Owen Rooney ingested mushrooms at an outdoor music festival and became disoriented. He was clearly the victim of an assault that was serious and beyond anything needed for the defense of property or of a person.
His initial encounter with the police took place when he had two black eyes and was bleeding from each ear which gives rise to fears of a serious concussion. He accepted a ride to a bus station but left the bus station to seek medical treatment at a nearby hospital where he was clearly mistreated.
He wandered away from the hospital without the backpack he had taken with him from the bus station and without a wallet or cell phone. Not having been located in the Grand Forks, BC area the search was extended to Vancouver although simultaneous inquiries were made in Alberta since he had recently texted a young lady from Alberta.
The search is now focused intensely on Vancouver Island and the nearby Lasqueti island, a rural area famed for its counter-culture lifestyle. There are reports of him having sold Dream Catchers door to door on Vancouver Island. His Australian accent would be distinctive although his speech might still be slurred due to his injuries. The reports from Vancouver are doubtful to some since they all follow televised reports of an initial sighting that appears to be of dubious value.
He is young and used to traveling light but I would still have focused the search in the vicinity of the Grand Forks hospital and at truck stops in the area. I know he had a brain injury and had been improperly administered morphine which would have depressed his mental acuity even more, yet he left the exterior picnic table without returning to the hospital to obtain the backpack containing his non-functioning cell phone and other belongings. It is possible he merely became disoriented at that outside picnic table. Surveillance cameras at the hospital are few and do not have any recording capability.
The Grand Forks Gazette has editorialized about the inaccuracies of the social media and has stated that the Gazette will endeavor to provide reliable information but so far I've not seen anything in the Gazette about the police officer who contacted a man with cerebral spinal fluid oozing from each hear and merely drove him to a bus station. Nor have I seen anything in the Gazette about improper administration of morphine to a severe concussion patient much less to a patient who was so disoriented he could not find his way back to his room in a very small and uncomplicated clinic. I've not seen any explanation in the Gazette about the mysterious statements that rather than being a patient with a severe concussion he was only there because he had no where else to go. I've not seen anything in the Gazette about the confusion concerning whether the player had his wallet or not; he certainly had it when initially confronted by the police. I've not seen any Gazette evaluation of the SAR mission. The Gazette has complained of the inadequacies of the social media. Perhaps the editorial staff of the Gazette should be focusing their attention on the Gazette. I wonder if the editorial staff of the Gazette think that a Canadian who had just expressed concern over his belongings would get up from that picnic table and go ambling off to the western potato field and leave those belongings behind? Its not exactly an exciting destination and its not exactly well renowned as a good place for hitchhikers.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
WikiLeaks is now under DDOS ATTACK
And you thought only the bad guys knew how to orchestrate bot-nets to perform a Distributed Denial Of Service attack! That attack began eight minutes ago and is an attempt to keep WikiLeaks from releasing the massive document dump that will embarrass several ambassadors and probably foment a riot or two in Turkey. USA really does not want this WikiLeaks database to see the light of day.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thanksgiving...
No. Not for me. I usually spend my Thanksgivings bumping my chin on some foot rail and realizing that it is simply not a holiday for me. I think of phone calls not made and drink myself into a stupor. Carefully nurtured contacts with former White House personnel that were not utilized that night despite my desperate fears weigh heavily upon my mind.
Thanksgiving never was much of a holiday for me, now it is not one at all.
I do, however, wish a Happy Thanksgiving to others.
Thanksgiving never was much of a holiday for me, now it is not one at all.
I do, however, wish a Happy Thanksgiving to others.
Legal Families and Legal Fictions.
For countless decades the legal position relating to gambling has clearly been contrary to the actual societal position. We have legalized Off Track Betting and we have legalized lotteries, yet often a facade of not favoring gambling debts or gambling activities persists.
For a long time New York courts granted divorces based on adultery when it seemed strange that one of the early divorce lawyers always used the same photographer, in the same hotel room, in the same suggestive situation and using the same "other woman" who just happened to be his secretary's sister. Do you think the New York judges were fools? Or do you perhaps realize that the judges simply decided that the State's arbitrary and ancient laws simply should no longer be so strictly applied.
Now we have adoption matters before the courts wherein a stable loving two parent home is being deemed as not in the best interests of the child because the biological father's rights were violated. Wrenching a toddler away from a happy loving home is bad enough, but doing it in the name of The Best Interests of the Child seems to make a mockery of arbitrary and capricious judges who deem any whim they happen to have as representing the best interests of the child.
We have marriages in America these days wherein each of the two spouses openly have a few "friends with benefits". One husband has his female auto mechanic spend Sunday afternoons helping him restore an old car and then its a few beers, dinner and then sexual intercourse. Meanwhile his wife is off exploring some used bookstore in the company of a local author with whom she will have dinner and then spend the night at his place where she shares a closet. Social and sexual activities regularly take place with others and yet there is a married couple and issue of that intact marriage. One wonders just how far the official position of the law can be stretched before it snaps back and hits the hands of the arbitrary and capricious judges. As society changes, our laws must change.
We don't always have a loving home consisting of two heterosexual parents who provide for their children, but when that situation does exist, why are judges so determined to tear it apart? Is a single parent home now to be favored over a more traditional marriage? Is a miserable excuse for a man to be favored by the courts due to a simple fact of biology being weighed more heavily than persistent actions?
For a long time New York courts granted divorces based on adultery when it seemed strange that one of the early divorce lawyers always used the same photographer, in the same hotel room, in the same suggestive situation and using the same "other woman" who just happened to be his secretary's sister. Do you think the New York judges were fools? Or do you perhaps realize that the judges simply decided that the State's arbitrary and ancient laws simply should no longer be so strictly applied.
Now we have adoption matters before the courts wherein a stable loving two parent home is being deemed as not in the best interests of the child because the biological father's rights were violated. Wrenching a toddler away from a happy loving home is bad enough, but doing it in the name of The Best Interests of the Child seems to make a mockery of arbitrary and capricious judges who deem any whim they happen to have as representing the best interests of the child.
We have marriages in America these days wherein each of the two spouses openly have a few "friends with benefits". One husband has his female auto mechanic spend Sunday afternoons helping him restore an old car and then its a few beers, dinner and then sexual intercourse. Meanwhile his wife is off exploring some used bookstore in the company of a local author with whom she will have dinner and then spend the night at his place where she shares a closet. Social and sexual activities regularly take place with others and yet there is a married couple and issue of that intact marriage. One wonders just how far the official position of the law can be stretched before it snaps back and hits the hands of the arbitrary and capricious judges. As society changes, our laws must change.
We don't always have a loving home consisting of two heterosexual parents who provide for their children, but when that situation does exist, why are judges so determined to tear it apart? Is a single parent home now to be favored over a more traditional marriage? Is a miserable excuse for a man to be favored by the courts due to a simple fact of biology being weighed more heavily than persistent actions?
Friday, November 19, 2010
Ronni Chasen ... Contract Hit ???
Why my initial thoughts are a contract hit:
Anyone able to group five shots in the chest area is not experiencing road rage or any other sort of rage. Even at close range a person experiencing rage would be lucky to get two out of five shots into the torso.
No shell casings? Probably knows enough to use a revolver and therefore never has to pick up shell casings at the scene of his handiwork. Could he have used a semi-automatic and kept it inside the vehicle? Sure, but even if wearing earplugs that noise is loud. However, if he did keep an automatic inside the vehicle that again indicates a lack of rage because having a concern for shell casings would usually mean being calm and experienced.
Driving skill. No skid marks from braking or from peeling away at a high rate of speed. Cool, calm and collected. By the time do-gooders get to the scene he is not only long gone but he has departed the scene quietly. This does not indicate road rage. Did he have a kill switch for the tail lights? I have no idea but it is a possibility since even early arriving witnesses saw no other vehicles.
Location: He chose a good location and may even have chosen an optimal location. This is not likely to have happened as a result of road rage. Nor as some have suggested was it some sort of random gang-initiation shooting. He probably knew where to be waiting and had a spotter car confirm the route and timing signals, although its clear that the location of the shooting was on the route that she would be taking to get from Sunset Blvd. to Wilshire Blvd.
A gang initiation shooting is absurd. They don't have the patience to lie in wait much less in that neighborhood. A gang shooting would be spraying shells all over the place.
I doubt there was any object used to shatter the window prior to the shots being fired. Its difficult to do that anyway particularly from a vehicle. It also gives an alarm that would allow the victim to suddenly accelerate. It was just a sudden firing of at least five well controlled shots into the victim's torso. A sure kill. Then a calm departure without any tire-squeeling. Someone knew the area, knew the vehicle and the occupant, positioned themselves, fired at least five times into the victim's torso and left the area in a calm and deliberate manner. This was not some gang initiation. This was not some road rage incident. This was a hit.
Addendum: Concerning Dum-Dum bullets: Although there are various fine differences in describing hollow point ammunition and no precise information is as yet available concerning what was found in the corpse, it appears that the ammunition utilized was sensibly selected for the task at hand. It would penetrate a body sufficiently and cause considerable damage to tissue but would be unlikely to exit the body. The ammunition is readily available. There was no reason to believe the victim would have been wearing body armor and that therefore non-deforming armor-piercing ammunition would have been required. Once again, it appears that sensible selections were made and that there are no indications of a spur of the moment incident provoked by road rage or any sort of randomly encountered target.
Anyone able to group five shots in the chest area is not experiencing road rage or any other sort of rage. Even at close range a person experiencing rage would be lucky to get two out of five shots into the torso.
No shell casings? Probably knows enough to use a revolver and therefore never has to pick up shell casings at the scene of his handiwork. Could he have used a semi-automatic and kept it inside the vehicle? Sure, but even if wearing earplugs that noise is loud. However, if he did keep an automatic inside the vehicle that again indicates a lack of rage because having a concern for shell casings would usually mean being calm and experienced.
Driving skill. No skid marks from braking or from peeling away at a high rate of speed. Cool, calm and collected. By the time do-gooders get to the scene he is not only long gone but he has departed the scene quietly. This does not indicate road rage. Did he have a kill switch for the tail lights? I have no idea but it is a possibility since even early arriving witnesses saw no other vehicles.
Location: He chose a good location and may even have chosen an optimal location. This is not likely to have happened as a result of road rage. Nor as some have suggested was it some sort of random gang-initiation shooting. He probably knew where to be waiting and had a spotter car confirm the route and timing signals, although its clear that the location of the shooting was on the route that she would be taking to get from Sunset Blvd. to Wilshire Blvd.
A gang initiation shooting is absurd. They don't have the patience to lie in wait much less in that neighborhood. A gang shooting would be spraying shells all over the place.
I doubt there was any object used to shatter the window prior to the shots being fired. Its difficult to do that anyway particularly from a vehicle. It also gives an alarm that would allow the victim to suddenly accelerate. It was just a sudden firing of at least five well controlled shots into the victim's torso. A sure kill. Then a calm departure without any tire-squeeling. Someone knew the area, knew the vehicle and the occupant, positioned themselves, fired at least five times into the victim's torso and left the area in a calm and deliberate manner. This was not some gang initiation. This was not some road rage incident. This was a hit.
Addendum: Concerning Dum-Dum bullets: Although there are various fine differences in describing hollow point ammunition and no precise information is as yet available concerning what was found in the corpse, it appears that the ammunition utilized was sensibly selected for the task at hand. It would penetrate a body sufficiently and cause considerable damage to tissue but would be unlikely to exit the body. The ammunition is readily available. There was no reason to believe the victim would have been wearing body armor and that therefore non-deforming armor-piercing ammunition would have been required. Once again, it appears that sensible selections were made and that there are no indications of a spur of the moment incident provoked by road rage or any sort of randomly encountered target.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
No Country For Old Men
Okay. I saw the film. It featured Michelle Monaghan, the "look at those stems" girl from Kiss Kiss, Die Die. So you know I would watch that movie. I decided I would start the novel too. I hope to finish it but am suddenly having some tough going. The opening of the film shows a young man who is an experienced hunter happening upon the aftermath of a drug dealers shoot-out and appropriating the money for himself.
The novel is able to bring out more of the hunters careful analysis of his situation, his decision making skills and the wisdom of his actions. He correctly assumes that the last man standing left with the money, he tracks it down knowing that a wounded man won't get far, he takes the money home and stashes it. He carefully reminds himself that he has to be careful and not think of it as luck. He has to stay alert to danger because he knows that someone is going to come looking for that money.
So far, so good! Now why would a man like that, who has the loot and has reached a place of seeming safety go and screw his life up by heading back to scene of the shoot-out with a glass of water for the wounded victim who had muttered Aqua Por Dios? I just can't see a shrewd hunter who is so fully aware of the situation as being so weak and so stupid as to take water to a dying man. Yes, he does tell his wife "I'm fixin to do somethin dubern hell but I'm goin anyways". Sure, its a novel. The characters have to have flaws. Without the hunter being a fool, the novel would end right there. I just wonder how plausible it is that man with a whole lot of loot who has made a clean getaway would go back to give a drink of water to a man who clearly is likely to be dead either by the time the hunter gets there or very shortly thereafter. All his self preservation skills that he had just exercised suddenly desert him. Strange. Perhaps the essence of the situation is captured in the terse dialog wherein the wife says "Its a false god" and the highly competent, realist husband replies "Yeah, but its real money".
I hope I am able to finish the novel. I have my doubts however. I wonder too if the killer of JonBenet Ramsey may have made mistakes. Sure those mistakes have not yet tripped him up, but what sort of man was he? Did he have a background involving home intrusions in the dead of night? Or was this his first time? Did he leave the grandiose note to mislead investigators or solely to entertain himself? Did he make a prompt departure in response to the scream or was it planned right from the start? If we adopt a 1:00am departure, do we narrow the "window of enjoyment" so much that it becomes a ploy rather than a goal? Would a pedophile want to linger in the basement or make quick work of the task? Do pedophiles draw out their time with the victim or is the perverted sex itself considered to be simply a sort of foreplay for the murder? Clearly the real goal in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was indeed murder. Yet it is obvious that the perversion was a major and critical task. What conclusions are proper for us to make when we are dealing with subjects that are so alien to us?
Okay. I finished the novel. Not a satisfactory resolution of the issues. Life is like that. It was interesting. The triumph of evil is often a proper subject. The Hunter got into the mess because he went back to give water to a dying man. The Hunter later got killed because he was protective of a teenage runaway girl. The Hunter's wife was killed simply because the psychotic hit man had promised to kill her. Not entirely satisfying.
The novel is able to bring out more of the hunters careful analysis of his situation, his decision making skills and the wisdom of his actions. He correctly assumes that the last man standing left with the money, he tracks it down knowing that a wounded man won't get far, he takes the money home and stashes it. He carefully reminds himself that he has to be careful and not think of it as luck. He has to stay alert to danger because he knows that someone is going to come looking for that money.
So far, so good! Now why would a man like that, who has the loot and has reached a place of seeming safety go and screw his life up by heading back to scene of the shoot-out with a glass of water for the wounded victim who had muttered Aqua Por Dios? I just can't see a shrewd hunter who is so fully aware of the situation as being so weak and so stupid as to take water to a dying man. Yes, he does tell his wife "I'm fixin to do somethin dubern hell but I'm goin anyways". Sure, its a novel. The characters have to have flaws. Without the hunter being a fool, the novel would end right there. I just wonder how plausible it is that man with a whole lot of loot who has made a clean getaway would go back to give a drink of water to a man who clearly is likely to be dead either by the time the hunter gets there or very shortly thereafter. All his self preservation skills that he had just exercised suddenly desert him. Strange. Perhaps the essence of the situation is captured in the terse dialog wherein the wife says "Its a false god" and the highly competent, realist husband replies "Yeah, but its real money".
I hope I am able to finish the novel. I have my doubts however. I wonder too if the killer of JonBenet Ramsey may have made mistakes. Sure those mistakes have not yet tripped him up, but what sort of man was he? Did he have a background involving home intrusions in the dead of night? Or was this his first time? Did he leave the grandiose note to mislead investigators or solely to entertain himself? Did he make a prompt departure in response to the scream or was it planned right from the start? If we adopt a 1:00am departure, do we narrow the "window of enjoyment" so much that it becomes a ploy rather than a goal? Would a pedophile want to linger in the basement or make quick work of the task? Do pedophiles draw out their time with the victim or is the perverted sex itself considered to be simply a sort of foreplay for the murder? Clearly the real goal in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was indeed murder. Yet it is obvious that the perversion was a major and critical task. What conclusions are proper for us to make when we are dealing with subjects that are so alien to us?
Okay. I finished the novel. Not a satisfactory resolution of the issues. Life is like that. It was interesting. The triumph of evil is often a proper subject. The Hunter got into the mess because he went back to give water to a dying man. The Hunter later got killed because he was protective of a teenage runaway girl. The Hunter's wife was killed simply because the psychotic hit man had promised to kill her. Not entirely satisfying.
The Life of a Sleuth
Chilly morn. Dogs expressing various needs for food and affection. Cats expressing desire for food and demonstrating a whole panoply of new techniques for attempting to trip an old geezer who can't even see his feet much less the cats crossing his path in front of him. Desire for coffee. Three different containers of various blends of coffee. One container of coffee beans. Empty container of coffee filters. Well, will it be improvise or will it be to go without? Improvising sounds very consonant with an "American can-do" spirit but its hard to be so spirited when dragging oneself out of bed on a chilly morning. Perhaps I shall go without my Old Sock Coffee this morning. I'm already behind schedule as it is.
Crank up the cantankerous computer. Time to take the overnight twitter feed and vet it for all references to JonBenet Ramsey. Sort out the insults, the jokes, the threats, the utter nonsense. Will these references to a girl having legs harder to close than the JonBenet Case ever end? Its a stupid joke from an utterly stupid movie. Yet everyone making a reference to JonBenet gets indexed, categorized and investigated. An endlessly trying task of very little investigatory value.
Cold, tired, lacking caffeine ... but still plodding on in search of a killer.
Crank up the cantankerous computer. Time to take the overnight twitter feed and vet it for all references to JonBenet Ramsey. Sort out the insults, the jokes, the threats, the utter nonsense. Will these references to a girl having legs harder to close than the JonBenet Case ever end? Its a stupid joke from an utterly stupid movie. Yet everyone making a reference to JonBenet gets indexed, categorized and investigated. An endlessly trying task of very little investigatory value.
Cold, tired, lacking caffeine ... but still plodding on in search of a killer.
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