April 8, 2013

Since the “War on Drugs” was launched in the mid-1980s, accompanied by mandatory-minimum sentences for drug offenders, the U.S. prison population has exploded from under 900,000 to 2.3 million prisoners. With correction budgets consumed by building new prisons and staffing them, rehabilitation programs were slashed. Prisons all over the nation turned – with disastrous results – to the use of solitary confinement as its primary means of control. More than 80,000 inmates are being subjected to long-term solitary confinement in the United States. Not one of them will leave prison undamaged by the experience.

                                                      by Shawn R. Griffith

I was 18 years old, sitting in a solitary confinement cell. My confinement was not a result of assaultive behavior, but instead a form of retaliation for refusing to jog. I was in one of the “Boot Camp” prisons so popular in the 1990s. This was a shock-jock program modeled after the Marines’ real boot camps, like the one at Camp Lejeune. Ostensibly, it was designed by corrections officials to make the initial incarceration of youthful offenders so brutal that it would change their ways and divert them from future crime and the institutional lifestyle.

Unfortunately, for political reasons, it was also calculated to advance only the least offensive youths for early release. The others, like me with an armed-burglary charge, were pawns to make the program appear as if it were functioning as it was intended. The most sadistic guards from the State of Florida were brought in, and they pushed the young men who they did not want to complete the program to the brink of death. When I finally refused to jog anymore, actually collapsing of heat stroke, I was taken to medical where they registered a fever of 102.5. I was given ice for my forehead and sent to the dreaded confinement for refusing orders.

April 5, 2013

From George Washington through Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. presidents followed a relentless policy of removing Native Americans from their lands. President Andrew Jackson codified ethnic cleansing into law when he signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830.

by David Robb

In 1830, it was called “The Indian Removal Act.” Today it’s called “ethnic cleansing,” which is considered a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court. But for nearly 100 years it was the stated policy of every U.S. presidents from Washington to Grant – including Lincoln.

Ethnic cleansing was codified into U.S. law in 1830 when President Andrew Jackson asked Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act. This allowed him to legally relocate all Native Americans who were then living east of the Mississippi to the west side of the river. The result: The Trail of Tears, in which as many as 10,000 Indians died during the forced march westward.

To this day, many Native Americans will not carry $20 bills.

April 4, 2013

D.B. Cooper

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.

April 1, 2013

Customs come and go but people’s fascination with the diabolical and the deadly is a constant throughout history. Greed, pride, and lust are among the most resilient of the Seven Deadly Sins. These perennial human failings help to power the stories of the books under review here, whether they take place in antiquity or in our own time period. Here are five books that are certain to captivate any aficionado of the true crime genre.

by Denise Noe

March 28, 2013

Dr. Donald C. Arthur

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.

March 25, 2013

Roger Caryl aka Tex McCord

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 suffered 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, 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 19^th-century 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. 

March 18, 2013

"I am the bullet in the chamber.  Just do it".-- Nike sports advertisement featuring 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.