Harrowing eras of crime

Crime waves present themselves as eras. Recall the the highway robber era, the pirate era, the stage-coach robber era,  train-robber era, and then comes a crime era that starts to get messy in the Great Depression.

That was the era known as the Public Enemy Era. A shining example of the Public Enemy Era was the Barrow Gang. There was also the Dillinger Gang, and several other crazy motherless children who fought authority on behalf of a criminal's right to die a grisly death. These were sometimes 3 and 4 year reigns of terror, killing a lot of innocent bystanders and law enforcement officers during the Great Depression. 

That's right. These gangs killed a lot of law enforcement officers, and the historical record indicates they concentrated most of their ordnance on law enforcement (as well as other people) during the Great Depression. They raced around stealing cars and gasoline. (Drive-away gasoline thieves are the lowest form of life on earth. We can thank Grant Depatie, of Vancouver, B.C., – R.I.P. -- for putting an end to much of that theft in parts of Canada).

The Public Enemies robbed general stores little mom and pop operations (the only kind that existed), robbed banks that didn't have much money in a 'Great Depression,' making it too often a fruitless imposition of death netting nothing but attention and gunplay. The criminal in the Public Enemy Era had a short, greedy, sparkling failure of a career. Was there a single successful Public Enemy Number One? These reprobates robbed old ladies in the streets, robbed honeymooning couples, robbed and stole, and sometimes took the lives of everything that moves. They wielded automatic weapons, Thompson machine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles -- high-calibre machine-guns designed for European battlefields. The Public Enemy Era was a harrowing era of crime.

Another era, the Crazed Mass-murderer Era, was launched by Charles Whitman, "a former Marine," (Wiki), raised in Florida, somehow ending up in Texas after the Marine Corps, where he studied engineering at the University of Texas, in 1965. He found his life coming apart in Austin, then killed his wife and his mother one night, and then climbed the tower in the middle of the Austin, Texas, campus before noon the next day, and starting shooting until he killed 14 more and wounded 32, then police blew him away and stopped his day of disintegration. 

Turned out, he had a brain tumor that probably affected his ability to control emotions (to say the least). Also turned out, it had been Whitman who requested the autopsy in a note he left after killing mother and wife, before killing a mob on campus.

Leader of the crazy mass-murderer era was the head of the Manson family, a bunch of grievously manipulated sociopaths and psychopaths who could never begin to explain what the hell they were doing, except that Charlie told them to. And they followed because an endless amount of drugs were involved, and a lot of 'star-dust' was in eyes of Charlie. Nor do we know how many were actually killed besides the party guests at Roman Polanski's house and the LaBiancos.

Night one was the killing of Polanski's beautiful pregnant wife, primary victim Sharon Tate, who was hosting guests like Jay Sebring, et al, none of whom had any particular future worries, except, WHOA! Then the LaBiancos go down the next night.

Somebody else belongs with the inexplicably crazy mass-murderer era, and that's Richard Speck. He has a part in the crazy mass-murderer era having murdered eight nursing students in Chicago using sheets, as bindings and taking his time using a switchblade knife, in a 'demented man of the house' gone insane scenario. He ended up dying of a heart attack at age 49, rushed from the prison to the hospital, in 1991. 

Youtube has video of Speck sporting a pair of substantial breasts in prison while he's smoking crack and showing off his blue panties. He's unfettered about fessing up the loving all the sex with men in prison ("If they knew how much fun I'm having they would kick me out," he said, snorting coke in jail, on an American crime report a few short years before his death).

From Speck we enter the unstoppable serial killer era, which includes the likes of Ted Bundy, the Hillside Stranger, and that clown in Chicago, John Wayne Gacy, not to mention the one in Canada, Clifford Olsen. As a matter of fact, the whole unstoppable serial killer era practically grinds to a stinking halt with Willy Pickton's pig farm extermination of God only knows how many lives. That is not to say serial killers are finished. It's just, they are part of another era.

Furthermore, we need sub-categories within eras, because disgusting and dishonorable mentions for murderous dementia must be proffered to the Night Stalker, Richard Ramierez, who sided with Satan during his serial killing and raping spree, and John Hughes, who sided with Jesus while luring truckers who wanted to have carnal knowledge with his girlfriend (bait?) where they died instead. Each of these are members of the serial-killer era who performed undertakings that were senseless, bloody, and involving around 15 dead on behalf of each own's version of a diety. Fifteen for Satan and 15 for Jesus. Existentialists might call that a 'push.'

Alas the serial killer era is not over, but perhaps the unstoppable part of it is passed, and stopping them seems to be less of an issue, but it's hard to stop them before they get started. In fact, police have interdicted two recent self-confessed or self-evident 'budding' serial killers in Canada, including Mark Twitchell, the idiot/savant (film-maker/killer) of Edmonton, Alberta fame, and police almost certainly interdicted any wider mayhem from a pair of deviant youth offenders in Victoria, British Columbia, whose names we are allowed to mention, but are not worth mentioning. We should just remember the young lady, Kimberly Proctor.

And that brings us to the modern era, and the new era of crime. It feels like we have entered a new era and it is hard to describe what is happening. How much different would the fate of these victims have been if the technologies didn't exist? Are we in some kind of Fourth Dimensional Crime Era, and if people like Alan Shoenborn are set free in my life-time, perhaps we should ask, Are we in a Fifth Dimensional Crime Era?

It could be partly technology that makes a new era worth noting. We can't ignore how much technology goes into crime these days. That's why we need a new crime era. Apparently crime is a leading-edge consumer, employer, participant in the use technology. But technology appears to be exposing crime at the same time as crime exploits technology.

The use of technology and the machinations around these marvels of human engineering makes you wonder if these new dimensional technologies are snaring people into death traps. Johnny Atlinger was lured by fake messages from an on-line dating service; Kimberly Proctor was begged, preened, annoyed, and seduced by text messages into stepping into one last night of horror; evidence of technology used as a lure goes all the way back to Lisa Marie Young, who disappeared in Nanaimo, B.C., in 2002, after one plaintive cellphone call at 4:30 A.M., on June 30, new dimensions, via technologies, that are leading people into death traps.

Well, the technology is also leading police to the killers. In the case of Qian Liu, a Chinese student at York University, whose alleged murder was done while she was in a webcam conversation, and it captured the attack upon her as it got underway. Her long distance boyfriend was a 'virtual' witness to the initial stages of the attack.

Since the murder in April of Qian Liu, we have to consider the era we have entered. It is the Close Surveillance era.

Stress is a killer, or in the case of Desmond Sandboe, a bully

There is veracity in the story about RCMP Officer Desmond Sandboe's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as it was used in the defense of his actions during the court hearings into why he laid such a beating, a video-taped and recorded drubbing, on Andrew Clyburn. Stress leads to disorders of the brain that can barely be controlled, sometimes showing up as extreme actions that suddenly become the only recourse. It's not that RCMP officer Desmond Sandboe spent nine years in a police career waiting for a chance to beat a guy on camera in a cell.

PTSD is a fact of life but it gets out of control under certain circumstances. This disorder may be prevalent in police work. Police officers face a line of duty that adds immense stress to their lives. Divorce, suicide, and explosions like Sandboe's, these are symptomatic of the stress of the job. The fact is, who else deals face-to-face (and sometimes first) with the terrible things humans do to each other? Witnessing this, embattled by it, this must be horrific.

 

Imagine the memories of two officers who walked into the Atlinger murder scene in Edmonton. The man and woman constables will never forget the stench of death in that burnt steel barrel. They testified to it court, that it was pungent. They will need psychological treatment for months to process the pungency  It's reality. Anyone would need to see a doctor if they walked into a garage that smelled of death and had the awareness and the training to know they were dealing with the human vein. They were standing amid a death scene, possibly facing one of their very own. They were confronting a killer, who, turns out, was and is indeed a murderous fiend.

 

Yes stress is a killer and killers cause stress. This stress is the court-expressed reason for Sandboe's insane burst of rage upon Clyburn, and in light of the diagnosis of PTSD, there can be no reason for Sandboe to be dismissed. What cannot be dismissed, in the treatment of this officer, and any officer, is the way PTSD occurs. It is often cumulative. It is the outcome of prior history with high stress encounters. One incident in the Sandboe case. in particular, speaks to the accumulation of his stress starting well prior to the Lac La Biche incident. Sandboe had another high stress encounter with a serving but off-duty Edmonton Police Service officer in 2003. And as it turned out, later, it is partly his duty to deal with the aftermath of the killing frenzy in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, by James Rozko.

 

PTSD is deadly and occurs from close encounters with death that cannot be erased from the mind, and these encounters accumulate to create greater disorder. PTSD requires empathy, for people who have severe forms of the disorder often describe life as being rather unlivable without a distinct purpose, meanwhile the disorder causes so much dissembling of a person's character, via things like dissociation, explosive rage, amnesia, flashbacks, and deep contemplations of suicide or paranoia, keeping focused on a distinct purpose becomes a major challenge.

 

It's not his dedication or commitment to duty that is in question because, frankly, he showed a form of restraint when Clyburn's head came up to the cement wall in the prison cell (as shown on Youtube), and I think Sandboe realized he was way out of control at that instant, when perhaps he had a moment of clarity that saw himself putting Clyburn's head into a different state of matter.

 

Taking Sandboe out of police work might be the worst thing the RCMP could do to the man. “I've been painted as a monster; I've been painted as a bully,” he told media after his sentencing to six months house arrest. "It's been horrible stress, depression, anxiety, humiliation. It breaks you down." Clyburn for his part rightly pointed out that Sandboe should have been on leave and in treatment since he was in that condition.

 

Police see things and experience the living nightmares. Lest we forget, it was Sandboe's chums in the body count of officers in Roszko's insanity, and cops are under threat at all times anyway, people wanting to kill them at any moment, and cops may be called upon to kill at any moment, and that's the last thing anybody wants to do unless they are people who belong in other kinds of uniforms.

 

No doubt cops get stress, and some probably get addicted to it. It's only natural that they would live with high adrenaline levels and learn to cope with it. They also need help when it goes too far. 

Now for something completely insane

RELEASE DENIED

Things are a little strange in Canada when it comes to killers, and it gets stranger when you turn to psychopathic killers who are practically bestial in their carnage only to walk away with barely a wink of an eye in the way of retribution. Pickton confessed on the sly to killing 50 but gets convicted of six, gets lots of encouragement to appeal, and why not? He's got nothing but time (you might wish).

The 12 year old Medicine Hat killer, now 14 goin' on 15, will be free when she's 18, mature enough to know better by then, we kind of hope.

Two devious and pestilent sadists who devastated the Proctor family have the privilege of applying for parole in 10 years from this week. They're counting the days that Kimberly Proctor has had erased.

Mark Twitchell took centre stage, finally, his dream had come true in Edmonton. He dazzled the world with the way he scripted, acted (fooled), savaged, and dispassionately disposed of another human being. The story got more compelling everyday because Mark Twitchell was re-writing it every day, and revealing the true nature of a stupid man who may have borderline psychopathic tendancies, and has tendancies enough to be dangerous more than once. We don't know how soon he gets to go back to Tim Horton's, but my opinion is, it won't be long. They will probably parole him on the grounds that he stay away from computers and other writing devices, including typewriters.

Out of atrocities that match any horrors concocted by the human imagination emerges Cocaine-shooting child killer Allan Schoenborn whose infantcide was appalling, senseless, drug addled, and done out of sheer psychopathic vengence. Out he comes from incarceration three years after the pitilous slaughter of a budding family. Oh, yes, in Canada, like Rwanda, some of these senseless slaughters are punishable by visits to Starbucks.

That's right, citizens of British Columbia, and visitors from abroad, this child killer was able to whine his way out of complete incarceration, and a panel of criminological types on a board in or around B.C. have put out the welcome mat for Allan Dwayne Shoenborn to apply for escorted day trips into the community. I hope they put up lots of signs so nobody else has to go out while this is happening.

Reports say that Allan Dwayne Shoenborn has made appearences in front of a review panel, and that apparently he continues to display hostility to his ex-wife, and argumentative or unassailable anger toward the institution, nevertheless, to his way of thinking he's been cooped up long enough. It's time for Allan Dwayne Shoenborn to step out and stretch his legs and go for coffee, according to Allan Dwayne Shoenborn, who has managed to convince the review panel (if not the B.C. Crown Prosecutor) that trips out are probably just fine.

What ever it was the confessed assailant said in those reviews was effective because on April 05, 2011, Bernd Walter, Chairperson, signed the disposition to let Allan Dwayne Shoenborn ascend over society. Some people might say killing the guy with coffee, slowly like that, seems more like an expense than a rehabilitation. So the question becomes, what are we dealing with here? He's a profoundly disturbed individual that nobody outside a panel in a mental hospital really wants to see, not up close, not in a window, and not in the street.

Honestly, this will not be good for the cafes when this guy comes in for a beverage. The review panel has determined that Allan Dwayne Shoenborn be permitted in public pools, like the rest of us who don't massacre our families. It's a peculiar mystification of justice, an unreal picture, frankly, that entertains the need of a multiple murderer to exercise a privilege, while the vast majority wishes him some form of justice, after the erasure of so much life that he, and he alone, somehow had the right to take.

In light of the recent sentencing of the two murderous psychopaths in Victoria, B.C., who need about 100 years of psychotherapy each (to get started) and who wait patiently hoping for ten years before their next parole hearing, and the fact that a 12-year-old psychopath killed her family and walks free in about two years or so, and in light of the fact that Starbucks is now a favourite haunt of mass murderers who actually get away with it, ya know, scot-free, in light of all this, it's time to take a look at the future, and whether or not the criminal justice system should sort out the priorities in order to actually protect society from facing atrocious killers when they are still panting from the rushes they felt in their killing sprees.

People who spill rampant amounts of human blood, reek havoc on all sorts of lives, take lives, torture lives to death, these people have taken a privileged place in society, not just in the minds of the members of society, but in the seats, in the malls, the tony coffee shops, the up-town cities like Montreal (where Karla savours memories of what she did to three teenage girls, did to death). It's the kinds of things these people do that earns them the privilege to be escorted on trips to gush over triple lattes at Starbucks, and swim in the pools with the taxpayers footing the bill, and swimming with the taxpayers! Now that's privilege. It permits people the likes of Willie Pickton to awaken each day to big dreams. Bigger dreams than a lot of us.