Category Archives: the Empress Anisa
Review: Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New Orleans
Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New Orleans by Ethan Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The author finally admits, when the book is almost complete, that he is sympathetic to the murderer. He stops shy of this admission, actually, writing that his wife felt he was, to the point of being angry with him. This book is an apology for the murderer, and the author forgot that the murder was not a quick act of passion, but rather a planned, gruesome saga that involved living with the corpse for over two weeks, and setting up a horrid tableau in order to scar those who followed the instructions in his suicide note. Brown works so hard to exonerate, somehow, the murderer from the full guilt of his crime that the book becomes a history of the war at some points.
Shannon Matthews update
Words cannot express. Good God.
The mother of Shannon Matthews has been jailed for kidnapping her own daughter in an attempt to claim reward money.
Karen Matthews, 33, and her co-accused Michael Donovan, 40, were earlier found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.
Both were jailed for eight years by a judge at Leeds Crown Court who said the offences were “truly despicable”.
Shannon was held at Donovan’s flat in Batley Carr, West Yorkshire, for 24 days. (full article, BBC)
- case timeline
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Missing nine-year-old Shannon Matthews had been given the sedative drug temazepam for up to 20 months before her disappearance, a court heard. (BBC)
- Inside the trial: BBC
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Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Resources: Truman Capote
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences * Truman Capote
- In Cold Blood: Salon article by Amy Standen:
Just over 40 years ago, a dandified New York reporter named Truman Capote traveled to Kansas to investigate the shotgun murder of a farm family. The result changed journalism forever.
- Findagrave: Truman Capote
- Truman Capote, and In Cold Blood at Answers.com
- the New Journalism movement
- photos of all of the principal parties involved with the case and with the book
- the murderers: Percy Smith and Dick Hickock
- Lowell Lee Andrews
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Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Roanoke Colony
For Larry, since we had a lovely discussion in the car, in which neither of us could remember the state of the abandoned “Lost Colony”—were the dwellings disheveled, or did they appear normal, as if their occupants had simply vanished?
The settlers landed on Roanoke Island on July 22 1587. On 18 August, White’s daughter delivered the first English child born in the Americas: Virginia Dare. Before her birth, White reestablished relations with the neighboring Croatans and tried to reestablish relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had attacked a year previously. The aggrieved tribes refused to meet with the new colonists. Shortly thereafter, George Howe was killed by natives while searching for crabs alone in Albemarle Sound. Knowing what had happened during Ralph Lane’s tenure in the area and fearing for their lives, the colonists convinced Governor White to return to England to explain the colony’s situation and ask for help. There were approximately 116 colonists—115 men and women who made the trans-Atlantic passage and a newborn baby, Virginia Dare, when White returned to England….
White landed on 18 August 1590, on his granddaughter’s third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. He organized a search, but his men could not find any trace of the colonists. Some ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children had disappeared; there was no sign of a struggle or battle of any kind. The only clue was the word “Croatoan” carved into a post of the fort and “Cro” carved into a nearby tree. In addition, there were two skeletons buried. All the houses and fortifications were dismantled. Before the colony disappeared, White established that if anything happened to them they would carve a maltese cross on a tree near their location indicating that their disappearance could have been forced. White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island, but he was unable to conduct a search; a massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, White stood on the deck of his ship and watched, helplessly, as they left Roanoke Island.
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Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Twitter: 2008-08-07
- They’re known as “People Embarrassing the Tidewater Area”, and this is why: http://tinyurl.com/64k8gg #
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Marilyn Monroe
Message I just left on her findagrave.com memorial page: 
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
These are the people who live in your neighborhood
Reason No. 545981945 I’m glad we’re moving:
Results for registered offenders, searching by address:
- Our current house = 577 Offenders, 105 Non-Mappable Offenders
- Our new home = 2 Offenders, 0 Non-Mappable Offenders
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Against all odds
Twenty-four days after she disappeared, nine-year-old Shannon Matthews has been found alive. The thirty-nine-year-old who lived at the house where she was discovered is in custody.
That’s stellar police work, and the Dewesbury force should feel very proud. These policemen eschewed the common understanding that people who are missing for longer than x period of time will not be found alive, or do not want to be found.
Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik said: “I would like to congratulate the outstanding police operation and also the unprecedented resources that were deployed in the search for Shannon. Over 300 police officers, including 60 specialist officers, have been involved in a continuous three-week operation in and around the Dewsbury area to find Shannon…All houses in the vicinity including my own home and the surrounding gardens have been searched, and the police have delivered on their commitment to leave no stone unturned in the search for Shannon. It was this meticulous and dedicated approach which led the police earlier today to the property in Lidgate Gardens, which resulted in Shannon being found and a 39-year-old man being arrested. (The Daily Mail)
Welcome home, Shannon. Don’t let what that man did interrupt your life any further. He took twenty-four days; don’t let him have one day more.
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
expert reversal in MA v. Louise Woodward
In 2007, Dr Patrick Barnes, the prosecution’s star medical witness, reversed his opinion. He concluded that death could have been caused by an old injury, as argued by the defense. In a scientific paper he states: “The science we have today could, in fact, have exonerated Louise. There is certainly, in retrospect, reasonable doubt.”
Dr. Barnes’ new opinion, however, is not shared by a majority of his medical colleagues, including some of the country’s leading medical authorities on shaken baby syndrome. One such expert, Dr. Robert Reece of Tufts University, is a pediatrician and one of the nation’s most respected authorities on shaken baby syndrome. In a 2007 interview with The Boston Globe he stated, “The information that was presented at trial on the prosecution side was correct”.
This opinion is shared by the vast majority of doctors who study shaken baby syndrome. Moreover, none of the prosecution’s other medical experts have changed their opinions. — answers.com
I don’t know what happened.
I know that the sexism and classism that emerged during this trial was appalling. The backlash against Dr. Deborah Eappen, Matthew’s mother, was so hateful; so many callers to Boston-area talk radio shows and letter writers to the local newspapers claimed that Dr. Eappen was a bad mother because she chose to work. Nothing was said about the other Dr. Eappen, her husband and Matthew’s father.
I know that Louise Woodward’s behavior while testifying was also appalling. She smiled and giggled on the witness stand, while discussing Matthew’s death.
I know that Woodward’s attorney, Elaine Sharp, also changed her mind, and came to believe that her client was guilty of killing Matthew Eappen.
I also know that I am alarmed to read this phrase for the fourth time today:
…state medical examiners said Matthew hit the floor with the “force equivalent to a fall from a second-story window.” (CourtTV report)
I have researched four cases of suspected shaken baby syndrome. In four out of four cases, the same phrase was used to describe the injury, almost in the exact same words: once by an emergency room nurse; once by a doctor; once by a prosecutor; and once by the MA ME’s office. I want to know what peer-reviewed article, or magazine article, or newspaper article is this phrase’s Ground Zero. This source desperately needs to be refuted.
Also, professional individuals and members of the public need to be properly educated on the nature of “shaken baby syndrome”. In order to shake a child to death, one must shake the child for an intense duration—one to two minutes. That does not sound like a long period of time at all, but do your own experimentation: clasp a pillow in both hands, and pull it towards you then thrust it away, and repeat this motion for two minutes. You will realize what an incredible amount of time must elapse during the assault. Also, other injuries will be present, beyond contre coup brain injuries and damage to blood vessels in the eyes. Bruising and fracture will also occur at the site of placement of the perpetrator’s hands; you must have a firm grip on the child in order to do fatal damage, and that grip alone will cause injury. Furthermore, there will most likely be severe injury to the neck; I am highly suspicious of any claim of shaken baby syndrome when the child’s neck in undamaged, since the alleged violence is akin to repeated whiplash.
I know that professionals are mistaking passion for professionalism. That’s an honest mistake, and one for which I have a great amount of sympathy. I want individuals in the helping, legal, and medical professionals to care passionately about the protection of the public. That desire cannot risk others’ lives, however, by ruining reputations and placing innocent people in jail.
People shake children. Sometimes older youths and adults put their hands on the bodies of infants and children, and those victims die. But I want to know when violence occurred, and when it did not, or when it occurred earlier, at someone else’s hands, rather than at the accused’s. I want the truth, no matter how complicated or messy it might be. I hope we all do.
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Dying to get an education
February 7, 2008:
…a man stabbed his estranged wife in front of her class at an Ohio school before fleeing the scene, stabbing another woman, and later shooting himself after a stand-off with police. (BBC)
February 8, 2008:
A nursing student has killed two fellow female students in their US classroom before turning the gun on herself.
The 23-year-old shot her victims in front of horrified classmates at the Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (BBC)
February 14, 2008:
Shortly after 3 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 14, tragedy struck the campus of Northern Illinois University. A gunman entered a class in Cole Hall, shooting and killing five NIU students and injuring 17 other students before taking his own life…NIU can confirm six fatalities, including the gunman. Four of the dead were female and two, including the gunman, were male. In total, there were 22 injured or killed. (NIU.edu; more information at BBC)
No college student should ever have to see the words “There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear.” on their school’s website. Whatever has been loosed into motion, we need to discover and stop.
Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
