Reality Round-Up: Express Edition

Another great Express: the Hogwart’s Express! (Warner Brothers)

Since it’s such a nice, cold fall day—and since there are still a few minutes of daylight left to enjoy—here’s an express edition of the Reality Round-Up to keep things moving.

In MICHIGAN, a woman is suing Etihad Airways over a flight she took from Abu Dhabi to Chicago on August 6^th. She reached into her seat pocket to retrieve the knob from her broken tray table, felt something poke her finger and discovered it was a hypodermic needle and syringe! A long and powerful treatment of drugs to prevent AIDS later and I think it’s clear she has a case.

A man in PLEASANT HILL, MISSOURI has just been charged with abandonment of a corpse and tampering with a vehicle. Police visited his home on November 4^th to investigate reports of a stolen vehicle and drugs. Upon searching his home, officers discovered a bucket filled with freshly poured concrete. Encased in cement was the stillborn son his wife had delivered nearly a month earlier! Gross-and-macabre is not a good mix!

Pay close attention to your winning cards (The Guardian)

A convenience store owner and his son are in big trouble in HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK. A customer who doesn’t speak English recently handed the clerk a scratch-off ticket he believed to be a winner. Karim Jaghab, 26, told the man he won $1000, handed him the cash and pocketed the ticket—which was really worth $1 million! Fortunately, the customer realized what happened, contacted the authorities and the scam was uncovered. The owner and his son claim a faulty lottery machine was to blame, but they seem to have forgotten the most important thing… the thing any convenience store owner who deals with lottery tickets should know: only payouts under $600 can be paid immediately by store clerks!

Finally—in BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—it looks like 14 more corrections officers have been indicted for working with prison gangs, most notably the Black Guerrilla Family. This brings the total to 44 people indicted on federal charges—27 of whom were Baltimore corrections officers. Apparently—and for quite some time—guards have been paid to smuggle drugs, cell phones and other contraband items to inmates. Some even develop personal and sexual relationships with convicts. They trade sex for money, sneak prohibited objects to them inside their body cavities and even bear children for notorious criminals. Alleged gang member Tavon White has impregnated four guards to date and likes prison so much he had this to say about it in a taped cell phone call: “This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious… I make every final call in this jail… and nothing go past me.”

I’m certainly glad we can keep our criminals happy. It’s important to be sensitive to the wants and needs of our incarcerated brothers and sisters. After all, they’re people, too.

Seriously, though… I’m full of shit. Prison should be punishment, not paradise. I couldn’t even keep a straight face as I was typing that!

So ends the express edition of the RRU. Enjoy the last remnants of your weekend, peeps!

Reality Round-Up: Sex and the Naked Truth

A famous scene from the film “American Pie” (Universal Pictures)

Yesterday, I published the latest installment in my ongoing Reality Round-Up series, “Hump Day +1.” For those of you unfamiliar with RRU, it’s basically a way for me to connect news stories from around the world—normally based on strange similarities or other common factors—while also commenting on the world around me. In terms of blogging, I’ve found it to be a useful tool—the news never stops and I can always count on someone doing some crazy shit worthy of a post.

Of course, it’s rare for me to publish two Reality Round-Ups back-to-back since variety is the spice of life and I try to mix things up a bit more for readers—interspersing news commentary with original essays, inspirational stories and even the occasional short fiction or screenplay idea. Every so often, though, news stories converge in a kind of “perfect storm” and simply cannot be ignored.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those days.

As a result of passing out early on the sofa last night—I have no idea what time it happened, so I must have been more exhausted than I thought—I woke up earlier than usual and made it to work a bit early, as well. After preparing for my day and completing some other small tasks, I decided to start scanning the news sites for more blog fodder, again searching for themes that might connect some of them while also appealing to readers.

I like focusing on connections because it helps me illustrate the connectedness of human kind—how we are all brothers and sisters who, despite living on different sides of the world, still have more in common than we might think. This “brotherhood of man” approach has always been important to me because our differences make us unique, yet almost always lead to strife in one form or another. Focusing on the similarities between us, on the other hand, makes day-to-day life better because it shows how our struggles, joys, successes and failures are common and should bring us together. It’s my small contribution to the betterment of society, or so I like to think.

As I was surfing from site to site in search of a topic for today’s RRU, two buzz words seemed to hit numerous times in different stories: sex and nudity. Granted, this may seem like a good thing until you remember how news agencies tend to focus more on the negative than the positive. Yes, one of these stories does have a happy ending, but in most cases—and because of the darkness that seems to be spreading across the United States (and the world, for that matter)—I’m afraid the negativity still rises to the top. My hope is that this won’t ruin anyone’s day or start the weekend off on the wrong foot, but again, they were too disturbing, strange and even interesting to ignore. I hope you enjoy this edition despite the darkness that always creeps in to the Reality Round-Up.

BILLINGS, MONTANA

Not long ago, I wrote about a man named Stacey Dean Rambold, a former high school teacher who confessed to raping one of his students—Cherize Moralez—when she was only 14 years old. Before he went to trial, though—and given the psychological and emotional consequences of rape—Moralez committed suicide. She was only two weeks shy of her 17^th birthday at the time.

Judge Baugh, Moralez and Rambold (Mankato Times)

Rambold’s case got national attention when the judge presiding over it—the “honorable” G. Todd Baugh—claimed his victim “seemed older than her chronological age” and sentenced him to only one month in jail—in legal terms, this is known as a deferred prosecution agreement. Rambold was placed on probation for the next 15 years or so and was also required to complete a sex offender treatment program. The stipulations of this program included no contact with children, avoidance of any area where children congregate and the relinquishing of all photo, video, Internet and cell phone capabilities. As long as Rambold lived up to his obligations, all charges against him would be dropped.

Unfortunately for Rambold, he fell short of some of his treatment requirements and prosecutors pushed for his sentence to be increased to 20 years in jail. Judge Baugh disagreed and again showed his level of incompetence when he made the following statement:

“He (Rambold) made some violations of his treatment program. They were more technical and not the kind you would send someone to prison for.”

Perhaps not, but I certainly think rape is a jail-able crime, even more so when it involves an underage girl who subsequently killed herself as a result. It’s too bad Baugh didn’t think this way because yesterday, Rambold completed his month behind bars and was released from jail. Yes, he’s on probation for a long time, but otherwise he’s a free man—which means he’s capable of doing this to some other unsuspecting girl.

After all, anyone who’s willing to rape a child is obviously sick and capable of doing it again and again, at least until someone stops him. And since our justice system failed miserably in the case of Rambold—a confessed rapist—I hope we don’t see his name in the headlines again for a similar crime… but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised.

Of course, I would also like to see the following headline in the news: Judge Baugh Fired for Being a Complete Moron. This is more likely to happen, and I will be keeping my eyes peeled for it very soon.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Although I know better, I was hoping the days of Catholic priests molesting children were largely behind us. Sadly, this isn’t the case in Philly where Father Robert Brennan was just charged with rape, aggravated indecent assault and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. His case is related to the 2012 child endangerment conviction of Monsignor William Lynn, the first church leader convicted of such a crime.

What I find most disturbing about Brennan’s case—aside from the actual crimes themselves—is that he was implicated in a 2005 case for allegedly abusing more than 20 children. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations had passed and he was never charged. The archdiocese stripped him of most of his duties shortly after these allegations came to light, but he was allowed to remain a priest and we see where that led. Had he been removed from the priesthood and jailed for his crimes, things likely would have been much, much different.

Father Robert Brennan, leave those kids alone! (CBS Local)

Is it me or does anyone else sense a trend here? Teenagers who are mentally ill but don’t receive the proper treatment arm themselves and start killing schoolchildren, while priests who molest children are allowed to continue so they can do the same thing to other victims.

Until we start acknowledging these kinds of issues and actually take action, all we’re doing is reinforcing the behavior we all want to weed out of our society… at least I hope we all do. Based on some of these recent developments, though, it seems as if the very system of checks and balances we use to prevent crime continues to fail, opening the door to even more crime in the future.

Something’s got to give, but until it does, expect to see more priests molesting children since we’re obviously doing very little to stop them.

TEMECULA, CALIFORNIA

On Thursday, 19-year-old Jared James Abrahams—a computer science student with a penchant for hacking—was arrested for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women and then extorting more risqué photos and videos by threatening to release these images online. One of his victims, in fact, was none other than Cassidy Wolf, the current Miss Teen USA and—at the time of her harassment—Miss Teen California.

According to the latest reports, Abrahams hacked into the webcams of young women, took control of their computers and then used the cameras to snap pictures of them changing clothes. He told authorities that he had as many as 40 “slave computers”—as well as access to other electronic devices (like tablets and cell phones)—and in all controlled as many as 150 different devices at one time. Once he had the images he needed, Abrahams would then contact each victim and threaten to release the photos unless they sent him more pictures or videos via Skype. His general threat went something like this:

“Either you do one of the things listed below or I upload these pics and a lot more (I have a LOT more and those are better quality) on all your accounts for everybody to see.”

In the case of Cassidy Wolf, he added “and your dream of being a model will be transformed into a porn star.”

What a complete freaking loser.

Cassidy Wolf and Abrahams, her online tormentor (NBC News)

Fortunately, Abrahams wasn’t a tech savvy as he thought and failed to cover his “online tracks” effectively. Investigators eventually discovered emails, IP addresses and other communications linking him to these crimes—as well as posts to online forums where he asked others about hacking into Facebook accounts, controlling webcams remotely and installing malware. He was also linked to at least eight other women from places as close as Southern California and as distant as Moldova. And they all told stories similar to Wolf’s.

The good news is that Abrahams “wised up,” surrendered to the FBI without incident and admitted his crimes. After appearing in court, he was released “on intensive pretrial supervision and home detention with electronic monitoring,” but his parents had to first sign bond agreements upwards of $50,000 to make this happen. Abrahams will now face federal extortion charges, which I hope will lead to some serious jail time. We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.

There is one more thing I should mention about Abrahams: he’s autistic. This information came out Thursday when his lawyer, Alan Eisner, spoke with CNN affiliate KTLA. In other words, here’s another teenager with mental illness who perpetrated a crime that, to me, could have been prevented.

When are we ever going to learn?

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

In an effort to end this edition of the Reality Round-Up on a more positive note, I bring you a story from Brown University that proves there are still some decent people in the world.

To generate discussion about “power, privilege, race, class, gender, ability and… how they interact with nudity, body image and nudity in relation to sexuality,” students at Brown have organized Nudity in the Upspace, a clothing-optional event that includes yoga classes, open mic nights, body painting and the aforementioned discussion forum.

Nude yoga sounds a little sketchy to me—especially if you get stuck behind a less hygienic person—but to each his own.

According to the event coordinators—juniors Becca Wolinsky and Camila Pacheco-Fores—the hope is that Nudity in the Upspace will promote both positivity and education.

Come to Brown University for an education and some nudity to boot (Campus Reform)

“It’s mostly the idea of talking about and addressing things that people don’t ‘normally’ address that can be stigmatized,” Pacheco-Fores said recently. “I hope that people will laugh when it’s funny and feel moved when that is appropriate. I hope that people will come out of the experience feeling empowered and feeling that bodies and people are beautiful whether naked or clothed.”

Personally, I’m sure I would be very moved if I attended an event populated with naked college girls. And I’m sure some male or even female students at Brown would feel the same, even though many Ivy Leaguers likely have more self-control. Either way, though, the event seems like a great idea since we often forget that “normal people” don’t look like the models, actors and other beautiful folks featured in the media. I commend these students for being willing enough—and courageous enough—to shed their clothing for such a great cause.

I’m also glad no cameras, cell phones or bags will be allowed at the event. Otherwise I’m certain there would be pictures of naked students all over the Internet… as if there aren’t enough already!

So there you have it, folks: the sex and nudity edition of the Reality Round-Up. I’m certain it won’t be the last…

Escaped Con Killed by Hostage

Police at the scene in Bedford (Des Moines Register)

Last Friday, convicted burglar Rodney Long escaped from the Clarinda Correctional Facility, a minimum security prison just southwest of Des Moines, Iowa.

Minimum security is right since this guy just walked away without so much as an alarm sounding.

On Sunday, the escaped convict was seen walking along a rural highway. A deputy stopped to confront him, at which time Long pulled a gun, shot the officer twice and then sped off in his patrol car.

I’m not quite sure where he found a weapon, but chalk that up as another benefit of minimum security. Hell, he could have had the gun in the prison, for all I know.

Following the shooting, a second deputy chased Long for roughly 40 minutes, but the pursuit ended abruptly when the fugitive crashed the car and escaped yet again. He eventually made his way to the home of Jerome and Carolyn Mauderly, a retired couple in rural Bedford whose house is very secluded—it’s surrounded by cornfields and the closest neighbor lives more than a mile away.

Long broke into the Mauderlys home around 10 p.m. while they were sleeping. Jerome Mauderly, a former prison guard and farmer, even had a loaded shotgun on the floor beside his bed—everyone in the area heard about the prison break and prepared accordingly, which means they loaded and readied their weapons. Unfortunately for Mauderly, though, he didn’t have a chance to use his… at least not at first.

The couple awoke to find Long standing there, loaded shotgun in hand. He immediately disabled the landline phone and left only the phone in their bedroom operational, most likely so he could speak with negotiators if his presence was discovered by the authorities.

For the next four hours, Long held the couple hostage while he rummaged through their home for supplies, all the time using their cell phones—who he may have been calling, I have no idea. Fortunately for the Mauderlys, though, the escaped convict soon made a fatal mistake.

Rodney Long picked the wrong home to invade! (Des Moines Register)

Close to 2 a.m., Long went upstairs to continue his search for supplies, only this time he left the shotgun in the downstairs kitchen. Jerome Mauderly saw his chance, snuck into the kitchen and recovered the weapon while his wife phoned the police—on the only phone Long left working no less!

By the time Long came downstairs, Jerome had the shotgun pointed at him.  And since he knew the convict also had a handgun, he wasn’t taking any chances. He fired one shot, which struck Long in the torso and immediately sent him to the floor bleeding. The police arrived a short time later—with the deputy who pursued Long searching for him less than 200 yards from the home—and found Long lying on the kitchen floor dead.

Since the Mauderlys acted in self-defense during a home invasion with a clear threat to their lives, no charges have been filed against them. And if Long were still alive to reflect on his decisions, I know one he would love to have back: the choice to invade the home of someone fully prepared to deal with his bullshit.

Nice work, Jerome! And I hope the other prisoners at Clarinda Correctional Facility take notice and go a different route if they ever escape!

Status Update: Dead

Dislike: Hearing about dead loved ones from FB (courtesy of Kommein)

Imagine that you’re sitting at breakfast, home alone, gnawing on an English muffin, when your phone rings. It’s your brother.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells you, weepy sympathy oozing through the speaker. “I just saw on Facebook where your husband hung himself.”

Shocking, isn’t it? Well that’s exactly what happened to Samantha Starr of Prince George County, Virginia earlier this week.

Her husband Victor was arrested in May after they had a domestic dispute and was sitting in Riverside Regional Jail. The charges against him included arson, grand larceny, breaking and entering, and firearms and drugs charges to boot. And according to his family members, Victor faced a host of “personal demons.”

They haunted him so much that he hung himself in his jail cell a week ago and after only one month of incarceration. Unfortunately, Samantha was not contacted when it happened around 6:15 that fateful Sunday morning. Instead, she learned about it a few hours later from her brother, who first saw it posted on that social media giant, Facebook.

And that’s just wrong.

“I’m outraged,” Samantha said of her treatment by jail officials. “Families need to be contacted before anything is leaked. Whether it’s an inmate or whether it’s a corrections officer. I should have been notified one way or another, without Facebook.”

Alas, there’s the rub, poor Samantha. The phrase without Facebook is losing all meaning because life without it would be unlivable, or so “they” would like you to believe.

The truth is that no, you should not have heard of your husband’s suicide through social media of any kind. And in the world before Facebook, cell phones, tablets and every other electronic gizmo or technological “advance” we find to fill the voids in our lives, this never would have happened. Or if it had, it would have taken a lot more doing.

Someone would have to smuggle out a note from an inmate—perhaps lodged in some uncomfortable orifice—and deliver it to a contact on the outside who would tell his friends, who would then tell their friends, and so on and so forth.

Victor Starr (courtesy of Riverside Regional Jail)

In other words, the news of Victor’s suicide would spread like a venereal disease, with each person passing it secretly to the next.

That or some loose-lipped guard would hit the bar after his shift, down one too many Long Island Iced Teas and start blabbing to anyone who listened.

Either way, it would take a miracle for the news to reach everyone but Samantha Starr. And by the time it finally did, the grapevine would have been surpassed by official notice from the jail, to be sure.

Not so where technology and social media are concerned. For all we know, one of the inmates accessed a library computer and found a way to post directly from “the clink.” Yes, you would expect there to be some online restrictions in place—so an inmate couldn’t start a revolution while behind bars or something—but these safeguards often fail at the most inopportune times. Why should this be any different?

Sadly, there is nothing to be done now. Samantha knows her husband is dead and regardless of how she obtained this information, the end result is the same. I hate it for her, but not as much as she hates it for her husband. And who could blame her?

“Be Victor a monster or be he not one,” Samantha said recently. “He still deserves some respect.”

You have to admit, she has a way with words.

Back Home in Prison

James Whitmore in “The Shawshank Redemption” (property of Castle Rock Entertainment)

One of my favorite movies, and arguably the best Stephen King adaptation ever made, is the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption. The movie follows Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a man unjustly accused of his wife’s murder in 1947 Maine and sentenced to two life terms in the notorious and violent Shawshank Prison.

I won’t spoil things for those of you who haven’t seen the film, even though I’m sure you’re in the minority, but there is a scene I found very touching. It involves Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), an old convict who spent so many years behind bars that he eventually became “institutionalized.”

In other words, he was in prison so long that it eventually became his home and the place he felt most comfortable.

After spending so many years in Shawshank, the time finally came for Brooks to be paroled. Only he didn’t want to leave, so he attacked a fellow inmate with a knife and would have slit his throat if Andy hadn’t talked him out of it.

Eventually, Brooks accepts his fate, packs his things and steps out of the same prison gate he entered as a young man. Old and alone, he wanders through the drastically-changed world in fear, marveling at how rushed and busy life had become. Brooks is placed into a halfway house and takes a job bagging groceries at a local supermarket, but his evenings are spent in quiet frustration and over time, his fear continues to grow.

Unable to adjust to life in the outside world, Brooks considers buying a gun and shooting his supervisor so he will be returned to prison. Obviously his rehabilitation worked because instead of choosing to harm others, he does something that only affects him: he commits suicide.

To me, this plot line was both poignant and timely since institutionalization is a growing problem among prison inmates, primarily those with longer sentences or a history of more serious offenses. Brooks Hatlen is a perfect example of what can happen when people spend more time behind bars than beyond them. Eventually, prison becomes the only home they have ever known and, in many cases, their next crime is nothing more than an attempt to return there.

I mention all of this because something similar happened in Chicago recently.

Unbehaun robs a bank (courtesy of MSN)

Walter Unbehaun—a 73-year-old ex-convict who spent most of his adult life behind bars and was released in 2011 after a ten-year stint for armed robbery—walked into a bank, showed a teller the gun tucked in his belt and left with more than $4000 in his pockets. He wore no disguise and even limped in with a cane, all of which was caught by surveillance cameras.

It didn’t take long for the police to catch up with Unbehaun. And when they did, he simply dropped his cane, confessed to the robbery and surrendered without as much as a complaint.

And why should he complain? If convicted, he could land back in prison for another 20 years. Put another way, he could be heading home for the rest of his life, which is what he wanted anyway.

Although I strongly believe that criminals should pay for their crimes—and doubt if true rehabilitation is even possible—it saddens me when someone has been incarcerated for so long that they come to need it. Institutionalization isn’t publicized very often—if at all—but it does happen. And if not for The Shawshank Redemption, I might have never heard about it, either.

I do give Walter Unbehaun credit, though. Robbing a bank isn’t a good thing, mind you, but at least he didn’t harm anyone in the process.

Brooks Hatlen would be proud.

Daddy was a Cop Killer

Nancy has her day in court (courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons)

In March 2007, Ronell Wilson was sentenced to death for killing two police officers, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews, during a gun sale  on Staten Island. At the time, he was the first person in half a century to receive the death penalty in this city. But due to some procedural errors, Wilson’s sentence was overturned in 2010 and a new jury will soon determine whether his original death sentence will be carried out or not.

In other words, Wilson has an equal chance of facing life in prison.

This may not sound much better, but when you consider what Wilson has been doing behind bars, some of you will likely change your minds.

In a federal complaint filed Tuesday, 29-year-old prison guard Nancy Gonzalez was accused of having sexual relations with two different inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. And you guessed it. One of her alleged lovers was none other than cop killer Ronell Wilson.

But there’s more: Gonzalez is also eight months pregnant with Wilson’s baby.

This means that in addition to free room and board, educational opportunities and exercise equipment, Wilson also gets all the straight love he can handle. And we all know how hard that is to come by in the clink.

Wilson’s on-site “booty calls” likely would have continued if Gonzalez hadn’t gotten pregnant in the first place. Of course, she hooked up with another inmate later and apparently told him all about her first affair behind bars. According to the federal complaint, she told the inmate that she “took a chance because [she] was so vulnerable and wanted to be loved.” Gonzalez also said that getting pregnant and having the baby was a way to give Wilson “some kind of hope.”

Does this turn you on, baby? (AP)

Give me a break. Or to quote comedian Jerry Seinfeld, “Moses smell the roses.” What a load of you-know-what.

Fortunately, no one bought what Gonzalez was selling and she was arrested on suspicion of unlawful sexual abuse on a ward. I never heard of this before, but it must be serious because if convicted, Gonzalez could face as many as 15 years in prison (preferably one with all female guards). For now, however, she remains free after posting $150,000 bond.

You know… I never understood why they called it the “penal system,” but it’s starting to make a lot more sense…

The Case of the Contraband Crotch

Maybe they won’t notice (courtesy of TimesUnion.com)

Andrea Amanatides is a 38-year-old woman in Albany, New York, scheduled to begin a six-month prison stint for a probation violation. She is also one of the worst prison smugglers in the history of crime.

While waiting in a holding cell in an Albany County Jail, and in full view of a surveillance camera, Amanatides had an accident. In an effort to make her prison time more enjoyable, she had hidden a condom inside her “hoo-ha” that included several bags of heroin, as well as more than 250 prescription pills ranging from Adderall and Valium to Lyrica and Ambien.

Unfortunately, the condom she selected must have been a Rough Rider from the corner store, because it broke and drugs poured all over the cell floor. Amanatides tried to kick the pills under a bench, as if they would disappear under the only piece of furniture in the room, but it didn’t work. She has now been charged with five misdemeanors for criminal drug possession and one felony involving prison contraband.

It looks like Amanatides will be spending more than six months in jail now. And even though she won’t have her precious drugs to keep her company, I’m sure she can replace them once she’s behind bars.

Congratulations, Andrea, on being my dumbass of the week!

The Pro-Pedophile Movement? Really?

The first pedophile activist? Sick… (courtesy of MSNBC)

Earlier this month, 63-year-old James Phillip Edwards of Kansas City was sentenced to more than 240 years in prison for lacing ice cream with sleeping pills and using it to drug children.

Over the course of four years, Edwards assaulted 13 girls and videotaped them in an effort to create and later distribute child pornography.

As disturbing as this is, it gets worse.

Edwards now says he wants to lead the “pro-pedophile movement” from prison and has even written an essay entitled “The Pedophile Minority.” His goal, in the words of prosecutors, is to become the “standard-bearer for pedophiles” while he serves his time.

Fortunately, even the most sadistic and homicidal inmates view pedophiles and child molesters as lower-than-low and treat them accordingly. In other words, Edwards might have more luck leading a pro-sodomy movement, because that’s likely what he’ll experience as soon as he steps through the prison gate.

At least that’s a start…