boarding passes and
tickets collected at the gate.
24
The airline industry employed and
monitored these controls as an
effective means to avert stowaway
travel in an era of minimal airline
security. If members of the crew
had been involved in the crime, the
individual identified as Dan Cooper
would still have likely had to exist
in person at some point. Conversely, his existence does not establish
that he acted entirely alone in the
commission of this epic crime.
This particular act of hijacking and
extortion holds the unique distinction of being the only hijacking ever
committed on U.S. soil to remain
unsolved. Cooper’s true identity
has remained a mystery as well, and
$194,200 in ransom money is still
unaccounted for. These outstanding details provide sufficient fodder
that the speculation, supposition
and spurious claims underground
has launched a standalone cottage
industry that continues to this very
day. The bigger than life persona of
the mysterious, misidentified and
still at-large outlaw has evolved
over several decades into an icon of
the American culture. The legend
of D.B. Cooper and his audacious
exploits are revered as fact around
the world, not because they repre-
sent reality, but because we desperately want them to represent reality. Americana will not be denied
this epic tale of ingenious criminal
daring or its eternal enshrinement
in the self aggrandizing genre of
outlaw folklore.
After a meticulous review of the
verified facts in the case it can be
concluded that a very small window of probability does in fact
exist for the alternate case scenario
of flight crew involvement in the
crime. If the material facts in this
case are ever found to differ substantially from the official version
of the events; it is probable that
the following alternate case scenario describes the next most likely
sequence of events related to the
hijacking of Northwest Orient Airline’s flight 305 on November 24,
1971. It has been accepted here that
the suspect, Dan Cooper (alias),
most likely did exist in person and
was not completely fabricated by
members of the crew in an effort to
divert the investigative attention of
the authorities. This conclusion is
based on two separate but equally
compelling aspects of the case that
would have been more difficult to
affect had Cooper not existed in
person.
First, the authorities obtained
multiple physical descriptions from
three separate sources; (ticketing
agent Hal Williams [in Portland],
flight attendant Florence Schaffner
[in Seattle] and flight attendant
Tina Mucklow [in Reno]), during and immediately following the
commission of the crime. Each of
these three eye-witnesses provided
a detailed description that very
closely matched the other two. If
Cooper had not existed in the flesh,
the three independent descriptions
would have had to have been rehearsed and subsequently reported
to authorities without the appearance of having been rehearsed; a
feat that is difficult to accomplish
between two collaborators and virtually impossible amongst three.
Second, the number of boarding
passes and tickets required, as well
as the number of passengers named
on the flight manifest, would all
have to correlate with the number
of passengers released in Seattle
plus one (37). If Dan Cooper did
not exist and his role in the crime
had been completely fictional,
the list of names on the passenger
flight manifest would have been
one short at 36. Consequently, only
36 boarding passes and tickets
would have been taken up at the
gate. Thus, when the 36 passengers
deplaned in Seattle the authorities
would have been tipped off to the
hoax. These controls would have
to have been manipulated in order
for Cooper’s presence to have been
completely made up by the crew.
Ironically these factors were very
likely manipulated, but in all probability they were manipulated by
Cooper himself.
Given the non-existent nature of
airline security that was in effect at
the time the individual that gave
the alias Dan Cooper could have
simply purchased a ticket for flight
305 at an earlier point in time. He
may have purchased the first ticket
disguised and under a different
assumed name. He then checkedin under that name at the gate. He
subsequently returned to the ticket
counter without the disguise and
purchased the second ticket and
provided the name Dan Cooper.
Once the he had checked in at the
gate for a second time he would
have been entered twice, under
two different aliases, on flight 305’s
passenger manifest and also in
possession of two boarding passes
for that same flight. A mere $20
in additional expense would have
accomplished both of the necessary
adjustments in the passenger count;
a cost far less than that of involving additional people in the plot.
The on-board head count would be
easily obscured by a participating
member of the crew.
less conspicuous than attempting
to falsify the flight manifest directly
while independently adding both
a ticket and a boarding pass at the
gate.
The alternate version of events
would have likely proceeded from
that point as follows:
Cooper’s designated seat was in
Florence Schaffner’s assigned
service area and she was the first
person on-board to interact with
Cooper. She had noticed him as
soon as he had come on board.
He had watched her closely as she
went through her pre-flight routine, so she was not shocked when
the suspect passed her the folded
up slip of paper. She assumed it to
be an intimate proposition from a
lonely business man so she simply
smiled politely and tucked it away
unread and resumed her duties.
When the suspect failed to get the
response that he had anticipated he
flagged her down again and insisted
that she read the note “because I
have a bomb.” Ms. Schaffner proceeded immediately to the galley
25
As the plane was being boarded
Cooper handed one boarding pass
to the attending gate agent and then
stooped down and pretended to
pick the second boarding pass up
off of the floor. He politely handed
it to the gate agent and suggested
that he or she must have “dropped
one.” The agent, not realizing
that anything was amiss, thanked
him and added it to the stack of
boarding passes for flight 305.This
would have been the most efficient
method of artificially inflating the
passenger count without involving
additional personnel in the conspiracy and would have been far
Once on board Cooper took his
designated seat 18c, an aisle seat
four rows from the back of the
plane. Senior flight attendant Alice
Hancock covered in-flight service
for passengers seated up front in
first-class and for the first few rows
of coach (see plane diagram). The
two junior flight attendants, each
with less than two years of in-flight
experience, split the passengers
seated in the rest of coach.
Tina Mucklow, an attractive 22
year-old flight attendant, was assigned the mid-section of passenger
seats that covered most of the forward half of coach. Her coworker
Florence Schaffner, an equally attractive 23 year-old flight attendant,
provided in-flight service for the
last six rows of coach.
area where she unfolded the note
to read: “I HAVE A BOMB. I WILL
USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT
YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU
ARE BEING HIJACKED”.
Stunned, Ms. Schaffner showed the
handwritten note to fellow flight
attendant Tina Mucklow who urged
her to comply. Ms. Schaffner agreed
and returned to row 18 and sat cautiously down next to the suspect.
Cooper instructed her to take out
her order pad and write down the
demands that he dictated to her.
First, he wanted $200,000 in cash,
four parachutes (two backpacks
[primary chutes] and two front
[reserve chutes]) and a refueling
truck on stand-by in Seattle before
he would permit the current flight
to land. Ms. Schaffner asked to see
the bomb and the suspect opened
his briefcase enough for her to see
what appeared to be a sizable explosive device. She promptly delivered
both notes to Captain William
Scott in the cockpit. Scott, a veteran
pilot with 20 years service with
Northwest Orient Airlines immediately contacted air-traffic control
at Sea-Tac and notified them of the
developing crisis. The events then
proceeded as previously described
up to the point where the plane was
on the ground in Seattle and the
money and the first set of parachutes had been delivered. Here the
events once again diverge from the
official version.
Tina Mucklow had retrieved the
money and the parachutes via the
aft air-stair and placed them on
the unoccupied seats next to Cooper. Cooper then instructed Ms.
Schaffner to take down his next set
of demands which included specific instructions to the flight crew.
26
Cooper said that he wanted to be
flown directly to Mexico City and
stipulated some odd, but very specific flight parameters that included
air speed, altitude, flap settings and
in particular that he wanted the aft
air-stair under the tail of the plane
to remain deployed on take-off. Ms.
Schaffner diligently delivered the
new instructions to the captain.
Captain Scott instantly rejected the
destination, pointing out that it was
beyond the jet’s maximum range
and couldn’t be reached without
landing to refuel – something the
hijacker had already indicated that
he would not allow. Presumably the
suspect was aware that he was most
vulnerable while the plane was on
the ground. Ms. Schaffner nervously asked the captain what she
should tell the lunatic in the back
with the bomb. First officer Bill
Rataczak volunteered to intercede
on her behalf. He would go and
explain the flight range limitations
of the aircraft to the bomb toting
lunatic in the back. As he climbed
out of the co-pilot’s seat Rataczak
said, “I’ll see if he wants to refuel it
or pick a new destination, but he’s
not going to Mexico in one hop, not
on this bird.” The very much relieved Schaffner followed closely on
the first officer’s heels as he made
his way down the aisle toward the
back of the plane.
Meanwhile Captain Scott announced over the intercom that
the mechanical problem that had
delayed their landing was currently
in the process of being corrected
but, for safety reasons it would be
necessary to wait just a little longer
before they could begin unloading.
He thanked the exasperated group
for their patience and of course for
their patronage of Northwest Ori-
ent Airlines.
As the two approached Cooper’s
seat Rataczak and Schaffner were
confronted with a visibly agitated
hijacker who now rather tersely
informed them that the parachutes
that had just been delivered were
“completely wrong!” He demanded
that they be replaced with manually
deployable parachutes “right now!”
or he threatened to detonate the
bomb. Rataczak tried to calm the
suspect down. He assured Cooper
that the mix-up had been completely unintentional and that the
situation would be easily corrected
if he would just give them a little
time to make it right.
Florence Schaffner felt her face go
flush and she could feel her heartbeat as it pounded away at the base
of her throat. Rataczak turned to
her and asked that she take down
exactly what type of parachute it
was that Cooper wanted and then
instructed her to deliver that message to Captain Scott immediately.
To show Cooper that he was acting
in good faith Rataczak insisted she
wait in the cockpit with the captain
until it could determine exactly
how long the replacement parachutes would take to be delivered.
Rataczak’s reassurance directive
was a false ploy. The directive’s true
intent was to keep Ms. Schaffner
occupied in the cockpit and away
from row 18. Schaffner obeyed and
swiftly returned to the cockpit; half
running as she scooted up the aisle.
As she burst into the cockpit she
interrupted the captain, who had by
now reviewed the entirety of Cooper’s flight instructions and pointed
emphatically to the last note. He
started to say, “Does that damn fool
think I….”
“Wait, wait…” she cut him off, “the
chutes, the ….parachutes…..” The
young woman gasped for air in between her words, “The parachutes,
they’re wrong, he’s pissed, he is
going to blow-up the plane!” She
held out the note she had just taken
down.
Captain Scott snatched the paper out of her shaking hand and
held it out at arm’s length, “Sh**!
I should’ve...” the Captain left the
words hanging. Schaffner was confused by the response; she looked
over to the flight engineer Harold
Anderson. Anderson obviously
puzzled himself just shrugged and
they both turned their attention
back to their captain. “Military
parachutes,” he finally continued,
“they delivered military chutes,
right?” He looked to the young
flight attendant for her response.
“Yes”, she nodded, “I think that is
what they brought. Yes, yes, military parachutes that’s what he’s so
mad about.”
The captain looked over to Anderson, “Static line”, he said, gesturing
an upward thrust with his closed
fist. The flight engineer nodded
instant recognition of the gesture.
“What?” Florence Schaffner was
still confused, “I don’t understand?”
“Military parachutes have static line
release,” Scott explained, “they have
to be attached to the aircraft in order to work and I’m pretty sure that
this plane wasn’t designed for that
particular stunt. Besides a static line
chute would pop open right out the
door; the jet wash alone would cut
him half, not that I care, but I think
he might.” The captain picked-up
the mic and radioed the tower. In
as few words as possible the captain
related the situation to whoever
was listening in the control room.
A voice acknowledged the captain’s
instructions and asked him to hold
on for a time estimate.
As he waited he turned his attention back to Ms. Schaffner, “I don’t
know who this idiot thinks he is
but if he’s going to jump out of this
plane you make damn sure he takes
the bomb with him! Oh and one
more thing,” the captain resumed
where Schaffner had interrupted
him, “Does that damn fool really
think I’m going to try and take off
with a staircase hanging out of my
ass?!!” The captain was incredulous
in his tone and turning red in the
face as he jammed his finger pointedly into the instructions she had
delivered previously.
Ms. Schaffner, with tears now
welling up in her eyes, confirmed
that that was what he had said he
wanted. Captain Scott softened
his demeanor but wasted no time
in making it abundantly clear that
there was no way in hell he was
going to attempt that kind of stunt,
bomb or no bomb. “You tell that
little sh** that I don’t give a damn if
he gets himself killed; he had better
leave the rest of us out of it. If he
wants to fly this bird that’s fine, but
as long as I’m driving all the doors
and windows will be secured on
take-off, you got that!!” The dam finally broke and the tears the young
woman was desperately trying to
hold back now streamed down her
young face.
The emotionally overwhelmed
23 year-old flight attendant again
found herself in the unenviable
position of rejecting another
demand from the madman in the
back. This time Harold Anderson,
the flight engineer, came to her aid
and volunteered to explain just how
dangerous and probably impossible
the crazy idea was to even try. This
freed the much relieved Ms. Schaffner to remain sequestered in the
cockpit with Captain Scott for word
on the replacement parachutes just
as first officer Rataczak had instructed her to do.
Meanwhile, at the back of the plane,
the plan shifted into high gear the
moment Schaffner had re-entered
the cockpit with orders to wait
there. Cooper immediately got up
from his seat with the briefcase
and the small paper sack (see FBI
Wanted Poster) and slipped into the
nearby aft lavatory. Inside he quickly removed the dark sun-glasses
and shed the business suit, the clipon tie and the pressed white shirt.
Underneath his business attire he
had on a long sleeved T-shirt and a
faded pair of blue jeans. He quickly
removed the elements of his earlier
disguise (possibly heavy rimmed
eye-glasses, a false mustache and/
or beard, baseball cap, etc., etc.)
from the paper sack and reapplied
them. He folded up the suit trousers and the pressed white shirt and
placed them inside the paper sack.
When he exited the lavatory he left
behind the suit jacket, the clip-on
tie, sun-glasses, briefcase and the
small paper sack. He squeezed past
Rataczak and headed up the aisle.
While Cooper altered his appearance Tina Mucklow retrieved an
empty carry-on satchel from the
baggage storage closet located near
the midsection of the plane across
from the galley and delivered it
to row 18. After Cooper, now in
27
28
disguise, squeezed by Rataczak
standing in the aisle the first officer
ducked into the now vacant lavatory. He quickly removed his flight
uniform jacket and airline cap and
put on Cooper’s suit jacket along
with the dark wrap-around sunglasses; he grabbed the briefcase
and the paper sack and returned to
Cooper’s seat in row 18 just as Tina
Mucklow delivered the carry-on
satchel.
Rataczak, now posing as Cooper,
opened the satchel and removed
the stiff vinyl covered board that
lined the bottom of the bag. From
the canvas bank bag that contained
the ransom money he removed ten
of the $2,000 bundles and placed
them on the seat next to him. He
then transferred the rest of the cash
to the empty satchel and replaced
the liner bottom as Mucklow stood
watch. He removed the trousers
and shirt from the paper sack and
placed the sack into the satchel first
followed by the folded up shirt and
the trousers. He zipped the satchel
closed and handed it back to Tina
Mucklow who then casually returned it to the mid-cabin storage
closet.
When Harold Anderson got up to
go explain the captain’s objections
to Cooper, Captain Scott prompted
him, “ask that joker about unloading the passengers,” adding, “I
don’t think I can stall much longer
without the serious possibility of
a mutiny on board.” Anderson
nodded his acknowledgement as
he exited the cockpit. As the flight
engineer worked his way down the
aisle towards the back of the plane
he found his path momentarily
blocked by one of the passengers
(the now disguised suspect) returning from the aft lavatory. To make
way for the flight engineer, Cooper
nonchalantly sat down in an unassigned seat that was further up
and across the aisle from his previous seat. He remained in this seat,
with his face buried in an airline
magazine, until the captain announced that the passengers could
depart. Anderson continued down
the aisle to row 18 where he then
stood watch over the contraband
that was piled in the seats of row 18
and prevented any stray passengers
from accessing the aft lavatories. He
maintained this post until first officer Rataczak had returned from the
lavatory masquerading as Cooper.
Once Rataczak had assumed
Cooper’s place, the flight engineer
returned to the cockpit and informed the captain that the air-stair
issue had been resolved and that
he could now go ahead and offload
the passengers and, “Oh, two of
the girls,” referring to the flight
attendants. This was the signal that
everything back in the cabin was
in order and on plan. The captain
announced over the intercom that
the passengers could start their
departure. He then directed Ms.
Schaffner to go find Alice Hancock
and help her unload the passengers.
The captain’s brief announcement
ensured that the aisle would jam up
with passengers eager to disembark
and thus prevent Ms. Schaffner
from returning to the back of the
plane where she might discover the
switch that had been made.
Florence Schaffner could see Tina
Mucklow at the back of the plane
dutifully helping the departing
passengers retrieve their carryon items. She could also make
out Cooper intermittently. He sat
upright and motionless against the
window; seemingly disinterested in
the flurry of activity going on elsewhere in the cabin. The dark wraparound sun-glasses at a distance
made him look like some kind of
mutant humanoid insect with giant
black unblinking eyes. She could
feel his hidden gaze following her
around the cabin and a cold chill
ran down her spine as she finally
had to look away.
Tina Mucklow worked her way
up to the mid-cabin storage closet
and popped the door open. She
removed the carry-on satchel
containing the hidden cash and
handed it over to Cooper, who
now assumed the role of departing
passenger. Tina suddenly caught
Florence Schaffner’s probing eyes
searching from the front of the
plane and the two friends momentarily exchanged mutually puzzled
“What’s next?” looks, as they both
shrugged.
Once the forward port side door
had finally been opened Alice
Hancock confirmed that the truck
mounted stairway was in place and
secured. She then quickly assumed
her familiar post outside the cockpit door; offering each departing
passenger the standard farewell
salutation.
Florence Schaffner took the opportunity to duck briefly back into the
cockpit. The harried young woman
quickly queried her captain, “What
about Tina?”
Captain Scott paused, and then
looked lamentingly over to flight
engineer Anderson who responded
right on cue, “You’d better just go
ahead and get the hell out of here
while you can.”
Schaffner felt instantly relieved and
29
then was sickened by the thought.
She had realized that she was free
to go but that her friend and coworker Tina Mucklow was to be left
behind. Initially she was reluctant
to leave with Tina still in the hands
of the lunatic, but she quickly realized that there was nothing more
she could do and returned to the
passenger cabin just as the last passengers departed.
Florence stared down the long open
expanse of the now virtually empty
plane. Her friend and coworker
Tina Mucklow was focused intently
on the suspect. The distorted half
human figure appeared to be dictating even more demands and Tina
struggled to transcribe them, just
as she herself had done earlier in
the nightmare. “I hate that freak,”
Schaffner thought to herself. “What
more could he possibly want from
us?!” Her hatred of him began to
burn as she watched the smug little
coward with the big bug-like eyes
task her terrified friend.
Suddenly Tina looked up and
caught her friend’s plaintive gaze.
Tina’s young fresh face flashed
instant recognition of her circumstances as she acknowledged her
friend at the front of the plane.
With remarkable composure the
young woman accepted her predicament completely and without
hesitation she eyed the port side
exit and motioned for Florence to
follow the others to safety. Florence
Schaffner had the same heartbreaking thought that all have at that
moment, “Will I ever see her again,
alive?” She forced the unspeakable thought from her mind as she
turned and walked off the plane.
Shortly thereafter the replacement
parachutes arrived and Mucklow
30
carried out the exchange via the aft
air-stair. The plane taxied toward
the runway as Captain Scott informed the tower that they would
be flying low and slow on Victor 23,
without the auto-pilot and putting
down in Reno to refuel. He requested that controllers make the necessary arrangements and that FAA
flight control be alerted to clear the
air-space along the flight plan as
they would be flying dark (without
lights). The tower confirmed the
instructions and cleared them for
take-off and the big jet roared down
the runway and lifted into the night
sky headed south.
Back in the now empty passenger cabin Tina Mucklow and Bill
Rataczak scrambled to gather up
all remaining evidence of Cooper’s
presence. Rataczak took off the suit
jacket and the dark sun-glasses and
retrieved his airline cap and flight
uniform jacket from the lavatory.
In his haste he overlooked the
thin black clip-on tie that Cooper
had left behind. They proceeded
to complete the plan at a frenzied
pace. Rataczak popped open one of
the reserve parachutes and cut two
lengths of suspension cord from
the canopy. The pair quickly piled
up the overcoat, the suit jacket, the
sunglasses, the bomb laden briefcase, one of the main parachutes,
the unopened reserve parachute
(ironically the inoperable classroom
prop) and the $20,000 in cash that
Rataczak had separated from the
ransom money and stacked it all in
the last row of seats.
At around 8 p.m. they opened the
aft exit door and deployed the airstair. Rataczak twisted the canopy
lines together and tied one end
securely to the steel frame that
held the last row of seats in place
and wrapped the other end loosely
around his forearm. He then
worked his way down the narrow
staircase letting out the cord as he
descended. The twisted parachute
lines acted as his safety-line against
the torrent of jet wash that blasted
past the protruding staircase. Tina
stood atop the air-stair and passed
the assorted items to the first officer
one by one. Rataczak in turn tossed
each of them out into the roaring,
black, wintery abyss. With the final
task of the plan complete, Rataczak
climbed back up the narrow airstair, untied his makeshift safety
line and tossed it out the open
stairwell. He turned to find Tina
Mucklow nearly collapsed against
one of the aisle seats. The young
woman was completely drained,
emotionally and physically spent.
“Come on sweetheart we’re almost
there,” he whispered tenderly into
the young woman’s ear as he turned
her by the shoulders and nudged
her gently along the aisle towards
the cockpit.
Once inside Rataczak slipped back
into the copilot’s seat and the four
co-conspirators exchanged sheepish
grins of stealthy accomplishment,
but they did not utter a word; in
observance of their pact to never
speak of the events of that day,
ever, regardless of how the scheme
played out. The flight continued
on to land in Reno as previously
described.
The Plan
This alternate version of the events,
if they had in fact occurred, would
put into place the one odd little
piece of the puzzle that remained
out of place in the official version of
events. The 4”x 12”x 14” paper sack
described at the bottom of the FBI’s
wanted poster served no discernible purpose. Why carry something
with you during the commission
of a crime that you would have to
either toss out or leave behind. It
had to contain something essential
to the plot or it would not have
been there. Witnesses on board
the plane never mention the sack
in their statements, at least none
that were made public. Suppose
that you were planning to hijack a
commercial jetliner during a brief,
30-minute flight. Would you pack
a lunch? Maybe it contained something special for his wife. A token
gesture for the little woman waiting
patiently at home for her dedicated
hubby to return home from a hard
day of extortion and hijacking!! I’m
thinking probably not so much. The
small paper sack in the official version of events is definitely odd and
certainly out of place.
Was it a coincidence that first officer Bill Rataczak’s face and build
bore an uncanny resemblance to
the eye-witness descriptions of
Cooper; particularly when he was
seated? The recovered clip-on tie
that Cooper had worn was nearly
indistinguishable from the tie with
tie-tack that Bill Rataczak had chosen to wear that day.
The final four crew members that
had remained aboard throughout
the entire ordeal would afterwards
avoid any discussion of the hijacking for an extended period of
time. Maybe the trauma of being
hijacked was simply too harrowing
to relive. But that leaves released
flight attendant Florence Schaffner’s
behavior a bit puzzling. She did
not appear to have experienced the
same degree of trauma in spite of
having been the only crew member
to have actually seen the bomb. On
the contrary, she would go on to
give multiple public interviews over
the ensuing years.
If these four crew members did
conspire with the unidentified
“Cooper” to carry out this well choreographed plan, the scheme was
brilliant and its execution nearly
flawless. This alternate case scenario would have permitted Cooper
to walk off the plane in Seattle with
most of the ransom money slung
over his shoulder. It would have
also accurately accounted for every
passenger on board including the
nut job who supposedly jumped out
the back of a commercial jetliner
with only one functional parachute.
Surely authorities questioned each
of the released passengers, at least
briefly anyway, for any possible detail that they might recall about the
non-descript, overly average looking businessman that sat way in
the back, chain smoked and drank
bourbon and seven.
More importantly investigators zeroed in on what Florence Schaffner
had to say; they immediately focused their attention on the details
that she alone could provide. After
all, she had had the most contact
and interaction with the suspect.
The conspirators had set her up for
the role that she would now unwittingly fulfill well beyond their
wildest expectations. Schaffner it
seems had been perfectly cast as the
completely innocent and convincingly honest airline worker who
was also absolutely dead certain
that Cooper was still on board that
plane when she left it; and she had
been the very last person to get off
the plane in Seattle.
Most of the other passengers
claimed that they had been com-
pletely unaware that anything was
wrong beyond the supposed mechanical problem that had delayed
their arrival. All Cooper had to do
was play along. He surely claimed
ignorance of the whole onboard
drama. He simply provided investigators with the name he used when
he purchased the first ticket since it
too would appear on the passenger
manifest
The investigators had everything
they could want in Florence
Schaffner; a detailed description
of Cooper; a blow by blow account
of the events thus far; and with
absolute certainty the last known
whereabouts of their suspect. The
other people that had been on
board the plane could add little to
nothing compared to what Florence
Schaffner had provided and consequently they were not detained for
any substantial period of time. So
convincingly honest was Florence
Schaffner’s recollection that authorities never bothered to cross check
for a possible second alias listed
among the passenger names on
the flight manifest – which would
have certainly cast suspicion in the
direction of the crew had it been
found there.
For his part Cooper could have
casually volunteered that he had enjoyed a couple of cocktails and then
simply slept through the remainder
of the protracted delay. He might
have even feigned impatient angst;
reminding the junior investigator
that he was already three hours late
getting home to his overtly suspicious wife. Adding that he urgently
needed to find a phone and call her.
After the subordinate field agent
handed over his FBI calling card
and prompted the suspect to call if
he remembered anything, he was
31
summarily dismissed to go about
his business. Absent any sense of
urgency he picked up his carry-on
satchel and slung it casually over
his shoulder and strode carefree
into the bustling swarm of holiday
travelers, never to be seen or heard
from again.
The pivotal player over the entire
course of events was the remarkably convincing and completely
innocent Florence Schaffner. Her
prominent role put her in a position to interact with the suspect
up close and later to cement the
audacious escape that Cooper had
to have made since there was simply no other way for him to have
gotten off that plane after she had
seen him talking to Tina Mucklow.
By permitting Schaffner to glimpse
Rataczak posing as Cooper at the
back of the plane seconds before
she departed, the conspirators had
assured Cooper’s place among the
greatest of all legendary outlaws.
Schaffner’s incredibly detailed recounting of the hijacking captured
the imagination of all who listened;
the authorities, the news media
and the awed American public.
Everyone involved was completely
convinced that a sociopathic madman had commandeered one of the
company’s planes, abducted four of
her coworkers and was now headed
for Mexico City with a bag full of
loot and a big ass bomb.
The evidence that Rataczak and
Mucklow had hurriedly gathered
up and tossed from the plane
would have surely convinced any
remaining skeptics that Cooper had
actually been foolhardy enough
to leap from a commercial jetliner
into a winter storm, at night, at
10,000 feet over mountainous terrain, wearing only a lightweight
32
overcoat, a business suit and slip
on loafers; that is had any of it been
found!!
The Missteps
Clearly the biggest miscalculation
by either the group of conspirators or the lone air-pirate was the
flawed assumption that the Feds
couldn’t possibly document the serial numbers of all 20,000 randomly
selected $20 bills on such short
notice but, somehow they had. It
has been speculated that certain
large banks keep a quantity of previously circulated, random and yet
already photocopied and recorded
currency on hand to thwart such
would be extortionists. This rumor
however, remains unconfirmed
at this time. A brilliant counter
measure if it were indeed available;
unfortunately in this case the Feds
stepped up with their own serious
misjudgment. When they revealed
the existence of the list that documented the serial numbers so soon
after the heist, they tipped off the
culprit(s) before he/they had gotten
the chance to spend any of his/their
ill gotten gain.
The clip-on tie with the mother-ofpearl tie-tack was clearly a sloppy
oversight made by either an otherwise consummately meticulous
individual or the normally very
detail oriented conspirators. There
are several counter intuitive actions committed by this individual,
if it was in fact a lone extortionist
on board. For instance; imagine
having the insight to request two
sets of parachutes knowing that the
authorities would assume that you
intend to force one of the hostages
out the door ahead of you and thus
averting any temptation to sabotage the parachutes. But then you
realize that you lack the foresight to
request helmets or goggles which
are standard skydiving equipment,
on a good day. Or take a moment
and imagine that your cool, calculating presence of mind allows you
to reclaim the one and only original
hand written note before the flight
attendant that had it got off the
plane in Seattle; only to discover
later that you are so absent minded
as to leave a cheap clip-on tie with
your favorite fancy tie-tack embedded in it behind! Extraordinary
attention to detail coupled with unbelievably absent minded mistakes
seems incongruent in the official
version of events.
The presumption that a massive
search effort would be mounted almost immediately over the projected drop zone was sound planning.
That the search would turn up the
discharged debris and lend irrefutable proof to an otherwise highly
implausible story looked great
on paper. However, the weather,
altitude, terrain and the uncertainty
of the exact location erased any
chance that the intended counter
measures would be recovered in
a timely fashion. Too little debris
scattered over too large and desolate an area of mostly impassable,
frozen mountain terrain meant
that little if anything would ever
be recovered. Consequently any
dispersal of the remaining ransom
money could easily lead authorities
back to one of the five conspirators.
That possibility was a chance the
conspirators felt was too great a risk
to take. That left them with only
one remaining option and that was
to simply keep quiet, lay low and go
on about their lives as though nothing had ever happened, and that is
exactly what they did.
It has been suggested that all of
the ransom money may have been
jettisoned along with the debris in
a daring charade intended to draw
attention to the lax airline security
maintained by the airline industry
at the time; a level of security that
placed passenger convenience and
public perception above the lives
and safety of airline employees.
Northwest Orient Airlines was one
of many airlines that had been involved in protracted labor disputes
in their recent history, and according to some, flight security and hijack prevention had both appeared
on the agenda as issues in some
of those disputes. So, in theory,
it could be considered a possible
motive, but a rather unlikely one.
It has been established that real life
Robin Hoods are exceptionally rare
and are far more likely to be found
in the frames of a Hollywood film
than they are in everyday life.
The four crew members that remained aboard flight 305 all the
way to Reno that night provided
their firsthand accounts to investigators immediately following the
crime and to a hastily called news
conference at the Reno Airport that
night or early the following morning. After that the four remained
remarkably silent on the subject,
declining to discuss the hijacking at
length with anyone for many years
to come. Tina Mucklow would
continue on as a flight attendant
for a decade and then abruptly quit
her job and enter a convent. She
remained cloistered for yet another
decade. When she did emerge from
the convent she changed her name
and continued to refuse any inquiry
regarding the hijacking of flight
305. Is this odd behavior? Maybe,
maybe not. Is it evidence of guilt?
No, not really. The decisions that
people make or what they do or do
not do in their private lives is none
of our business, no matter how
strange we may find it or what we
may “think” it to mean.
There are two more minor details,
beyond that of the curious little paper sack, that that are often passed
over in this case that any interested
party should take note of; these
points of interest are as follows:
The suspect seemed to have an
intimate working knowledge of that
specific model of commercial airliner; precisely what the minimum
safe airspeed at low altitudes was
and that the aft air-stair could be
safely deployed while in-flight (the
Boeing 727 is the only commercial
jet airliner ever produced with that
feature). This may suggest that the
suspect was a former airman, since
civilian aviation crew members
would not have had reason or the
opportunity to gain that knowledge
as part of their civilian training.
The CIA reportedly used Boeing 727’s over Vietnam to drop
personnel and supplies behind
enemy lines. They allegedly chose
the 727 for its ability to drop the
air-stair while in-flight. The Boeing
Corporation manufactured only
four of the military version of the
727; three of which were ultimately
assigned to the 201st Airlift Squadron, Air National Guard, District
of Columbia based in Washington
D.C. Coincidently; Northwest Orient Airline’s flight 305 originated
that morning of November 24, 1971
out of Washington D.C. Also curious to note is that the Washington
(State) Air National Guard is based
out of Camp Murray in Tacoma,
Washington and that the suspect
reportedly recognized the city of
Tacoma and other area landmarks
from the air as they were circling in
the holding pattern prior to landing
in Seattle.
I would like to stress to the reader
that the fantastic conspiracy described above very likely never
occurred at all, in any form or fashion. The discussion presented here
serves only to make the observation
that it was physically possible to do
so at the time and not to suggest
that it was probable in the least. The
four crew members implicated as
co-conspirators in this version of
events were thoroughly interviewed
by investigators and have since
continued to cooperate fully with
the authorities in charge of the case.
They have not at any juncture been
considered viable suspects in any
capacity. I trust that the authorities
in this case had and continue to
have sound reasoning for excluding
these four individuals from consideration as suspects, and I suggest to
the reader that we all must accept
this as fact and let it go at that.
Cold Case Continued
County Sheriff 's Office cold case
squad to offer information about
the case. He described the nature
and location of the crime and identified a person of interest who had
the means, motive and opportunity
to commit the robbery-murder.
That person had left the area about
the time of the crime and made a
telephone call to discuss the robbery-homicide.
And the informant revealed exactly
where investigators could find the
possible murder weapon, a revolver
still available for testing decades
33
after Floyd's murder.
life.
Would a simple ballistics comparison mate the fatal bullet to the suspect weapon and unmask a killer?
Would Joe Floyd Collins's long
string of bad luck finally be coming to an end a quarter of a century
after his murder?
“Around midnight he was drunk
and driving on the interstate to his
girl friend's house,” Dottie remembered. “Another drunk driver
crossed the median and hit him
head on.”
Bad luck maynot have beenJoe
Floyd Collins's best friend, but it
was most certainly his lifelong close
companion.
A Bad Luck Joe
In the 1970s and early 1980s, he
would learn the fickle alchemy
guiding his fortune and misfortune.
While bad luck sometimes seemed
to turn magically into good, more
often than not Floyd's good luck
took a dark turn.
Dorothy “Dottie” McMichael
lived through those flip-flopping
fortunes with Collins, whom she
called Joe. She married Joe in the
summer of 1977. Now more than
30 years divorced from Collins,
from her Arkansas home Dottie shared information about her
ex-husband. After suffering several
strokes, Dottie searches carefully
to find the right words to convey
those memories.
Hailing from northeast Liberty
County, Joe was the son of an abusive alcoholic father. After attending Hardin schools, Joe served in
the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam.
The tempo of Joe Floyd Collins's
tango with good and bad luck
quickened in California in 1979.
Married to Dottie for two years,
Joe was involved in a car crash that
would cripple him for the rest of his
34
“Joe was hospitalized for a long
time and bedridden for several
months at home,” she said. “He
ended up with a stiff elbow and a
stiff knee that forced him to walk
with a limp and a cane. He had little
range of motion in his right shoulder. He was no longer capable of
hanging drywall.”
Idled from work and enduring
painful injuries, Joe turned increasingly to alcohol for relief. “He took
to drinking all the time,” said Dottie, “usually a quart of Jack Daniel's
every day.”
Collins sued the other driver.
“While waiting for his lawsuit to
come to court,” Dottie said, “Joe
decided he wanted to live in Liberty
County. We packed up everything
and moved to Texas.”
In June of 1980, Collins won a
$250,000 settlement in his lawsuit,
minus $50,000 paid to his first wife
for back child support.
According to an online inflation
calculator, his share of that settlement would be worth $714,000 in
2012 dollars. Feeling that he had
struck it rich, Joe went on a spending spree.
“He purchased a house in Hardin, a
house full of furniture, new vehicles
and two boats,” Dottie said.
Back in his native Liberty County,
Joe and wife Dottie befriended
entrepreneur Eddie Elliott and wife
Phyllis of Dayton. In 1975, Elliott
had seen a need and opened a new
business in a portable building in
Harris County just outside of the
Liberty County line. He named it
County Line Liquor.
“In 1981, Joe started working for
Eddie at the liquor store,” Dottie recounted. “He was drinking
continually and became more and
more violent. I finally called it quits
in 1982.”
That's the year Joe Floyd Collins
struck his deal with friend Eddie Elliott. “The store was making
good money,” recalled Elliott, who
owns several real estate parcels and
operates a septic tank business in
Dayton. “Joe had been working
there a year. He knew there was
good money to be made.”
Collins jumped at the chance
to spend some of the remaining
money from his accident settlement
to purchase Eddie's County Line Liquor. Eddie Elliott kept title to the
tiny parcel of land, but Joe Floyd
Collins owned the liquor business.
Eddie sold the lot in 2012.
Dottie saw Joe one last time in September of 1984 after he asked her
to join him for a drink. Apparently,
she said, he just wanted to brag to
her that “the bigwigs” wanted to
induct him into their clique.
“Some of the things he said didn't
make a lot of sense,” Dottie recalled.
“He told me he was being checked
out as a prospect to join 'the club.'
He was on top of the world.”
As if on cue, three weeks later, on
October 12, 1984, good luck once
again changed to bad. Instead of
living the additional 32 years cited
in lifespan tables, Joe Floyd Collins
would take a fatal bullet to his gut
and tumble from the “top of the
world” into a bottomless death pit.
A simple headline on an inside
page of the Houston Chronicle's
October 14, 1984 Sunday edition
read: “Liquor store owner slain.”
Three brief paragraphs followed.
The story caught my attention because I lived in the country perhaps
10 miles from the little liquor store.
I had shopped there a few times for
beer and spirits. Over the decades,
I forgot many of the story's details.
I would not set eyes on the story
again for 27 years until I located it
at the Houston Public Library in
late 2011.
A former news reporter and editor, I understood the rhythm of
crime stories — arrest, charge,
indictment, trial and punishment.
I expected the saga to unfold and
conclude over time. But I never saw
any follow-up. Still, I got an unexpected reminder that very day. In
mid-afternoon, my telephone rang.
A Person of Interest
“Hey, Jim,” said the caller. I recognized the voice of a family member,
L.R. “Matt” Matthews. “Have you
heard anything about someone getting killed in a robbery at the liquor
store out on Nineteen-sixty?” Matt
asked. Like me, he was obviously
familiar with the store.
“Yes,” I replied. “I just read about
it in the newspaper this morning.
Isn't that something? You still staying at your mother's?”
“No,” he said. “I'm back home in
Pasadena.”
After a little more small-talk,
werang off. Almost immediately
I began to feel a vague uneasiness
about the call. Matt, a confirmed
36-year-old alcoholic awaiting trial
and sentencing for his first drivingunder-the-influence charge, had
been staying for perhaps two weeks
at his mother's home near Dayton.
Once again he had been banished
from his own home in Pasadena for
threatening the lives of his wife and
children during a drunken rage.
And now he had returned suddenly
and unexpectedly to that home
close on the heels of the liquor store
robbery-murder.
Even with little to buttress my
suspicions, I realized he could have
been the robber who murdered
the store owner. Motive-meansopportunity is a starting point but
qualifies, at best, as circumstantial
evidence and certainly can't prove
guilt.
Matt had the motive — he was usually broke and always craved alcohol. He had the means — a .38-caliber pistol that once belonged to his
deceased policeman father. And he
had the opportunity — staying just
eight miles from County Line Liquor. The closest liquor store to his
mother's house, it was likely where
he bought his Canadian whiskey.
And when he drank, he took on an
overriding aura of superiority. Was
he calling me to gauge whether the
murder was getting its due publicattention?
From that moment, L.R. Matthews
became my “person of interest.” My
thoughts boiled down to a simple
notion: Contact the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office and lead them to
the suspect weapon. A ballistics
test would easily determine if the
revolver had fired the bullet that
killed the liquor store owner.
If it matched and my suspicions
proved correct, the case could be
solved. If not, the HCSO could
keep searching for the killer. And I
would have done my civic duty.
But, having little more than a vague
hunch, I demurred. I still hoped
for information about the crime.
Years passed, then decades. News
about the fatal crime was as dead as
the victim. Yet, it dogged my mind.
Had it been solved? Had I simply
missed the news?
From the mid-1980s and through
the 1990s, Matthews continued
to amass DUI charges, threaten
the lives of family members and
get banished from his Pasadena
home. He became a regular guest
of the Harris County Jail and Texas
Department of Criminal Justice
prisons.
When not incarcerated, he bounced
from job to job, frequently working for meager commissions at
fireworks stands during the Fourth
of July and Christmas-New Year’s
holidays.
Finally, in 1999, Matt was arrested
in Williamson County near Austin
for his eighth DUI. He would soon
learn why Williamson County has
a reputation for refusing to coddle
drunk drivers. He was held in jail
until 2000 when the court sentenced him to 35 years in the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice.
35
Paroled in 2006, he stayed for a
time at a half-way house, then
moved once again into his mother's
house. By the end of the year, she
would be dead and Matt would
share in her estate.
In early 2008 when Matt chose to
sell his share of his mother's farm, I
volunteered to drive him to Liberty
County to arrange for a real estate
agent's services.
Knowing our trip would carry us
past the liquor store site, I casually recounted my memories of the
crime. Of course I didn't remind
him of our long-ago telephone
conversation or mention my suspicions about him. I timed the story
to finish just as we passed the nowempty lot.
At the instant I finished, without
even a one-second pause between
my voice and his, Matt said: “Well, I
can guarantee you that's one liquor
store I've never been in.”
It was clear that instead of truly
listening to my story he had been
forming a diversionary answer and
sprang it at the earliest opportunity.
To me, the speed of his response
jolted me from the plausible and
possible squarely into the probable.
Matthews had expressed no sympathy or empathy for the murder
victim and survivors. Instead, he
seemed bent on tailoring his reply
to distance himself from the crime
scene— and from the crime.
But I recalled that he and I had
once stopped at the liquor store to
buy beer. And I clearly remembered
that long-ago telephone call zeroing in on the liquor store robberymurder. His hasty disclaimer set off
36
alarm bells in my head.
In that instant, I resolved to carry
out my plan to contact the Harris
County Sheriff 's Office and bare my
suspicions. In this unscripted crime
saga in which Matt had long ago
emerged as the person of interest,
I would finally become the informant.
Elected to his first term, Harris
County Sheriff Adrian Garcia reactivated the department's cold case
squad in 2009.Garcia named Sgt.
Eric Clegg to the squad. In November of 2012, Harris County voters
re-elected Garcia to a second term,
and the squad remained active.
In 2009, fulfilling the pledge to myself, I shared with Sgt. Clegg what I
could remember about the murder.
The crime was a robbery-homicide.
It occurred at a liquor store.
The location was the Harris-Liberty County line on FM 1960.
It happened in the mid-1980s.
The victim was the liquor store
owner.
I supplied the name, address and
vital statistics of Matt, my “person
of interest.”
I also gave the current location of
Matt's .38-caliber revolver.
Here are the facts I didn't recall:
The victim's name.
The liquor store's name.
The store's address.
The exact date of the crime.
In a follow-up phone conversation,
Sgt. Clegg said: “I searched all cold
case records from the 1980s, and I
can't locate this case. Call me if you
find additional information.”
It was as if the sergeant was saying
the crime had never occurred. But
I knew better. My memory may not
have been perfect, but I certainly
didn't have a history of inventing
or imagining events. His lack of
interest perplexed me, and I vowed
to ferret out the information he said
he couldn't find.
Over the next year, I spent uncountable hours searching the
Internet and Harris County records
and talking to Huffman old timers
for any mention of the robberyhomicide at the liquor store. The
result? Nothing. It was if Joe Floyd
Collins and any memory of him
had simply, well, vaporized.
Finally, in June of 2010, a full
year after I first contacted Clegg,
I placed this personal want ad in
the Liberty Vindicator, a weekly
print and online newspaper serving
Liberty County: “Seeking info on
mid-80s liquor store robbery/murder at Harris-Liberty County line
on FM 1960. Need to know victim's
name, store name, approximate
date of crime, whether solved.” The
ad included a phone number and
an email address. I paid for the ad
to run an entire month.
The ad produced near-instant
results. On the first day it appeared,
on June 10, 2010, a title company
manager from Liberty responded
to the ad and telephoned me.
Although caller Angela DeDear
couldn't recall the exact date of the
crime, she knew the name of the
murdered liquor store owner.
The victim was her step-father,
Joe Floyd Collins. He had owned
County Line Liquor at exactly the
location I had described to Sgt.
Clegg. And Floyd's wife was Angela's mother, Patricia Ann Collins,
who had made that futile crosscountry dash to her dead husband's
side so many years ago. Angela and
her mother had always called him
Floyd.
Armed with these revelations, I immediately searched Internet sites to
verify the information and find the
date of the crime. The RootsWeb
site quickly produced the victim's
name and the crucial date of his
death — October 12, 1984.
Passed on by phone to Harris
County Archivist Sarah Canby
Jackson, C.A., the date of death
and a name led her quickly to a
handwritten entry in the Harris
County Medical Examiner's intake
log for October 12, 1984. It read:
“Joe Floyd Collins. WM/43. GSW
of the abdomen. Hom.” Translation:
White male, 43 years old. Gunshot
wound of the abdomen. Homicide.
The entry also revealed that a single
.38-caliber slug was removed from
Collins at autopsy and turned over
to HCSO Homicide Detective R.S.
“Ronnie” Phillips. Thus began the
evidentiary chain of custody, a critical milestone in criminal investigations.
For me, the medical examiner’s log
gave the first revelation that the
murder weapon indeed had been
a .38-caliber pistol, the same type
of pistol available to Matthews, my
person of interest, that I had described to Sgt. Clegg a year earlier.
Ms. Jackson also forwarded a onepage document titled, “Medical Examiner's Investigation.” Although
far short of investigators' full case
files, it summarized the crime
details:
According to Detective Phillips, the decedent was the owner
and operator of a liquor store at
the above location (Identified as
the 5000 block of FM 1960 East
at the Huffman-Eastgate Road).
The decedent was found on floor
behind counter still alive with
gunshot wound to abdomen at 7:05
p.m., by a customer, Norma Zarsky,
who called Harris County Sheriff 's
Office. The decedent expired in the
presence of Ms. Zarsky and two
unknown Caucasian males while
waiting for ambulance. The cash
register was open and all folding
money was missing from register.
Angela DeDear would tell me 25
years later that the killer got perhaps $30 for his efforts.
The report also contained the Harris County Sheriff 's Office case
number — 84-137640. I immediately telephoned Sgt. Eric Clegg
and relayed the newly uncovered
information. I forwarded him copies of the documents Ms. Jackson
had unearthed.
Given these documents detailing
the robbery-homicide, Clegg excused his earlier failure to locate the
case's records, saying: “I didn't have
an address.”
At last, gifted with the case's critical
information, Clegg had an address.
But it was the wrong address. There
is no 5000 FM 1960 East in Huffman.
Re-Opening Cold Case No. 84137640
So,confronted in June of 2010 with
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office
case number and no longer able to
deny the case's existence, Sgt. Clegg
agreed to reopen the robbery-homicide case. He assigned Homicide
Detective Anthony J. Kelly to the
investigation.
Immediately I felt a tremendous
sense of relief. At long last I expected a quick resolution to my suspicions. Either the bullet recovered
at Joe's autopsy would match L.R.
Matthew's .38 revolver. Or it would
not.
The first two monthsof therenewed
investigation into Joe Floyd Collins's death passed quietly. Then,
in September of 2010, in a phone
call, Detective A.J. Kelly dropped
a bombshell: The bullet that killed
Floyd, removed at autopsy soon after his murder, could not be found.
In a flash, my optimism changed
to despair. The solution I sensed so
close at hand suddenly seemed remote, light years away. A black hole
had opened and swallowed forever
any chance that the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office had the ability to
thaw and solve this frozen murder
case.
Without a doubt the fatal bullet
was the Harris County Sheriff 's
Office’s most important clue in its
investigation of Joe Floyd Collins's
murder. How could such valuable
evidence disappear? I was stunned.
Kelly's Harris County Sheriff 's Office homicide division didn't have
the bullet, but the detective did
have a story. In 1984, Kelly said,
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office — the state's largest sheriff 's
department and third-largest in the
entire nation — didn't possess its
own ballistics testing water tank.
37
Instead, he said, the sheriff 's office relied on the Houston Police
Department's tank.
Kelly said Harris County Sheriff 's
Office Detective Ronnie Phillips
received the bullet from the Harris
County Medical Examiner's office,
now the Harris County Institute of
Forensic Sciences. He passed it to
the HPD crime lab. And the HPD
crime lab, he said, promptly lost the
bullet.
“I'm sure you've heard on TV that
the Houston Police Department's
crime lab has had a lot of problems
in the last few years,” Kelly ventured.
But the Houston Police Department's Lt. Alan Harris wasn't
nearly as anxious to let his office get
thrown under the bus for losing the
bullet. In 2011,Harris headed the
HPD's homicide evidence room.
And after reviewing his department's records, he offered a far
different outcome in the short-lived
history of the Harris County Sheriff 's Office’s mysterious .38-caliber
slug.
Yes, he said, Detective Phillips delivered the evidence to the HPD not
long after Collins's autopsy. Then
Phillips picked up the bullet the
very next day. Phillips retired at age
73 from the Harris County Sheriff 's
Office on December 31, 2008 and
could not be located for comment.
Wherever the fault for losing the
evidence ultimately lies, one of law
enforcement's most basic investigative tools — the chain-of-custody
protocol — was violated. Big time.
This rule requires documenting
38
and cataloging evidence and its
movement from the time it is first
gathered until it is used in investigations and trials and beyond
through the appeals process. This
precaution ensures that evidence
remains untainted and can fend off
legal challenges.
Lost within days of the crime, the
missing bullet meant that, short of
an unlikely confession from out of
the blue, Joe Floyd Collins's killer
likely could never be called to account. This cold case had become
frigid.
And it appears that Sgt. Clegg tried
to make sure the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office would never be
called to account either. His claim
to me in 2009 that he had searched
all Harris County Sheriff 's Office’s
cold cases from the 1980s without
locating the Collins case proves, at
best, to be shaky.
In a Houston Chronicle story in
December of 2011, Clegg praised
cold case squad clerk Rebecca
Sweetman for keeping track of all
the squad's 541 cold cases. “She
knows those cases,” Clegg told
Chronicle reporter Anita Hassan.
“She's just a wealth of information.”
Most likely neither Sgt. Clegg nor
Rebecca Sweetman could have
overlooked a crime so unique that
no similar crime had occurred in
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office’s
jurisdiction in the 1980s.(Houston
Chronicle, “Cold case unit clerk an
integral part of the team,” Dec. 9,
2011.
However, the Collins crime closely
matches a similar case that occurred in 1986 just one and a half
miles from the Pasadena home of
Matt, my person of interest. An unknown assailant mortally wounded
and robbed liquor store owner
Eang Peng Ngov, taking $1,000 just
two days before Christmas. That
case also remains cold.
Questions about the unsolved case
brought an odd response – and
little interest – from the Pasadena
Police Department's cold case
squad Detective R.R. Rogge.
Two weeks after revealing that the
bullet that killed Floyd had been
lost, Detective A.J. Kelly sent me an
email on October 22, 2010 closing
the investigation into Matthew's
possible role in Joe Floyd Collins's
murder. It read:
There has been no further
development in regards to this
investigation. Additional research
has not provided any additional
information or evidence which
links (Matthews) to this homicide.
I, along with SERGEANT CLEGG
have discussed this case as well as
the new information provided by
you and concluded that the only
way to proceed, if at all, would be to
approach (Matthews) cold. Without
any additional information or probable cause this may be more detrimental to the investigation than
good. The new information has
been included in the case file, and
if in fact (Matthews) is in anyway
involved, hopefully another avenue
will present itself to investigators .
..
The email made no mention of
the missing crucial evidence, the
phantom slug that killed Joe Floyd
Collins.
Suspect Dies of Overdose – Questions Remain
In another two weeks, in the early
morning of November 5, 2010, at
age 62 Matt would be pronounced
dead at Montgomery County's
Conroe Regional Medical Center.
Attending physicians said his death
was caused by mixing alcohol and a
powerful prescription pain medication. Given his many addictions, his
death came as no surprise.
Many questions remain, but a few
cry out for answers. Were there
other serious blunders or omissions
in the investigation of Joe Floyd
Collins's murder? Although records
aren't public, other sources offer a
glimpse into the case.
Angela DeDear, Collins's stepdaughter who responded to my
personal want ad andprovided the
initial information that resulted in
reopening the murder case, noted a
potentially huge lapse.Investigators
at the crime scene didn't gather the
customer tabs that Floyd kept. The
names on those credit slips should
have been checked by investigators.
Could Matt's name have been on
one of those slips?
Angela also recalled that her
mother, Patricia Ann Collins, told
her that husband Floyd's shotgun,
found with him in the liquor store,
had been fired. Supporting that
assertion, the last sentence in the
Chronicle story of October 14, 1984
reads: “Collins is believed to have
shot at his assailants but it was not
known whether anyone was hit . .
.”(Houston Chronicle, “Liquor store
owner slain," Oct. 14, 1984.)
Asked about the shotgun, Detective
A.J. Kelly pleaded ignorance. Had
the shotgun been fired and had the
assailant indeed been wounded,
providing blood evidence that,
properly preserved, could have
revealed the killer's DNA decades
later? Are the remaining case files
still intact?
Norma Zarsky, the customer who
first called the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office and then phoned
Patricia Ann Collins, had remained
with husband Henry at the liquor
store during the investigation. In an
interview from her Eastgate home,
she said she saw the shotgun in a
patrol car at the scene.
She also said that Harris County
Sheriff 's Office homicide investigators never contacted her or husband Henry for follow-up interviews.
So what are the chances that Joe
Floyd Collins's murder, plucked
randomly from 540 or so cold cases, could be the only Harris County
Sheriff 's Office case bungled into
oblivion? A handful of cases? Or
many? Odds greatly favor the notion that other cases lie hidden
from public review deep in the cold
case freezer for similar embarrassing reasons.
Finally, what internal checks and
balances exist in the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office to police and punish its own? Could the department's
right to seal records from public
scrutiny also conveniently shield
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office
from lapses in the quality of its
investigations?
Whatever the answers, the botched
investigation into the robberymurder of Joe Floyd Collins leads
to at least one inescapable conclusion: In a homicide case so riddled
with careless miscues and missteps,
the Harris County Sheriff 's Office
rendered itself totally impotent to
uphold its sworn duty. Did Floyd's
fickle luck or the Harris County
Sheriff 's Office’s gross negligence
cause this law enforcement debacle?
Guess how Joe Floyd Collins would
answer. If only he could.
Code of Silence
Robbery-homicides are rare at
liquor stores in the greater Houston
area. A check of archived stories
in the Houston Chronicle turned
up a single liquor store robberyhomicide from 1985-1990. (Houston Chronicle, “Murder suspect
sought,” Dec. 25, 1986.)
And it occurred in Pasadena just a
mile or so from the home of L.R.
Matthews, the person of interest
in the Joe Floyd Collins robberymurder case.
In 1986, just two days before
Christmas, a gunman entered P
& H Liquor Store at 7341 Spencer
Highway, shot owner Eang Peng
Ngov in the head and took about
$1,000 from the cash register. A
Life Flight helicopter flew Ngov, 36,
to Memorial Hermann Hospital in
Houston where he died from his
wound.
Just as in the Joe Floyd Collins case,
a customer found Ngov bleeding on
the floor behind the counter. The
Cambodian native had operated
the store for 10 years. Besides his
widow, he was survived by a 4-yearold child.
And, like the Collins case, no
follow-up news stories of Ngov's
death ever appeared, signaling that
the case had gone cold.
39
In an attempt to learn if the two
similar cases were related, this writer contacted the Pasadena Police
Department's Detective R.R. Rogge,
who alone made up that agency's
cold case squad in 2011.
The writer explained his interest in
the case and related details about
Collins's murder to the detective.
At the beginning, Rogge proved
helpful, noting that an initial check
failed to turn up evidence in the
Ngov case. He promised to look
deeper.
When contacted a few weeks later,
however, his attitude had taken a
one-eighty. His hostile comments
indicated he had talked to an unnamed Harris County Sheriff 's
Office cold case detective about the
Collins case.
Referring to both the Collins and
Ngov cases, he admonished the
writer that both cases were very
old. Dredging them up, he said,
might upset survivors. And Matt,
the person of interest, had died and
could never be prosecuted anyway.
Rogge also said that it might be
impossible to locate survivors.
At the time, the Pasadena Police
Department's Web site featured
four cold cases, three of which were
older than both the Collins and
Ngov cases.
And far from upsetting survivors,
a basic premise of cold case squads
is to solve old crimes and bring
closure to survivors. If cold case
squads held back due to concern
over upsetting survivors, the squads
would probably lose the public's
confidence.
40
As for closing cold cases only
through prosecution, any resolution is preferable to no resolution.
And finding the likely address and
phone number of Ngov’s widow’s
took a 10-minute search of an online directory.
Ngov's autopsy report revealed he
had been shot in the head, the bullet passing “through and through.”
So the fatal bullet was not found
during the autopsy. Detective
Rogge would not reveal if the bullet
was recovered at the crime scene or
whether it remains in evidence files
today.
Perhaps the Ngov case shares yet
another similarity to the Collins
murder. Like Collins, Ngov too may
have been killed by a disappearing
bullet. And, like Collins, he may
have been the victim of a botched
police investigation.
Tex Cont. Page 40
scope. Still, they sat smugly in their
college dorm, “talking smart” and
watching the storm from the safety
of the towers.
“Aaarrrgh!” Dagen roared, coming
up for air. “That fucker!”
For you see, Dan Dagen was the
main tormentor of young Roger
Caryl, now Tex McCord. The same
crazy cowboy sought for killing
four innocent people for much less;
still loose after an FBI manhunt
spanning several weeks and seven
states.
And Dagen knew the score. No
amount of marijuana could change
that history, those facts, or that
Karmic “debt.” Roger Caryl was
coming for Dan Dagen – he was
convinced.
Back-story
Dagen was my best friend from first
grade. We grew up on streets where
an actual lynching occurred – not
while we lived there, but the vestige
remained.
His sister was my babysitter. Dagen
was a fan of Dare Devil comics, The
Munsters, My Mother the Car, and
my favorite, Top Cat. I signed my
papers “T.C.” in first grade and he
signed his “Benny,” even though he
was neither short nor chubby, naïve
or especially cute.
Suddenly, heat lightening splashed
across Dan Dagen (not his real
name) in a dark corner, pulling his
head off a horrendous bong hit.
His long hair smothered in smoke,
Dagen looked like a monk in selfimmolation, drinking kerosene and
smoking dynamite.
Dagen’s family was the first to have
a color TV. His dad, “Big Mike”
Dagen, was our village’s first constable. Little Dan was not a bad
sort—not at all – but he had a thing
about Roger Karl that evolved into
a blood feud.
The overhead lights glitched, and
the towers shuddered in the wind,
causing Dagen to sneeze, spew, and
“oink” the dangerous ditch-weed in
one snot-filled blast.
The Dagens lived next to the railroad track. No more than 12 feet
from rails dissecting the farming
and factory town of Mount Zion.
Trains scrambled their picture of
“Bonanza,” and made glass rattle in
their gun cabinet.
There’s a lot you might infer about
pot-smoking having made Dan Dagen paranoid. I’d say that’s bullshit.
A known killer looking to settle
a “score” from high school would
scare some, but Dagen wasn’t easily
rattled. Still, it’s not like he could
call home and tell his law-andorder pop what he’d done to “Tex”
in high-school. There was no 9-1-1,
and with a dorm-room full of pot,
calling campus police was out of
the question.
When they finally squared off in
high school, the tension was palpable. In the interest of the historic
record, this is from a recent correspondence with Dan Dagen.
Here is what I remember about Tex
Carl. He had done something to (a
friend, Danny), can't remember exactly anymore what it was, pushed
Danny, teased him about his hair,
called him a name, but I had to
stick up for him. Tex was walking
down the hall carrying his books
and I came up behind him and
knocked all of the books out of his
hand, sending them flying across
the floor. He turned around and
gave me a look that could kill (little
did I know, huh?). We had a manoa-mano stare down. Tex backed
down, picked up his books and we
went on our separate ways.
Across the Great Divide – The
Code and the Trail to Crazy Man
(sic)
Like many legends, crossing the
Rockies with a Buck knife was both
exaggerated and understated.
The reality was worse. Tex was a
teenager toting a large bore rifle
with telescopic sights built to bring
down big game. The 7mm weapon
caused one deputy to say Caryl
“could blow a man’s head off at 500
yards.”
Sheriff David J. Collings worked
one of the many outposts running
north-south between U.S. 12 and
Montana 200. He was the source of
Caryl entering the kitchen of the
dude ranch holding a shotgun on
his hip, and a pistol and a couple of
knives in his belt.
Collings explained how Tex first
shot the two men he shared a cabin
with, then killed the ranch manager
and the cook. But, not till after
McCord told his victims, “I have a
few hellos for you and here's a hello
from Tex McCord,” did he begin
blasting away. Official accounts said
John Miller either shoved his baby
on the table or a chair. Caryl shot
Miller twice with a shotgun at close
range, but the gun-blasts somehow missed the baby. The exact
sequence of events was “confused,”
even to witnesses, but McCord’s
legend was already cold-blooded. http://mt.findacase.com/
research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/
fac.19751212_0000213.MT.htm/qx
That night Roger Caryl slept in a
nearby ranch house, but not until
he’d cut the phone lines. Deputies didn’t know why. Perhaps he
wanted a sound night’s sleep.
Newspapers across the nation
bugled that Caryl, an Eagle Scout,
had escaped carrying six weapons. He was being chased by airplanes and tracking dogs. Deputies
warned that McCord was a skilled
outdoorsman and a crack shot.
Two days later a truck was reported
stolen near Helena, 30 miles due
west of where Caryl disappeared
into the mountains. Hotels in
Helena filled to capacity when local
ranchers chose to spend the night
in town instead of coming face to
face with Tex McCord.
Roger Caryl, aka Tex McCord, was
finally caught in February of 1974
in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It was
less than a month and barely a mile
from my sighting of the wanted
poster. Police were tipped by a citizen recognizing his poster from the
local Post Office.
Roger’s father and friends got their
wish. He was taken alive and would
live to tell his story.
The Trial
Roger Caryl pled not guilty by
reason of insanity. His defense focused on the claim that he was not
responsible for his acts “because of
mental disease or defect.”
Caryl testified that the night before
the killings he drank some whiskey
and took a "red" (i.e., a nonprescription drug), and got "bombed."
He could remember nothing until
days later, when he stopped at a
motel in southern Montana.
Roger Caryl did not deny the killings. He claimed “a state of mind
incapable of forming the specific
intent required to constitute the
crimes” (from court documents
obtained online).
So, the court was asked to consider testimony concerning Caryl’s
sanity. This testimony consisted of
“events, attitudes and relationships
41
during his childhood and during
his employment at the Whitetail
ranch coupled with expert opinion evidence from psychologists,
a social worker, and a psychiatrist
concerning the presence or absence
of mental disease or defect.”
Standard crime procedural.
Roger G. Caryl was born on September 3, 1955 in Japan where his
father was in the Air Force. From
an early age he became obsessed
with the "Old West," cowboys
and gunfighters. He wore western
clothes, cowboy boots, and talked
with a drawl. He became fascinated
with early Texas history, southerners, and the Confederacy.
In school, Caryl graduated with
average grades. From time to time
he became a “disciplinary problem”
resulting in temporary suspensions.
Through high school, Caryl spent
progressively less time at home
and became more isolated from his
parents.
When Roger left home in August
of 1973, he headed west with a high
school friend. It’s not clear whether
they were bound for Texas, but they
ended up at the Whitetail Ranch
near Ovando, Montana, 75 miles
northwest of Helena. He told them
his name was Texana Jess McCord, “apparently from a television
program,” that he was from Texas
where his folks had a ranch; that he
was an experienced cowboy; that
he had been wounded in Vietnam
while serving with the U.S. Marines; and many other “fantasies of
the same general tenor.”
Soon Caryl was considered a braggart and a liar by many of those at
the Whitetail ranch.
42
In reality, Roger Caryl’s family
had a few small ponies on a fiveacre plot of land in central Illinois.
Testimony at his trial surfaced that
Caryl was never paid for his work
at the Montana ranch. He was
behind in his car payments. He’d
damaged his employer's truck when
he ran it off the road. Caryl had
been given three traffic citations
in town, which were unpaid and
further action was threatened. And,
for reasons never published, he had
shot his employer's dog.
Testimony revealed his employer,
John Miller, was going to discharge
him and have Tex removed from
the premises. Everyone knew it, but
it never happened. And it was the
incident with the dog that hounded
him…
Gracia, a psychiatrist at the Warm
Springs State Hospital. His diagnosis of defendant was: “without
mental disorder; episodic excessive
drinking; passive-aggressive personality; drug dependence, psychostimulants (reds); social maladjustment; unsocialized aggressive
reaction of adolescence.”
Perhaps Roger Caryl worried
because he had much to worry
about. He might be headed to the
hoosegow. When most young men
wore bell bottoms and talked like
Sly Stone, Roger Caryl had a drawl
and looked like a cross-eyed Gene
Autry. He insisted people call him
“Tex.” And now, some shrink had
just called him out on his “so-called
mental disorder.”
Dr. Gracia concluded on behalf of
the State:
Junk Science
According to his trial testimony,
Caryl “began worrying” on the
Saturday night before the Sunday
morning shootings. He went to the
bunkhouse and began to drink.
The two Akins and a "long haired"
friend appeared at the bunkhouse;
the "long hair" gave Caryl a "red"
which he swallowed. The defendant
went outside "bombed" and does
not remember anything further
until a couple of days after the
shootings.
After charges were filed, court
records state Roger Caryl was extensively examined and tested over
a four-week period at the Warm
Springs State Hospital. Caryl was
also examined and tested by a psychologist retained by the defense.
The principal testimony on behalf
of the state was given by Dr. M. F.
(1) that defendant had the capacity to understand the proceedings
against him and to assist in his
own defense; (2) at the time of the
criminal conduct charged, defendant had the ability to appreciate
the criminality of his conduct and
to conform to the requirements
of law; and (3) that the defendant
possessed the capacity to have the
particular state of mind which is an
element of the offenses charged.
On the other side, the defense
called Dr. Lester W. Edens, a psychologist, who gave his report and
testimony on the defendant's mental state. On the basis of testing and
examination, Dr. Edens concluded:
"…it is the impression of this examiner that this patient is characterized as a personality disorder of a
non-psycotic (sic) nature.”
Specifically, the diagnosis would
read personality disorder, antisocial personality type, Code No.
301.7 of the A.P.A. diagnostic and
statistical manual of disorders. In
addition to the primary diagnosis,
it is the impression of the writer
that there are underlying schizophrenic symtoms (sic) not yet
characterized, that is, Mr. Caryl on
occasion appears to present contaminated thought processes and
inappropriate mannerisms and
responses.
Additionally, with a tendency
towards periodic disorganization
of thought processes, his condition
has been and will continue to be
disabling, particularly when cornpounded (sic) with the induction
of alcohol and/or non-prescriptive
drug abuse." (Source: court documents obtained from the Internet
unless otherwise indicated—all
misspellings from the original).
(http://mt.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/
fac.19751212_0000213.MT.htm/
qx).
The near daily bullying and abuse
from Caryl’s school days was absent
from both reports.
The defense pleaded with the
judge to consider Caryl’s “personal
characteristics, his peculiarities, his
habits, his declarations and statements, his actions, conduct and
appearance, prior to, at the time of,
and after the act charged…and any
changes in his physical as well as
his mental state, his temper, jealousy, shattered hopes, desires, and
troubles of all kinds, together with
the opinions of experts."
In other words, your honor, please
regard Roger Caryl as “bat-shit
crazy.” And if that’s too nuanced,
consider he recently killed four
people for no good reason.
It did no good.
Judgment Day
Caryl was sentenced to two life sentences, to be served consecutively.
Another 10 years was added for the
wounding of the ranch owner’s wife
from the shotgun blast, but Caryl
was (strangely) never charged with
the murders of the Akinses.
Roger Caryl would be eligible for
parole in 25 years – in 1999.
Perhaps the judge felt two consecutive life-sentences were
enough. One source speculated
that it was a strategy by prosecutors in case Caryl was acquitted of
the murders of Miller and Judd.
http://helenair.com/news/emotional-hearing/article_6e3c7d3fd370-51e1-b5ae-43d1a45d301f.
html?print=true&cid=print
Caryl’s claim, that he was not
responsible for his acts “because of
mental disease or defect,” had not
worked. The trail to crazy, though
well-documented, was not sufficient. Experts could not agree on
how to explain Caryl’s behavior, so
the established defects, diseases and
disorders would not be allowed to
excuse it.
People had died, and someone was
going to pay.
His claims of amnesia were ineffective, because “motivated forgetting”
is viewed in the courts as too easy
to fake. “My client has no memory
of that, your honor…”
And, because there was no proof of
insanity, there would be no referral
of Caryl for mental- health treatment. According to the presiding
judge, the defense of insanity “must
be proved by a preponderance of
the evidence. Sections 94-119, 95503, R.C.M. 1947.”
Voluntary intoxication is no excuse
for crime as long as the offender
is capable of conceiving an intelligent design; he will be presumed,
if the case is otherwise made out
beyond a reasonable doubt, to have
intended the natural and probable
consequences of his own act.
The verdict was allowed to stand.
Guilty act: guilty mind.
The appeal judge ruled that someone as heavily armed as Roger
Caryl had a very strong intent to
commit the killings. From the appeal, “premeditation and malice
aforethought can be inferred from
defendant's act of arming himself
with deadly weapons, seeking out
his victim(s), and shooting his
unarmed victim(s) without provocation.” (Plural added).
Shooting unarmed people without reason didn’t sound crazy, or
perhaps crazy enough, to a Montana judge. And if it did, it was no
reason to avoid punishment.
Haunted Again
On August 29, 2004, The Helena
Independent Record published the
story of Steve Foundation, who was
14-years old at the time of the killings, and was hiding upstairs at the
Whitetail ranch during the shootings.
“I saw blood everywhere,” he re-
43
called.
Thirty years later, Steve Foundation
still reported having trouble sleeping and waking up with gunfire
ringing in his ears. So, he was
incensed to learn Roger Caryl was
living in a Butte, Montana pre-release center outside prison walls.
“When (the judge) says life, it
should mean life,” Foundation said.
But, in the case of Tex McCord, it
didn’t.
Epilogue
In 2006, Roger Caryl was transferred to Muskogee, Oklahoma,
where he has lived and worked
outside prison walls ever since.
What made a parole board decide
Roger Caryl had been punished
enough, or was now “well enough,”
to walk among us? Perhaps the cost.
His probation or parole costs $4.69
per day, compared with $90 per day
for an inmate in prison (Montana
DOC ISP Website, 4/25/12).
Caryl’s mug shot on the Montana
Department of Corrections website shows no clear sign of guilt or
remorse.
The heroic activities of the Western
frontier captured the American
imagination to the extent it was
often impossible to separate fact
from fiction. Men settled conflicts
with guns. Guns with names like
Winchester and Remington became
heroes. Zane Grey said if my gun
is bigger, or my hands faster, I live
and you die.
Along with violence, Jeremy Agnew
wrote that the incidence of alcohol
44
and drug abuse was high in the Old
West. Wyatt Earp’s younger brother,
Warren, once challenged Johnny
Boyett to a gunfight over a woman.
Earp was so drunk he forgot he
didn’t have his gun with him. Boyett calmly aimed and shot him in
the chest. (Source: Medicine in the
Old West: A History 1850-1900, p.
111.)
In this story of Tex McCord there is
no effort to make him villain or victim, simply to state the facts of his
life and incarceration. In the present telling there is no nostalgia for
the Old West, or for “the simpler
time” when a bully could badger,
torment, and torture someone with
little attention or rebuke.
This account seeks to be as objective as possible, neither omitting
the faults of its characters nor
exaggerating their talents. But it is
puzzling in many respects.
How high must a killer rank on
a scale of depravity to be seen as
insane? And, once locked away for
three decades, what happens for
someone to say they are “healed,”
and can now be free? As someone
who helped start those wheels in
motion, I simply can’t explain it.
Today, Dan Dagen is a successful
businessman and loving father,
living in St. Louis and approaching
retirement. He volunteers in the
community and leads a bible study
group.
The author is a quiet, taciturn
university professor, who writes
obscure stories and maintains few
close personal relationships. His
most recent documentary is about
a former student who stabbed and
killed a man fighting over a strip-
per.
Roger G. Caryl, aka Tex McCord,
lives in Muskogee, Oklahoma,
where he is said to receive regular mental-health counseling and
random urine tests. He is under
electronic monitoring, and can be
reached via his records officer: Robert Gunn, Northeast District Office,
3031 N. 32nd Street, Muskogee, OK
74401, (918) 680-6612.
Perhaps he can explain it.
Pretender continued p. 44
injured during the ground invasion.
Because of the perceived threat of
chemical and biological weapons
being used by the Iraqi military,
Dr. Burkle was told to prepare for
significant casualties. What no
one knew at the time was that the
ground invasion would only last
100 hours and there was no real
Iraqi resistance.
Dr. Burkle said he ran into Dr. Arthur on his first night of his assignment. In that exchange, Dr. Burkle
remembers that Dr. Arthur made
a comment that he (Dr. Arthur)
should have been named the senior
medical officer, not Dr. Burkle.
Despite being of lesser rank than
Dr. Burkle, Dr. Arthur claimed that
his doctorate and law degrees made
him more qualified. Dr. Burkle said
he responded by stating that assignments were posted and that he
expected Arthur to be in the emergency department the next morning. That would be the last time Dr.
Burkle would see Dr. Arthur.
In fact, Dr. Burkle said that to his
knowledge no one on the emergency medical team ever saw
Arthur perform any medical related
functions the entire time they were
at the trauma center. Ironically
enough, Dr. Burkle said that with
all the responsibilities he had and
how smoothly and responsible the
other medical, nursing and corpsmen staff were he never made an
issue of Arthur’s absence.
Dr. Burkle said he remembered
everything moving very quickly
while in Saudi Arabia because the
ground offensive ended so quickly.
He said that during the redeployment process a number of junior
officers approached him angry with
Arthur’s behavior and absence and
asked Dr. Burkle to court martial
Arthur. Since Arthur was not in his
direct chain of command, Burkle
told the officers to pursue the complaint if they still felt very strongly
when they returned to the United
States.
“I remember thinking that Arthur was a tragic case of an officer who thought more of himself
than his duty and would probably
not amount to much now that he
had tarnished his reputation,” Dr.
Burkle said in an interview for this
story. He now ponders how Dr.
Arthur became the top medical
professional in the Navy. Dr. Burkle
said no one at the trauma center
saw any combat action because
that was not their function, as Dr.
Arthur claimed he did, and found
Arthur’s wearing of the combat action ribbon and claims of combat
experience “incredulous and an
insult to those at the trauma center
and who did see combat action.”
Dr. Burkle said that a number of
corpsmen told him that Dr. Arthur
was stashed away in a tent with a
woman but he didn’t independently
verify that rumor.
Motorcycle Rider Extraordinaire
Arthur’s playing with the truth is
not limited to his academic degrees
or military career. It even extends
to his decades-long enthusiasm for
motorcycle riding. Arthur claimed
to various motorcycle magazines,
motorcycle related groups, and
other motorcycle riders to have
ridden 117,000 miles on his motorcycle in 2002. He made this claim
even though in 2002 he was working full time as the deputy surgeon
general of the Navy.
In August 2005, Arthur was involved in a motorcycle accident. At
the time, he was quoted as saying
that his helmet saved him from any
brain injury. “Thanks to the helmet,
I suffered no brain injury. My injuries are a pelvis fractured in three
places, a separated right shoulder,
and fracture separations of two
ribs at the sternum which caused a
pneumothorax.”
In an article that appeared March
5, 2007 on the Army News Service
about brain injury treatment, Navy
Surgeon General Arthur admitted
that he suffered a serious brain injury from the motorcycle accident
in 2005. "Arthur said he himself
suffered a traumatic brain injury a
year and a half ago and was initially
embarrassed to talk about the problems he was having as a result." The
article quotes Arthur saying, “Many
cases of mild traumatic brain injury
don't get reported because servicemembers don't recognize the
symptoms or are too embarrassed
to admit to problems with memory
or other mental functions.”In a
motorcycle related message board
discussion of Arthur’s accident, Ken
Markwell, another motorcycle riding enthusiast, said that Arthur was
unconscious for 20-30 minutes.
The Case of Wheeler Lipes
Another facet of Crime Magazine’s
investigation into Arthur uncovered that he had engaged in a near
10-year campaign to destroy the life
and career of a colleague while both
worked together in the Navy. In
one of his first acts as the surgeon
general of the Navy, Arthur used all
the bureaucratic power of his office
to stall and delay the awarding of
the Medal of Honor to Wheeler
Lipes, a dying WWII veteran who
was reprimanded during the war
for performing an unsanctioned
appendectomy on a dying man. The
appendectomy was unsanctioned
because Lipes was only the rank of
corpsman, not high enough to perform the procedure. That operation
was successful and the man lived.
Lipes is universally considered a
hero today.
What follows is Lipes’s recollection
of the incident as he told it to the
Naval Historical Department in
1999. “I had been up on the watch
and when I came down to the after
battery section of the submarine –
the crew's compartment – I found
Darrell Rector. It was his 19th
birthday. He said to me, ‘Hey Doc,
I don't feel very good.’ I told him
to get into his bunk and rest a bit
and kept him under observation.
His temperature was rising. He had
the classic symptoms of appendicitis. The abdominal muscles were
getting that washboard rigidity. He
then began to flex his right leg up
on his abdomen to get some relief.
He worsened and I went to the CO
45
[Commanding Officer] to report
his condition. The skipper went
back and talked to Rector explaining that there were no doctors
around. Rector then said, ‘Whatever Lipes wants to do is OK with me.’
The CO and I had a long talk and
he asked me what I was going to do.
‘Nothing,’ I replied. He lectured me
about the fact that we were there to
do the best we could. ‘I fire torpedoes every day and some of them
miss,’ he reminded me. I told him
that I could not fire this torpedo
and miss. He asked me if I could do
the surgery and I said yes. He then
ordered me to do it.
“When I got to the appendix, it
wasn't there. I thought. ‘Oh my
God! Is this guy reversed?’ There
are people like that with organs
opposite where they should be. I
slipped my finger down under the
cecum – the blind gut – and felt it
there. Suddenly I understood why
it hadn't popped up where I could
see it. I turned the cecum over. The
appendix, which was five-inches
long, was adhered, buried at the
distal tip, and looked gangrenous
two-thirds of the way. What luck,
I thought. My first one couldn't
be easy. I detached the appendix,
tied it off in two places, and then
removed it after which I cauterized
the stump with phenol. I then neutralized the phenol with torpedo
alcohol. There was no penicillin
in those days. When you think of
what we have in the armamentarium today to prevent infection, I
marvel.”
Jan Herman is a recently retired
Navy historian. He spoke exclusively with Crime Magazine about
the ordeal behind getting Wheeler
Lipes his Medal of Honor and how
Arthur did everything in his power
46
to make sure it didn’t happen. Herman was one of the driving forces
in helping to finally award Lipes
his long overdue medal. The other
driving force was Admiral Mike
Cowan. Cowan was Arthur’s predecessor as Navy surgeon general.
Herman said that Cowan heard
about Lipes’s story from his own
father, himself a Navy veteran.
“Everyone in the submarine corps
knew this story; it was kind of a
legend.” Herman continued, “I felt
that as the historian of the medical
department that this was a great
injustice.” Herman was referring to
Lipes’s not receiving some sort of
medal for his heroism that day in
WWII.
In the early part of 2004, Herman
said that he discussed this with
Cowan, then the surgeon general
of the Navy. Cowan told Herman
to do the research and draw up a
citation for approval. Herman said
that after the necessary research the
Navy decided to award Lipes the
Navy Commendation Medal.
“We made arrangements to have
him and his wife come up to
Washington for the ceremony. The
admiral and the admiral’s father
invited Lipes to the admiral’s home
for dinner.”
Unfortunately, as arrangements
were being made, Lipes developed
pancreatic cancer and the ceremony was temporarily delayed. It was
only temporarily delayed at Lipes’s
insistence, because he insisted it be
rescheduled as soon as he got better. In the meantime, Cowan retired
as Navy surgeon general.
Once Lipes got better, Herman took
a new request to the new Surgeon
General of the Navy, Vice Admiral
Donald Arthur. Here’s how Herman
said he recalled the conversation.
“A corpsman doing surgery,” said
Arthur shaking his head in disapproval, “I don’t know if that will
send the proper message to today’s
corpsman.”
“Sir, I don’t understand. I think it
sends a really great message. It says
our corpsmen are trained and that
they can save anyone’s life if called
upon.” Herman said he replied.
“Don’t put it on my schedule, I
don’t do that.” Herman said Arthur
replied and ended the conversation.
From that point forward, Herman
said that Arthur did everything in
his power to stop Lipes from receiving the commendation.
“I was very disturbed by the prospect that Lipes would not get his
medal in time.”
Herman said he attempted to make
arrangements for Lipes to receive
his medal despite Dr. Arthur’s opposition. Herman made plans with
Camp Lejeune and relayed those
plans to Naval Public Affairs Officer
Mike Brady.
After conferring with Brady, Herman then went to the now retired
Navy Surgeon General Mike
Cowan and asked Cowan if he’d attend a ceremony for Lipes at Camp
Lejeune in North Carolina.
About a week later, Herman said he
got a phone call from Brady.
“I have some very bad news for
you. He [Arthur] forbids you to go
to North Carolina and you should
have nothing to do with this,” said
Brady.
After having a chance to think
about it for a bit, Herman said that
he realized that both he and Cowan
were civilians and neither could be
ordered to do anything by Arthur.
As such, he made preparations to
go to Camp Lejeune to present
Lipes with his medal.
Upon hearing this, Arthur finally
relented, but upon the condition
that the ceremony be a private ceremony, unsanctioned by the Navy.
Vendetta
Another troubling part of Dr. Arthur’s past involves Dr. Eric Gluck,
medical doctor and Navy veteran.
Dr. Gluck said he first ran into
Donald Arthur at the College of
Dentistry and Medicine in New Jersey in 1979. Arthur was two years
ahead of Dr. Gluck.
The next time he ran into Dr.
Arthur was when Dr. Gluck was
recruited by the Navy to teach
advance laparoscopic surgery at
the Navy Hospital Groton Submarine Base New London in 1996.
This particular hospital is located
in Groton, Connecticut and at the
time, Dr. Arthur was in charge.
According to Dr. Gluck, he thought
he would come on active duty as a
commander but Dr. Arthur intervened, and only gave him the rank
of ensign. Dr. Arthur said that Dr.
Gluck was misinformed about what
his rank would be.
In May 2000, Dr. Gluck said he was
blamed for a delay in an operation. According to the allegation,
Dr. Gluck performed, “improper
non-operative management of the
perforation and delay in operating after the need for surgery was
determined.”
An investigation into Dr. Gluck’s
conduct in this case led to a larger
review. This initial review led to the
review of six cases. This review led
to the review of 50 of Dr. Gluck’s
cases. In 2000, Dr. Gluck was removed from performing surgeries.
This set off a larger investigation
of 60-plus cases that Dr. Gluck was
involved in.
By this time, Dr. Arthur had
reached the position of deputy
surgeon general of the Navy, and he
was the one in charge of overseeing
the investigation.
The peer review was allowed to
go on even though there were a
number of red flags. First, the peer
review was supposed to be in front
of five individuals who were all supposed to be surgeons, but only two
were surgeons. Second, the peer
review was supposed to review Dr.
Gluck’s competence but instead reviewed his mental fitness. The peer
review found that Dr. Gluck wasn’t
mentally fit to be a surgeon in the
fall of 2000.
Meanwhile, as part of the peer
review process, Dr. Arthur, and a
number of his subordinates, attempted to have Dr. Gluck committed to a military psychiatric facility.
John Donlon witnessed this evaluation which occurred in June 2000.
Donlon, 85, was a 40-year-veteran
of the U.S. Navy. He said that in
2000 he accompanied Dr. Gluck
to a meeting also attended by Dr.
Arthur.
In speaking with Crime Magazine
of his recollections of that meet-
ing, Donlon said he was appalled
at what transpired because subordinates to Dr. Gluck were making
recommendations that he be committed even though by their rank,
they were not in a position to make
such a recommendation.
That idea was eventually scrapped
and Donlon believes today that
this was in part because Dr. Gluck
brought him in as a witness to the
proceedings.
Following the peer review findings in September 2000, Dr. Gluck’s
superior officer, Gregory Atkinson,
reviewed the findings and issued
an evaluation in February of 2001,
clearing Dr. Gluck of any wrongdoing and ordered Dr. Gluck back to
work.
“I do not concur with the findings
of the Administrative Panel. Your
[Dr. Gluck’s] clinical privileges are
hereby reinstated, without restriction, at Naval Ambulatory Care
Center,” read the pertinent portion
of Atkinson’s evaluation.
Atkinson was relieved of his command by Arthur shortly after
issuing this evaluation. Atkinson
was replaced by Captain Francis
R. McMahon. McMahon is now
deceased.
Dr. Gluck retired from the Navy
in December 2002, but not before
Dr. Arthur forced him to take a
six-month’s supply of vaccinations
all at once. Dr. Gluck said that Dr.
Arthur threatened to dishonorably
discharge Dr. Gluck if he refused to
take the vaccination as ordered. Dr.
Gluck said he developed multiple
sclerosis a few months after taking
this vaccination, which he believes
was the result of what he took. He’s
47
currently being treated for MS in
the VA system.
Dr. Arthur retired from the Navy in
2007. According to Bridget Therriault, a spokesperson for Mainline
Health Care, Dr. Arthur worked
for Mainline Health Care in Philadelphia until December 2011. Ms.
Therriault said that the company
would have no further comment
beyond that for this story. The U.S.
Navy didn’t respond to a call and
email for comment.
All those contacted for this article
believe it is still not too late for
Dr. Arthur to face justice for his
many misdeeds during his naval
career. They point out that each
of his fraudulent degrees helped
him achieve ranks he otherwise
wouldn’t have received. With that,
he also received pay he shouldn’t
have received and is now receiving
an inflated Navy pension. (According to Goldstein’s Philadelphia
Inquirer article, that pension was
$137,724 yearly in 2009.) All that
would have been done fraudulently,
they argue, and he should face punishment for it.
According to public records, Dr.
Arthur currently lives in Brewster,
Massachusetts. A phone call and
FAX to the residence listed were left
unreturned. The FAX listed a number of questions pertaining to the
various accusations raised against
Dr. Arthur in this article, seeking
his direct response and input.
Westley Allan Dodd:
The Victorian-Renaissance Evidence:
A Review of the Motive to Murder Children
by Thomas A. Green
Kindle Edition available at Amazon $4.99
http://www.amazon.com/Westley-Allan-Dodd-Victorian-Renaissance-ebook/
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