Getting Away with a Murder... and a Cover Up.

I'm not quite sure why this morning's log-on page brought me to a re-hash of an LAPD detective, Stephanie Lazarus, having been charged with a decades old murder based on her DNA having been found on the victim, Sherri Rae Rasmussen.

The police of course tried to say the investigation was a regrettable incident of tunnel vision but its a very strange tunnel indeed. Sure there were a couple of items placed by the door as if a burglar was assembling his loot prior to removing it, but a lousy VCR and a disc player sure ain't much to commit a murder over. It was quite obvious right from the start that although even burglars who do kill to get away from a crime scene when a homeowner returns unexpectedly that such surprised burglars primarily want to get away. They don't make a long, drawn-out battle of it that ranges over two floors of the home and they don't make it a massively violent and highly emotional over-kill.

Now it can be assumed that the loot was going to be fenced but just how much money does the average burglar think he can get by fencing a stolen marriage license? So don't tell me that the LAPD detectives investigating this "burglary" were too dumb to realize that a stolen marriage license means a highly personal motive and that the assembled valuable items were merely staging. I mean lets face it, the detectives may or may not have been corrupt but they most certainly were not bumbling idiots. They knew what they were doing. And it seems what they did was to ignore the obvious implications of the purloined marriage certificate and to avoid papering the file with excessive adverse statements. All the statements by the victim's family to the investigators about the prior girlfriend seem to have been kept verbal and not memorialized by the investigators into memoranda for the file. Even over the years, it seems that adverse paperwork was being kept out of the file.

Rising young star in the LAPD, rapid promotion to detective, eventual promotion to an elite Art Squad even though she knew nothing about art. Don't tell me that woman didn't have a happy and rewarding life after she committed the murder. Sure she is the clink now and that is not too happy a retirement for her so she surely did not get off scott free but let's face it, she sure fared better than if she had not been an LAPD patrolman at the time of the killing!

Intensely emotional overkill, protracted fight, shooting and biting and beating the victim. Attributed to two men, at least one of whom was armed. Yeah, LAPD, that really makes sense! A female homeowner returns unexpectedly and finds two male burglars one of whom has a gun so she immediately goes on the attack? And that theft of the marriage certificate! Why just think of all the dough the burglars thought they would get from some fence for that item! Its obviously not an item of any value whatsoever to a burglar or a fence or pawnshop owner. I can just see burglars searching out items of great and obvious value and coming up with someone's marriage certificate!

Tunnel vision? A mistake in the investigation? Inexperienced investigators? Nah. The LAPD was not that stupid back then. And they are not that stupid now! They didn't want to have an embarrassing result then, so it was an investigation that went nowhere. Either that or the investigators really and truly thought that a marriage certificate was an item that a burglar would truly want to steal. Which of those two alternatives do you think is more reasonable?

The Fifth Estate segment on Owen Rooney

Please understand that I have great respect for The Fifth Estate and for the Canadian documentary series entitled The Fifth Estate. I've long admired the program but am disappointed in the quality of the segment that was recently aired in relation to the Owen Rooney case.

There is always a difficult situation when someone is missing. How much time and effort will be spent? What resources will be utilized? What risks will searchers be exposed to? What funds will be expended? What avenues appear most likely to be fruitful? What steps should have priority and what should be back-burnered?

I've posted before about the courage of the Derek Kelly family in immediately insisting that the RCMP consider their "missing person" to be a victim of homicide. Do you think the Derek Kelly family didn't want their Derek to be alive. I'm sure they did. Desperately. Yet they faced facts and they faced the RCMP which, if I recall correctly, took two years to officially term it a homicide.

I've posted about Eric Wilson's family. This decades old case is relevant solely because The Fifth Estate's award winning documentary on it focused mainly on the attitude of law enforcement versus the attitude the family was encouraged to take.

Was the Fifth Estate's program on the missing Owen Rooney a service to the community and to the family? There are different viewpoints on that matter. A family wants to have hope. Journalists are not supposed to go around dashing hopes much less taking pleasure in doing it. Would the family and the Fifth Estate benefit from a different emphasis? I don't know. I think so. I think it is the duty of the Fifth Estate to make a judgment and to exercise discretion rather than merely take press releases from the police and publicize them unedited and unscrutinized. A sense of balance, a sense of fairness and a bit of common sense should be the emphasis of the Fifth Estate. A great many things are possible, some are clearly more probable than others but an analysis should not avoid that which is unpleasant to contemplate.

The Eric Wilson documentary won an award. I don't think the recent show on Owen Rooney will be winning any journalism awards. Fair and balanced? We are not here to split an already fine hair. The RCMP did poorly in the Derek Kelly case and the Fifth Estate was not there to expose the RCMP to public scrutiny. The RCMP has done poorly in the Owen Rooney case and once again the RCMP has not been subjected to public scrutiny by the Fifth Estate.

Q-Ships: The Only Alternative in the Indian Ocean.

Although in wartime merchant vessels are often armed with modest defenses its obvious that such guns and gun-crews are hardly a major deterrent to attack. Q-ship was the term used to designate a heavily armed merchant vessel that was acting as a decoy. As enemy craft approached the Q-ship and its crew would act as a merchant vessel until the enemy was close enough and then the deck cargo and cabin walls would drop and experienced gun crews would engage the enemy at point-blank range.

With some of these pirate attacks being conducted by skiffs filled with 20 armed men, its clear a yacht has no real chance of defense. Add the fact that several attacks utilize two or three skiffs approaching from different directions and even if each skiff has only two or three armed men aboard it is still an indefensible situation for the average yacht owner who has too few weapons aboard and too few crewmen to operate them. When one considers the nature of the weaponry involved, the range, accuracy and the nature of the shooting platform, its obvious that yachts really are virtually defenseless.

The only thing that will work in the Indian Ocean is a series of decoy yachts each equipped with sufficient weaponry and sufficient personnel to immediately deal with the approaching skiffs and their crew in a permanently effective manner. Nothing else is going to end this situation. The politicians lack courage to do ought but bluster and rattle sabers, the military lack resources and are committed to more valuable protective duty. The direct and immediately effective action can only be taken by a well-armed, but also well disguised, yacht.

It is obvious that direct and immediately effective action against the pirate skiffs and their associated mother ships would be the nautical equivalent of targeting drug mule peasants employed by major narcotic traffickers. It is well known that the Somali pirates are not themselves entrepreneurs but are merely employees of a variety of land-based businessmen. Eventually there would certainly be escalation by the warlords who see their income diminishing. Bring it on!

Piracy: A tradition of the Sea

Piracy is a tradition of the sea with many cultures considering that harvesting the bounty of the surface of the ocean to be no different than harvesting the bounty of its depths.

The FoolsGold posting on a yachting blog about a nation's viewpoints on piracy was deleted by the blogging yachties who didn't care to be reminded of the truth at this particular time.

The post was nothing more than a description of a nation wherein people in its very agrarian southeast sector openly supported piracy with even the wives of wealthy landowners routinely attending open-air auctions of pirate booty. Also discussed in the posting was the more industrialized northeast sector of the country wherein major merchant firms in three separate cities make a fortune selling weapons and various naval stores to pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean. On the outskirts of that country's northeast sector there is a common practice of showing false lights on moonless nights so that sailing vessels will think it to be a lightship and will turn onto a rocky shore. The blog post mentioned that locals who harvested the cargo obviously had no particular interest in the continued safety of any sailors who happened to make it to shore alive.

This blog post that was deleted by the yachties happened to end with the tag line that the nation being described was quite obviously the United States during the 19th century.

How often we forget our history. England likes to take great pride in its seafaring tradition. Well, let us not forget that the English Crown took all property if there were "but one man or beast" aboard a shipwrecked vessel. It was therefore quite common for residents in the area to make certain that shipwrecked sailors did not survive, lest the cargo be taken by Crown revenue agents rather than local merchants.

Traditions of the sea? Or simply a very convenient lapse of memory on our part?

JonBenet Ramsey and Piracy off the Somalia Coast.

One of my sources in the investigation of the JonBenet Ramsey murder is a stew whose travels and knowledge of linguistics compelled her to provide me with certain information concerning the ransom note's stylistic comparison with Malaysian English.

Although now a stew aboard a motor yacht, she is a blue water sailor and is familiar with sailing yachts. The entire yachting world is much abuzz about the recent murder of the M/V Cheetah Moon's chef in St. Maartin as well as the seizure of the S/V Quest and the S/V Ing by Somalia pirates.

I have wondered why yachts would take risks. I'm aware that some yachts have transited these waters in the company of other yachts and of course it is well known that many yachts turn off their running lights and AIS gear when transiting waters anywhere near the Somalia coast. It is also well known that certain security teams are taken aboard temporarily but only superyachts can afford to take such precautionary measures.

The family aboard the S/V ING was following the officially published route. There had been previous piracy attacks but these had been confined to large commercial vessels that are the targets so cherished by pirates because insurance companies are so certain to pay well for the release of the vessel and its cargo. The ING did have the option of sailing a different route but such a deviation would have placed it closer to the Somali shore and would have exposed it to danger for a greater period of time. Also a small sailboat with such a limited supply of fresh water aboard would not be well-advised to make such a deviation as it would mean standing into danger as regards the expected tracks of cyclones during cyclone season.

Even a cursory review of naval history during World War Two shows how easy it is for entire fleets to get lost out there despite all the surface vessels and aircraft that are seeking them. Its a big ocean. Unfortunately, sometimes even a small yacht trying desperately to simply slip quietly by can be found by pirates.

One notable problem concerning piracy is that it is legally a crime that requires an attack on a vessel that is located in international waters. Any attack taking place in territorial waters rather than on the high seas is a matter of classification and publication by that nation. Many nations do not keep a tally of yacht related crimes and, as is quite common in tourist destinations, crime reports are always prepared with a view toward the local economy.

Note: Yachties seem to think that convoys provide a measure of safety but its quite obvious that they do not. Many sailors seem to think that a convoy will be protected more promptly by the Naval Forces in the area but that is unlikely since the naval ships are assigned particular stations to protect large value commercial ships. For most incidents a helicopter would take over thirty minutes to be on station and a destroyer that deviated from its sector would take two hours to get on scene. Its just not going to happen. Yachts are essentially on their own.