A Commentary on "Conspiracy Theorists"

I just want to take a moment to discuss the term “conspiracy theorist”. Obviously, with regards to the assassination of President Kennedy I am a believer in a conspiracy. However, I believe there was a conspiracy involved after studying the case for over 20 years. I have studied, in depth, the evidence and what the case against Lee Harvey Oswald would be, without the biases of those in power and those who would benefit in having him take the fall and presumed guilty in the public’s mind. Having studied the established suspect and been convinced beyond any doubt that he was not an assassin and that if he was involved he was involved which others, which has been denied by the official conclusions, the conclusion to be reached has to be that a conspiracy took place.
I believe in certain cases in our country that there was a conspiracy that took place. In further studies I have become convinced that the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were also conspiracies (again, after ample problems have arisen in each case). In recent cases, I am thoroughly convinced that the Oklahoma City Bombing and, extremely recently, I believe there was conspiratorial activity regarding the Sandy Hook shootings last year (I am planning on writing something about what I have learned about that case later on). But I don’t believe that every single American tragedy or assassination/assassination attempt that has ever occurred has some conspiracy attached to it. I do find it interesting that most successful assassination attempts have been followed by sloppy/compromised police investigations and extensive evidence of conspiratorial activity and yet many unsuccessful assassination attempts, such as the two perpetrated against former President Gerald Ford, have been shown to legitimately be the workings of a lone assassin (which has been posed in all these major assassination from the 20th Century).
Now it is often the objective of lone assassination theorists and particularly those in the media who have the obvious intention of following the official line, especially since most media is owned and controlled by those in high places, to constantly belittle and defile those who support even one conspiracy of the multiples that have likely occurred. It is always presented that conspiracy theorists are these wild people who think there is a conspiracy behind everything, and granted there are people out there like this who believe there is a conspiracy for everything (such as the quirky rumors that somehow the Bush Administration was responsible for Hurricane Katrina happened… his responsibilities in the aftermath certainly leaves something to be desired, but it’s insane to act like he or any single human being or political entity could create a massive hurricane, of which several happen every year). But that is the objective pushed by many, that everyone who believes in any type of conspiratorial activity are all exactly the same, and they’re all loose cannon, deranged lunatics. Such is an outright lie and doesn’t take more than five minutes to see through if you’re actually looking. It’s also incredibly disrespectful for those conspiracy supporters who have reached those conclusions after extensive research and examination of various cases. And then they get insulted by members of the media who haven’t taken ten minutes to look at any of the evidence but merely use their talents for chattering and constant interruption so that when one who defends a conspiracy ever gets the rare opportunity to go on the air on a major network they only get a few small ideas out before they’re quashed. It’s truly astonishing and I have practically no respect for any of the major news networks. I feel like Fox News is a bit of a scapegoat in that they are more bias than the other major networks and yet the portrayal is that they are astronomically worse than the others. But in the end they’re pretty much all the same.
It does bother me how simple it is for people to try and keep hidden in their cocoons. I know the feeling. I did it for years before I finally started thinking for myself instead of compromising my thinking so I wouldn’t have to face those serious questions about where I live and the history of that place. As I have often said in response to those who overly criticize or overly propel our country: America is a beautiful and wonderful place. It’s only problem is the stupidity of it’s people. And I don’t exclude myself from that. Back in 2003 when post-9/11 America dived into battle with Iraq. I felt we were justified and felt Iraq played a hand in the 9/11 attacks as many people did and I just went with what the government was telling us. After all, we’re a much stronger and moral country than we were back in the 60s and 70s when all those assassinations were going on along with things such as the Vietnam War and Watergate, right? And why have assassination attempts against Presidents suddenly stopped? Because none of them are willing to challenge the powers that be, those who have powers even greater than their own. It astounds me, not that there are people out there who refuse to believe that those in power in our own country would be behind things so horrible as Presidential assassinations, the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and even the collapse of the Twin Towers back in 2001, but what does astound me is that people choose to naively believe in such a way without knowing anything about these events. I always hear these updated polls about what percentage of the American people believe that there was a conspiracy in the case of President Kennedy’s assassination and I think, “So what?” We see these polls and how an overwhelming majority of American’s believe there was a conspiracy and just say, “Sure! The government always lies so of course they did that.” That’s no reason to believe in a conspiracy and, frankly, who cares about a polls taken in which maybe 5% of the people surveyed know anything about the event they’re providing an opinion for? I don’t want to know the perspectives from people who are ignorant of a particular event. I know practically nothing about space exploration so what should anyone think about my opinion as far as what actions should be taken to progress our abilities for space exploration? Such is a rhetorical question.
So I feel it’s very unfortunate that those who don’t know anything about these problematic and likely conspiratorial cases choose to believe in one way or another without the necessary information and research to come to a legitimate opinion. And yet such is how so many people behave. I feel a sense of hope for the future in that so many young people of my generation are looking into these cases more and becoming more intelligent about the workings and goings on in our country today. Hopefully they’ll overcome those ignorant people in our country who either out of simple ignorance or out of being spoiled or privileged, and thus don’t need to worry about the problems of our country, choose to disbelieve or ignore that there are serious problems in our country. I just wanted to write this brief piece to expose the inaccurate portrayal in which many conspiracy theorists have been presented through, and hopefully many of the postings I have placed here have shown to be in depth, focused and to be the written words of a sane person and not some lunatic spouting off conspiracy for everything that has ever happened. Remember everyone: think for yourselves!

The 90 Seconds After

While these are two both widely known stories in the realm of the Kennedy Assassination and what happened in the immediate aftermath, I had only considered one of them (the first one of the two mentioned below) really in regards to understanding the time figures in which things happened. But now, in putting them both together I realize they create a very interesting picture in regards to that never ending question: did Lee Harvey Oswald kill the President? These two elements are listed below:
1) Dallas Officer Marion Baker ran into the Texas School Book Depository and encountered Oswald in the second floor lunchroom, officially, 90 seconds after the shooting. Thus, Oswald managed to shoot the President, run across the 6th floor and down four sets of stairs in less than 90 seconds.
2) Two Depository employees, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles, were on the fourth floor of the building when the shooting happened and left the floor right after the shooting to go downstairs and see what was going on. They ran down the same staircase that Oswald would have ran down to the first floor and never saw anyone on that staircase.
Now I always treated the accounts of these two women as just strong proof that Oswald didn’t kill the President because it’s likely these two women would have seen him or at least heard him. Anyone who has been on a staircase with someone else running down them knows you can hear them from a good distance away, sometimes more than a floor’s distance away. But we do have moderate time figured for when these two women were on this staircase. According to Adams (Styles was never called to testify because, as Adams believed, the Warren Commission didn’t want verification for her story) both she and Adams reached the staircase about 20 seconds after the assassination and made it to the first floor about 55 to 60 seconds after the assassination (she put it around a minute).
With this time figure there is no doubt that these two women reached the stairs before Oswald, even if their leaving was a little later, like say 30 seconds after the shooting. Oswald had to wipe prints from his rifle, stash the rifle and dodge book boxes that Adams and Styles did not have to. Furthermore, these two women were two floors down from Oswald. There is no way he could have reached that staircase and stormed down past the fourth floor without being seen or heard by these women. So he had to have been behind them, and likely a good distance behind them. And if these two women, at the earliest, reached the first floor around a minute after the shooting it means they passed the second floor lunchroom around 45 to 50 seconds after the shooting (the stairs down to the first floor were very close to the entrance to the lunchroom). And with how loud Oswald would have been storming down those steps (admittedly, somewhat drowned out by the women who said they were running downstairs, wearing clicking heeled shoes), he would have had to be at least 10 seconds behind these women. And that’s probably a kind estimate, but that is honestly the closest he could have been to them while still being able to go unheard. So this puts Oswald on the second floor, unseen by anyone, at best maybe 60 seconds after the assassination.
This is critical because the official story suggests that Officer Baker encountered Oswald 90 seconds after the assassination, so Oswald still had about 20 seconds to get himself situated in the lunchroom right? Well, it’s not quite that simple. The Warren Commission reached their bogus 90-second figure after conducting time tests with Officer Baker reconstructing his movements from the assassination until he reached the second floor… going at a walking pace! They conducted another test with Baker going at a fast walking pace and found that he reached the lunchroom in 75 seconds. But who can honestly believe that an Officer pursuing the potential assassin of the President of the United States would go at a fast walking pace? Even if it were a kid who stole a $0.75 candy bar and took off running an officer would have chased that kid down and done what he was supposed to do. But the Commission not only embraced the potential that Baker walked, but they considered the most accurate time figure to be the one used for when he moved at a regular walking pace. This 90-second figure is one of the most absurd lies posed by the official story.
There is film footage capturing Baker outside of the Book Depository sprinting into the building only some ten seconds after the shooting. Everyone who saw Baker inside said he was moving at a running/sprinting pace. He checked to see if he could use the elevator to go up, which wasn’t operating. The building’s superintendent, Roy Truly, directed Baker to the next best option, to go up the stairs. They both went up the stairs, with Truly ahead of Baker, mind you. Now who can honestly say this whole event, going at a legitimate running pace, took more than maybe thirty seconds? It was a quick run from the first floor up to the second floor, passing right by the lunchroom.
But let’s play the devil’s advocate and say, “Well fine, let’s say if a fast walking pace came out with a 75 second figure, then let’s have a running figure come out at 60 seconds.” And 60 seconds might even be longer than it took for Baker to reach the second floor. And Truly was a few seconds ahead of him because he was leading Baker around since he was more familiar with the structure of the building. When Baker encountered Oswald he had to call Truly back so he could identify Oswald and determine if he was someone supposed to be there. Truly identified Oswald as an employee there and they left him be, journeying up to higher floors (because Baker’s initial feeling was that the shot came from high up in the Depository building). So Truly likely passed the lunchroom around 55 seconds after the shooting.
Based on these figures it’s likely that Truly and Baker started running upstairs right around the time that Adams and Styles reached the first floor. Adams claimed she didn’t see anyone until they came down to the first floor. And again, based on her account this could be put around 50 to 60 seconds after the shooting and we consider Truly and Baker going up to the second floor about 55 seconds after the shooting. Either way, we are presented circumstances wherein Truly and Baker would have reached the second floor at the exact moment that Oswald did, if not a second or two before he did. Had this occurred they most certainly would have seen him before reaching the lunchroom, or would have seen the door to the lunchroom closing. Baker said he only caught sight of Oswald by looking through the window to the door leading into the lunchroom.
When Baker walked into the room and pulled his revolver on Oswald he was walking away from the door with a partially drank Coke in his hand. Oswald turned and faced Baker completely calm. He wasn’t shaking or breathing heavily, as would have been characteristic of someone who just killed a President and then sprinted down several floors, having arrived on the second floor only seconds before. Only a cold-hearted, trained killer could even come close to collecting himself in this manner, and even the Warren Commission wanted to push the idea that Oswald was a wandering loser and idealist who killed the President for attention (a contention that is laughable at best). The fact is Oswald showed no signs of exhaustion or fatigue that anybody would have. He appeared completely as though he had been there a while or had reached there by walking. The partially drank Coke he had is important at well as it suggests further proof of his having been there awhile since it had been drank. Then again, maybe he bought it before and planted it there so as to look like he’d been there a while. That is a possibility.
But the fact of the matter is that will a legitimate examination of the time figures involving Adams and Styles and then Truly and Baker, there is practically no time for Oswald to have slipped out onto the second floor and taken refuge in the lunchroom. It suggests that Oswald was never up there and that the real assassin did not leave the sixth floor right away. An eyewitness, Lillian Mooneyham claimed she saw someone up in the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor four or five minutes after the shooting. Who was this man? The police hadn’t begun their search up there yet? No employees are known to have been up there? Three employees were down on the fifth floor directly below the sniper’s nest, and only one of them suggested the shots may have come from directly above. None of them heard the footsteps of the assassin fleeing right after and, like Adams and Styles, they left the fifth floor shortly after the assassination took place. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing to suggest that the President’s killer, if he was acting alone on the sixth floor of the Book Depository, left his location immediately. And thus there is little to no evidence to suggest Oswald was ever there as well. The only evidence suggesting he was there was the shaky and unreliable account of eyewitness Howard Brennan, the three shells recovered from the sniper’s next, which couldn’t be proven to have been fired from the rifle which was found up there as well, which has never been proven as belonging to Oswald! Thus, there is no proof whatsoever that he was up there!

A Brief Commentary on Conspiracy

As anyone who has read any of my postings to this point has likely gathered, I believe there was a conspiracy involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However, that does not make me a “conspiracy buff”. Unfortunately we are finding out more and more every day that many of the national incidences our country has experience in which the potential for conspiratorial activity have been applied are more than likely true. I simply believe in a conspiracy when the weight of the evidence points to such being the case. And in the case of JFK there is ample, overwhelming evidence to point to a conspiracy.
I personally don’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald even fired a weapon that day. And in order to prove that you need to prove much of the physical evidence against him to be inaccurate in their representation. You have to explain away the rifle found on the sixth floor of the building he worked at. Beyond that you have to explain away the three spent rifle shells found on the sixth floor as well. The fact that only three shells were found on the sixth floor forced the Presidential Commission put together by new President Lyndon Johnson to work from the perspective that only three shots were fired in Dealey Plaza the day the President died. This was necessary considering the fact that the Commission wanted to do their best to prove Oswald’s guilt without considering the possibility that anyone else was involved. It’s interesting that the Commission held the stance that they established and believed in their single bullet theory (a.k.a. ‘The Magic Bullet Theory’) from the very beginning. However, the truth is that they maintained the simple conclusion that one shot hit Governor John Connally, accounting for all of his wounds, and then two shots hit the President, one through the back and out his throat and one to the right side of his head. However, it soon came to the Commission’s attention that one bullet struck the curb ahead of the President’s motorcade, chipping away a piece of concrete that struck bystander James Tague in the face. This was a situation the Commission could not explain away, and thus they were relegated to only two bullets to account for all of the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds. Thus they were forced to establish the single bullet theory, which claims that the President’s back/throat would was caused by the same bullet that caused all of Governor Connally’s wounds (which totaled seven in all and were spread all over his body from his back, through his chest, and then his wrist, and the final wound to his thigh). This became necessary when it was clear that there was a time gap between all of these wounds and then when the President was struck in the head. The head shot had to account for one bullet all by itself. That, coupled with the misfired bullet, makes for two of the three shots leaving only one bullet to account for everything else.
This is all critical to keep in mind as I go into the crux of this brief analytical point. There were five bullet fragments discovered after the assassination in the Presidential limousine, only two of which were of any significant size (Commission’s Exhibits 567 and 569). By all accounts these fragments would have had to be from the bullet that struck the President in the head and not from any other bullets involved. Again, one shot missed the vehicle all together, by at least 20 feet, and thus there’s no way these fragments found could have been from that bullet. And, if we follows the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the bullet that caused the remainder of the President’s and the Governor’s wounds was found with practically no metal missing from it all and in one piece. Analysis of a metal fragment in Governor Connally’s leg alone was found to weigh more that all the metal lost from this bullet (Commission’s Exhibit 399); itself disproving the single bullet theory by itself. But even if the Warren Commission is given the benefit of the doubt in that matter, the fact of the matter is, of three shots, we have one missing the car all together and another with practically no metal missing from it. This leaves only one bullet to account for these fragments, and that being the final shot that struck Kennedy’s head.
Now, on the outset, these fragments appear to bolster the Warren Commission’s conclusions at least that the head shot came from behind (along with every other shot) seeing as these fragments were found near the front of the limousine, suggesting the President to have been hit from behind, knocking him forward and sending bullet fragments forward to the head of the car. However, this is very suspicious, especially since every film of the assassination and every eyewitness account of the assassination shows that the President was not thrust forward. There has already been suspicion about these conveniently discovered fragments that were conveniently tied to the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (and purportedly was purchased by Oswald through the mail, having purchased it with an alias and having it sent to a mailbox wherein only mail sent to his real name could be obtained). However, if there were more shots fired there could have been a shot that struck the President from behind as well as a shot from the front (accounting for Kennedy’s backward falling motion after being struck in the head). There is ample evidence that two shots may have struck him simultaneously, more than anything, bolstered by the fact that so many witnesses said around the time of the head shot that they heard two shots practically on top of each other (one almost sounding like the echo of another). So other shots may account for this oddity, but then one must admit there was a conspiracy in the assassination. After all, if it’s that easy to prove there was a second assassin then why couldn’t a government-formed Commission figure that out (outside of the fact that they didn’t want to). With the way the Secret Service swarmed around the Presidential limousine after the assassination it would not be a far stretch to even suggest these fragments had been planted. Some would argue such is nonsense, that no one would do such a thing unless they knew for certain these fragments would match and that there’d be an opportunity to put them in place. They want to argue that such ideas are too outlandish to believe, and yet there was no problem in doing this with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, or the three spent shells, or the backyard photographs supposedly depicting Oswald with the rifle he used to kill the President (all pieces of evidence which have extensive problems with them and of which are believed by many to have been placed where they were to frame up Oswald as the assassin).
There are many instances in the assassination wherein discovered pieces of evidence were found in bizarre ways. Dallas Officer Roger Craig, one of the two officers who discovered the spent shells on the sixth floor said they were all lined up side by side (an absurd likelihood considering Carcano rifles eject their shells violently to the right). Commission’s Exhibit 399 (the magic bullet) is quite possibly the most far-fetched of them all, having been discovered on a stretcher that was likely never used by President Kennedy or Governor Connally wedged between the stretcher itself and the padding on top of it. We are led to believe then that the bullet slipped out of Connally’s final wound, (again, assuming the unlikely possibility that the stretcher where the bullet found was even used by him) the one to his thigh, fell out of his pants and somehow defied gravity so as to roll off the stretcher’s pad and not simply fall to the ground, but to wrap around with the padding and somehow wedge itself between that pad and the stretcher itself. Maybe on the moon such defying possibilities are not overly absurd, but here on Earth they are laughable to say the least. I mention this because one of the fragments, Commission’s Exhibit 567 was found in an equally unlikely place: on the front driver’s seat. This means that somehow a small bullet fragment managed to either go through the driver’s body to land on the seat or floated around somewhere unknown before magically falling right into place several hours later when the fragment was found. Being found between the front seats (like Commission’s Exhibit 569 was) or being found on the floor makes sense, but not somewhere in which the fragment could not possibly have landed. And finally, to end this venture into theories that the fragments may have been planted, as with so many aspects of the Kennedy assassination, upon being discovered, this evidence was not photographed upon discovery in their original locations. We just have the Secret Service and the FBI’s word to believe, which, if you’ve examined the Kennedy assassination as much as I have, provides little to no consolation.
And finally, as I have only recently discovered today and I will use as my finishing point in this discussion of an area of the Kennedy assassination that I don’t often go into, there is the examination of these bullet fragments by UC Irvine chemist Vincent P. Guinn. Mr. Guinn examined these fragments for the House Select Committee on Assassinations and came to the conclusion that all of these fragments came from at least two different bullets. However, following the Warren Commission’s story as to what happened, and delving back into what I discussed earlier, this is impossible since only one bullet (again, the head shot bullet) could have accounted for all of these fragments. Unless you want to believe that pieces of a bullet can magically break off into fragments that are unaccounted for with the bullet itself (like with CE 399) or you want to believe that the bullet that missed the car entirely magically struck the ground and then threw fragments backwards (which in and of itself is an anomaly) that conveniently landed right in the Presidential limousine you do not have a leg to stand on if you are a lone assassin theorist who buys into the conclusions of the Warren Commission. If this examination, by a nationally renowned chemist selected to conduct experimentation for a governmental committee, reached the conclusion that there were two different bullets that accounted for these fragments then, everything else disregarded, you have to admit that there were at least four shots fired. And once you make that leap it proves the Warren Commission’s story inaccurate. And from there you have to accept the fact of a conspiracy with regards to the assassination of President Kennedy. And this is only one example out of many that I have studied in which such a conclusion not only can, but must be reached on the weight of the evidence.

An Emotional Take on Why I Study Crime

I should probably be asleep right now. It's pushing one in the morning and I have to be up before eight for a film shoot, but oh well, I'm young. I can't help but feel the urge to reflect on something. I have studied famous crimes in America for years. It's always intrigued me and anyone who knows me knows about my interests in crime. And I do get the periodic critique by those who don't understand why I do what I do and who look at this interest as a waste of time. Sadly, those who often throw this critique at me are people who think your free time is for little more than wasting. But it's a back and forth type of affair. They don't understand why I spend the time I do studying crime and I don't understand how they can be so passive towards it. The Kennedy assassination is my major area of study; I've been studying it since I was only 7-years old and I know most aspects of it inside and out. The reason I've dedicated so much study towards it is because of what the event represents for our country as a whole. Within five years our country was in the most turmoil it had been in since the Civil War. That was only followed by the Watergate debacle and all the insanity that has happened since then. Now it's hard to say how different things might be if Kennedy wasn't killed, but one thing's for sure, it couldn't get much worse had he not been killed. But his assassination changed the way we look at government and led the public as a collective whole to question and become pessimistic towards them. That event led to extreme changes in our country and, in effect, as a whole. That's why I study and try to be knowledgeable about events such as these, because this is where I live. If you don't know anything about your own country then don't complain about it. And studying events such as these help give you an honest perspective as to the way things work and function in our country, which is something most people are scared of knowing.

But it's not only famous crimes that I study. I study whatever attracts me, and sometimes that attraction is not as simple as having a crime surrounded by interesting events. Sometimes it has to hit you right in the heart to get your attention. And that happened to me tonight while I was doing something completely unrelated, and then it just popped into my head. It's a story that I have looked up before but has always been mixed in with all the other crimes I've studied. But for some reason my mind was more opened up than before and this event popped into my head and immediately I started looking up videos, photographs and information on the case. After being reintroduced to the case I have it in my plans to do a short film on the event, maybe around twenty minutes or so, if for no other to at least remind people of it because it's sadly such an obscure case. It's been used as a template for various cold case-style television programs, but being a true story, the real thing is so much more painful to examine. When I was first examining the case I stumbled onto a video create on YouTube that provided the base details of the case, playing to an instrumental version of "Amazing Grace" that had a major effect on me watching the imagery flow along amidst the melancholic soundtrack. And I'm someone who has seen many videos on many various heartbreaking crimes, but this one has had a much greater effect than others. This case is known as: The Boy in the Box. (the link to that YouTube video, if you want your heart to be ripped out, is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LImoCjRjpfQ)

"The Boy in the Box", also known as "America's Unknown Child" revolved around events that occurred in February, 1957 when the body of a boy, approximately four to six years of age, was discovered wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a JCPenney box along a rural road on the edge of Philadelphia. To this day the child has never been identified. With the event having occurred over fifty-six years ago it's hard to believe that the boys true identity will ever be established. The potential for identifying him more or less hinges on the fact that there are trace amounts of DNA in existence so that small amount of hope much loom there. But sadly it seems that this small child was badly neglected and thus likely killed by whoever was supposed to be taking care of him, be it his parents or anyone else. The boys body was roughly around five-years of age but he had the size and weight of a child more around the age of three and a half. He had several scars on his body, some of which appear to have been surgical (which makes one wonder of there are records of him sitting in a hospital somewhere collecting dust). He had bruises all over his body from his head to his feet.

While there are a few websites and organizations who are trying to keep the memory of this child alive in the hopes of discovering his real identity someday the case is still so incredibly obscure and yet I think it's one of the most gripping unsolved crimes of all time. Sure it may not have the prestige or flare of higher profile unsolved crimes such as the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia, but few other crimes can tear at the heart the way this one does. The Boy in the Box serves as a likely example of a child who even in only a few years of existence was never cared for and never loved, and yet children have a capacity for love, sensitivity and compassion that most adults can hardly imagine or comprehend anymore. I can't imagine taking the wondrous heart of a child and trying to comprehend the shattering feeling of going ignored and unloved. Sadly, nonetheless, there are so many children out there who feel this way and who are being horrible neglected and mistreated and it defies my logic. When you acknowledge that you can't comprehend the way these guardians behave the following answer is often that they are too stupid and sick to grasp what they're doing either. But that certainly doesn't give them a pass in my book. Whether you love little kids or now, regardless how annoyed you get when babies scream or little kids complain when they don't get that toy they want, there is still so much kindness and warmth running through their hearts, a warmth that our world really needs, especially now in this lazy and pessimistic time we live in. Such is one of the reasons I really enjoy the 2006 film "Children of Men", which specifically tries to convey the disheartened and war torn existence that may come about in a world without children.

And while the case is still unsolved there have been many suggestions as to who this child may have been and unfortunately none of those possibilities suggest a positive existence for this little one. Many people all over the east coast who had a background of child abuse or child abandonment were fingered as being possibly involved. There happened to be a large foster home that functioned similarly to an orphanage, taking in lots of children who didn't have or had been abandoned by their parents, that was stationed only a short distance from where this boy was discovered. There have been suggestions of mistreatment of the children who were kept here and the daughter of the woman who ran the house was believed to be mentally challenged. While no proof was ever presented tying those from this foster home to the crime for certain, it is of interest to note that one of the investigating officers on the case attended a yard sale that was done at the house and he stumbled upon a collection of plaid blankets (the boy had been wrapped in a plaid blanket) and a bassinet for sale (the JCPenney box the boy had been found it originally held a bassinet). He also noticed there was a duck pond right next to the house (when the boy was discovered they found that parts of his body had recently been placed in water for a prolonged period of time). With the strange way in which the people who ran this house conducted themselves there were many reasons to consider them to be suspects. It has even been argued that the man who ran the place may have impregnated his mentally challenged stepdaughter and thus this child was her illegitimate child.

Despite questions about its legitimacy (the woman who claimed this story refused to speak directly with authorities but only through phone calls and email before she clammed up and stopped talking to authorities all together), the most convincing story came from a woman who never game her real name, but claimed she grew up in the same house with this boy. She claimed that he had been horrible abused, kept locked in a cold basement and poorly fed (upon discovery, the boy was very malnourished). She claimed that in a fit of rage her mother, who was taking care of the boy, had killed the boy and went out with her brother to get rid of his dead body. What made this the most compelling for me was the fact that this woman told a story that matched perfectly with an eyewitness account from a man who drove past the site where the boy's body was discovered, and at the time she told her story this man's account had not been made known to the public so she couldn't have known that the police had corroboration for her story). She claimed that her mother and little brother drove out and abandoned the boy inside of a box along the road. But while they were taking care of moving the body a man drove by in a car and stopped, asking if they were having car troubles. Worried, she said her mom just turned away from the man and tried to ignore him. Then the man drove off. Well, according to the account of this eyewitness, he claimed that he pulled up to a location near where the boy's body was abandoned and saw a woman there with a young boy. He said he asked if they needed help and was surprised to see the woman turn her back on him as though she were ignoring him, and so he just kept driving. So either this woman was incredibly lucky in guessing at an event that the police had corroboration really happened or she was telling the truth.

But sadly, in the end, the case is still regarded as unsolved and we have a small child who likely suffered through a horribly painful existence. And that's why I study things such as this, in the hopes of understanding these events and helping to prevent such events from happening in the future. With the scientific and technical advancements we have now it's unlikely many cases such as the boy in the box will occur because we have so many more tools now to use to identify people, but the significance of this case goes beyond mere identification. And I know hearing about tragic stories like this troubles many people and they just don't want to deal with it; they throw out the classic, "Just because it exists doesn't mean I have to see it" argument. Well, the truth is yes, you do need to see it and to experience it because if you ignore things such as this you ignore a very sad reality of our world, that there are people out there that do things such as this. And just because it's the 21st Century and we're all so convinced that we are so much more advanced than before doesn't mean heart-shattering mind-blowing events such as the boy in the box don't still occur and won't continue to occur in the future. Ignoring the problem doesn't help it go away and if you ignore the problem you may as well say you don't care, because if you do you'd put your own ego aside and acknowledge the bad things we all must live with along with the good. It's not there to dwell on but to help us understand the world we live in a little better. It helps us take notice of what is going on around us so that when events such as this occur there will be more people in the know and a better chance of finding out what happened. And coming to terms with painful events such as these should not serve to dishearten us, as we often allow them to do, but to remind us of how wonderful everything we have is. It's easy to be passive or lack appreciation towards what we do have when we willingly ignore how horrible things could be. But when we acknowledge the pain that can and does exist out there we learn to love what we have a little more and to be stronger for those around us who are suffering the most and need more than just consolation, but also understanding.

I could go on and on about this, but it's pushing two a.m. now and I seriously need to get myself off to sleep. To all you parents out there who will wake up tomorrow morning to see your child, the apple of your eye, remember to kiss them and hold them close because they are the real proof of the miracle that is life. Never take your child for granted. Good night.

This Next Generation

THIS IS ACTUALLY SOMETHING I WROTE ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO, BUT IT'S AN IDEA THAT HAS BECOME MORE AND MORE PREVALENT IN MY MIND AS TIME GOES ALONG AND I SEE EXAMPLE AFTER EXAMPLE OF FAMILIES, PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN AND SO ON FITTING IT TO A TEE. I ALSO PLAN ON WRITING SOMETHING ALONG THESE SAME LINES AGAIN IN MY FRUSTRATIONS TOWARDS THE GENERATION THAT PRECEDED MINE.

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    I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the younger generation of our current world. I may be 25-years old but with few exceptions the bulk of my collection of friends mostly range from 16 to 22 years in age. And I personally feel both physically and psychologically like I am still hovering around that 20-year old zone. I consider myself a part of that age group for the most part then. And it’s a hard generation to be struggling through. We’re still so young and naïve and we’re being infiltrating by fear as we watch our parents losing the jobs they’ve had for years and wondering what kind of job market they will inherit. What will our world be like a year from now? Or five or ten?
    As time has wore on I have become so frustrated and disappointed with the generation that preceded ours, our parents generation. This is the generation that created the world we will be forced to inherit and someday fix, because we need severe fixing to say the least. They created this world and now selfishly expect us to thrive through it like they did when they were our age. Unfortunately so many of them fail to understand many things. The job market was thriving when they were twenty and it most certainly is not now. When I was a small child it was the way of the world that when one turned eighteen they moved away from home, went to college, graduated and found a career. I remember turning twenty-three and feeling somewhat embarrassed that I was still living at home, but unfortunately I didn’t feel a great sense of inspiration or ambition at that time. And when our parents were our age there were much more jobs available to a much smaller population. With corporations and companies either downsizing or closing shop all together we’re watching entry level and low pay jobs that were mostly open to this younger generation so as they could develop a work record and resume being infiltrated by these middle-aged former employees who are now themselves looking for work.
    But beyond the economic problems this young generation faces there is also the emotional and psychological difficulties they face. And much of this falls on the deaf ears of our parents generation as well. For almost all of my friends and even my acquaintances only a relative few of them have even moderately positive relationships with their parents (and in some cases even the rest of their family). And beyond that even in the relative few cases where those I know have moderately decent relationships with their parents those families still struggle with disfunctionalities in some ways. It was easy to be naïve when I had what I felt was a functional family and had a roof over my head. I had a cool, quirky bedroom and a large backyard. I didn’t have to pay rent, pay for school, cars, insurance, etc. And yet still having everything provided for me while I worked a simple little theatre job and had no real concept of the economy or the tough job market future that was to come there was always this nervous sense I felt within myself. How am I going to support myself when the time comes form my need to do such? Everybody thinks about that, especially when they don’t know what the future holds. And as things continue to deteriorate (which the economic elite blither on about how the ‘recession is over’, likely because all their rich friends are still in work) the future of everyone looms more and more in doubt. But the difference is our parents generation has experience in the workforce. While yes the stumbling economy is something rather unfamiliar to them too they have years of experience looking for jobs and supporting themselves. Our younger generation doesn’t have that. We’re scared shitless and most of us are just fluttering in the breeze. We all have our ideas of what career we’re after and how we’re going to fly through school and into our dream career but we all know how great the fight is getting. We all know deep down inside that we hardly know a thing about the ‘real world’, which unfortunately our previous two generations did a wonderful job screwing up.
    And I was seriously naïve. I had no idea how vast the pain and frustration was. In the start of the fall of 2008 I accompanied a few of my friends to an anime/manga convention in Portland. And it was nice, it was a fun escape for the weekend. But as I allowed my mind to go free there was still my more ‘realistic’ side that was saying, “Enjoy this while it lasts cause someday you’re gonna have to deal with the real world”. Little did I realize that at that time I was on the verge of watching my own family fall apart. What started as mere discussion of a separation led to so much more and by the end of the fall my mother moved out. For the next several months I lived alone with my father and began developing severe depression. For those months I either went to work or locked myself in my room. Finally one day I decided that I just couldn’t handle anymore and that I needed to start creating a life for myself or else this is all that would be left for me. I enrolled at the University of Portland and gradually I began to rebuild my life. After an altercation with my father over finances for school it was the last straw and I left home permanently and haven’t spoken to my father for over two years.
    My first year at U of P was a struggle, no doubt, but it was a great experience. My confidence was on the rise and for the first time in years I felt a true drive and meaning in my life like I was on my way to something more than I ever felt before. After finishing my first year I went into the summer with a strong drive. I was learning a great deal about myself and began subjecting myself to a very liberating period of self-criticism in an effort to advance my life further. Then, in the midst of this I discovered that a lawsuit had been filed against against me for a car accident in 2006 that I will defend to my death my sole responsibility for. Not knowing a thing about lawsuits and knowing nothing more in that moment except the fact that I had lost my driver’s license and been sued for over $40,000 I almost snapped. From the DMV in Gladstone right alongside the Clackamas River I nearly walked down to the water and drowned myself. The experience was so traumatizing that for nearly the next two months I was a total wreck and eve now, almost a year later, I am still recovering from just that.
    Today my life is a wreck, a gradually redeveloping wreck. I practically live on one, maybe two meals a day if I am lucky. I just spent half my money on a car that now I must spend handreds of extra dollars to fix. The current roof over my head is weighing completely on whether the church I attend stays open, and our church just happens to be struggling financially. And as with so many others my relationships with many people are struggling. And I am not ashamed to admit that every now and then I completely lose my mind and snap over things because I wonder how much more I can handle. But when I am finally able to calm myself I take recognition of how much turmoil I have managed to make it through.
    As a result of this, more than anything right now I want to embrace a stronger understanding of the struggles those around me are suffering. I am trying to watch closely, looking at the expressions on their faces and the pain that everyone has. I am doing this because one of the hardest things in the universe is to take recognition of the pains others feel when you are so wrapped up in your own. And I don’t want to be all wrapped up in my own pain. I want to handle it and use it to change my life or to forget it all together. Pain and suffering is often an alienating experience, something that makes us want to run and hide. But as I’m slowly learning, and after years of putting myself through isolation, one of the best ways to handle pain is to connect with other people, other people who too are suffering. The problems we all feel may differ but the simple truth is we all feel.
    One thing these past couple years have taught me is how heart breaking it can be to suffer and to feel like you’re all alone. That’s why through it all I choose to keep smiling and keep trying to bring happiness to those around me even if it’s only for the most fleeting of moments. As much as I know I cannot control it and don’t have the right to control it, I don’t ever want anyone to have to feel the way that I did. That coupled with the experience of watching my family break up, something so many around me had suffered through but never something I thought would ever happen to be (again with the naivety), and I’ve been transformed in a way. It’s strange, for I’ve noticed a change in my personality. I watch video of me from some three or four years ago and I notice I am not as wild and outlandishly entertaining as I once was (something I always relished). I feel that’s a change I don’t want to embrace but in accordance with that I have found a change in my emotional state/ Very influenced by my father I had a somewhat pessimistic perspective of people who weren’t productive. I was very much judgmental and while I am glad for that time and for the knowledge it gave me I am grateful for the struggles I have I guess for the most part because they’ve made me feel more human. I’ve been forced to experience things I’ve never faced before and everything is coming to me in a new light.
    I think back on that weekend in 2008 at the anime convention and I think about all those people there, just exploding at the seams with happiness. While the preppy kids next door at Lloyd Center glared at us with their snobby expressions and I think about what all the parents of these people must have been thinking, the absurdity of it all, I just think of the happiness. God knows things like that are hard to find. It makes me think. I wonder what would possess people to become so immersed in a fantasy world of fantasy characters. Again, just me battling with my common sense. And it’s here I return to thinking about this young generation and the world we live and my goodness it hits me like a ton of bricks. Who wouldn’t want to escape into a fantasy world like that? I wonder what some of these kids much be facing in their real lives, what broken-heartedness they must have felt or still be feeling.
    And this is another thing our parent’s generation just doesn’t understand. They always say they do and in some case yes certainly they do but often times this defense of understanding is just an easy out. And that’s how so many parents are. All they want is an easy out. They complain and feel stressed about having to be parents as though each individual one is the only one who knows what it feels like to have to raise kids. And then these same parents find their stress only deepened when they find their kids becoming standoffish and resentful towards them. Maturing at a much younger age than most guys I took to heart the understanding that adults, especially those our parents age, really did understand us and understood the world much better than us. But now I see several examples of the proof looming right in front of me and it’s obvious there is a great break between these two generations. But the older generation is the one I am most disappointed with because they have the greater experience to where they should know how to deal with such things better. And yet when all is said and done I am stunned to see that such is very seldom the case. And it stuns me. And too, it saddens me.
    We have this plethora of parents and many of them are just mired in all sorts of dysfunctions. They’re either bogged down and controlled by some lost addiction to alcohol or some hidden drug addiction. I look at many of these parents and the fact of their misery just oozes from them to such an overbearing degree that it is beyond their reasoning to be a positive influence on their children’s lives. And how can they be such if they can’t even pursue a positive outlook on their own lives. Many of them know their miserable but either don’t care or don’t have the clout that God gave the common beaver to change their direction. They fail either to see or, if they do see it, they then fail to acknowledge all the good their children do and can do but every mistake these kids make, no matter how pointless, has to be noted. And not only must it be noted but it’s often times accompanied by some ten minute rant blithering on about irresponsibility when really the whole time their parental subconscious is telling them that they’re the one’s who cannot grasp responsibility.
    But they’re creatures of habit as we all are. Everyone says our world today has become a more lazy one, which I disagree with to some extent. Laziness plays its part but it’s more so to me a world in which we are more easily allowed to slip into comfort zones and thus grow accustom to our lives. How else do these marriages in which there is clearly no love and/or connection last for years. Nobody through true personal examination and a recognition of what changes it will take to make them happy would stay in such a frustrating situation but it’s a matter of inconvenience. I’ve known people that have lived in dysfunctional and bickering families their whole lives and yet they’re still standing. It’s amazing how much of the same garbage we are capable of taking on day after day once we simply get used to it as a daily thing.
    This is something so many of us hardly even notice because why should we? It’s what we’re used to. But what our parents generation doesn’t understand is that this constant and endless rhetoric, the same miserable and immature manner in which they choose to lead their lives day after day, rubs off on their children. It leaves them feeling unappreciated, feeling like nothing they ever do is good enough. They’re left isolated and confused and their parents are too lost in their own problems, most of which they create or allow to come along themselves. They play this circular game where they tell you to be your own person, on the surface, but then there’s this constant insecurity where they try and get you to be like them. And even in many cases I have sensed the resentment from parents whose kids don’t follow along their footsteps, and so their frustration increases over their selfish desires for their children to be slaves to what they want. And that anger and resentment then only becomes amplified because deep down most of these parents known their shitty lives are their responsibility. They allowed it to become that way and to remain that way and so often times there’s this additional struggle they have with themselves where they hate themselves but still expect to be respected as the authority figure they should be.
    And this just goes on and on and at the end of they day all they can do is prattle on about the corruption of America’s youth and how they‘re all lost spending 12 hours a day on you tube and the other 12 hours texting their friends any random shit they can come up with just to kill the time. They bicker and become paranoid about how their child’s generation is becoming more and more isolated. Adolescent depression is on the rise. Adolescent ADHD is on the rise. And all most parents do it either cop an attitude with their kids who only want a little positive attention (most young people are critical enough about themselves, they don’t need anyone elses assistance on that) as though that’s supposed to turn things around. Or there’s the common solution of medication. My kid’s depressed but I’m so pissed about my life and I am so busy in my life I don’t have time to deal with it. There are honestly parents who think this way! I’ve seen it and it disgusts me to place of complete incomprehension. So then parents get their kids hooked on pain meds of which if you ask the majority of young people, these meds hardly do a thing for them. But as with everything else, it’s something one gets used to so they keep taking them. Every acts like a change is happening but deep down everyone knows, if they’d stop and actually use that damn ball of mush inside their head called a brain that nothing is changing. It’s just the same garbage day after day and this young generation that’s already scared shitless is being forced to take the brunt of it by an older, supposedly more mature generation that can’t get anything about it together.
    That’s possibly the most pathetic thing of all. As time goes on I see more and more young people’s parents reverting back to the immaturities of childhood while their children are forced to step up and being the mature ones as best as they can understand. And even though they often have little to no experience on what it’s like to be thrust into such a place often times perform at a place of maturity their parents have never reached in their entire lives! But still our parents go on and on about how lost we are. They have no problem acknowledging our flaws. They try and buy our hearts with money because simply giving somebody a present or cash is a lot easier than just sitting down for a few seconds and asking, “Hey how are you doing?” and actually caring about what the answer might be. The disrespect many contemporary parents show to their kids leaves me in complete awe, and not in the good way. And they can just go on and on asking their questions, which of course they don’t want to take five seconds to answer. They can go on with their frustrations about how their flawed kids won’t change when their selfish and dismissive attitudes only serve to block any change or advancement their kids might make.
    I look at how this younger generation is and I remember when I was in high school and the level of depression amongst young people never even touched where it’s at today (and it’s only been seven years). And for a long time I had that aged attitude when I looked at people who were in high school right after I started college and I just thought, “Grow up you whining little brats! What could you possibly have to complain about?” And that was just me slipping into the hole that so many others have. That was me not using my mind. That was me following that transparent line so many parents follows which is essentially, “I support you, kid. I feed you and keep a roof over your head, so quick bitching!” Of course, there is a very fine line between they things that allow us to survive properly (such as food and a home) and the emotional pains that we suffer. So many parents think because they’re “in power” and because it is to their credit that their children have a place to live that somehow this translates to them having the right to treat their kids however they damn well please. This perspective, beyond being utterly self-serving and pathetic, is just another creation of the ignorant part of our mind known as the ego.
    Now I’m not attacking all parents, obviously that’s not the case. Many children have grown up happy and in decent homes where their relationship with their parents and family is stable. And they should be happy and grateful for such an atmosphere. This is not a broad, flat out criticism of all people of our parents generation. But that disclaimer being laid down, the number of parents who serve as a more detrimental element in their kids’ lives as oppose to a positive one is staggering. And that’s why my perspective on these products of messed up, depressing and dysfunctional homes has changed. It’s easy to look at all these depressed and sad young people and fear what the future may hold. So many worry about whether or not these people will be assets at all in our society. But then I look at our society as it stands and I look at who’s in control. When we look at it what are the things that so many of us deem to be what matters in the world. There’s money, of course. Appearance; so many are obsessed with how they look and how others look. Status is also important, we all long to be known and revered (reputation). It’s all very material and shallow, which has played such a big part in what is so wrong with our pleasant world in the larger context. Why is our economy struggling so much? Because everyone’s thinking about profit, which often leads to cutting man power to save money. The have mores are gaining more which those who aren’t are finding themselves with even less. Why is marriage failing so much? It’s because we’re marrying for looks, status and money now more than ever before. You use such materialistic things as a platform for a relationship and a marriage and it will almost always fail or lead to a loveless marriage. And many of these marriages produce children who are forced to grow up underneath this lack of love.
    One doesn’t have to think too hard to realize this is a selfish world going about its selfish means and everyday we are seeing love and compassion flying out the window. We watch the job market fizzling and we start to think ‘well, I’ve just got to worry about myself.’ If our world comes to a point where in every case it’s all about looking out for number one I fully believe our society will crumble because there will be nothing to hold us together. Nobody would genuinely care about anybody else anymore. While I don’t want to make any grand claims or pose any ill-informed prophesies I fear we are slowly edging our way in this direction, and the more and more people that turn their life perspective in that way the more resentful we’ll become towards each other (because despite our ‘looking out for number one’ perspective we will still hypocritically expect others to take compassion on us) and the more and more we will slip away.
    That’s where my change in perspective comes into play. As much as I see kindness and compassion flying out the window for the sake of looking out for one’s own interests and the desire to have a life of security I think back again on that convention. I think back on looking around at those smiles of happiness and I look at the way these young people come together, they way they bond. When they watch their friend being treated poorly by their parents they are there for that friend because they can most likely understand where they’re coming from. This is a generation that is starving for love and attention because they’re not getting it from their parents. And as heart breaking as that is there is something to be gained in our present day world by this. And it’s the potential that this, what I believe to be a majority, of young people who are struggling and having to practically scream out to feel noticed or loved will begin to whittle away at this present day materialistically direction society.
    I pray the hunger and the desire that these young feel for love and compassion stays strong and that they never forget what it feels like to be alone and/or unappreciated. Because these may be our greatest asset at bringing love and compassion back into this world. I think everyone agrees that there’s something wrong in our world and that changes need to be made and I am truly beginning to believe that those who are struggling now may very well be that force that sparks that change. One of the strongest statements The Bible makes is that life is suffering and the more we suffer the stronger we will be. And I believe that, especially with the trials I have faced recently. I am nowhere near perfect or squared away right now but there are things I can do now that three years ago I never would have considered. Suffering does make us stronger because it’s a constant reminder against the odds of what we as people are capable of surviving through. And not one of us, if one is coherent, would deny that knowing we are loved by others during these trials makes us feel that much stronger. This honestly makes me worry less about the future, even with our addiction to material nonsense. I spoke with one of my aunt’s recently and we discussed the fact that one of the things our parents do perfectly for us is they show us all the mistakes and ways in which we should not live so we learn from those mistakes. As so many of us young people founder under the sadness and anger of the strain of our relationships with our parents the best thing we can take away is a deep and reflective understanding of that pain and frustration. This understanding can serve as a constant reminder of how one should and should not be towards others and hopefully that understanding can catapult us into a greater future where love once again becomes the ruler of all.

Remembering a Forgotten Tragedy

Yesterday I found my mind wandering a little at work. It wasn't a particularly busy day and I began reflecting back on something much more important than any film or web series. And, like most thoughts, it came about through reflection on something else entirely. For some reason, while on my break at work, I started thinking about how much I hate most serial killer related films because so many of them try and take on that crazed psychedelic feel that is just so disassociated from reality. I've always been an avid studier of crime, as some of my earlier postings show, and I have studied serial killers a good deal, mostly because of the psychological aspect of them. But thinking on that transitioned into thinking about all of the bad serial killer films done out there with the exception of very few, such as "Zodiac", which is one of my favorite movies. More than anything else, I love it because it doesn't glorify or create another misguided example of psychedelia, but rather hones in on the story from a humane perspective wherein we see the way those who are trying to solve the case are troubled by it rather than following the killer around on his killing spree and loving him as some anti-heroic character.

It was amidst this pondering and reflecting on such morbid things that I found myself thinking about another morbid case that happened practically up the street from me. It's a case that has always loomed with me and had a much greater effect on me than any other murder cases (probably in part due to the fact that it happened so close to me). I remember when the whole sad experience came to an end in August, 2002 and my father told me, because I was hoping to be a successful writer back then, I needed to write a book on the case because people would forget about this event and people needed to remember. I, unfortunately, never got around to writing anything of real substance on the case (outside of some writings I did on it when it was still an unsolved case, in which I posed some of my theories). But it is sad that in the years since the case has become generally forgotten. Even around here, in my own neighborhood and those surrounding me the case hasn't been talked about in years. At the site of the events there is no plaque or memorial for the events that happened there and it just astounds me that such an event could be so easily swept under the rug because back in 2002 it was the murder tragedy of the year in America. Every major network in the country was following the case up until its bitter end, and ending which has always stayed with me.

The case I am talking about was the disappearance of two girls from Oregon City, Ashley Pond, 12, and Miranda Gaddis, 13. Back in 2002, children seldom ever seemed to disappear in the Portland area. Maybe in the city of Portland itself, but down in my neighborhood and places like Oregon City just a little south of me, if a young child went missing it was almost always a runaway. So when a 12-year old girl named Ashley Pond vanished on January 9, 2002 the whole Portland Metropolitan Area went into a frenzy. And there I was, only 16-years old myself. And I remember my parents telling me to keep a close eye on my friends and some of the girls I knew, even though this disappearance happened some 10 miles away from where I lived. But none of us really knew what was going on. All that was known was that Ashley disappeared, supposedly, while walking from her apartment up to her bus stop. Being a sophomore in high school and taking the bus I often took it upon myself to monitor girls around me to see if they were all right or being followed, and I'm sure many other students were doing the same thing.

Now I am constantly reminded of this case because I have, during two different stints, attended Clackamas Community College, which is in Oregon City and literally just a small hill away from where all the events in this case took place. I've driven by the location many times and it always perplexed me as to how Ashley had been abduction. She lived in a fairly compacted apartment complex and her bus stop was literally at the front of the driveway to this apartment complex. It's also located on Beavercreek Road which, for those who don't know or aren't from around here, is a wide, four-lane highway stretching from the middle of Oregon City and out past the college before it becomes a more rural two-lane road. There is a large shopping complex almost directly across the street. At practically every moment of every day there is lots of car and pedestrian traffic through there and there were other kids at Ashley's bus stop who never saw a thing. I choose to believe she vanished earlier than that, and I'll tell you why.

The defense that Ashley vanished on the way to her bus stop based on the story her mother gave, but as time went on it was found that her mother's account was somewhat shaky and inconsistent, suggesting that she hadn't seen her daughter right before she left, but rather had last seen her almost an hour before. Now anything can happen in an hour? It was discovered, in the midst of the search for Ashley, that she had been carrying on a rather strange relationship with the man who lived next door to her apartment, a man named Ward Weaver. Now Weaver is hardly a household name now, but again back in 2002 you couldn't find a person who didn't know exactly who he was. Ashley had lived for a period of a few months practically in Weaver's home at which time the 39-year old man had reportedly become so attached to her that his girlfriend at the time left him when he decided he'd rather sleep with this 12-year old girl than her. Weaver also had an extensive history of assault, often focused on the women of his past. And these were violent assaults, some of which could have killed his victims. Furthermore, his father was an ex-trucker and convicted serial killer who had killed multiple people, mostly hitchhikers, as he drove along the freeways of the west coast. There were lots of reasons to point the finger at Weaver as the individual who caused Ashley's disappearance.

It is known that after that period of time living in Weaver's home that those who knew Ashley claimed that she had gone through lots of changes and was much more reactive and yet also apprehensive. One of her teachers even saw her kissing Weaver on the lips when he dropped her off at school. Finally, I believe it was either the end of summer or the start of fall of 2001, Ashley finally came out and said that Weaver had assaulted her. Weaver immediately banned the girl from his home and Ashley became the target of hazing in her school, mostly targeted by Weaver's own daughter, who understandably, didn't want to believe her own father could be such an animal, and thus Ashley had to be a attention-seeking liar. There is little evidence to show whether there was any correspondence for the remainder of 2001 between Ashley and Weaver. One of the last things known about Ashley is that at a Christmas party she had told her mother that she was genuinely afraid of Ward Weaver. Then, 2 1/2 weeks later, she vanishes.

Weaver became a suspect and immediately thrust himself into the spotlight, claiming his innocence of course. However, taking such action, going out of his way to do public interviews and so on, only made him look more guilty. Ward Weaver was a rather unattractive man with a bushy head of hair and a bushy mustache. When he opened his doors for local news interviews he often dressed in a wife-beater, was captured chain-smoking on camera and despite his rather calm and sometimes eloquent way of speaking, he just looked guilty. I wasn't convinced yet, as a young man. And maybe it was his ability to act so calm. I just figured a guilty person wouldn't be able to play himself off like that. Of course, any real sane person probably couldn't. Then March came, and my opinion changed rapidly.

On March 8, 2002 another girl, Miranda Gaddis, vanished in the exact same way that Ashley Pond did, from the exact same apartment complex. It didn't take but a moment to realize that the two crimes were related; they were identical! Miranda Gaddis was quite the opposite of Ashley, much more active, popular, quirky and outgoing. But, like Ashley, she came from a troubled background. Her father was a convicted sex offender, who later died in a shooting after his release. Both Ashley and Miranda had experienced sexual assault at a young age. There were so many connections, but still they didn't convince me 100% that Weaver was the man who did it. After all, he didn't seem to have any connection to Miranda Gaddis at all. Then I read a story in the Portland Tribune, which had a few staff writers who had taken a vested interest in the case. Near the ending of it there was reference to Weaver's daughter's birthday party, of which Miranda was invited. At this party Miranda had begun spreading talk about when Ashley lived there and what Weaver and done to her. At one point she even told some of the other girls there not to spend the night because Weaver would probably do something to one of them. Angered, Weaver's daughter reported this to him, at which time he got very angry. Hearing that story changed everything for me. First, we have Ashey, 2 1/2 weeks before disappearing telling her mother that she was genuinely fearful of him and now we have Miranda, about 2 1/2 weeks before she vanished pointing the finger at Weaver as the probable abductor of Ashley. And Miranda and Ashley knew each other. Weaver had to ponder what Ashley may have told her. And Miranda was a very expressive outgoing girl who likely wasn't going to keep her mouth shut about the situation.

I also found it very intriguing that on the day of one of the girls' disappearance he went to a store and bought a whole bunch of bathroom, and specifically bathtub, cleaning supplies. That has always lead me to believe that he may have drowned or at least attacked one of his victims in his bathroom and later bought supplied to clean everything up.

But beyond that, right after the disappearance of these two girls, Weaver had a part of his backyard dug up so he could place barrels down there and then lay a slab of concrete over it for placement of a new hot tub. This caused frantic attention as Weaver's own father had buried one of his victims in his backyard and laid a concrete slab over her body. Weaver practically sealed his own fate as murder suspect #1 with this action. The media came calling again and angry parents all over the place were screaming for Weaver's head on a platter and for authorities to get back there and tear up that backyard. Even after the event ended we heard the same old clamor: if only the police had acted sooner! But the fact of the matter was, just because Weaver was following in the footsteps eerily similar to those of his father, this was note remotely sufficient evidence to even get a general search warrant for the property. Interestingly enough, Weaver had allowed multiple searches of his property, even one with police K9's, who sniffed all around the concrete slab and never reacted to it. There was just no, pardon the pun, concrete evidence to prove Weaver was guilty. There wasn't even a known crime scene to examine seeing as neither of the girls were seen being abducted and neither left any evidence behind. The evidence just wasn't there.

For months then the case dragged on and started losing traction. Any other possible suspects came and went and eyes always remained focused on Weaver. But by late summer the case was beginning to lose attention. Both Ashley and Miranda had been missing for months and much of the general public presumed they were dead. Then, on August 13, 2002, the case was launched back into the spotlight. There were signs that Weaver may have been about to split, possibly fleeing to Mexico. On this night however he was given a ride home by his son's pregnant 19-year old girlfriend. Once they arrived there the two went into the house and while inside Weaver attempted to rape her. She managed to break free and ran screaming from the house naked. She found a tarp to wrap around her body and dodged into traffic on Beavercreek Road, getting a man to stop for her. He quickly took her across the street to a nearby salon where police were contacted and alerted to the fact that Ward Weaver had just attempted to rape a young woman. Weaver immediately took off, leaping into his car and tearing out onto the street. It was a rather anti-climactic way to end things. The police tracked him to the nearby I-205 freeway where they pursued him briefly and he ultimately pulled over and was arrested. Later, Weaver's son Francis, the boyfriend of the rape victim, contacted police and told them that his father had admitted killing Ashley and Miranda to him. His claim had to be taken with great caution as he was most definitely angry and vengeful to his father for what he had done. But this event got the ball rolling.

It was at this time that Weaver was also evicted from his house, which was located directly next to the apartments where Ashley and Miranda lived. With Weaver evicted, the power of whether the police could search the property lay in the hands of Weaver's landlord, who openly allowed them to set up shop and search the property. On August 24th the search was underway. It was a media circus with at least four news helicopters circling overhead around this one little house. The property had been fenced off and people surrounded the fence line for practically the whole duration of the search. Over the course of the three days that the property was searched people began placing notes, signs, stuffed animals and things such as that into the fencing, turning it into a spontaneous memorial (and this was before it was even known if the girls were there - but someone it seems everybody knew deep inside). As the concrete slab was being torn up the police and FBI had focused a part of their search on a small shed in the background, wherein they found a set of human remains stuffed in a microwave box. I remember, about a hour before this discovery was mentioned in the news, watching the coverage and being unable to take my eyes off of it. This was right around the corner from me. These girls went to school at a place where I played youth basketball. A kid in my biology class was Miranda Gaddis' cousin, I mean, this hit right at home to me. And then, when nothing new seemed to be going on out of nowhere a coroners van pulled up and entered the property. There was this collective gasp. I remember it well because we were watching Channel 2's coverage of the events and Anna Song was the main news person on the scene who had spent more time than any other news person on this case. She had interviewed Miranda Gaddis personally when the search had begun for Ashley. I remember Song being in the midst of giving an update as the coroner's vehicle pulled up and she just completely went silent and was so overcome that they had to cut back to the main news room while she collected herself. I think, in that moment, everyone knew the worst had happened.

A short while later the discovery of these remains was announced and the following day, as the backyard had been practically torn apart, and the barrels below the concrete unearthed, another set of human remains were discovered. It was Sunday, August 25, 2002, one of the most agonizing days I have ever experienced and I didn't even know these girls. It was during the afternoon that another report was made for the news media. They announced that a second set of human remains had been recovered and that the remains discovered the day before belonged to Miranda Gaddis. There was a collective scream and just complete shock by everyone gathered there. And I just felt my heart feel like it was going to collapse down to my stomach. I was watching the coverage with my parents and even though it felt clear to us at that time that the two girls were in that backyard we all went silent with shock when this announcement was made. It was a forgone conclusion the next day when it was reported that the remains found in the barrel were those of Ashley Pond. I remember there was hardly a reaction when that announcement was made because everyone knew by then.

Weaver, being the heartless jackass that he was, denied guilt as long as he could, even trying to enter in a plead of insanity. He was sent to the state hospital where he was examined and found to be completely sane and just a sick, manipulative person. Once it was clear that Weaver would have to stand trial he took a plea and in admitting his guilt got life in prison over what would have likely been the death penalty. I seriously wonder how much longer Weaver will have. Child killers don't last long in prison. In 2007 a fellow prisoner who was going to cut his hair tried to stab Weaver to death. Weaver escaped with a few stabs to his neck and shoulders. And that was about it. It seems when Weaver confessed everyone was satisfied and the case has slowly faded from memory. I've talked to people about it who moved to the Portland area after 2002 and most of them have no knowledge of the event because it has gone forgotten. The location where Weaver's home once stood is just a grassy field with no memorial or reminder of what was taken from our world back in 2002. The apartment complex, once known as the Newell Creek Apartments, has changed its name understandably. Why would you keep an apartment name that had been nationally associated with disappearing children?

Going to school so close to that site I've walked by it so many times. I've looked down the entryway to the apartment complex and it looks more or less the same. I've stood right where Ashley and Miranda's bus stop was. I've walked by the salon where Weaver's almost third victim contacted the police. And it's such an ominous experience walking through there knowing everything that happened. But it's equally sad that so many people have no idea and drive through that small area completely clueless of what happened right under their noses in their own neighborhood. While others have forgotten there is no way that I can. It was an experience that altered me. Afterward, if I was ever around younger children, either family or relatives of friends, I always keep an eye on them, especially when those who should be watching them aren't. When I'm at work and I ever see a child walking around by his or herself I always keep a close eye on them to make sure they leave with the right person. Children are precious and sadly the prey of many sick and twisted people, many of which we don't even know are out there waiting for an opportunity. Those opportunities can occur at any time so we must always remember to keep our kids close to us so tragedies such as this become fewer and fewer.

Good day everyone.     

My Take on the Kyron Horman Case (as of now)

PREPARE YOURSELF, THIS IS A LONG ONE (AND POSSIBLY WITH SPELLING ERRORS - I WROTE IN A FRENZY)

While I’ve been writing, shooting, and organizing my plans for my immediate future I have recently had it bouncing through my mind to make a documentary film of some kind. I’ve never really made a true documentary even though I’ve dabble in the field a little bit. But if I do make something I want it to be gritty and real, going out and conducting interviews, finding someone to be a narrator for the film as a whole and so on. But while I’ve been mulling this around a little I’ve been watching a whole collection of documentaries the past couple days while I recover from being severely under the weather. Today was just a continuation of that as I woke up feeling just as miserable as last night, called in sick to work, and since then I’ve just laid here feeling my back get stiffer as I watch any odd documentary piece that sparks my intrigue. I watched a piece about the “Wonderland Murders”, which is one of the most bizarre murder cases I’ve ever heard of. I’d launch into it, but that’s not my purpose for writing here. If you are interested, here’s a link to an E-True Hollywood Story on the case (as far as I know it’s the only legit documentary about the case that I’ve been able to find online); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO5LGoeAIfg. I warn you though: there’s a shot of a dick like 30 seconds into it.

But anyway, today I gradually transitioned over to films about missing children, which has always been an area of crime that’s bothered me severely, as I’m sure it does a great many people. I’ve seen many things on the abduction and death of Charles Lindbergh’s baby and various other cases. I’ve also seen some programs on the famous and yet in many ways forgotten case of the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. And most recently, especially since it happened in my own town, I’ve done lots of research into the disappearance of Kyron Horman, who’s now been missing for almost three and a half years with no trace of him discovered. I know those in his family are still holding out hope, as once would expect, but I personally very highly doubt the boy is still alive and if he is I wouldn’t even want to imagine the circumstances surrounding his abduction or what he has been through in the prevailing 40+ months since his disappearance.

In watching a program about Jon Benet Ramsey and then following it with one on Kyron Horman I noticed a significant correlation between the two. No, not that the circumstances surrounding both cases are still unresolved or that two little children were involved, but rather the immediate focus on those in these childrens’ family. Now in practically every missing child or child murder case the immediate family is suspected first. That is practically a given, but if a case cannot be established or if one is being established it is one that is only based on a few elements of circumstantial evidence, that reality has to be deeply understood. However, in our high tech, can’t slow down, there’s too much to see, our attention spans become shorter and shorter and all outside influences seem to be interested in doing about that issue is helping make even shorter. Because of this, people don’t want to do their own in depth examinations into unsolved cases such as those of Ramsey and Horman. But rather they are content to take the investigators and/or the media at their word. And with the media often presenting a case and then just re-presenting the same details over and over again an often singular pattern is established that society keeps taking in over and over again to the point that they automatically presume what they are being told is the God’s honest truth. Then people start talking about it amongst themselves and since everyone is getting the same media they all have the same perspective on things, and again, since people don’t want to take the time to stop and analyze things, they are quick to take many things at their face value even if they haven’t been proven true in reality.

This is what I fear has happened in the cases of Jon Benet Ramsey’s parents and the stepmother of Kyron Horman (and granted has likely been the case in a vast majority of other cases of its like). I had just turned eleven when the Jon Benet Ramsey case broke and I recall very little about it when it actually happened, but I was a well-established 24-year old when the Kyron Horman case broke, and it with it having occurred only some fifteen or so miles from where I live there was an added attention grabber for me. Kyron’s stepmother, Terri Horman, became the focus of the investigations attention rather quickly, and thus she became the focus of the media’s attention. She has been reportedly the last person who was with Kyron before he disappeared (even though her attorney has recently stated that there are eyewitnesses who have claimed otherwise - that story remains to be told).

In the prevailing weeks after Kyron’s disappearance the media’s focus became even stronger on Terri Horman, probably because it was a major child disappearance case and with no crime scene and no other leads she was the only real subject of controversy in the case. It thus took very little time for her to become the suspect in the publics mind. This isn’t to say that Terri did herself any favors in those weeks and months following the disappearance of her grandson. One of the greatest damages at least to her character was when it came out that she had been “sexting” a friend of hers. I personally read the text messages and to keep you all from vomiting I won’t repeat them here. I found them on the internet (they are public records now so if you’re truly interested you should be able to find them). A little later on a former landscaper came forward claiming that Terri wanted to hire him to kill Kaine, her soon-to-be ex-husband and father of Kyron. Either this matter is still being investigated or is has been determined to be a fabrication. If it were true it constitutes conspiracy to commit murder, which is a felony and Terri Horman would have been snatched up immediately. I don’t know weather to believe this story of her hiring a hitman. Of course when the story came out everyone was quick to presume its authenticity, but that’s because, again, the public for the most part had already determined her guilt. While I don’t know the background of this landscaper, it is not too far-fetched for him to have fabricated this story in an effort to gain some spotlight for himself. Such a story would be relatively easy to believe publicly since Terri was already being presumed as the killer of little Kyron. In practically every high profile case someone comes out of the woodworks claiming a connection of some kind and they are proven to be liars or unreliable. It’s hard to say for certain as very little information has surfaced for the publics examination on that matter.

Then there are those instances with which have been considered as evidence against Terri. I won’t go into great detail on each one because there really isn’t much detail that any one can be gone into over. The most significant piece of evidence against her is her consistent mixing up of the circumstances that surrounded her final moments with Kyron. In one of her accounts she claimed that she never went into Kyron’s classroom and yet the now infamous photograph taken of Kyron in front of his science fair presentation, taken by Terri, show that he is in his classroom. She would claim that the last time she saw Kyron she let him go to walk down the hallway to his classroom. She turned away and left before he reached his classroom and apparently no one saw him after that. This seems to be a rather unlikely scenario considering the fact that had Kyron been abducted by someone in this scenario it would have left the abductor probably a maximum of five to ten seconds to snatch up the child before reaching his classroom. And even then, the most deranged psychopathic personality is going to be collected enough to realize you don’t abduct a child in the middle of a hallway at his school only steps from his classroom. And had this somehow occurred, somebody would have seen or heard something. It just defines my logic that the child would have been abducted in such a small period of both time and space.

A common misconception is that these demented people; serial killers, rapists, child abductors and so on are utterly disassociated and insane. In the non-legal sense of the word, certainly these people are insane, but, as practically all evidence has suggested, they are also very calculated individuals. In order to get what they want they plan things in advance, which is often why serial offenders are so difficult to capture. Their forms of violence are not sporadic or the simple climax of a crime of passion where everything is unplanned and often very messy. The reason I bring this up is because if we have to consider that it was not Terri who took Kyron and killed him, and beyond that it was nobody in his immediate family that did it, then we have to venture forth to consider who would have done it. What kind of person would abduct a little child from right next to his school. There are only a few logical possibilities, three of which I have listed below:

Kyron was abducted by someone or by a collection of people involved in underground activities such as child sex trafficking. It’s unfortunate that we have found the issue of people being abducted and sold into sex trafficking in particular within America to be an ever-growing problem. Obviously it is heinous to even try and think of something like this being the case for little Kyron. It’s somewhat far-fetched as well because of his age, but sadly there are people of all kinds who are sadistically interested in different kinds of people. That being said I pray with all my might that this did not occur in the case of little Kyron, and I still feel it is an unlikely premise.
Kyron was abducted by someone for the same reason many people are abducted: as a way to ransom money. Kyron’s father had a fairly cushiony job with Intel so the possibility of someone wanting to kidnap his child for a ransom wouldn’t bee too far-fetched. However there is one fundamental problem: no communication has ever been made by the guilty party seeking out a ransom. It’s sad and unlikely consideration, but must be posed, that had Kyron been abducted in the efforts to obtain ransom money it could be possibly that those who took him killed him. Perhaps Kyron tried to struggle and in the efforts to get ahold of him he was killed. With a dead child the guilty party may have abandoned their plans to collect a ransom. After all, even if they tried to pull through with still getting the ransom they would have risked putting themselves out there to be captured and by this point they were not only kidnappers, but killers. While it’s possible, I still don’t consider this scenario to be a likely premise as to how Kyron disappeared.
Finally, there is another sad scenario that he was abducted by a pedophile or serial child abductor/sex offender (of which they all go hand in hand). This possibility has to be considered. Whenever a child goes missing the authorities always check to see what sex offenders are living in or around the abduction area and which of these people are possible suspects for being close to there when the abduction occurred. Despite it being the next likely scenario as far as I’m concerned, outside of someone in Kyron’s immediate family being responsible, this too I think is a difficult premise to swallow.

So here I have posed the three most likely alternate possibilities and yet I don’t consider any of them likely. Why? Because of the location. The fact that Kyron was still likely inside of his own school when he vanished is, to me, one of the most troubling factors in the case. Even crazed sex offenders scoping out children often watch children from off school ground or keep a mild distance when they’re considering a possible attack or an abduction. While their minds are focused on sickening and despicable conquests, they are still cold and calculated individuals. This is what bothers me about the three possibilities above. People working in the sex slave trade, abductors for ransom, or serial offenders; they are all calculating people. They take action after considering the best ways to take it so they can get what they want without being captured. Look into any serial killer, especially ones like Gary Ridgway or Dennis Rader who evaded capture for some twenty or thirty years, these were cold and calculated individuals. They managed to kill and kill again and going unseen. For famous killers like Ridgway and others like Ted Bundy who killed in excess of thirty people and yet up until their capture the only evidence against them was a handful of shaky eyewitness accounts that didn’t really help the investigation. And furthermore, it is commonplace for every serial killer (or serial offender) to want to stay in the spotlight if their actions bring about high profile cases, and Kyron’s disappearance got worldwide attention. This was true of the Zodiac killer, who did his best to stay in the spotlight and when people began to forget what he had done he’d send the police another letter or take credit for another killing. Dennis Rader ultimately was caught because he couldn’t deal with his evil deeds being forgotten and he established a paper trail that tied him to his killings. This is what makes me doubt so highly that Kyron was abducted by a serial offender. No serial offender would have wandered into the school and snatched up this child on a few dozen feet from his stepmother and literally footsteps from his classroom. That’s not how they work. And furthermore, sad though it is, the Kyron Horman case has gone rather cold in the Portland area over the past year or so and yet no interesting efforts have been made by any guilty party to write a letter or anonymously mail evidence to the police showing they’re the guilty party (as was the case in the Black Dahlia murder back in 1946). There is just nothing to suggest this was the workings of a serial offender. And furthermore, there have been no other child abductions in Portland area, or even really in the Pacific Northwest for that matter that have synched up with the potential MO that can be supplied to an offender who just wanders into a school with the confidence that he/she can snatch up a child and walk out unseen (as would have to be the case).

It is interesting that in another one of Terri Horman’s accounts she claimed that she left Kyron with a male chaperone who was with other children when she left the school. It was later determined there were no male chaperones there and the easy conclusion to reach is that Terri was setting up a suspect in the case. By leaving her stepson with a mysterious male chaperone, of which she couldn’t remember his name or various aspects about, we have a possible abductor from within the school. But then again, how could a random man-off-the-street just wander into a school and offer to be a chaperone for a elementary school’s science fair without the least bit of scrutiny? So the mix of accounts hasn’t helped Terri in her case. A mix of final accounts suggests ones effort to fabricate a story to protect one’s self. The next question is: why would Terri have to come up with a story to protect herself if she’s innocent? It’s a valid point.

Then there is a smaller issue that is worth closer scrutiny, and that is the fact that Terri and Kaine switched vehicles that day. Terri loved and always drove her Red Mustang, but on the day Kyron vanished she took Kaine’s white Ford truck when she drove Kyron to the science fair. Now it appears that this was Terri’s idea because she wanted the space in the larger truck so as to transport Kyron’s science project (apparently her Mustang was too small to transport it?). I only point this out because it would make a difference who suggested this switch, especially if we are considering Kyron’s father as a possible suspect. Kaine Horman’s alibi for the day Kyron vanished was pretty cut and dry, claiming he was at work at Intel until around 2 p.m. when he came home. However there appear to be reasons to disbelieve that and what has been posed is that someone had accessed Terri Horman’s Facebook account twice during the 8 a.m. hour in which she was at Skyline Elementary with Kyron. So it obviously wasn’t she who was using the account and it appears that Kaine was the one using it. This certainly doesn’t make Kaine the guilty party. After all, how could he abduct Kyron from school if he’s sitting, presumably at home, on Terri’s Facebook account. It would be interesting to see if this was a common thing between them, both accessing Terri’s account. While Facebook is the most popular social networking sites in the world, I practically never have seen anyone willingly let another person use their account, especially for playing video games on the website (which appears to have been what was going on in her Facebook activity log during that eight o’clock hour). The question must then be posed: why would Kaine use Terri’s Facebook to play video games. Didn’t he have his own Facebook? And if so, why wouldn’t he use his own account. This whole thing is very interesting to me, coupled with the fact that Kaine bonded so closely to his ex and Kyron’s biological mother, Desiree Young, right after the disappearance and rather quickly began disassociating with Terri. Overall it’s hard to understand why Kaine would be accessing Terri’s Facebook at this time and it doesn’t really help to serve his possible guilt unless it can be proven that he really wasn’t at work like he said he was and was somewhere else, presumably at home for at least a short while. Even if there was some ulterior motive is his doing this, what would it have achieved? It wouldn’t have shown that Terri was home at this time because she was known to be at Skyline Elementary.

Whatever the case, because of all the attention thrust on Terri, Kaine never really emerged as a possible suspect. The fact that the police have still never stepped forward and identified him as even a person of interest suggests that with what they know he was likely either right where he said he was or somewhere wherein it would have been impossible for him to be the abductor. After breaking off on that tangent, it brings us back around to the issue of Kaine and Terri switching cars on the day of the disappearance. It would change things quite a bit if it was Kaine’s idea and he was the one to push them towards switching cars that morning, especially if he was involved in Kyron’s disappearance. First off, Terri would have his truck over by the school and thus his vehicle could possibly be accounted for being somewhere other than where Kyron would ultimately end up. Beyond that, having Terri’s car in his possession he could drive that vehicle wherever he wished and potentially someone could see the car and assume it was Terri driving it. Terri loved her Red Mustang and even graced it with a unique license plate number: RDSQRL (an abbreviated term for “Red Squirrel”). Needless to say, there were possible aspects about this car that might attract ones attention if they saw the car and knew Terri. But this is all, while possible, still rather far-fetched. Had Kaine been involved it would have been a greater pain to transport Kyron, had he been responsible, in that Red Mustang than in his much larger truck. This piece of logic turns things back around on Terri. If the claim is true that she wanted to switch vehicles so she could have Kaine’s larger truck to transport Kyron’s science fair project then that claim must be analyzed. The presumption must be considered in this case that Terri wanted to take Kaine’s truck so she would be able to transport Kyron better when she, presumably, took his life. But before that can be considered the reason given must be considered first.

So was Kyron’s project so large that it couldn’t be conveniently transported in Terri’s Red Mustang. The answer is a quick and simple ‘No’. While her Mustang was certainly not a truck it also was not a tiny compact vehicle. And even if it had been there is still no reason why they couldn’t have transported Kyron’s project in her Mustang. In the last picture taken of Kyron we see his whole project right behind him. It consists of a large fold-up presentation and a small diorama. Now Kyron was listed as being three feet and eight inches tall and he, as can be seen in the picture, is definitely a little taller than the board for his presentation, which could conveniently fold up. From just eyeballing it I would put the height of that board between about 36 and 40 inches and it’s width is probably around 25 inches if folded up. Something this size would have easily fit into Terri Horman’s Mustang. And the diorama was about the size of a shoebox, something so small he could have held it in his lap, which is probably what he did. It was presented as though this was some massive project that even Kaine initially said was something easier to transport in his truck than her car. It was a piece of poster board and a shoebox for crying out loud! I could have transported something that minute on a crowded bus (and have on many occasions) with little to no difficulty. This argument that Terri needed a vehicle so colossally larger than her Mustang to carry Kyron’s project just doesn’t hold water. And furthermore, she had the objective of bringing the project home with her when the fair was over, and yet when she left she left without briging the project with her. This all casts further light on Terri as the possible guilty party, suggesting she wanted a larger vehicle with a open and easy to clean trunk bed to transport Kyron, presumably after she rendered him incapacitated. This all considered, it’s a sad realization, as far as I know, that the police never checked this truck for evidence. It’s a wonder what they may have found if Terri is, in fact, guilty. And yet it is known that the police took in her car for close examination, and she wasn’t even driving it that day. Nevertheless, this is just another hitch in Terri’s day.

According to her story she then spent approximately the period of 10:10 to 11:39 a.m. driving along rural roads in the west hills area on the far west end of Portland’s city limits as she tried to help her then infant daughter settle down while suffering from inner ear pain. This story has brought about lots of scrutiny. First off, many would question what driving around would do to help an infant’s ear ache? It’s an intriguing question, but unfortunately no one is in a place of one hundred percent certainty to say that this didn’t work for Terri’s little daughter. However, this does leave open almost a ninety minute period in which Terri could have taken Kyron and done something with his body. It is worthy to note as well that one of Terri’s closest friends, DeDe Spicher’s (pronounced ‘spicer’) whereabouts are unknown during a period of time very close to this period in which Terri was reportedly just driving about. Spicher claimed that she had a solid alibi and that she spent that part of the day working at a customers home. However the owner of the home claimed that from roughly the period of 11:10 a.m. until 1 p.m. Spicher had left, was unaccounted found and could not be reached on her cell phone. This casts suspicion on Spicher. Had she admitted that she was away from her work during this time, and provided logical reasoning for why she did so, she might have gone neglected by investigators and the media. But the fact is she claimed to be at one location during this who stretch of the day and yet the very person she was working for acknowledges that she was missing in acting for nearly two hours.

This makes for some convenient matching of time. If Terri did in fact kill Kyron, be it intentional or accidental, we have her arriving at home around 11:39 a.m. We then have Spicher leaving her place of work at 11:10 a.m. With that close proximity of time it is logical to suggest that Terri made it known to one of her closest friends what had happened after the event was finished and she was soon to return home. An emergency of this nature would lead to Spicher leaving right in the middle of a job she was one. We then have the two of them meeting at Terri’s home for potentially anytime up till around an hour before Spicher returned to her workplace. What they may have discussed could have been anything, but had things turned out this way it’s likely the meeting consisted of Spicher trying to be the voice of deceptive reasoning, telling Terri to keep quiet and not to admit to anything. Such is often the advice given by friends to a fellow guilty friend. Despite this possibility however, this is all speculation. It’s reasonable and circumstantial speculation, but still speculation nonetheless. I have no clue what Terri or Spicher’s phone records consist of, if there were any calls or text messages sent between the two women during this time that could make for a stronger connection between them. Since there has been so much made about a ping apparently captured from Terri’s cell phone that suggested she was in the area of Sauvie Island along with the fact that little of law enforcement’s examination into Spicher seems to have been focused on the question of communication between these two women it seems hard to believe that there was any communication between them during this time. The police definitely had reason to examine their phone records otherwise. Spicher claims that she hadn’t been in close contact with Terri, having not spoken to her for a couple months before Kyron’s disappearance. Furthermore, her contention for her “missing time” was that she had been away from her cell phone and a good ways from the house, where reportedly the woman who lived there called out to her and tried to contact her via her cell phone when they had lunch prepared. She claimed she never heard any of these efforts to contact her and didn’t return to the house itself till around 1 p.m. Honest account or convenient cover story? It’s hard to say. It’s all circumstantial but it seems when all is said and done no one else knows for certain where Spicher was during this time. It’s suspicious, but again, we all find ourselves alone and without so-called alibi’s for certain events whether we were involved or not.

Something else that cast further suspicion on Spicher was her initial willingness to take a polygraph test and then rapidly changing her mind when reportedly Terri contacted her, telling her that she took a polygraph test and was told that she failed it. This is in some ways verified by Kaine Horman and Desiree Young who came out and expressed that she had taken two polygraph tests and failed both. They claimed that this was common knowledge and known by everyone, and yet every story I have looked up on this matter only references how Kaine and Desiree came out and expressed that she failed the test. This is hardly definitive proof, but it seems if one of Terri’s closest friends acknowledged that she also failed a test it gets harder to argue this possibility. Terri’s failure of a polygraph is what led to Spicher changing her mind when both women presumed this was a crooked effort on the part of the Portland Police to set Terri up as the guilty party. But even this is difficult to swallow seeing as three years have gone by and Terri hasn’t so much as been arrested for the crime.

So what does it mean if Terri Horman failed a polygraph? I’d like to say it’s absurd to argue that the police lied about the test to set her up as a more viable suspect, but unfortunately such things have happened in various police precincts in various cities. Just as much though, it’s always a convenient argument from the subject who failed the test to claim it was either done improperly or that those administering the test had an agenda against them in some way or another. We the public want to assume polygraph tests to be definitive proof of someone’s guilt and innocence and certainly polygraph tests are about as accurate as things get, but they are not a hundred percent accurate. That must be firmly grasped. Furthermore, the notion of failing a polygraph tests creates the easy presumption that whoever took the test was lying through their teeth and being dishonest from the very first question to the final one. However, failure of a polygraph test can be as simple as lying on only one question. The question then becomes what question, or possibly questions was Terri dishonest on? It’s impossible for someone like me to know seeing as the results of these tests haven’t been released to the public. Again, failing a polygraph tests is another strike against Terri, but it’s not necessarily proof of her guilt in the abduction of Kyron. It’s just another area where it’s easy for someone not in the know to presume a definitive answer in one way or another. Something similar came up in the case of Arthur Lee Allan, who to this day has been argued as the key suspect of the Zodiac murders that happened in California during the late 60s and early 70s. A few years back the DNA taken from saliva on the envelopes used to send the letters was tested against Allen’s and found to not be a match. So quickly did people presume this was proof of Allen’s innocence and that the matter should be dropped. However, whoever licked the envelopes wasn’t necessarily the killer. And colleagues of Allen came out and expressed that when Allen mailed things he had someone else lick his envelopes for him because the taste of the glue substance on them made him sick. Perhaps this is just a bunch of contrived nonsense to keep Allen as the suspect in the spotlight and possibly it’s further proof that he needs to be continually examined as a Zodiac possible. But nevertheless, a DNA test under circumstances doesn’t necessarily rule someone out of a case just as much as failing a polygraph test doesn’t necessarily make one guilty of the crime they are being tested against.

As the story of that day concludes, Terri arrived home and later Kaine arrived and when the school day concluded the two of them went to meet Kyron when he got off the bus. But when the bus arrived Kyron wasn’t there. Contacting the school it was found that Kyron never made it to class and was marked absent for that day. Immediately the Horman’s knew something was wrong and before long the case of the missing 7-year old spread like wildfire, becoming national news in days. Upon discovery that Terri is the last known person to have seen Kyron she became a person of interest rather quickly.

Of course, those close to her came to her aid, claiming police harassment (everyone claims police harassment when they’re the suspect in a crime, as though they should be treated with kid gloves) and begging why they were wasting time pursing Terri when the “real assailant” was out there roaming free. Why was so much attention put on Terri? Well, she was the last to see Kyron alive and there are no other credible suspects. People wonder why this has been such a tough case to crack. There’s no body. Kyron’s whereabouts could be anywhere be he dead or alive. Most importantly, there is no crime scene. While the last place Kyron was seen was at his school, it’s unknown when he legitimately disappeared. There is not even a specific location that can be marked as the location where he was taken. This leads me to become intrigued as to how much investigative attention was put into that hallway where reportedly Terri watched Kyron walk away and then he just vanished before reaching his class. While again it’s difficult to know exactly what happened to Kyron or where he went during this short period of time, the fact is this is what the investigation has to go on. That whole hallway should have been blocked off the moment Kyron qualified as a missing person and every single footprint or fingerprint should have been taken, granted there would have been a good many. But most of them would have been tiny feet, that of the various students at the elementary. Any larger adult footprints, and it was most definitely an adult that took him, should have be checked and taken. It would have been very time consuming, but with the best initial presumption to be that Kyron was abducted from the school itself that hallway would have been tantamount to examine for evidence. I don’t have all of the details of the police investigation obviously, but I highly doubt this was done. It may have yielded no results, especially if Terri was the guilty party, but it still should have been done. Honestly, how many crimes have been solved by footprints and fingerprints?

Again, Terri Horman continued to not do herself any favors after the abduction and having become a person of interest to police. In addition to being the last person to see Kyron, having a shaky story about where she was and what she did around the time he went missing, supposedly having hired a landscaper to kill Kaine, she also was found to be sending sexually explicit texts to a friend who was helping in the search for Kyron. As more and more attention was being put on Terri, not only had the general public pointed their fingers collectively at her but ultimately Kaine and Kyron’s mother had turned their backs on her, and ever since they have been harshly critical of Terri. They all believe she was involved in his disappearance.

Before continuing from here let me first mention that I believe these circumstances surrounding Terri Horman are worth further examination and cannot be ignored, allowing her to be removed as a suspect. I have a tendency to personally lead towards her having been at least involved in Kyron’s disappearance. My greatest reasoning to believe this, above all else and as I discussed before, is the fact that Kyron would have had to been taken from the school. I just don’t see any kind of offender being that brazen as to snatch a kid out of a school like that, especially without attracting attention to his or herself. Desiree in an interview expressed how Kyron would get nervous and reactive if just a few feet away from a family member or someone else he knew and trusted like school teachers and fellow students. Such is commonplace for most children. They all know to keep away from strangers and to be reactive for their safety if a stranger tries to take them. Thus the only way I can honestly fathom a stranger (or more directly anyone but Terri Horman) having taken Kyron is if he was taken outside of the school. But how could this have happened unless a stranger infiltrated the school. If Terri’s story rings true that Kyron was on his way to class for what reason would he wander off with a stranger, whether he became comfortable being with that stranger or not. It seems clear that Kyron left with someone he knew. Otherwise there is no way he could have been taken right out of the school like that without getting someone’s attention. Whatever circumstances follows in the immediate aftermath of that science fair, I have to assume that if Kyron didn’t show up for class he left the school property with Terri. What happened after is a mystery. But is poses another question that must be considered.

If Terri Horman took Kyron with her and ultimately killed him, I have a hard time in believing that her killing of him was an accident. It’s an often posed possibility in cases of parents killing their children that it was an accident or the parent snapped and in a fit of rage suddenly killed their child. This was posed against Jon Benet Ramsey’s mother Patricia. In the most absurd theory of the whole case, authorities posed that Jon Benet wet herself and ran to her parents and this somehow sent her mother into a frenzy wherein she beat, choked and killed her daughter. Absurd and yet, astoundingly, some people believed that theory. The whole ‘killing by accident’ argument is always posed in cases such as this, but seldom is it ever the reality of the situation.

If Terri did kill Kyron I have a feeling it had to be something that was at least somewhat preplanned. She would have to plot out having Kaine’s truck that day, thus when she went to dispose of the body nobody would see her in her Red Squirrel wagon. She had to know to bring Kyron to his science fair, thus she would be seen there with her stepson smiling, taking pictures and being generally supportive in those last moments before he vanished. And most of all, she had to know that she wouldn’t have an eternity to get rid of the body, which she apparently would have been busy getting rid of between 10:10 and 11:39 a.m. It seems likely to presume she made no incriminating phone calls for if she did they most likely would have come out by now. She knew the police could check her phone records to see whoever she called. This is often a significant and common piece of police work when examining possible suspects in crimes, to see who they were in communication with around the time of the crime. Knowing she wouldn’t have an extended period of time to get rid of the body it seems likely she would have had to have a planned location for getting rid of the body. Cell phone pings suggest she was in the Sauvie Island area, a location that would be about as good as any in the Portland area to dispose of a body with how little traffic there is through that area. It’s interesting to ponder how well Terri knew Sauvie Island or how many times she may have ventured there so has to consider how prepared she would have been to dispose of Kyron’s body in a particular spot. While searches have occurred there, it’s a very large island and they can’t tear the whole thing up looking for a body. Whatever the case, whether she had accomplices or not, she somehow managed to get rid of Kyron and he hasn’t been seen since. She has relocated to southern Oregon after the attention became overwhelming. Many see this as further proof of her guilt.

I mean to express what my opinion is about Terri Horman’s possible involvement in the case to express my belief that she was involved in Kyron’s disappearance before continuing from her. Having said my piece, the fact of the matter is that these pieces of evidence against Terri are all circumstantial, and some of them aren’t even that circumstantial necessarily. About a year and a half I engaged in a total emersion into this case, reading every article I could find on the case and filling a notebook up with notes. I really did my homework, sticking to the grind until I just had to put it away because I had looked into it so deeply. As I was engaging in my own studies into the case I had the preconceived notion that everyone else had that Terri was probably guilty at some level or another. Once I finished this lengthy examination I wasn’t quite as convinced. More than anything, I couldn’t find that one solid piece of evidence to prove her involvement. Admitting again my belief in her guilt the fact of the matter is the definitive proof is just not there and such is why it’s a good thing that the police have yet to arrest and try Terri Horman in this case. Maybe that will change with future events. But the fact of the matter is, with what they’d have to work with, if Terri Horman was brought to trial that is not a case in which the prosecution would have come out on top. I do not believe she would be found guilty without reasonable doubt, especially since it can’t even be definitively proven whether Kyron is dead or alive. What would we think if Kyron miraculously popped back up ten years down the road, alive and well and somehow the victim of a cult abduction or something crazy like that? And there’s Terri Horman, rotting away in a prison for ten years and generally hated by the public over a case that hadn’t been proven against her. But more significant, if Kyron was killed and killed at the hands of Terri, if she was tried now and found not guilty there would be no way to re-try her in the future. That’s the double jeopardy rule. So whatever evidence comes out in the future that might solidify Terri’s guilt in the killings would be irrelevant. Granted she probably wouldn’t be a very popular woman about town if that occurred, but the fact is justice would not be able to be carried out against her. So when people complain about police complacency or asking repeatedly why Terri is just being allowed to live in seclusion in southern Oregon it’s because to arrest in try her now would be a tragic decision that would likely result in acquittal and a greater obstacle in ever discovering what happened to that little boy.

As I started in this piece, discussing how easily most people go with the media, which was so focused in on Terri Horman (because again they have no other persons of interest to focus in on), Terri became the guilty party in everyone’s eyes. I would hear people everywhere I go saying, “She’s guilty as hell”. And practically none of these people know the details of this case and yet they feel qualified in reaching definitive conclusions in such a tragic event. The greatest rallying factors have, understandably, been Kyron’s birth parents and in particular his mother. They have gathered and rallied against Terri time and time against since his disappearance. And certainly I don’t wish to be harsh on Kyron’s parents. I wouldn’t wish what they went through on my worst enemy, whoever that may be. But the truth is the truth, and that truth is that, as with the media, Kyron’s biological parents have only served to amplify the publics presumptions about Terri. It’s really quite astounding. I understand full well that a parent in the throws of looking for their missing child will act erratically at times. In practically every child abduction case, the moment a suspect comes into light, whether there’s enough proof to keep them, the parents in the case, and in particular the mothers, want to believe any and every suspect is guilty. So before things even get serious with a possible suspect we have the parents screaming at them about what they did to their child and they’re having press conferences saying so-and-so is guilty as hell and they should just admit it and get it over with. It happens in practically every case involving the parents of missing children. It’s understandable erratic behavior, but it does little to clarify the situation.

If you listen to Kyron’s biological parents, and in particular his mother, it’s like every single word Terri has said since the moment Kyron vanished is incriminating. She has had something to say about every action Terri has taken no matter how minute it is. Her level of vindictiveness against Terri is so exaggerated that it’s almost suspicious, and it has carried on for the past three and a half years. The most absurd example of her hysteria was in an interview I saw with her in which she was discussing a press conference she was in with her husband, Kaine and Terry. Captured on film, there is a moment where Terri puts her arm around Desiree and rests her head on her shoulder. Desiree appears disconnected and distance and she would express in the interview how it was strange that she would do that under those circumstances. I’m sorry? Your son, her stepson had gone missing and you found it odd and suspicious that she was trying to console you? Granted one can argue she was making a show for the cameras by acting supportive, but in watching that footage in the early going of that press conference, Terri Horman is the only one who looks emotionally distraught.  I find it interesting how stiff everyone else was on that occasion, but on the flip side I have always looked as Terri’s distraught and haggard appearance after Kyron’s disappearance as the after effects of guilt for what she knows and what she did.

That said, I will now venture into my final discussion on this matter. And this point will not focus so much on the case itself as much as how we, as a society, should behave in the light of cases such as this. I know there are a great deal of lazy people out there who won’t care and don’t want to take the time to learn the facts before spouting off their opinions about things. But the fact of the matter is that the case against Terri Horman is purely circumstantial, and a weak circumstantial case at that. If that is so then why all of the attention? Because that’s where all the media’s attention has been and so Terri Horman being the one and only real suspect has led a good many people to presume her guilt without knowing the evidence. If anyone takes a long hard look at the case they will see inconsistencies and things that raise red flags, but they will not at this time find concrete evidence proving Kyron Horman died at the hands of Terri Horman and/or accomplices she was associated with.

This is a lasting effect of a lazy society and it is something that frustrates me a great deal. The manner in which people have so passively screamed guilt at others, and then turned a deaf ear when they were proven wrong is astounding and embarrassing to say the least. Nobody has the right to scream guilty or innocent without looking at the facts for themselves. But still we scream guilty all willy nilly. We throw it around like any other word. Anyone who knows me knows I am a Kennedy Assassination buff in a contemporary society where many people alive now weren’t even born and hardly know a single detail about the case. And yet the continuously present these surveys about how more than eighty percent of people believe there was a conspiracy involved in the investigation of his murder, to which I say, “Who cares?” I believe there was a conspiracy in the case but when ninety percent of present day society hardly knows a thing about the case what should we care about the general public’s opinion about the case at all. It’s like when people talk about how we need to get out and vote and how sad it is that more people don’t vote. Why?! Hardly anyone in this country knows what’s going on or who they’re voting for is really like so why should we be supporting the vote from people who don’t know what we’re voting for? And then we get hostile because the majority of these people we vote for can’t or refuse to do their jobs. Well whose fault is that? We’re the one’s who put them there. Then we blindly follow Presidential candidates as long as they seem to support what we want or they represent whatever political party we loosely fall inline with. We revere our recent President’s depending on which side of the political spectrum we reside on. If we’re democrats we love Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. If we’re republicans, the last two Bushes are loved by us. But the truth is they’re just politicians like everyone else, and some of them aren’t even particularly good politicians, but we love them, especially when we don’t really know anything about them. I laugh the most when people revere Bill Clinton and put up those bumper stickers reading: “No one died when Clinton lied.” Clinton is about as corrupt a politician as there is. He overlooked the whole Mena operation while serving as the Governor of Arkansas. Mena, Arkansas was a major supply point for illegal activity involving the Iran Contras and was a location used for guns and drug running (cocaine in particular). The activities done through there played a major part in bringing large quantities of drugs into America at a time when our country randomly had a huge spike in drug problems. What a coincidence.

Yes, I just made a significant jump from Kyron Horman to the most recent President’s of the United States, but it does tie together. People don’t care about taking the time to know the truth when they can presumably get it all in five minutes on the evening news. This same injustice was served against the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey, which was my primary reason for referencing them earlier in this piece. I remember the years following the death of Jon Benet and there was not a person I knew of who wasn’t “certain in their own mind” that they were guilty. Even after many aspects of the police investigation were shown to be inaccurate (for instance, they claimed there were no footprints in the snow to suggest Jon Benet was killed by an outside intruder and yet crime scene photos outside the house showed there was practically no snow on the ground), extensive proof was established to show someone likely broke in and killed the girl and the fact that after years of examination still bore nothing that the police could use to arrest or try Jon Benet’s parents the general public still felt they were guilty.

Now they have both passed away and there is amble evidence to suggest other parties may have been involved, in particular a man named Michael Helgoth who lived near the Ramsey’s. I recently saw a film on the case that focused in on Helgoth and it’s astounding to me that he hasn’t been looked at more closely by authorities. Helgoth was known to be fearless and erratic; those who knew him said he’d point a gun at them and then shoot a bullet right past their head. There was a footstep in the basement that matched a rare pare of boots Helgoth owned, even to the point of having brown markings in the print and small brown markings were found in that same place on his boot. He also claimed to be coming into a lot of money around the time Jon Benet was killed (and a ransom note for $118,000 was left in the home) and then got depressed a while later when no money showed up. He had also said to several colleagues that he had an interest in possibly caving in a human’s skull as well as an unhealthy interest in little girls. It was particularly eerie watching home video of him with his girlfriend’s daughter, only three or four years old with thick and bright blonde hair (a look almost identical to Jon Benet). They also found several tapes he’d recorded showing children scenes and violent scenes from movies. In one particular video a clip from the Santa Clause, where Tim Allen visits a little girl, was edited into a video and then followed by news footage of another girl who had been kidnapped four years before Jon Benet was killed. This is intriguing because Jon Benet Ramsey was killed on Christmas night. A taser was also found among Helgoth’s possessions and it is known that Jon Benet was tasered when she was killed. Lots of circumstantial evidence sure, but the case against Holgoth is a hell of a long stronger than the case against Terri Horman in Kyron’s disappearance.

Of further interest is that Holgoth apparently committed suicide shortly after Jon Benet’s death. Even more interesting is the fact that his death occurred the day after a police conference in which the police tried to menace the possible suspects by telling them the suspect list only gets small until they’re down to one. Some suggest Holgoth’s guilt made him panic to this police conference and he killed himself. However the trajectory of the shot suggests it was a homicide. Perhaps an accomplice tying up loose ends?

Whatever the case, there are many correlations between the Jon Benet Ramsey and Kyron Horman case in terms of how the public has chosen to behave and it’s something that needs to be changed. We should have learned this a long time ago with the lasting effects of cases such as the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptman (found guilty and executed for the kidnapping and killing of Charles Lindbergh’s son) and that of Sam Sheppard, who’s innocence is still disputed today but regardless of his guilt or innocence, his reason for release was due to the fact that the press and the public had determined him guilty before he was even tried for the 1954 murder of his wife. These cases showed us fifty and sixty years before what happens when people collect in mobs and make decisions about major crimes with major possible consequences and they don’t even hardly know the details of these cases. I want that to be my parting word in this discussion about the case of Kyron Horman, one that is sadly already slipping from the public’s conscience. It’s still a young case however and I hope that it will be resolved someday, however that has to be. But until then we need to conduct ourselves responsibly and remember that there is so little known about this case and about what really happened and until we know for certain we must look at Terri Horman as nothing more than a suspect, which is what she is. That status hasn’t changed at this time and it’s unlikely it will until the case is hopefully ultimately resolved. But spouting off and complaining isn’t doing the situation any good. We need to be patient and with all the hope in the world, and even a little luck, we may someday find out what really happened that day when innocence vanished without a trace.