UPDATE 10/20/09: Sources say Unruh's body has been claimed by an unidentified niece. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
~~~~
Howard Unruh, who has been called (somewhat errantly) "the father of mass murder," has died in the New Jersey mental hospital where he has lived since gunning down 13 people in Camden, N.J., in 1949. He was 88 and spent more than 60 years in the asylum.
He was not, in fact, America's first mass murderer, nor even the first one to snap, pick up a gun and start killing people. He was, however, a rarity, in that he didn't commit suicide after his rampage.
Charles Cohen, a 12-year-old boy whose parents and grandmother were slaughtered in Unruh's angry, 12-minute spree, became the most outspoken survivor of the so-called "walk of death." When Unurh was seeking less restrictive accommodations in the hospital, Cohen campaigned to keep him under the strictest control. He kept artifacts of the killings in an old suitcase and yearned for the day the seriously psychotic Unruh would be dead, so he could bury the suitcase -- and his memory. Alas, Cohen himself died at age 72 less than two months ago and was buried on the 60th anniversary of the shooting.
Ironically, Unruh was a WWII veteran who might now be eligible for a burial with full military rites. No services have yet been announced.
The story of Howard Unruh's rampage and Charles Cohen's extraordinary survival will be part of a 2010 book by Ron Franscell about survivors of mass killers.
Monday, October 19, 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Mass-murderer Howard Unruh is dead
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Real Texas Ghost Video: Haunted Hotel in Beaumont
The murder of Alice Benoit in 1957 remains one of the most monstrous crimes in Beaumont, Texas. The young prostitute was a favorite among the sailors, dock workers and wildcatters who visited the Hotel Rouler, the city's most colorful bordello. But one night in 1957, Alice Benoit was literally slaughtered by a jealous sailor when she spurned his marriage proposal. Her macabre slaying ignited a firestorm of public intolerance for Beaumont's famed red light district, which was soon shut down by police.
Recently, a local TV crew (the station manager asked that it not be identified) embarked on a story about the 50th anniversary of the murder that changed the face of Beaumont forever. As the crew prepared to videotape a reporter at the long-abandoned hulk of the Hotel Rouler, the videographer was startled to see a misty figure in an empty window. Later, he noticed that an open mike also picked up an eerie sound: A disembodied human voice whispering what sounds like a name.
If you want a real-life scare for Halloween, take a look at the video at BeaumontEnterprise.com and judge for yourself if this ghost really exists. Personally, I'm dubious. The image is verrry faint and the sound is hardly a whisper ... make up your own mind.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Not Lost Forever: New book details little girl's murder survival and search for answers
Then the news broke that just up the road from my house, just a few miles from my own daughter's kindergarten, the bloody bodies of three little girls were found in the county dump, their throats slashed. But one, little 3-year-old Carmina, was clinging to life ... and the unfolding news was pointing to a disturbing suspect: the little girls' own father.
Steve Jackson's latest true crime book, Not Lost Forever ($25.99, HarperCollins), co-authored with Carmina Salcido officially hits the bookstores today (Oct. 6). The publisher describes it this way: "It is a remarkable story of survival and healing after the 1989 murderous rampage by Carmina's father, Mexican vineyard worker Ramon Salcido in the wine country of Sonoma Valley, California. Left for dead at three years old — her throat brutally slashed — Carmina miraculously survived what is widely considered one of California’s most notorious crimes: the unthinkable attack that savagely destroyed seven innocent lives, including her entire family. At once a harrowing true crime story and the inspirational first-person account of a young girl’s strength, heart, and determination in the nightmare’s aftermath, Not Lost Forever is a shocking and profoundly moving tale of perseverance and hope, and of a precious life regained."
As such, she had no idea of what was going on around her: the search for her father and his capture and subsequent trial; the massive national and international response to her incredible story of survival, which at the time made her "the most famous three-year-old in the world"; or the impact of the crimes on what to that point had been the sort of laid-back wine country atmosphere of Sonoma County in 1989.
Still, Carmina wanted to tell her part of the story in the first person, which necessitated what I consider a hybrid of first-person memoir with dramatic narrative for passages such as the hunt for her father, Ramon Salcido, and his trial.
There is also some "as told to" sections from my time spent with her traveling to the crime scenes and reflecting on the past in which as the writer, I felt my observations were important to the story, too. Obviously, as she grew older, her memories of the bizarre life she was subjected to AFTER the murders was much fuller and so the first-person aspect is more dominant. We'll see if I was able to achieve a decent blend -- sticking with the wine country metaphor, perhaps something of a cabernet-merlot mix.
She was greatly aided in this by Capt. Mike Brown (Ret.) who had been the detective sergeant in charge of the homicide investigation team that day. He patiently answered her questions, and also helped her with her research, including gaining access to the police, district attorney and court files, which of course contained much more information than what the newspapers had written.So Carmina actually knew a lot of the story and was able to relate it to me in her own words and in context with her memories. And once again, Mike Brown was invaluable to me as well in regards to filling in those blanks from a dedicated police detective's point of view.
This wasn't one incident, it was four with significant distance between each episode and location. He continues to deny his culpability -- blaming it all on alcohol drugs and untrue allegations about his wife's fidelity -- and has beaten the system and remained alive on Death Row at San Quentin for 20 years.
So yes, if this was the standard fare of a truly heinous crime and then the machinations of justice, it would indeed be a dark tale with very little light with the exception of the work of the detectives working the case and prosecutor who sent Ramon Salcido to Death Row. However, I see it as Carmina's story -- a story about her courage and strength and, for lack of a better term, her indomitable spirit to overcome not just what her father did, but the misery of her life afterward without giving up, and then her quest to learn the truth and finally to confront the man who had done his best to destroy her and everything she cared about.
That she still laughs with such delight and looks forward to life like any young woman who had not been through what she has, is truly inspirational to me. I think anyone who is deal with the aftermath of a crime, or just having a rough ride through life, who reads this book has to come away thinking "I don't have it so bad. If she can overcome that, I can deal with what I have to as well."
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Dirty New Orleans: Anti-citizen government is worse than Katrina
An open letter to the citizens of New Orleans:
Everyone knows about Stockholm Syndrome. It's a psychological term that describes the behavior of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors. In some cases, they even see their rescuers as the bad guys.
In almost 30 years as a newspaperman, I've seen the Stockholm Syndrome play out in unexpected places, including the halls of government. Well-meaning people who likely began their public lives as honest, devoted public servants become compliant, submissive hostages to the institutions that envelop, hide and nurture them. In their minds, the noble public slowly transmogrifies into ... the unwashed masses. "These pitchfork-wielding peasants want to harm our comfortable systems and codes," they cry, "and we cannot let that happen!"
Suddenly, the ordinary citizen -- for whom these institutions supposedly exist -- is the enemy. Every ordinary action, such as seeking a day in court, requesting guidance on zoning, or just asking for a simple public document, becomes a terroristic threat to the very people who once swore to serve ordinary citizens. God forbid that we might be forced to depend on our city leaders to actually save our lives in the event of a natural disaster.
New Orleans -- in both its pre- and post-Katrina incarnations -- might just be America's best example of corrupt, anti-citizen government. The silos have been hardened to withstand a nuclear blast of public opinion (although, as you'll learn later in this essay, apparently cannot protect simple file cabinets). Many of the dysfunctional, corrupt, lazy, petulant, unorganized, non-responsive, despotic, Third World behaviors of New Orleans public servants are detailed at this site, so I won't repeat the lengthy laundry list of misdeeds and insults New Orleans government heaps upon its people every single day.
But I will tell you an uncomplicated story about my most recent experience with New Orleans city government, especially its law enforcement agencies. Incredibly, what should have been one of the simplest and most non-threatening open-records requests ever has revealed just how entrenched New Orleans "public" servants have become against you. Maybe against the world.
I am writing a book profiling 10 survivors of mass-murder in the USA, to be published in late 2010. Each story will recap crimes and the moment when the survivor and killer crossed paths, but they will also explore how each survivor has coped with the trauma and its ripple effects over the years. One of my subjects is a retired New Orleans firefighter named Tim Ursin, who was wounded in 1973 by mass-murderer Mark Essex at New Orleans’ Howard Johnson Hotel.
Essex was a racist African-American who targeted white victims (and skipped over blacks) during a famous day-long siege at the downtown hotel in January 1973. He slaughtered 9 white people (mostly cops) and wounded 13 more innocents. He shot Tim Ursin, who was only trying to save people from the burning hotel. He was himself finally killed with the help of a Marine helicopter in the area because the New Orleans police were outgunned and unprepared for such a crime.
My research on Tim Ursin’s heroic experience began in January 2009 with a letter to the New Orleans Police Department seeking access to general reports and photographs from the crime. I followed with a request to the New Orleans Coroners Office with a similar request for Essex’s autopsy report.
Nine months after I first requested simple documents related to one of NOLA's most historic and noteworthy events, I have received nothing. Zip. In those nine months, despite repeated letters, phone messages and emails, I have literally received ONE call back (last March) from a low-ranking media officer who assured me that she was passing my request to the NOPD Records Department and that I'd be hearing from them soon. Never happened.
Today, I called the New Orleans Coroner's Office, from whom I've been seeking similar records in multiple snail-mailings. Just before he hung up on me, badge-heavy and dyspeptic Chief Investigator John Gagliano -- to whom I had addressed three separate letters -- claimed he never got them and that all Essex records were destroyed by Katrina anyway. End of story. Click.
Two letters to New Orleans City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields have also gone unanswered ... even though Louisiana law requires agencies to respond to open-records requests within three days. Clearly, the law enforcement agencies of New Orleans remain unfazed by the law. It just gets in the way.
Now, I must why a government agency would hide documents that actually might make them look good? Could it be that they simply don't know how to be open? That ALL information imbues them with a power they cannot risk sharing with people (you) who simply can't handle the truth?
CitizenCrimeWatch.org has detailed frighteningly numerous government misdeeds in New orleans, many of them quite serious to the public health and safety of New Orleanians. But in my case, we're not talking about records that will blow the lid off city-government or police careers. It isn't an expose of Watergate-like proportion. We're talking about simple official documentation of a historic case that's been closed for almost 40 years. If ineptitude has cost New Orleans all of its pre-2005 historic documents, then you really are a Third World community. But I suspect it's just old-fashioned "we ain't gonna tell ya 'cuz we don't wanna." The barbarians are at the gate!
Your city's leadership is famously (and historically) inept and corrupt. Fixing that rests entirely in your hands. It's not just a change of mayors that's required, but a change in cultures ... and frankly that seems less likely than another mega-billion-dollar disaster in your city.
If New Orleans police agencies are incapable of protecting pieces of paper, how in the world could they be expected to protect people? If they feel no special obligation to the public's trust, how can they expect the public to trust them?
Bottom line, you shouldn't trust the government to always do what's right. You can't even trust them to do what's legal. Right now, New Orleans has a government apart from the people ... of itself, by itself, for itself.
The biggest mess you have wasn't created by Hurricane Katrina, but might have been exposed by the storm. If these easiest public service is made difficult, the core of your government is rotten. You're not the true enemy, but they will sacrifice you to protect their institutions. And it appears you're quite comfortable with that. Like sheep to the slaughter.
All my best,
Ron Franscell
Friday, September 25, 2009
Last Meal: Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger ...
Your last breath is only a few hours away. The governor isn't going to call. People are gathering outside to cheer your death. The Death Row chaplain has run out of prayers. The clock is ticking like a time bomb.
You have one final decision before your life is over: what will you eat for your last meal? Porterhouse steak? Beef Wellington? French nouvelle?
In Texas, where we keep painfully detailed Death House records, the most common answer is surprising: cheeseburgers and fries. Why? After 20 years in stir, where cheeseburgers aren't commonly served in the prison chow line, they are the most evocative comfort food in a Dead Man Walking's memory of the outside world. Or maybe they just taste good.
Double and triple cheeseburgers were on the Last Menu for killers. Most were prepared in the prison kitchens, but insiders reveal that they'll occasionally make a quick run to the Golden Arches to satisfy a last request.
But burgers aren't the only surprising final entree for the condemned. Hatchet-killer David Long had four BLTs. Baby-killing mass-murderer John Wheat had liver and onions -- and whole milk. Family killer Leonard Rojas had a whole fried chicken (extra crispy). Shootist John Baltazar asked for Cool Whip and cherries. James Powell wanted one pot of coffee. Random killer Jonathan Nobles requested communion for his last meal. And robber-killer Clifton Russell wasn't picky -- he asked for "whatever is on the menu."
Just like the outside world, cheeseburgers are declasse for the celebrities of Death Row. Serial killer Ricky Lee Green had five scrambled eggs, four sausage patties, eight slices of toast, six strips of bacon and four pints of milk. Born-again pick-axe killer Karla Faye Tucker chose a banana, a peach and a garden salad with ranch dressing. Serial killer Kenneth McDuff gorged himself on two T-bone steaks, five fried eggs, French fries, coconut pie and Coke. "Candyman" Ronald O'Bryan -- who poisoned his own son and ruined Halloween for many children -- ate a T-bone with corn and peas, saltines, Boston cream pie and sweet tea. Railroad Killer Angel Maturino Resendiz declined any last meal.
Last Meals are purely symbolic of society's mercy. They are generally served so close to execution that they have no nutritional value to the condemned. In most cases, they don't even have time to digest completely. They are simply a gesture to provide one last comfort or pleasure to a man or woman who'll be dead within a few hours.
So ... what would you order for your Last Meal?
(Want to know more? Pick up the latest edition of "Texas Death Row," Edited by Bill Crawford)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
To all the Under-30 Crybabies
I didn't write this ... I just wish I had.
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways …yadda, yadda, yadda.
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!
1) When I was a kid we didn't have The Internet.
If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!
2) There was no email!!
We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
3) There were no MP3's or Napsters!
You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up!
4) We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting!
If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!
5) And we didn't have fancy caller ID.
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!
6) We didn't have any fancy video games with high-resolution 3D graphics!
We had the Atari! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics were horrible! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
7) When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating!
All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with big hair or a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!
8) Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
And there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!
9) And we didn't have microwaves…
If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire...imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing or a pan with HOT oil and real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.
10) When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked-in … we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone - not to the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do.....hang up and talk to them later.
That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!
Regards,
“The Over 30 Crowd”
Friday, September 18, 2009
A peek inside my writing life ...
Read novelist Craig Lancaster's Q&A with me about books and literature at his website, A Mind Adrift in the West.
Here's a taste:
"[Validation] is when a reader comes up to me or writes letter and tells me how one of my books touched her in a memorable way. For me, this has always been an intimate contract between me and readers. Agents, editors, booksellers, publicists, reviewers, media are all necessary in delivering the book to a reader’s hands, but when the reader completes the circle and tells me something marvelous about one of my stories, that’s when I know I told a good story."
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Sticks and Stones: Let's stop being offended, fergawdsakes
America is all a'Twitter (literally) over recent outbursts by singer Kanye West, tennis player Serena Williams and U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson. Throw in the righteous indignation over town-hall protesters by suddenly decorum-obsessed followers of Cindy Sheehan and Al Sharpton and ... well, you've got a massive whine-and-cheese party.
C'mon folks. Was the normally prosaic path of your life significantly (or even slightly) altered by any of these knuckleheaded squawks? Sure, depending on your view, maybe you were entertained or enraged briefly, but really ... did any of them truly matter?
Long ago, media critic Jeff Jarvis spoke words that should resonate with us far more than "hope and change." He said:
"The cardinal sin today is to offend (and) the clearest badge of victimhood is to be offended."
Kanye West did nothing more than extend his brand. He's the quintessential gangsta wannabe who can't control his self-centered urge to blurt out inappropriate blather at exactly the wrong moment. It comes to him more naturally than foreign accents come to Meryl Streep. After making unscripted racist comments about President Bush during a fund-raising commercial, and other awards-show interruptions, should we really be surprised by Kanye West? His comments might have hurt Taylor Swift's feelings, but how did they hurt anyone else but Kanye West?
And, oh boy, let's get our panties wadded over a potty-mouthed tennis player! Ever since John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors -- now both cultural icons -- picked up a racket, it's been the template for professional tennis players. But suddenly we're shocked -- shocked, I say -- that Serena Williams has a ghetto mouth.
Of course, Joe Wilson's is worst of all. He said, "You lie!" during President Obama's speech to Congress (and was correct) but now the House of representatives stops its work on, oh, fixing the economy, health care, terror and everything else to admonish the poor guy who has already apologized to the president. And nobody admonished Democrats for booing President Bush in his 2005 State of the Union speech. If delays in health care reform were so fatal, how many people died while Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed her outrage that a Republican would shout at a president who was, indeed, lying?
Let's get past our righteous indignation about people mouthing off. Stick and stones and all that. We are not hurt, nor even significantly diminished, by these outbursts. What should be minor blips on the media radar are being played above the fold in papers and looped endlessly on TV and radio. Talk radio is nothing but a series of these inconsequential outbursts (OK, conservatives will say it's patriotism and liberals will say it's Nazi-racist-anarchist-greedy maundering, but to most of us it's simply inconsequential.)
Maybe we should take a page from Facebook's notebook. Wouldn't it be convenient if, when one of these outbursts erupts, instead of getting all panty-wadded, we could just "un-friend" the offender and never have to listen to him/her again? Can you imagine how Kanye's record sales would fall if the USA suddenly un-friended him in one fell swoop? Or how Serena's pay-days would be suddenly thinner if nobody was watching?
If we continue to just float on the erratic stream of pop-culture like idiot leaves, we will simply continue to be offended, which makes us all victims. Screw that (sorry, folks, but that's as offensive as I can muster.)
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Commie, intolerant conspiracy-nut Van Jones: 'What did I do?'
Van Jones, the green jobs "czar" in the Obama Administration, has resigned. He blames right-wing talk radio and health-care reform protesters.
Gee, really?
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that Jones harbored a belief that the Bush Administration secretly ordered or allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen. Jones admitted last week that he signed a 2004 petition calling for an investigation into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."
And it couldn't possibly be Jones confession that he labels himself a communist.
And it couldn't possibly be Jones' admitted membership in radical, anti-establishment groups like Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which based itself on the teachings of Marx and Lenin.
Nor could it possibly be that he regards all Republicans (in his own words) as "assholes." (I mean, do we really have a man who hates half of America whispering to our President?)
No, it must be talk radio's fault. What a joke. Being someone who really wants "green jobs" to become an important trend in America, I resent that President Obama has subjected it to the extreme views of this one political pervert. Like too many people today, Van Jones proves to be extremely ordinary: he just can't take responsibility for his own behavior.
Good riddance. Let's hope he's replaced by someone with a realistic, honest, positive view of America's potential.
Friday, September 04, 2009
CHARLES COHEN (1937-2009)
A second life well lived
A second life well lived
My friend Charles Cohen, 72, has died. He passed at 1:30 a.m. today and he will be buried on Sunday, September 6, in Philadelphia, not far from his parents and gradnmother, who were killed by mass murderer Howard Unruh exactly 60 years before ... September 6, 1949. The timing feels less like coincidence, more like design.
On a day I expected to sit with him and hear stories about his extraordinary life, I will instead attend his funeral.
Over the past several months, I developed great affection for Charles, who found himself suddenly alone in the world at 12 years old. Every time some deranged gunman would kill a large number of people, my phone would ring and we'd talk for a long time about what had happened. Of course, these killings aroused dark memories in Charles, but he always wanted to talk about the survivors and the families of the dead because he had a direct, empathetic connection to them. They were his family, too.
I will miss my friend, but tonight, he knows what we don't.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Ron Franscell will sign books in Milford CT!
If you're anywhere near Connecticut on Sept. 8, please drop in at Collected Stories Bookstore in Milford CT. I'll be signing my latest book, THE DARKEST NIGHT, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Even if you think I suck as a writer, there'll be free wine!
And there's a rumor that copies of my previous novels ANGEL FIRE and THE DEADLINE will be available, too! So c'mon down and say hello!
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Lost Letters of Janis Joplin A glimpse into the heart of a Pearl
Forty years ago tomorrow, Janis Joplin rocked Woodstock. If she'd lived, today she'd be 3 years younger than Tina Turner. At 66, she might be doing ads for AARP or some osteoporosis drug if she hadn't flamed out at age 27 from a heroin overdose, but probably not.
She was a rebel among rebels. She ran away from home in Port Arthur when she was 17 and went to California. Drugs and disappointment sucked her dry. She wasn't ready for the bright lights and the big city. Withered to 88 pounds, she came home to Port Arthur -- a place legend says she famously hated -- in the summer of 1965 to dry out, to regain her equilibrium and retrace her steps. The road had taken her farther from where she started, closer to where she was from.
But in at least 64 letters from Port Arthur in the last half of 1965, we catch a glimpse of a Janis Joplin remarkably different from the whiskey-soaked, blues-drenched insurgent of legend: She comes across as a dreamy, insecure schoolgirl in love, a homebody who dreams about her wedding day, reconnecting with her faith, being mesmerized by a man flying in space and distant train whistles, not being able to fix her hair right, and being torn between spending a recent windfall on yarn to make her boyfriend a sweater or buying a guitar.
The letters were written to her fiance Peter de Blanc. They'd met in California, but when she returned to Port Arthur, he went home to Manhattan. The letters were made public in 2000, shortly before de Blanc died of cancer in 2002. The 64 handwritten letters, some very short and others as long as 8 pages, were broken up into 28 lots and auctioned off, perhaps never to be seen publicly again.
They contain no bombshells, no startling new facts, no skeletons uncloseted ... just the private Janis, not the iconic Janis. You might never see what they contained, even in this blog, because the Joplin Estate has so far asserted its copyright ownership of them -- Janis did write them, after all, and as such they are like a lyric that is owned by her and her estate. I received copies of 24 of those letters in 2005 from a rock memorabilia dealer, but when I asked Joplin's sister Laura's blessing to reprint them in my newspaper at the time, her lawyers responded emphatically: No way.
Why? The estate feared it would reduce the letters' future value. In other words, they wanted to be able to get top dollar for the contents later.
So, I'm sorry. I cannot excerpt substantial parts of the letters because their contents are legitimately owned by the Joplin Estate, even if the letters themselves are owned by collectors. But I can summarize for you some of the 24 letters I saw, and in a few spots, I will quote her words that have appeared in other reports about the letters.
[Aug. 21, 1965] After Peter visits Port Arthur, she reports that her family likes him. Mom thinks he's very refined and "has potential." She tells Peter her hope chest is filling quickly and that she, Laura and their mother will soon begin stitching a new quilt.
[Aug. 24, 1965] Janis is panicked about money -- or lack of it. She wants some, but the bohemian Janis is suspicious of the Material Janis. Peter comes from a wealthy family and all she's ever known are "ordinary people." She wants a little struggle, but she wants something to hold onto. "I don't want to just live a useless bored life of ignoble ease," she writes.
[Aug. 28, 1965] Janis is delighted to report she got all B's at Lamar and the family got a new light green Volkswagen. She tells him wistfully of lying in bed at night and looking out her window, hearing train whistles in the distance. "It's really a nice sound," she says. "I've never been so happy before ... because of you."
[Aug. 31, 1965] Janis begs Peter to mail Spiderman and Marvel comic books that she can't get in Port Arthur, to fix her fantasy-escapism jones. She tells Peter, who came to be an accomplished recorder musician, that she was practicing on her recorder but wasn't very good. She closes by telling him her mother is starting to work on some linen napkins, "a wedding gift sort of thing."
[Sept. 8, 1965] Janis excitedly reports that a guitar-playing friend from Beaumont is going to take her to a Houston folk club where the two of them might be able to get a gig for $125 a week. Right after she mails the letter, she's going to Beaumont to sing in a small club with "an old spade blues piano player."
[Sept. 9, 1965] Janis has taught herself a few ballads on the guitar "but it scares me much more than the blues," she writes. She chalks it up to her vulnerability, but doesn't really want to go deeper into it before signing off.
[Sept. 27, 1965] Janis tells Peter she wears hose and pins her hair up and "boys flirt with me. Blush. I really like it." Her guitar playing is improving, she says. And she writes that she thinks her head is "really straight now" and she's happy.
[Oct. 1, 1965] Janis is worried about Peter, who has been hospitalized for a drug problem. She gently chides him, saying she shouldn't take tranquilizers because they depress him. She wants badly to be with him as "a wife or an old lady or whatever I am."
[Oct. 13, 1965] Janis giddily reports that she has bought the "first thing for our house"-- a set of cups. She tells Peter he may visit Port Arthur again, but warns that he shouldn't do it simply to escape loneliness because "you won't be lonely long & then you'll be stuck in Texas."
[Oct. 19, 1965] It's been a while since she got a letter from Peter, but Janis reports that she bought a new pair of shoes this day and sounds a little surprised herself that she spent the night before scouring the Sears & Roebuck catalog for her trousseau. She's made A's on all her tests so far. "Isn't that good?" she asks.
~~~
In January 1966, Janis Joplin and Peter de Blanc are no longer together. She leaves Port Arthur for Austin and then San Francisco, where she joins a local band called Big Brother and the Holding Company. It's still 18 months before her breakout performance at the Monterey Pop Festival and almost three years before Woodstock, but she's on her way at last. Somewhere along the way, the Quilting Schoolgirl disappears and the Consummate Rebel emerges. On Oct. 4, 1970, she was dead and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
She was only 27 ... the same age as singer Adam Lambert.
Her star burned bright for only 4 years. And although she visited Port Arthur in that time, she never really came home again. The little girl who lit a candle in her room every night to write to her boyfriend, who dreamed of being a bride, who once sought asylum in a place she reputedly loathed, whose personal blues were belted out in some of the greatest rock anthems ever recorded, became ashes long before she could become dust.
She was a shooting star, not a sleepy, permanent planet.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Ed Gein ... the musical?
By Ron Franscell
Ed Gein wasn't your ordinary grave-robbing, corpse-grinding, necrophiliac, cannibalistic, would-be serial killer. He could carry a snappy tune, too!
You might recall Eddie. In the late 1950s, cops investigating a local murder in Plainfield, Wis., stumbled upon a startlingly grotesque scene in Gein's farmhouse. Yes, they found their murder victim dressed out like a dead deer, but that was the easy part. They also found a mask made from the face-skin of another local woman; human skulls made into bedposts and soup bowls; four disembodied noses; socks, lampshades and baskets made of human skin; shrunken heads; a box of female genitals; and a belt made from nipples.
In a surprise verdict, Eddie was judged insane. Go figure. He died in 1984 in a Wisconsin insane asylum.
But like all good freaks, Eddie isn't really dead. He lives -- nay, thrives -- in our cultural consciousness. In both books and film, he was the inspiration for Norman Bates in "Psycho" and for Jamie Gumb in "Silence of the Lambs." His affinity for human-face masks was even aped by Leatherface in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
Now, Eddie will be the main character in "Ed Gein, The Musical," an indie film by Appleton-based DaviesRussell. It's being shot in Omro, Wis., because the citizens of Plainfield simply weren't interested. Go figure.
Co-producer Dan Davies says his movie will be historically accurate ... but will also feature lots of comedy and "plenty of great music." Oh yeah! Broadway-style show tunes with stirring lyrics like "I'm in love ... she's all cooked up!" and "I truly love you ... you smell of formaldehyde."
Ed must have some strange power over musical minds. Former Marilyn Manson bassist Gidget Gein took his name from Eddie. And there's also a grindcore band called "Ed Gein." Consider their 2003 album, "It's a Shame a Family Can Be Torn Apart by Something as Simple as a Pack of Wild Dogs," featuring the hit single, "The Marlboro Man is a Douche Bag."
Somewhere down deep inside where only God and Eddie Gein have explored, I want to be offended by this, but I just can't. If we can celebrate Sweeney Todd and John Dillinger, then Eddie deserves his screen time, too. In fact, I've got this tune stuck in my head:
her pituitary gland is a tasty treat.
Who do you turn to when you need to sup?
... I'm in love ...
she's all cooked up
Uh-huh.
You can now follow Ron Franscell, author of THE DARKEST NIGHT, at Facebook and Twitter. He is now working on his next book, an exploration of mass-murder survivors' experiences -- without music.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Help me find the Missing Mummy!
Ready to play Gumshoe?
While researching an upcoming book, I came across the intriguing story of the long-lost mummy of John Wilkes Booth ... or at least a fellow who claimed to be him.
It all begins in 1870, five years after the Lincoln assassination, when a young man named John St. Helen settled in Glen Rose, Texas, where he took a job as a bartender and acted in the local theater. He reportedly had an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare and remarkable stage presence. But when the daughter of a local politician invited a slew of U.S. Army officers and a federal marshal to her fabulous wedding, St. Helen mysteriously disappeared.
In 1871, he popped up in Granbury, just up the road. He again worked as a bartender at a local saloon and befriended a local lawyer named Finis Bates. Bates noted years later that although St. Helen was a teetotaler, he drank himself silly on one day of every year, April 14 — the anniversary of Lincoln’s shooting.
While in Granbury, St. Helen got sick and believed he would soon die. Secretly, he whispered to his friend Bates, “My name is not John St. Helen. I am John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.”
To be sure, he bore a resemblance to the famed actor and dastardly killer. His age (about 40) was about right, and his theatrical demeanor gave one pause. And he told a remarkable story of mistaken identity on the Virginia farm where Booth was supposedly killed by federal troops.
But St. Helen didn’t die. He recovered long enough to disappear again, reportedly leaving behind a pistol wrapped in a Washington newspaper dated April 15, 1865.
That was the last anyone heard of St. Helen — until 1903, when an itinerant housepainter named David George committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma. He’d again confessed his “true” identity to a local widow, who described him as an intelligent man who often quoted Shakespeare when in his cups. And the coroner discovered George’s right leg had been broken just above the ankle years before, and he was born in the same year as Booth. They wondered, might David George’s alias be a combination of two Lincoln conspirators’ names, David Herold and George Atzerodt, both hanged for their roles in the assassination plot?
George/St. Helen/Booth’s corpse was mummified and displayed for two years in the front window of an Enid funeral home until his old friend Finis Bates (future grandfather of actress Kathy Bates) came to identify George as his old friend, John St. Helen. He claimed the body, had it positively identified by Booth relatives, then sent it on a carnival sideshow tour as the mummy of John Wilkes Booth.
In 1931, a team of doctors and detectives X-rayed the mummy (pictured above). They allegedly found a broken leg and thumb, and a scar on the neck that matched wounds Booth was known to have suffered. Oddly, they also found a corroded signet ring in the mummy’s stomach — bearing the initial “B.” Suddenly, people began to wonder … could it be?
In 1937, the mummy reportedly attracted more than $100,000 from sideshow gawkers. Various carnivals displayed the mummy over the years until it vanished completely in the mid-1970s ... about the time the feds were cracking down on displaying human remains. Whether the Booth mummy was destroyed or is now in a secret collector's care, the central question is ... where is it?
~~~~~~~~~~
Personally, I am skeptical that David George was Booth ... but it's that sliver of possibility that intrigues me. Even if he isn't, though, maybe we can explore the tragedy of being nobody wanting to be somebody ... and ultimately being lost altogether. Whether the mummy is found or unfound, the book will explore bigger issues of culture and psyche ... and cultural psyche.
Who wants to play? Doesn't matter if you are a skeptic or a believer ... let the courts and scientists sort it out. If you have clues or special inside knowledge, let's see if we can crack the Case of the Missing Mummy. (And you thought it was easy?)
You may post here or write directly to Ron by clicking here
Friday, May 15, 2009
Thinking about a 'book doctor'? Check it out!
So how do you know if you need a "book doctor"? It's not always an easy call. But since close-editing isn't exactly the highest priority in today's book-publishing landscape, more would-be authors could probably use it than ever before. Here's an essay by a former book editor that might help you decide if you should seek a book editor's help.See one industry insider's view by clicking here.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Worst U.S. serial killer behind bars tonight?
After a recent arrest, a DNA database matched Thomas to evidence left in two 1970s killings in Southern California. Thomas, they say, might have begun a serial rape and murder spree as early as 1955.
Police believe Thomas might prove to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, with an estimated 30 cases in the L.A. area alone.
Stay tuned ...
Monday, April 06, 2009
16 Pages of Shocking Photos! Do you look?
Funny story. Not long ago, I was telling a fascinating little yarn about the autopsy of a deranged killer whose body was riddled with more than 200 bullets after pursuing police cornered him at the end of one of modern America's bloodiest massacres.
Then my wife nudged me with one of our secret signs that maybe I should change the subject because, after all, we were at a funeral.
In 30 years as a newspaperman and a couple true-crime projects, I sometimes forget my threshhold for grisliness is somewhat higher than the ordinary human's. I have attended autopsies and exhumations, thumbed through hundreds of coroner reports, pored over grotesque evidence photos, learned a couple cool tricks to keep from retching from death-stink, and seen more than my share of gore-splattered crime scenes. Most times, I know how far is too far, but sometimes I forget that I chose to see these things so you (the common public) didn't have to ... mostly because, trust me, you don't want to.
This, of course, totally neglects the voyeurism that is such an intimate part of true crime. From graphic descriptions of rape and dismemberment to uncloseted skeletons, many of us want to see the darker elements of crime and punishment.This week, while researching an upcoming book, I was given a crime-scene photo that actually caused me to gasp. Honestly, that's hard to do. The first thing that went through my mind was, "God, the publisher will never print that." The second thing was, "God, what if they want to publish that?"
Honestly, I don't know which bothers me more.
I have held forth here and elsewhere in the past that true-crime publishing has become largely pulpy and exploitive, splashing faux blood on bookjackets and promising "16 Pages of Shocking Photos!" I cannot believe that shocking photos are more attractive to true-crime readers than good, dramatic storytelling ... but it wouldn't be the first time I've been dead wrong.One of the classics of the genre is Gary Lavergne's 1997 "Sniper in the Tower," about Charles Whitman's 1966 shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower. It set a standard for detailed research and reportage, but more interestingly, its photo insert contained images of Whitman's dead wife and mother in which their actual corpses were Photoshopped out. Only the blank outline of their bodies remained. While I understand the motivation to show a little dignity in a genre that usually doesn't, I also felt that someone decided my constitution wasn't strong enough to see two tiny black-and-white dead people. Run the image or don't run the image, I thought, but don't manipulate it.
Bloody crime-scene photos don't affect me much, but I must realize I'm far more jaded than most. For me, color seems to be more provocative than black-and-white; yesterday's images are far more affecting than tintypes of Jesse James' corpse. But in the end, I would neither buy (nor refuse to buy) a book based on my reaction to a surreptitious glimpse of its photos in the checkout line. The images, like the adjectives, just add color to the movie that unreels in my head as I read.If my wife were here right now, she'd nudge me. She'd remind me that not everyone has inspected, up close, the logo on a dead man's socks, or seen a dead man's bloated body burst like a sad balloon on a hot summer afternoon.
And not everyone can come here to ask some of true crime's most devoted fans how they feel, so ... what's your feeling about disturbing crime photos in true-crime books and magazines? Are they truly off-putting or an essential part of why you read true crime? Will grotesque pictures influence your purchase (or refusal to purchase) a book?
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Parking cops and the dead guys they ... miss
In Gainesville, Fla., parking cops issued seven tickets to a 2001 BMW parked in a neighborhood for several days. It was only after a perturbed neighbor finally called to have it towed a couple weeks later that they found a dead guy in the back seat. John Waldo, 41, had been missing since the day of the first parking ticket.
Why is this important?
Well, we now have solved a true-crime mystery that's been plaguing us for years: Where's Waldo?
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Baby Grace: This killer mom is going to prison for life
Kim Trenor, the twisted mom of a dead child who came to be known as Baby Grace, was convicted in the bizarre murder this week in Galveston, Texas, and will spend the rest of her life in prison without any hope of ever being released ... and, one hopes, with her child's death-cries ringing every day in her dreams.
Trenor and husband Royce Zeigler (Baby Grace's stepfather) are accused of lashing the little girl with leather belts, smothering her under pillows, holding her head underwater and throwing her across a room by her hair during a 4- to 6-hour "discipline session" in 2007. Her corpse was stowed in a storage shed for 2 months before it was set adrift in Galveston Bay. Zeigler awaits his own unscheduled capital-murder trial.
Because the killer mom is a danger to herself and because Texas takes special care with all capital-murder convicts, she'll be held under suicide watch indefinitely. But Trenor's safety in prison might be a whole new challenge, with any number of inmates chomping at the bit to take a shot at a mother who helped kill her own baby daughter, covered up the killing and dumped the child's corpse in the Gulf of Mexico, then hoped nobody would notice her absence.
I believe facts have no moral quality, only what we project upon them.
Thus, it seems to me, a criminal trial is like a cultural ink-blot test, in which society looks at a set of insensate, numb facts and projects its own history, fears, impatience, insolence, clemency, insecurities, dreams — and nightmares — upon those facts.
In theory, we are not really describing the ink blots, but something inside ourselves. And what’s inside is every fairy-tale monster: A brutal ogre, a bloodthirsty werewolf, an elegant vampire, a bullying giant, a scheming devil, a predatory wolf, a sneering troll, or maybe just an abusive mother.
The archetypes of our fears have trickled into every heart. And when a crime captures the public’s imagination before a trial, the great majority of citizens are already projecting the monsters of our collective mythology onto the suspects.
Since no courtroom in the world is expansive enough to accommodate the populace of even a small-ish town in the least populated state in America, we select twelve neighbors at random to sift and cull the truth from evidence, testimony and lawyers’ speechifying. Placing our faith in randomness, we presume these 12 will reflect the psychology and conscience of the place we live, surrogates that reflect the best and worst of us. Their noble duty is to protect the public from the monsters among us. But they are charged with an equally noble trust that almost nobody else wants: To protect the monsters from the public.
For me, Kim Trenor is a monster of the first-degree and I won't lose a night's sleep worrying about her safety in prison. I prefer to save my concern for others whose hearts haven't shriveled and whose lives have not already ended, except for the rot.
