Who Killed Theresa?: 12/01/2007

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas 2007

This is last year's Xmas tree:

I spray painted it silver and put it along the Bolin Creek trail with the following sign:

I especially like that someone left a dollar:

And a happy new year...

Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas Everybody

by Stompin' Tom Connors

For those Americans who don't know the Great Stompin' Tom, he's a prolific singer/songwriter who was born Charles Thomas Connors in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1936. He was later adopted by a family in Skinner's Pond, Prince Edward Island. Stompin' Tom keeps rhythm by "stomping" the heel of his cowboy boot. His downhome, folksy brand of Maritime music can be heard at hockey games and kitchen parties throughout the country.

(PHOTO by Howard LaBillois: King's Square Bandstand, Saint John, NB.)

Merry Christmas everybody! and a happy New Year too.
May your holidays be merry, and every wish come true.
May you always be remembered by those so dear to you
Merry Christmas everybody and happy New Year all year through.
Merry Christmas everybody and happy New Year all year through.

Well there's old Grand Pappy and he sure looks happy

with Granny just a slappin' her knees

There's old Aunt Mary with funny Uncle Harry
and they're trying to give the baby a squeeze

There's long lost cousins, kiddies by the dozens,
and they're gonna stay the whole day long

Get together now friends and neighbours,
Sing a happy holiday song.

The turkey's on the table now and when your feelin' able
you can take another helpin' if ya will

But soon as ya eat it
I'm afraid ya gotta beat it
cause ya gotta give the chair to brother Bill

And Hey Uncle Marty it's an all night party,
and don't ya pour the drinks too strong

Get together now friends and neighbours,
Sing a happy holiday song.

====
Maritime Missy

Thursday, December 20, 2007

I'd Rather Leave Than Suffer This

At year end there is much taking stock of what music we've listened to in 2007. There is a lot I have enjoyed; Radiohead's In Rainbows was a treat, too bad it's content was overshadowed by the marketing ploy. The Fiery Furnaces' Widow City is a prog rock compendium of hooks and harmonies - nothing this side of 9/8-time has been so satisfying since 2112. For pure pop adrenaline you can't beat Fountains of Wayne's Traffic and Weather. Lyle Lovett came back with a strong set on It's not Big It's Large (South Texas Girl is well worth the dollar on iTunes). And there were some oldies I discovered for the first time; Gillian Welch's Time: The Revelator is a wonderful collection of rock and folk and blues. The Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet is a masterpiece everyone was aware of but me.

But I'd like to focus on The Foo Fighters' Echoes Silence Patience and Grace. The Foos will always be David Grohl's band; the former grunge drummer who took up the guitar and sang himself hoarse for the last ten years with the same raw energy he provided along side bassist Krist Novoselic for the band Nirvana. I can't think of a more striking transition in Rock as Grohl's transformation from rhythm attendant to frantic front man. For the first two Foo Fighters albums Grohl practically played all the instruments, never finding a drummer to match his own drive and stamina until Taylor Hawkins joined the Foos in 1997.

Though not my favorite album of the year, Echoes is a welcome return of a band that had seemed to have lost its crunch of late (and Hawkins sounds so HARD on this record, finally making his own statement). The opening 5 song run from The Pretender to Come Alive is so powerful and satisfying that it almost compensates for some faltering on the rest of the set (Long Road to Ruin is the this generation's Born to Run - A Born in the USA anthem no doubt blasting from Humvees across Baghdad).

What happens next is hard to understand. Dave! Promise not to stop when we say "when"? The next 5 songs lack focus and are so disjointed... what's Grohl striving to achieve? There's nothing wrong with stretching. And the instrumental Ballad of The Beaconsfield Miners does take us to new territory, if a little on the movie soundtrack side of things. one wonders if Grohl was envious of Eddie Vedder's collaboration with Sean Penn, or Jonny Greenwood's work on There Will Be Blood. If Grohl wants to write for film, he should pen power tunes for this Summer's Iron Man or Hell Boy sequel. Stick with what you know.

Statues is so very, very awful. I'll let the lyrics do the talking:

You and I were two old and tortured souls
Repaired by a love of broken things

It gets worse:

We're just ordinary people, you and me
Time will turn us into statues, eventually

DAVE, WHERE IS THY STING? It's hard to figure what the band is up to with Statues. It may be fun for them to ape 70s pop schmaltz, but where's the pleasure for us? If I want a self-deprecating turn on Air Supply I'll listen to... what? I don't know... REO Speedwaggon? This seems to be an issue with the Foos. The video for Road to Ruin is a return to their mock-MTV beginnings, a tongue-in-cheek play on a soap / rock star's rise and fall from fame. To undercut the power of one of their best songs in years is cheap and unworthy of their talent, and they shouldn't try to have it both ways. Dave: you wrote a Springsteen power ballad - live with it.

Where stretching and reference eventually pay off are on the final two cuts. But, Honestly starts with such a pleasing, breezy Ventura Highway guitar, and Dave's vocals sound sincere and controlled. By the time you reach the scorching end, I dare you to avoid pumping your fist in the air. On the final cut, Home, Dave channels his inner Neil Young performing mostly solo with acoustic piano on a song that is simple, honest and thankfully without irony:

People I've loved I have no regrets
Some I remember Some I forget
Some of them living Some of them dead
All I want is to be home

Mr. Grohl should be excused from suggestions he is singing about a former fellow band mate, just as he should forgive us for thinking he wrote it for Kurt Cobain.

--------------------------

All of this had me thinking back to a Foos album from ten years ago, The Colour and The Shape. Many consider this their finest achievement. I will go further. Just re-released for a 10th anniversary edition, Colour is one of the best rock albums of the last 40 years, and one of the finest expressions of separation and dissolution by any songwriter. The reasons are simple; with Colour, Grohl imprinted a complete statement of the breakdown and breakup of a relationship. All of it expressed with controlled coherence, and with a raw bang, not a whimper - and sans ironic distance. In fact the songs are so immediate, they capture what it's like to be caught in an unsolvable and reductive puzzle, always coming back to the same inescapable point of reference. The ferocity of My Poor Brain and Enough Space is disturbing, but so very human. The transition from the savage Wind Up to the apologetic Up In Arms stark, jolting and unnerving. Have a gander at some lyrics, and tell me you don't see an artist clawing to get out of his box:

I wish I never had taken this dare
I wasn't quite prepared

Now that I've found my reward,
Throw it away long before,
I'd share a piece of mine with you.

sometimes I feel I'm getting stuck
between the handshake and the fuck

will I be happy on the back of the shelf
will you be happy when we're sharing a cell

put her on the ceiling
try to maker he my own
people line up to see
but there never seems to be enough space

You ask for walls I'll build them higher
we'll lie in shadows of them all
I'd stand but they're much too tall
and i fall

Breathe out
So I can breathe you in
Hold you in

I cannot be without you,
matter of fact
I'm on your back

I'll never tell you the secrets I'm holding
I love this leash that holds me
when I try to run away

and finally, Monkey Wrench's gutcheck scream; what may be the definitive last word on relationships:

one last thing before I quit
I never wanted any more than I could fit into my head
I still remember every single word you said
and all the shit that somehow came along with it
still there's one thing that comforts me
since I was always caged and now I'm free

I don't know that anyone has better expressed how it feels to finally stamp something into the ground, and to oblivion.

From the opening invitation, Doll, this is a stripped down, balls-out juggernaut to its redemptive climax, New Way Home. A definite sleeper of the last decade.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

"If you don’t shoot, you don’t score…"

In Quebec’s neighbouring province of Ontario, it appears as if their provincial police force has a cold case investigative team that is a little more sensitive to the needs of the victims’ families and a lot more inclined to dig a little deeper and go a little further in pursuit of justice.

Hats off to Detective Constables Andre Bayard and Dan Linkenheld of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Historical Investigations Unit.

They “get it”.

EXCERPTS FROM THE STORY:

A pain that never goes away;
OPP cold case squad making inroads in
solving local mysteries

Posted By
Jonathon Jackson
Owen Sound (Ontario) Sun-Times

…Some mysteries remain unsolved for decades.

Yet people like Andre Bayard and Dan Linkenheld, detective-constables with the
Ontario Provincial Police's Historical Investigations Unit, continue to pore over the puzzle pieces.

"If you don't shoot, you don't score," Bayard says describing the work cold case officers do as they attempt to close cases that have long mystified other police.

"In these types of investigations, you've got to keep everything open. I mean, we talk to everybody. Some of these conversations are pretty strange, let's put it that
way. We deal with some people that think they have these "gifts," but we talk to them. Usually they have nothing for us, or they don't tell us anything we don't already know, but we continue to talk to them."

Bayard adds: "If it was my family, my kid missing, I would want the police to make every effort, to talk to everybody, no matter how big or how small."

That's where you, the reader, comes in. You may know these stories already, or you may be learning about them for the first time. You may have information about one of these cases, and you may have already spoken with police about what you know.

But maybe you didn't tell them everything. Maybe you left something out because you believed it to be insignificant. Perhaps you haven't spoken with police at all, because you assumed they already know what you know.

Linkenheld says this is the kind of information that can sometimes provide investigators with that little link they need. "Those individuals don't see the overall picture, the whole puzzle," he says.

"They have a piece of it, and they don't think their piece is significant. To us, it might mean knitting one piece of info with another, and you have a solid link made with that individual that we didn't have before."

"The police are just an extension of the community, and we're as good as the help we get."

Cold case officers must also display a great deal of sensitivity, because they are dealing with families whose wounds have never healed, whose pain has never gone away.

Linkenheld says the death of a loved one changes the whole dynamic of a family, affecting relationships within that family and sometimes completely destabilizing them. That's true whether the death is sudden or expected.

But at least the majority of deaths can be explained to some degree, and a person's family and friends can mourn, grieve and have closure. That's not so in the cases we have chosen to examine this week.

"Here, you've got no answers," Linkenheld says.

"You've got either a missing person or you've got a deceased person, and you don't have answers as to why. I think that wears quite heavily on people."

For the complete article, visit
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=822266&auth=Jonathon+Jackson

====
Maritime Missy

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Another deck of Cold Case Playing Cards is on the table...

The cold case playing cards that Florida's law enforcement community introduced to the state's prison inmates in 2005 will soon be printing its third edition. Law enforcement in Kansas City, San Diego and Odessa, Texas have also followed suit with their own playing cards. It's time for every province in Canada to do the same.

Apparently, the money to print and distribute Florida's cards was funded through a court fee.

So if Canada or Quebec is balking at the cost...just tell them to tack a surcharge on court fines. There is no shortage of offenders so there should be no shortage of money. The government doesn't mind bumping up fees for everything from parking tickets to passports. I wouldn't mind paying an extra $10 on my speeding tickets if I thought it was going to help get justice for a grieving family. That being said, I still think the government should pay for the entire cost regardless. They don't seem to have a problem spending millions on ridiculous studies or bad business deals.

Read this story...(especially the sections in bold).

Prison poker cards seek leads on homicides
Cold cases featured on prisoners' decks

By Joseph Sjostrom
Chicago Tribune staff
reporter
December 10, 2007

The investigation into the slaying of Elmhurst resident Albert Seaburg outside a Tallahassee, Fla., motel in 1997 has gone cold, but authorities hope a game of poker in prison can produce some clues.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has produced two editions of a full deck of playing cards that show photos of murder victims, some information about the case and a phone number to call to offer police more information.

Authorities say they distributed 100,000 decks in Florida's 129 state prisons.

First distributed last summer, they have produced 66 tips that solved two cold-case murders, both from 2004, and significantly advanced several others, police there said.

Police won't identify the cases in which the cards produced helpful tips, but the cards were considered effective enough that Florida authorities plan to produce a third deck to help with the state's 400 to 500 unsolved murders. Authorities in San Diego, Kansas City, Mo., and Odessa, Texas, have since created their own decks.

Seaburg was a 71-year-old retired civil engineer traveling on business when he was shot at a Tallahassee motel on Sept. 4, 1997. Police say the shooting occurred during a robbery attempt.

Awareness of Seaburg's case and other unsolved killings also is being kept up by Seaburg's nephew, Robert Hansen of Oakbrook Terrace, who maintains a Web site - http://www.unsolvedmurder.com/ -- featuring photos and information.

"This is something I have to do for him because he was such an awesome man," said Hansen, 48, the youngest of five children, who lost his father at age 7. "When my father died, [Seaburg] took over the father's duties and was just really good to us kids."

Florida investigator Tommy Ray and cold-case colleagues in Polk County first produced a similar set of cards in 2005 for the county jail. They were inspired by the most-wanted deck of Saddam Hussein and other fugitives issued to U.S. troops after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Florida cards generated a tip that solved a murder two months later, prompting Ray and other investigators to advocate a statewide version of cold-case playing cards.

A fund fed by a court fee supplied the $68,000 for production and provided $7,000 to pay tipsters.

"None of the [informants] have asked for any rewards so far," Ray said. "These guys are serving time for non-violent, less-serious offenses. They might not turn in a drug dealer or a burglar, but they feel like murder is different because the victim could have been their mother, their father, their brother or sister."

Ray played down the concern about the cards producing false leads.

"There's very little information on each case on the cards, so it's hard for somebody to make up a credible story," he said. "Having the cards in prison is like interviewing thousands of inmates on 104 homicides. It would take years to do that."

====
Maritime Missy

Monday, December 10, 2007

Led It Reign

It would be hard to do this blog without acknowledging tonight's Led Zeppelin reunion; one of Theresa's favorite bands, LZIV forbidden from her record collection because of ill-conceived notions that it was the devil's music.

Down like a lead balloon indeed.

Blog of War

I told some of you that I opted out of writing a paper in my Organizational Behavior course on the Surete du Quebec. My shrink thought it might be a bad road to go down, so I set my mind on a paper examining sustainable farming...

Ya, that lasted about 3 weeks. I did a 180 and went back to the paper on the SQ.

35 pages labored in love. I got my mark back tonight: 98/100. I'd share it with you, but I'm working on it a bit more with my professor to get it published in a Canadian academic journal. Ok, I'll give you the title:

Organizational Behavior and Design: Reforms to the Surete du Quebec in the Aftermath of the Poitras Commission Public Inquiry.

Missy read it (thanks MM for proofing it for me). It ain't no hatchet job. Just the facts.

Onward.

Friday, December 07, 2007

In the Shadow of the Asshole that is Me

I am sorry I missed Debbie Key's 10-year vigil last week. I made a commitment to Bill to show up, but that got changed when my oldest daughter had a sleepover; I had no one to sit with the two younger kids.

And that's about as personal as I'm going to get this go-round folks. The reason is simple. My family was getting tired of learning personal facts about my life from lookie-loos before they had a chance to talk to me. Have to keep it at a bit of a distance, my friends.

Suffice to say, I'm a single-parent with three daughters, I'm almost finished my degree, and - five years later - I'm still dealing with this shit.

So why deal with it in a public forum?

That's very simple too. There are basically two types of people who go through these things:

1. The ones who are very vocal for a time, then burn out; they completely drop out of sight.

2. The ones who suffer tragedy, but always manage to keep things professional, they never let their personal pain interfere with the work they're doing.

Though I admire number two, I feel it's a bit of a sham, and not a very helpful model for those who run up against the system and tragedy . I always wanted to put it all out there - my frustrations, my insanity, my hi-and-lows - as a marker for others, as if to say,

"you're not alone. What you're feeling and experiencing is perfectly normal, and very real. Look at me, I've made an ass of myself for 5 years. But I'm still alive. I still fight the good fight. I lose my temper. I take extreme actions that later cannot be excused. I force, then bend, then apologize... but I keep a piece of myself for myself. There is joy, and pleasure. But that is separate, and I keep it for me."

That's my creed. If it's helpful to others, if it gets them through the day - great. If it instructs - if you find yourself saying, "god, at least I'm not as f&*#ed-up as that guy" - even better.

Letter to a Friend:

Please push for media:

Here's what happened:

I had my meeting in Quebec City with the Ministere / Securite Publique. Everything goes well. I say, "the letter I wrote you 1 1/2 years ago calling for:

- Inquiry into the SQ
- Better SQ communications
- Cold Case Bureau?"

Don't worry about it. The gov did $30 million on Poitras, you guys have improved on communications, and there IS a cold case bureau (my guy in Montreal confirmed it)

So here's what I tell Robert Lafreniere, the sous-ministre (go-between b/w Public Security and the SQ) what I want:

1. A new Investigator for Theresa (Benoit's leaving, I need a new, aggressive guy).

2. Better yet, that cold case bureau? Move all three files into it (Allore, Camirand, Dube). Yes I understand the initial mandate was to only go back 25 years, broaden the mandate - if you don't do it now, you'll never do it.

3. There's this creepy family called the Poiliots - we think there's something up there: would you please have them investigated.

"Yes M. Allore, I understand, I will get back to you on all of this". He even READ BACK TO ME POINT-FOR-POINT the things I was asking for.

SO what do I get in the mail? (I'll forward it). A written response from this boob with the typical SQ "a case is never closed until it's solved":

I even specified for him in that meeting that I never wanted to hear that language again.

Currently:

1. I can't get anyone in his office on the phone or email.

2. I can't get a response from the Ministere de Conseil's office (it was their office who introduced me to Lafreniere)

3. I can't find Benoit anymore, so I'm cut off from the SQ

I've worked the chain. I've got two places further to go, over Lafreniere's head to Dupuis' sous-ministre, Paul Girard, and then to Dupuis himself.

And I'm not asking for much! A little piece of mind to know things are being handled.I don't want an inquiry (they couldn't afford it, they're already doing a communications overhaul, and the cold case thing is in place!)

My meeting with Lafreniere went VERY well; very friendly, French-and-English, no threats (ever) just the facts.

So it's bizarre and extremely frustrating 6 weeks later to be faced with this.

So, yes! At this point any press at all. I will be in Montreal over the Xmas holiday. I will be fully prepared for ANYBODY to stick a camera in my face. I will also attempt to get a meeting with the Ministere de Conseil (maybe Pierre can join me), and another with the SQ (at the least, I want Theresa's wallet, earrings, ring and watch back).

Anything, ANYONE can do to help at this point would be appreciated.

John

Monday, December 03, 2007

Should cold case files be open for public review?

If a cold case has been inactive, does the public have a right to see the files to determine for themselves whether or not they think the police are doing their job?

I believe that if the victim's family feels nothing is being done to move the case forward, then they should be the ones who ultimately decide whether or not to open the files. The crime is against society so shouldn't society have a right to see what's being done (or not being done) in a murder investigation?

If a case has gone unsolved for decades, it's not like the police are going to lose a hot lead. In fact, they may even GET a few leads by releasing the information.

What do you think?

Fight over release of cold case files goes to
high court
By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press
Published on: 12/03/07

Lawyers tangled in the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday about a case that could force police departments to release documents in unsolved crimes, a move which authorities said would undermine their investigations.

The argument deals with the police use of the term "pending investigation" to refuse media requests for public information, a term that open records lawyers say is being abused by authorities to withhold public information.

Similar squabbles between media and police over documents play out throughout the state. The court's decision ultimately could provide a clear answer on what information police would be required to release in unsolved crimes.

Jennifer Stone was raped and murdered in 1992 in her Athens apartment, and there has never been any arrest in the case. The Athens Banner-Herald newspaper challenged the law after it requested records of the investigation under the Open Records Act in 2005 but was rebuffed.

Police said they refused the request because the case is still being investigated, pointing to records showing that Stone's DNA is being processed into a computer database every two weeks. The department also contends that the release of certain details could "poison" the investigation, regardless of how old the case is.

"Why should the mere passage of time – or the luck of a criminal or the skill of a criminal – weaken the state's ability to prosecute this case?" asked Bill Berryman, the county's attorney.

He said releasing details of the Stone investigation would be "destructive."

"Witnesses could be intimidated, statements could change, the criminal could have knowledge he otherwise wouldn't have," he said.

The newspaper argued police should not be allowed to claim a case is pending if there's no active investigation and contended that keeping the files secret prevents the public from scrutinizing the investigation. That could shield the revelation of police corruption or incompetence, attorney David Hudson said.

"How would anyone know unless someone was allowed to look into the documents?" he asked.

=====
Maritime Missy

Saturday, December 01, 2007

San Diego heats up cold cases

Quebec should follow the lead of San Diego's law enforcement community.

When their cold cases started backing up, the police department announced that they would be working WITH a volunteer cold case team to help clear the backlog as quickly as possible. In addition, San Diego County has followed Florida's lead and also introduced cold case playing cards into their prison system. (Thanks to Doreen P. for forwarding me the last news item.)

What will it take to get Quebec to join the rest of their colleagues in the 21st century?

SAPD Creates Volunteer Cold Case Team
Kristina de Leon
www.woai.com
Nov. 28, 2007

San Antonio Police will announce a new volunteer team today, who will work to solve cold cases at no cost to the city.

The team is made up of six former law enforcement officers with a combined 150 years of experience. Their job will be to look at unsolved murders that are at least a
year old and have gone unsolved.

The team is called "Volunteers in Policing: Cold Case Review". Among the volunteers are two former SAPD sergeants, a former SAPD lieutenant, two former SAPD detectives and a former FBI agent.

The volunteers are not able to make arrests, but will be in direct communication with the cold case liason, who will communicate with cold case detectives to get the cases solved immediately.

=======

County hopes cards will deal blow to crime
By Debbi Farr Baker
UNION-TRIBUNE NEWS TEAM
November 27, 2007

SAN DIEGO – From now on, when the county's jail inmates play cards, the faces of homicide victims or homicide suspects will be staring at them.

That's because from now on the only cards available for inmates in any of the county's seven jails will be decks that depict 52 unsolved murders.

Some of the cards, unveiled Tuesday by San Diego County Crime Stoppers officials, depict the victim on one side along with a brief description of the crime. Some depict wanted fugitives. On the other side is Crime Stoppers' toll-free number.

Inmates can call in tips anonymously and if the information leads to an arrest they can be rewarded up to $1,000 from Crime Stoppers – and possibly more if additional reward money is offered by other parties. One of the unsolved cases offers a reward of $56,000, said San Diego police officer Jim Johnson.

The cards will sell for $1.79 and be the only ones sold in the jails, said Sheriff's Lt. Dennis Brugos. Brugos said there are 5,100 inmates incarcerated in the county's jails and about 400 packs of cards bought each month. Jail phones have been reprogrammed so that inmates can call the toll-free number, he said.

The cold-case playing cards are modeled after a program in Florida that resulted in three cases being solved in three months, Crime Stoppers Executive Director Sally Cox said.

Officials hope that by distributing the cards to the criminal population, more leads on unsolved cases will be generated.

“We know that those in jail right now have the information to take care of and to bring justice to the victims and the victims' families,” said Crime Stoppers board member Auday Arabo.

There are currently 2,000 cold cases in the county under investigation, some dating back decades.

Arabo said it is especially hard for those families that have an empty chair at the table during the holidays.“We hope to bring justice and some type of closure," he said.