“An Empty Home Full of Memories…”

The Real Victim
by Robert A. Waters

A recent Los Angeles Times story about the “botched” execution of Clayton Lockett gave exactly one sentence to his victim, Stephanie Nieman.  That’s why I decided to publish the other side of the story.   (WARNING: This material is extremely graphic.)

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On June 3, 1999, an innocent victim stared evil in the face.  Nineteen-year-old Stephanie Neiman had just graduated from Perry High School in Oklahoma where she played saxophone in the high school band.

The following court document describes the full story of her murder. 

“At around 10:30 p.m. on June 3, 1999, Bobby Bornt was asleep on the couch at his home in Perry, Oklahoma, when his front door was kicked in.  Three men, Appellant [Clayton Lockett], Shawn Mathis, and Alfonzo Lockett, entered his house and immediately started beating and kicking him.  Bornt recognized Appellant because Appellant had recently covered a tattoo for him.  Appellant was carrying a shotgun which he used to hit Bornt.  After the beating, Bornt’s attackers used duct tape to secure his hands behind his back and they gagged him and left him on the couch while they ransacked the house looking for drugs.  As Bornt lay restrained on the couch, his friend Angel Hart [name has been changed] approached the open door.  She was pulled inside, hit in the face and thrown against a wall.  One of the men put a gun to her head and ordered her to call her friend, Stephanie Nieman, who was outside sitting in her pickup.  When Nieman came inside, they hit her several times to get the keys to her pickup and the code to disarm the alarm on her pickup.

“The men put all three victims in the bedroom where Bornt’s nine-month old son, Sam, had been sleeping.  Alfonzo Lockett came into the bedroom and got Hart.  He took her into the bathroom where he made her perform oral sodomy on him.  He then took her into Bornt’s bedroom where he told her to get undressed and raped her.  When he was finished, he left her there and Appellant came into the bedroom.  He raped her vaginally and anally and he made her perform oral sodomy on him.  When he was finished, he told her to get dressed and she went back into Sam’s bedroom with the others.  Alfonzo Lockett came into the bedroom and used duct tape to secure Hart’s and Nieman’s hands behind their backs.  He also put tape across their mouths.

“Appellant instructed Mathis to look in the garage for a shovel.  When he returned with a shovel, the victims were loaded into Bornt’s and Nieman’s pickups.  Bornt and his son were placed in his pickup with Appellant.  Hart and Nieman were placed in Nieman’s pickup with Mathis and Alfonzo Lockett.  They took off driving with Apellant in the lead.  They left Perry and drove to a rural area in Kay County.  Appellant stopped on a country road where he got out of the pickup he was driving and went over to Nieman’s pickup.  He made Hart get out and go with him to a ditch where he raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on him.  When he was finished, he took her back to Bornt’s pickup.  While Hart was sitting in the pickup, Mathis got her and took her back to Nieman’s pickup where he made her perform oral sex on him.  He grabbed her by her head and said, ‘In order for you to live, this is what you have got to do.’

“While stopped on the country road, Apellant told Mathis to get the shovel and start digging.  When Mathis was digging in the ditch, Bornt heard Appellant say, ‘Someone has got to go.’  Nieman was taken to the hole dug by Mathis and Appellant shot her.  The gun jammed and Appellant came back to the pickup to fix it.  While he was doing this, Bornt heard Neiman’s muffled screams.  When the gun was fixed, Appellant went back to the ditch and shot Nieman again.  While Mathis buried Nieman’s body, Apellant and Alfonzo Lockett warned Bornt and Hart that if they told anyone they would be killed, too…”

Bornt, Hart, and Sam were released.  The next day, Bornt and Hart reported the murder to police.  An autopsy revealed that Nieman had been buried alive.

Lawmen arrested Clayton Lockett and he quickly confessed.  This senseless murder of a completely innocent victim outraged the community and Lockett was sentenced to death, while Alfonzo Lockett and Mathis received life.

Stephanie’s mother and father, Susie and Steve Nieman, later wrote of their loss: “Every day we are left with horrific images of what the last hours of Stephanie’s life was like.  Did she cry out for us to help her?  We are left with the knowledge that she needed us and we were not aware of it therefore unable [to] help her.

“We go through the motions of living, we eat, we sleep, Steve goes to work and comes home again. We do what we have to do to make it through the day and we start all over again the next. We exist.

“We were left with an empty home full of memories and the deafening silence of the lack of life within it’s [sic] walls. We have moved, but in our new home Stephanie also has a bedroom which is filled with her treasures and belongings.”

 

Sailing Through Tempests

So Jameis Winston has been “cited” for stealing crab-legs and crawfish from a grocery store.  His sentence is 20 hours of community service.  In addition, the Florida State University baseball team relieved him of his duties for a while.  (Not to worry, I predict it won’t be long and the golden boy will be throwing that high hard one once again.)

For some people, life is a tempest of their own making.  For Sir Jameis, it’s more like a surfer gliding over rough waves as throngs of on-lookers cheer him on.

With the help of coaches and administrators at Florida State University, cops at the Tallahassee Police Department, and high-priced attorneys, Sir Jameis has sailed around storms before.

An accusation of rape was barely investigated by TPD and shoved under the rug by FSU.  In the meantime, evidence disappeared (a student videotaped the sexual encounter but later “lost” the tape) and witnesses, including Sir Jameis himself, went silent, on the advice of their attorneys.  The accuser could barely get her case heard—TPD is now being investigated by the state of Florida for its handling of the complaint.  In fact, it was the accuser who was interrogated, not the accused.  The co-ed also stated that she felt coerced by police to drop the charges.

But none of that matters to the Seminole Nation.

Neither does the fact that a month before the rape accusation, another woman, according to the New York Times, “had sought counseling after a sexual encounter with Mr. Winston.”  Although the woman didn’t call it “rape,” she said she felt “violated.”

The winner of the Heisman Trophy and leader of the Seminole team that won last year’s national championship represents hundreds of millions of dollars for the university and Tallahassee.  So maybe the Seminole faithful think Sir Jameis is just reaping the rewards of victory by screwing every woman he meets, whether she wants him to or not.  Whatever the case, this sordid story exemplifies athletics in today’s world.  (I’m not picking on FSU—I believe football corruption is prevalent at almost every major university.)

Maybe FSU football coach Jimbo Fisher should take a page from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.  When his star wide receiver, Desmond Bryant, beat up his own mother after a string of other unlawful incidents, Jones hired a round-the-clock bodyguard (some would call him a “baby-sitter”) to help keep Bryant out of trouble.  So far it seems to have worked.

If they give Sir Jameis a babysitter, maybe the crab-legs and crawfish will be safe.  But I doubt even that will protect the pretty co-eds at FSU.

Search for Skeegie Cash

The search for James Bailey “Skeegie” Cash, Jr. began in a driving rain.  Throughout the first day, June 2, 1938, thunderclaps rocked the sky and torrents of water drenched southern Florida.  More than 2,000 farmers, World War I veterans, Seminole Indians, FBI agents, local lawmen, and everyday citizens plowed through miles of swamp, desperate to locate Skeegie.  Crop-dusters and military planes flew precision patterns over the Everglades and divers worked grottos, lakes, and rivers.

A five-year-old boy, treasured by his parents and well-known to his small community, had once been anonymous to the rest of the world.  But on Saturday night, February 28, an unknown kidnapper snatched Skeegie from his home.  As newsmen flocked to Princeton, Florida, the boy’s parents paid a ransom of $10,000, then waited for their son's return.  After two days, it became obvious that Skeegie would not be coming home alive.  Finally, the largest search in Florida history began. 

The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash: J. Edgar Hoover and Florida’s Lindbergh Case by Robert A. Waters and Zack C. Waters describes this poignant story of a grieving father and mother caught in the heart-killing grip of a monster's mad plan. 

Order the book from University of Alabama Press or Amazon.com.  

Kidnapped and Murdered: Five-Year-Old Skeegie Cash

My brother Zack C. Waters spent decades researching A Small but Spartan Band, about Florida’s Confederates in the War Between the States.  This book is now a classic in the genre.  He has also published a novel, and is currently working on another Civil War book.

Zack and I are co-authors of The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash: J. Edgar Hoover and Florida’s Lindbergh Case.  This poignant true tale is set in rural Florida in the late 1930s.  Within a few months of the execution of Skeegie's killer, World War II erupted in all its tragic fury and the Cash case was largely forgotten.

Zack and I researched 4,000 pages from the original FBI files.  We were also able to obtain nearly a thousand pages of court documents, beginning with the trial of Franklin Pierce McCall, his appeals, and his execution.  We also gained access to a previously unknown archive of material about the local sheriff who fingered the suspect.

The kidnapping and murder of James Bailey “Skeegie” Cash, Jr. led to tragic consequences for all involved—except J. Edgar Hoover.  The FBI had nearly run out of money and Hoover needed a successful case that would pressure politicians to allocate additional funding.  He found his case in the kidnapping of Skeegie.  In his usual head-on, bullying style, Hoover flew down to the swamps of south Florida and turned disaster into a victory for himself and the Bureau.

Zack and I would like to invite everyone to purchase this book and read it.  It would also make a great gift for the crime reader in your family.  (NOTE: While the book is well-researched, it is written in a readable dramatic true crime style.)

Death for the Boston Bomber

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces execution if convicted of the Boston Marathon bombings.  Massachusetts has no death penalty, so the United States Department of Justice will try the suspected terrorist.  I’m no fan of our bloated, corrupt Federal government, but they’re right on this one.  If Tsarnaev is found guilty, he deserves nothing less than death.

The mutilated bodies of three victims were located in the wreckage after the attacks.  Krystle Marie Campbell, 29; Lingzi Lu, 23; and Martin Richard, 8, died of horrific injuries.  Just days later, Sean Collier, 27, an MIT police officer, was shot to death in his police cruiser.  Investigators claim that in addition to the bombings, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar killed the campus cop.  (Tamerlan later died during a shootout with police.)

Krystle, 29, a native of Medford, Massachusetts, lived in Arlington at the time of her death.  She was near the finish line with a friend when the first bomb detonated.  An employee of Jasper White Summer Shack restaurants, Krystle managed the catering division.  Her family stated that she worked 70 to 80 hours a week.  Krystle’s grandmother, Lillian, said, “She was so cute.  She was just full of life.  She loved being around people.  She was a people lover, even as a little girl.  She always had a lot of friends around her.  She loved music, and she loved life, Krystle did.  She was always bouncing and always happy.”

There was no reason for Krystle Campbell to die at that moment in time.

Lingzi Lu, 23, was a graduate student at Boston University.  Born in China, Lingzi always dreamed of immigrating to America.  She seemed happy in her adopted country.  Seeking a career in international business, Lingzi had just completed a difficult statistics course and applied for several internships.  She was an only child.

There was no reason for Lingzi Lu to die at that moment in time.

Martin William Richard, 8, became the face of the murder victims.  In the aftermath, Martin’s innocent smile, blown from his lips by a home-made bomb, graced newspapers and television sets across the country.  Every member of Martin’s family suffered extreme injuries and psychological damage from the explosion.  Their child’s brutalized, lifeless body will haunt Martin’s mother and father for life.

There was no reason for Martin Richard to die at that moment in time.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier sat in his cruiser when the terrorists allegedly shot him dead.  The popular cop loved the outdoors, and belonged to a hiking club.  A “technological geek,” he fit into the campus culture.  A memorial to his life is currently being erected on the MIT campus.

There was no reason for Sean Collier to die at that moment in time.

In addition to the dead, hundreds suffered horrendous life-changing injuries.

The Tsarnaev brothers had every opportunity America has to offer.  Many people are threatened by freedom, and maybe this was part of their motive.  Or maybe Islamist extremists won’t be satisfied until they’ve destroyed the freedom that makes this country great.  It was said that the brothers had become increasingly radicalized in the year leading up to the attacks.

Whatever the motive, if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is convicted, death is too good for him.  But it’s all our system has to offer to express our repugnance for the acts that took four innocent lives.      
 

New York Boy Kidnapped, Murdered

On February 24, 1938, twelve-year-old Peter David Levine disappeared from New Rochelle, New York.  While walking home from school with a companion, Peter stepped into a store to buy candy.  He was never seen alive again.

The New Rochelle Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a massive search.  Soon Peter’s father received a note demanding $60,000 in cash for the return of his son.  He could raise only half, and offered that to the kidnappers.

On May 29, after weeks of silence, Peter’s torso washed ashore behind a home on Long Island.  An Associated Press story described the scene: “One hundred local police and G-men searched nearby shores today for the remnants of the body of kidnaped 12-year-old Peter Levine, whose wire-trussed, headless torso was yielded up last night by the waters of Long Island Sound…”

The night before Peter’s body was found, another kidnapping occurred.  James Bailey “Skeegie” Cash disappeared from his Princeton, Florida home.  For two weeks, the cases ran simultaneously in newspapers across the country.  The difference between the modestly wealthy parents of Peter Levine and the “obscure country merchant” father of Skeegie was stark.  But both parents did all they could to bring their sons home.

The inside story of these cases is told in a dramatic new book by Robert A. Waters and Zack C. Waters.  While the Levine case was never solved, the Cash abduction reached a horrifying conclusion in the swamps of the Everglades.  The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash: J. Edgar Hoover and Florida’s Lindbergh Case breaks new ground in the history of child abduction. 

A True Crime Story from the Bible

It’s now the chic thing to deride God.  Biblical references are no longer allowed in any public forum, and secularism has washed into our culture like a toxic fog.  For those of us who grew up studying the Bible, it’s a heartbreaking event.  But it’s not surprising.  As a civilization declines, the spark of life that produced it is often abandoned.

For readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the Bible, here is a true crime story from 2,500 years ago, back before the advent of criminology and forensics.  (I’ve used the Good News Translation for easy reading, and have eliminated verses—numerical units weren’t placed in the original text by the scholars who penned the Bible.)

The Rape of Dinah
(Genesis, Chapter 34)

One day Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, went to visit some of the Canaanite women.  When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, who was chief of that region, saw her, he took her and raped her.  But he found the young woman so attractive that he fell in love with her and tried to win her affection.  He told his father, “I want you to get Dinah for me as my wife.”

Jacob learned that his daughter had been disgraced, but because his sons were out in the fields with his livestock, he did nothing until they came back.  Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob, just as Jacob’s sons were coming in from the fields. When they heard about it, they were shocked and furious that Shechem had done such a thing and had insulted the people of Israel by raping Jacob’s daughter.  Hamor said to him, “My son Shechem has fallen in love with your daughter; please let him marry her.  Let us make an agreement that there will be intermarriage between our people and yours.  Then you may stay here in our country with us; you may live anywhere you wish, trade freely, and own property.”

Then Shechem said to Dinah’s father and brothers, “Do me this favor, and I will give you whatever you want.  Tell me what presents you want, and set the payment for the bride as high as you wish; I will give you whatever you ask, if you will only let me marry her.”

Because Shechem had disgraced their sister Dinah, Jacob’s sons answered Shechem and his father Hamor in a deceitful way.  They said to him, “We cannot let our sister marry a man who is not circumcised; that would be a disgrace for us.  We can agree only on the condition that you become like us by circumcising all your males.  Then we will agree to intermarriage. We will settle among you and become one people with you.  But if you will not accept our terms and be circumcised, we will take her and leave.”

These terms seemed fair to Hamor and his son Shechem, and the young man lost no time in doing what was suggested, because he was in love with Jacob’s daughter.  He was the most important member of his family.

Hamor and his son Shechem went to the meeting place at the city gate and spoke to the people of the town:  “These men are friendly; let them live in the land with us and travel freely.  The land is large enough for them also.  Let us marry their daughters and give them ours in marriage.  But these men will agree to live among us and be one people with us only on the condition that we circumcise all our males, as they are circumcised.  Won’t all their livestock and everything else they own be ours? So let us agree that they can live among us.”  All the citizens of the city agreed with what Hamor and Shechem proposed, and all the males were circumcised.

Three days later, when the men were still sore from their circumcision, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, took their swords, went into the city without arousing suspicion, and killed all the men, including Hamor and his son Shechem.  Then they took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left.  After the slaughter Jacob’s other sons looted the town to take revenge for their sister’s disgrace.  They took the flocks, the cattle, the donkeys, and everything else in the city and in the fields.  They took everything of value, captured all the women and children, and carried off everything in the houses.

Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have gotten me into trouble; now the Canaanites, the Perizzites, and everybody else in the land will hate me.  I do not have many men; if they all band together against me and attack me, our whole family will be destroyed.”

But they answered, “We cannot let our sister be treated like a common whore.”

New True Crime Book Now in Stock

The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash: J. Edgar Hoover and Florida's Lindbergh Case is now in stock on Amazon.  Robert A. Waters and Zack C. Waters delved into the massive archives of the FBI to bring this little-known true crime story to light. 

In a tale clear and gripping, Robert and Zack Waters have deftly chronicled a crime that was as significant to FBI history as all the public enemies that came before. The crisp narrative exposes J. Edgar Hoover’s bold political machinations and an urgent grassroots effort to save a missing child. This is true crime at its best: unembellished, dramatic, and authoritative.
—Ron Franscell, bestselling author of The Darkest Night

Robert A. Waters and Zack C. Waters have crafted a masterpiece of detective work and analysis, detailing the tragedy of the kidnapping and murder of Little Skeegie Cash in Princeton, Florida.  They place this tragic event in the context of the machinations of J. Edgar Hoover to claim credit for the eventual arrest of Franklin Pierce McCall in a desperate attempt to reverse severe budget cuts for the FBI by Congress. Based on newspaper research, examinations of the trial records, and 4,000 pages of FBI records, secured through the Freedom of Information Act, The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash highlights one of the most infamous criminal episodes in Florida history. It is also another in the damning indictments of Hoover and his tenure as head of the FBI.  It is an excellent read.
—Nick Wynne, Executive Director Emeritus of The Florida Historical Society

What’s Happening in Detroit?

Detroit Police Chief James Craig

Law-abiding citizens fight back…
by Robert A. Waters

In the last two weeks, home invaders in Detroit have gotten the worst of it when attempting to rob homeowners.  And, in a surprise, the police chief supports armed self-defense.

When two teenage thugs attempted to break into a man’s home, he heard them and opened fire, killing one of the intruders.  After the shooting, Detroit Deputy Police Chief Rodney Johnson said, “As a homeowner, he had a right to protect himself inside his home.” (None of the homeowners in these stories were identified because of possible retaliation.)

Police Chief James Craig told reporters that burglars may think twice if they know their intended victim is armed.

A few days later, three armed teenagers kicked down the door of a grandmother.  Using a semi-automatic rifle (or what reporters like to label an “assault rifle”), the woman routed the invaders, killing one.

In another case, a woman pulled into her driveway and was accosted by a carjacker.  Throwing her keys to the ground to distract the robber, the victim drew her gun and killed him.

In a south Detroit neighborhood, two men used a crowbar to break into an occupied home.  When the men tried to attack the homeowner with the tire iron, he drew his pistol and shot them both.  One thug died on the scene—the other was taken to the hospital with severe injuries.

Chief Craig stated his thoughts on the benefits of law-abiding citizens owning firearms.  He said that years ago in California, he’d been against concealed carry permits and was reluctant to give them out. But after taking a job as a police chief in Maine, he was required by law to dispense permits to law-abiding citizens.  Thousands of permits later, Craig changed his mind.  He told reporters that Maine is one of the safest states in the union.

As soon as Craig made his comments, a writer at Huffington Post belittled him for “wanting more guns on the street, not fewer.”  Undeterred, the chief continues to sing the praises of concealed carry laws.

And in Detroit, defenders continued to ignore the pundits.

A homeowner heard his back window “shatter” and, arming himself, went to investigate.  He found an intruder inside his home and fired.  Another career criminal lay dead, and another homeowner was not charged.

In yet another case, a woman on Grove Street heard noises coming from her rear window.  Investigating, she saw a man entering her home.  The woman retrieved a handgun, fired, and hit the intruder in the chest.  He ran out of the house and was found dead on a nearby street.  

The desire to feel safe is a primal need.  In America, gun ownership crosses party lines.  Large numbers of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians own firearms.  Even as the “sophisticated” elite denounce guns, the great unwashed throngs keep firearms and use them for self-protection.

The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash

James Bailey "Skeegie" Cash

The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash brings to light a long-forgotten story from the annals of FBI history.  The sensational 1938 murder of the five-year-old son of a merchant rocked America, reaching from the wetlands of southern Florida to the White House itself.  In a rare move, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover flew from Washington, D.C. to a rain-drenched hamlet on the edge of the Everglades.

What prompted Hoover to abandon the confines of power to actively investigate a missing child case?  Why did President Franklin D. Roosevelt allocate thousands of tax dollars to the FBI to investigate this specific case?  Why did Hoover whitewash the FBI files to eliminate all mention of the lawman who really solved the case?  Why did the case disappear from the public record almost immediately after it was solved?

In this explosive new book, Robert A. Waters and Zack C. Waters delved into thousands of pages of FBI files and court documents to unearth the true story.  The authors recount the abduction, the payment of a $10,000 ransom, the hunt for James Bailey “Skeegie” Cash and his kidnapper, the arrest and confession of Franklin Pierce McCall, and the killer’s trial and execution.  The poignant story of Skeegie’s heart-broken parents contrasts with the cut-throat intrigue of Hoover’s sometimes extra-legal methods to bring the killer to bay.

The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash, set against the backdrop of a psychopathic killer matching wits with J. Edgar Hoover himself, will add a new chapter to the long and storied history of the FBI.