Book Review: The Love Pirate and the Bandit's Son by Laura James

The Love Pirate and the Bandit’s Son: Murder, Sin, and Scandal in the Shadow of Jesse James
Laura James
Union Square Press, 2009

Review by Robert A. Waters

My wife and I recently traveled to Pocahontas, Tennessee (for those who don’t know, that’s half-way between Woodbury and Manchester) to attend her family’s annual reunion. I brought along a book that had been burning a hole in my brain for a couple of months. Entitled The Love Pirate and The Bandit's Son, it was written by Laura James. The author is an attorney, a blogger, and a crime historian extraordinaire. I believe CLEWS (her blog) is the best true crime blog on the Internet. So I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed when I opened her book. I wasn’t, and I recommend it to all true-crimers.


The case is as cold as the long-dead bodies of Zeo Zoe Wilkins and the men she drove to early graves. In 1924, Zeo was murdered. It wasn’t particularly surprising. In fact, Zeo had predicted that she would be dead within the week. When Kansas City, Missouri police entered her blood-soaked rental home they found her safe missing. According to witnesses, it was filled with diamonds and valuable bonds. They were the dead woman’s last remnants of wealth. Sired and raised in poverty, she had accumulated more than three million dollars in her life, but had lost it through lavish spending, hooch, and dope.

What’s surprising is that she wasn’t murdered sooner. Zeo was indeed a love pirate. The brazen beauty married six times (five times to different men)--each time she added to her bank account and left her victims’ hearts, souls, and pocketbooks shattered. One husband was shot by the schemer, another committed suicide, one lost his bank and his fortune and his sanity, one fled the state to be rid of her.

In addition to her marriages, Zeo was a nymphomaniac, as her affairs with hundreds of men would attest. Cops investigating her murder had so many suspects that they could never get a grasp on the case. Three men were arrested but there was never any real evidence against them and they were released. The crime was never solved.

Jesse James, Jr. was six-years-old when his father was murdered by the dirty little coward Robert Ford. Junior heard the gunshot and ran to the living room to find the famous outlaw lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Jesse James, Jr. would be forever scarred by the scene.

Junior went to law school. Like many attorneys of yesteryear and today, slime oozed from his every pore. Junior represented denizens of the underworld. For a while, he prospered, but eventually lost all his money and self-esteem when he invested in a disastrous movie about his father. He was adjudged insane and temporarily admitted to a doctor’s care.

Zeo Zoe Wilkins was unaware of his problems when she came to Junior for legal advice. She wanted someone to fence her diamonds and bonds. Who better than an underworld attorney whose father had “stole from the rich and gave to the poor?” Zeo brought Jesse James, Jr. to her house, bedded him, and showed him the contents of her strong box. Two weeks after they met, Zeo was dead and her last remaining valuables missing. They were never seen again.

Did Junior murder her? He was never considered a suspect by police, but historian James has presented a case against him. Is it compelling? You read the book and decide.

Buy The Love Pirate and the Bandit's Son and add it to your true crime library. It’s well-researched, well-written, well-edited, and will keep your fingers moving. What more can you ask in a book?

Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Vintage Books, 2006

Reviewed by Robert A. Waters

This is the first fiction book I’ve read in years. I hate the political correctness of most major modern novels--aren’t writers supposed to challenge the norm? Not only that, the plots of today’s books and movies are so predictable that I can always tell what’s going to happen next. It seems as if most of today’s fiction is cut from the same cookie-cutter mentality that authors like to criticize the middle-class for.

Had I known that The Road was a selection of the Oprah Book Club, or that it had won the Pulitzer Prize, I probably would have never even picked it up. My son, however, suggested I try it and once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.

Post-apocalypse books and movies are a dime a dozen. Zombies, militarists, and super-heroes are the usual fare in such things. Since I like realistic books, these scenarios turn me off.

What would really happen if most of humanity were destroyed in some world-wide disaster? The Road probably answers that question as well as it can be answered. The plot is simple: after the earth is visited by some unnamed cataclysm, a man and his young son walk south in an attempt to reach the coast. They push a grocery cart loaded with their few possessions in front of them and carry a pistol for protection. Their two purposes for taking to the road are to escape the brutal cold of the mid-west and to try to find other “good guys.” Maybe a group of survivors who still have some spark of humanity left.

Along the way, the father and his son pass through the burned-out landscape of America and meet ragged, dying people, many of whom have turned to cannibalism. Several times, the father uses his gun to ward off aggressors. In one instance, he shoots and kills a cannibal who has attacked his son. (This alone drew me to the book. How many times have we seen the evil gun taken from the good guy and used for awful purposes? The Tom Cruise remake of War of the Worlds rings that bell.)

But what I really liked was the inter-play between the dad and his son. The old man was hard-souled, the boy idealistic. Between them, they complete their journey, each in his own way.

The Road is being made into a movie. My suggestion to the producers is to write the script directly from the book. Don’t try to make it more exciting. Don’t change it from what it is. Don’t try to insert some political or environmental message. Just go with the masterpiece that this writer has produced.

Oh, and one more thing: don’t use voice-overs--nothing will put your audience to sleep quicker.

Recommended Website: Texas Executions

http://www.txexecutions.org

This informative website is must reading for death penalty advocates and foes alike. The story below is one of hundreds from the site that describes the circumstances of previous executions.

Michael Lynn Riley, 51, was executed by lethal injection on 19 May 2009 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder and robbery of a convenience store clerk.

On 1 February 1986, Riley, then 27, entered a convenience store in Quitman in northeastern Texas, carrying a concealed butcher knife. Riley was a frequent customer in the store. Clerk Wynona Harris, 23, told him to help himself to the ice cream he wanted while she counted some money. While Harris had her back turned to Riley, he came up behind her and stabbed her to death. He left the store with a cloth bag containing $1,110 in cash. A customer came in later and found Harris's body behind the counter. She was stabbed 31 times.

A set of bloody footprints led from the store in the direction of Riley's home a few blocks away. Detectives followed the footprints and found the murder weapon and a money bag. Later that day, Riley, who had several felony and misdemeanor convictions and was well-known to law enforcement authorities in Quitman, went to the Wood County sheriff's office after hearing that authorities were looking for him. Riley indicated that he knew something about the murder, but he denied being at the store that morning. He was allowed to leave the sheriff's office, but after a milk delivery driver informed authorities that he had spotted a man in distinctive coveralls hanging around outside the store that morning, he was brought back in for questioning. Riley then led authorities to a pair of bloodstained coveralls hidden under some brush in a field near his house. In one of the pockets was $970 in cash. He then confessed to the crime.

Riley had prior felony convictions and two prior prison sentences. In March 1977, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison for burglary and larceny. He was discharged in November 1978. In January 1980, he was sentenced to 9 years for burglary of a building. He was paroled in July 1983 and discharged in July 1985. He also had several convictions for forgery and writing bad checks.

A jury convicted Riley of capital murder in November 1986 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction in November 1993 on the grounds that a potential juror was improperly struck from the jury. At his second trial, Riley pleaded guilty. A jury then convicted him again of capital murder in September 1995 and resentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in May 1997. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

Several of Riley's appeals asserted that he was mentally retarded and thus ineligible for capital punishment. In 1973, he was evaluated as having an I.Q. of 67, which is considered a borderline retardation level. This evaluation was admitted at his first trial. In preparation for his second trial, his attorney, William Wright, interviewed Riley's family and examined his school, probation, and juvenile records. Based on this evaluation and his own personal observations of his client, Wright concluded that Riley was not retarded, and he decided not to present the 1973 evaluation into evidence, because he believed doing so could be counterproductive to his trial strategy. Wright also consulted with Dr. Patrick Lawrence, a psychologist, about Riley's mental state. Lawrence evaluated Riley and testified at his trial that he did not pose a future danger to society, but he did not testify as to Riley's I.Q. In March 2004, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Wright's actions were reasonable, and did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel.

In an interview from death row the week before his execution, Riley said that he turned to crime to support his gambling habit. "Dice took my life," he said. "It's the worst drug habit you can have."

Riley said he was remorseful for his actions and held no ill will toward the jurors or prosecutors who sent him to death row. He also said that he had asked his friends not to pray for him to receive a reprieve. "They're freeing me from this place," he told a reporter. "I'm in Heaven. I can already feel it. Come May 19th, I'll be free."

"I know I hurt you vary bad," Riley said to his victim's family members who attended his execution. "I truly am sorry for the hurt and pain I caused you." He also apologized to his mother, who did not attend, for not being the son she wanted him to be. He reminded his friends and supporters that he was ready to die. He concluded his last statement by urging this fellow death row inmates to "stay strong". Using his death row nickname, he said, "Fleetwood is out of here." The lethal injection was then started. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m.

By David Carson. Posted on 20 May 2009.
Sources: Texas Attorney General's office, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, court documents, Associated Press.

The Body by the River by Robert A. Waters

Nevaeh Buchanan, Roy Smith, George Kennedy

Even though I’ve become jaded to many of the tragedies presented on the crime talk shows, the death of Nevaeh Buchanan strikes home. After watching hundreds of horrific cases unfold over many years, I’ll admit I’ve become desensitized to the reality of it all. Many times I view victims and criminals alike as comic book characters with little real depth. I don’t apologize for it: too many similar images bombarding the brain will do that to you.

On the afternoon of May 24, five-year-old Nevaeh disappeared from outside her apartment in Monroe, Michigan. According to her mother’s account, she was last seen riding her bicycle in the parking lot at around six-thirty. Then she was gone.

Two weeks later, the body of a child was found along the River Raisin, a few miles from Nevaeh’s home. Dumped in a shallow grave and hardened over with a layer of ready-mix concrete, DNA tests confirmed that the remains were those of Nevaeh.

To be honest, I’m unable to muster much sympathy for Jennifer Buchanan. Her daughter had been taken from her by the courts after she was convicted of home invasion. According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press, “Sherry Buchanan [Nevaeh’s grandmother] was granted custody of Nevaeh after Jennifer Buchanan was convicted in 2006 on a first-degree home invasion charge. She had been breaking into homes to support a drug habit. For the last 2 1/2 months, Sherry, Jennifer and Nevaeh Buchanan have lived together in the two-bedroom apartment.”

Jennifer associated with low-lifes and criminals. When Nevaeh landed with her grandmother, it was undoubtedly the best thing that ever happened to her.

Two registered sex offenders, both having served time in prison, circled the family like hyenas waiting to make a kill. Whether they got to Nevaeh or not, the very fact that Jennifer Buchanan would allow them within shouting distance of her daughter is a crime--maybe not in the legal sense of the word, but at least in the moral sense. George Kennedy and Roy Smith have now been sent back to prison to complete their original sentences because they violated their parole by associating with the child and her mother.

Whether either committed the murder remains to be seen.

The case has even fueled a debate about the death penalty in Michigan. The state abolished the practice in 1846, yet such a monstrous crime as this screams out for more than life in prison.

I guess the reason I’m drawn to this case is that Nevaeh was facing an uphill battle in life almost from the beginning. She had no father-figure (her real father was long-gone). Her mother seemed bent on self-destruction. Her role models (except for her long-suffering grandmother and a few relatives) were criminals.

Yet she should have been given a chance. Millions of people have risen above worse than what Nevaeh faced.

When she was murdered, that chance ended.

And for that I mourn.

Book Review: Jack Hinson's One-Man War

Book Review by Robert A. Waters

Jack Hinson’s One-Man War: A Civil War Sniper
Tom C. McKenney
Pelican Publishing Company, 2009

Here are a few questions relating to the Civil War. Answers are at the bottom of this review. (1) Which state executed the most slaves--New Jersey, Mississippi, or New York? (2) Which states were exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation? (3) Did any freed blacks own slaves?


In 1861, Jack Hinson lived near Dover, Tennessee, in the Land Between the Rivers. He had a farm, slaves, a growing family, and was relatively prosperous. Like many Southerners (Robert E. Lee comes to mind), Hinson opposed secession. After the Civil War broke out, he attempted to remain neutral. One of his sons joined the Confederacy, but Hinson was able to keep the rest of his family on the farm.

Hinson had hunted and fished the land for most of his fifty-seven years. He knew the forests, the game-trails, the out-crops of rocks above the bluffs of the Tennessee River, and he was a crack marksman. However, he had never raised a gun in anger and was known as a peaceable man. In 1862, while the war was raging, Hinson freed his slaves and hired those who wanted to continue working for him (which was all of them).

In the fall of 1862, two of Hinson’s sons were hunting in the woods near their property. A passing Union patrol arrested them. Mistaking the two for bushwhackers, they summarily executed George, 22, and John, 17. Dragging the victims’ bodies behind their horses, the hated Union soldiers circled the Dover courthouse. Then they cut off the heads of both young men and galloped to Jack Hinson’s house. There, in front of Hinson, his wife, children, friends, and former slaves, a soldier stuck the heads on two gate-posts.

After Jack Hinson buried his sons, he paid a local gunsmith to make a super-gun: a .50-caliber rifle that was accurate up to 500 yards. Hinson then became a one-man disaster for the Union army in west Tennessee. His two first “kills” were the Lieutenant who ordered the execution of his sons and the soldier who hung their heads on his fence-posts. Lying in wait among the dense forests in the area or high on the bluffs overlooking the river, Hinson exacted his private revenge. All in all, he killed one hundred Union soldiers, mostly officers.

Jack Hinson’s One-Man War describes the events that led up to the old man becoming a guerilla warrior. Even though his one-man war cost him nearly everything he loved, it was in Hinson’s mind a necessary reckoning.

The book is at once a local history, and a universal story of primal vengeance. It should open the eyes of anyone who wants to know what the Civil War was really all about. McKenney’s research and crisp writing style has brought to life one of those strange yet ultimately sympathetic American characters who will now be long-remembered.

Buy this book and read it.


Answers: (1) According to the website “Before the Needles,” Mississippi executed 13 slaves; New Jersey executed 36 slaves; and New York executed 73 slaves. (2) The following states were exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation: Kentucky; Missouri; Maryland; and Delaware. Washington, D. C. slave-owners were also allowed to keep their slaves. In fact, it is said that the week after the Proclamation, blacks were still being auctioned off behind the White House. (3) In 1830 alone, 3,775 freed blacks owned black slaves. From the mid-1700s to 1860, tens of thousands of blacks owned slaves.

Where is Tori?

I’ve completed the manuscript for my new book. It is entitled: Sun Struck: 16 Infamous Murders in the Sunshine State. It will be published in November of this year. Now that I have a break from writing Sun Struck I hope I can go back to posting some original stories on my blog. Many thanks to the readers who stuck with me over these last few hectic months.


On Wednesday afternoon, April 8, 2009, Tori Stafford walked out of existence. Despite a videotape that shows the 8-year-old leaving the campus of Oliver Stephens Middle School in Ontario, Canada with an unknown woman, police have not learned what happened to Tori.

At first, the Oxford Community Police Department seemed reluctant to even believe the schoolgirl had been abducted. It was three days before they issued an Amber-style alert. A week into the investigation, police were still labeling the disappearance a “missing persons” case. “Even the police and Victoria’s parents have said it’s strange because Victoria is not leaving against her will,” explained the Canadian Missing and Exploited Children’s website.

(I don’t think it’s strange at all. I’d suggest the police conduct an experiment. Take an inoffensive-looking woman to a school as it’s letting out--then have her approach children and tell them the child’s mother is ill and the child is needed right away. I venture to say that many, if not most, of the pre-teen children would willingly leave with the stranger.)

After a week of what Tori’s parents termed an ineffective investigation, the Ontario Provincial Police took over the case.

It’s been more than a month now and still no word of the girl. Rumors about biker gangs and family drug problems have been swirling about the parents. Rodney Stafford and Tara McDonald were divorced many years ago. McDonald lives with her boyfriend, James Gorris. No wrong-doing has been substantiated, although investigators still say that “everyone” is still a suspect.

Why was Tori kidnapped?

Did some lonely or disturbed woman take the child? In most such cases, the abductor snatches an infant, not a pre-teen. That scenario doesn’t fit this case.

Why of all the children in the universe did she pick out Tori? Is there something to the rumors? Did some unpaid drug dealer steal the child for revenge or ransom? So far nothing has been released that indicates this to be true.

Did a sexual predator steal the child? Several recent cases have shown that women sometimes sexually molest young girls. But why Tori? She wasn’t randomly abducted off the street or while playing in front of her home. In some way, she seems to have been chosen.

A fog shrouds this case.

And yet there may be hope.

One Canadian case that comes to mind is the Abby Drover abduction. In 1976, the twelve-year-old was held captive in an underground room for six months before escaping. In America, many kidnapping victims have been rescued. Katie Beers, Elizabeth Smart, and Shawn Hornbeck are just a few that come to mind.

Here’s hoping that this case will also come to a quick and satisfactory conclusion.

Jennifer Short Murder Update

Federal investigators are looking for a flatbed truck that reportedly was seen near the home of Michael Short and Mary Short in Henry County just hours before their bodies were found dead inside their home on Aug. 15, 2002.

The FBI has released a sketch of the truck, described as a 1998 to 2002 white, single-cab, two-ton stake body truck with wooden rails. An unidentified man was seen sitting in the truck along U.S. 220 in the vicinity of the Shorts’ Oak Level home, according to the FBI.

The Shorts were found with single gunshot wounds to their heads. Their 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was missing from the home. Her body was found two months later in Rockingham County, N.C. No arrests have been made in the case.

However, investigators are requesting information from anyone who had contact with Michael Short regarding employment and relocation he was seeking to the coastal region of South Carolina as a mobile home mover. In addition, investigators are seeking information from general contractors, independent contractors, construction companies, mobile home dealers, mobile home parts suppliers, mobile home transporters or mobile home salvage yard owners who conducted business with Short or M.S. Mobile Home Movers between Jan. 1, 2001, and Aug. 15, 2002.

South Carolina Cheerleader Innocent of Raping Teen Girl

South Carolina Cheeleader Innocent of Raping Teen Girl
by Robert A. Waters

This could happen to you or me. One day, you’re leading a normal life. Then it all corkscrews into the abyss of disaster. You’re at work when cops come and arrest you for raping a child. You’re paraded in handcuffs through a gauntlet of reporters with flashing cameras and plastic smiles. The next day your face is on the front page of the papers, on the blogs, on TV. You wonder if the reporters will be there when you’re proven innocent. Or worse yet, will you be railroaded to prison for years to come?

Stephanie Gail Kirkland, 20, lived in Graniteville, South Carolina, near Aiken. She worked two part-time jobs while she attended college. She had a boyfriend, a MySpace page, and a loving, supportive family.

On August 12, 2008, police arrested her at her workplace. It came out of the blue—-they’d never even questioned her. A child at the school where she taught cheerleading had accused Kirkland of rape. She was charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the second degree and four counts of lewd acts on a minor. Two things made this case even more high-voltage than most sexual offenses: Stephanie Kirkland was an attractive blue-eyed blonde and the “victim” was a thirteen-year-old girl.

“I didn’t know what to think,” Kirkland said later. “I mean it was just awful. Handcuffs and shackles, walking in front of my family...I lost nine pounds, I couldn’t eat for a week.”

Once the news got out, the accused lesbian child rapist was inundated with obscene messages on her MySpace page. Much later Kirkland explained that strangers who’d seen her picture in the news threatened “to do sexual things to me because of something I did to a little girl--that I didn’t do.” The menace of stalking and violence seemed very real because the local newspaper had published her home address.

“There was a relationship between Ms. Kirkland and the thirteen-year-old,” Lt. Michael Frank said emphatically. An article in the Aiken Standard expanded on the charges. “Investigators said that between May and December 2007, the subject sexually violated the victim, fondling her and assaulting her at Aiken Cheer Extreme, College Acres locations and several times in the victim’s bedroom.” After being approached by a relative of the girl, the paper reported that investigators “launched an investigation into the matter, which Frank explained can take several months.”

The blogosphere exploded. “Stephanie Gail Kirkland, 20, enjoys the music of Ashley Tisdale and Usher, hanging out with friends, her kitten, Chipper, and having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl,” one blogger wrote. Another assured readers that “local police say that they have enough evidence for the arrest and feel that the charges are valid and are prepared for trial on the charges.”

Then something amazing, something magnificent happened. People who had known Kirkland all her life began posting responses to the story in the online edition of the Standard. All were supportive. (While many online comments to newspapers are obviously from crackpots, a number of these posters published their real names. It was obvious that they knew the situation well.)

Here are a few of their comments:

“I think it is ridiculous that Stephanies (sic) picture is in the paper. This has ruined her reputation.”

“The sensationalized article on Kirkland was the worst thing I’ve seen this horrible, uncaring, clueless newspaper do.”

“Why is it that Stephanie was never interviewed prior to her arrest?”

“Kirkland was arrested on completely frivolous and physically impossible accusations made by a known unreliable source. This is truly scary, so much for presumed innocence.”

Many of the posters knew the accuser. “The 13 yr old...is out of control,” someone wrote. “I have had a chance to view her myspace page and see the things that she post[ed]...which are lewd and disgusting...I know that she has accused other young girls of the same charges and they were untrue also.”

On September 26, 2008, while out on bail, Kirkland got a call from her lawyer informing her that the charges had been dropped. Aiken County Assistant Solicitor Steve Kodman said that there were multiple inconsistencies in the accuser’s statement. Trying to cover his ass, he said, “There are times where law enforcement has enough probable cause to make an arrest, but we have to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to take it to court.” Even though they dropped the charges, authorities said “they have nothing that leads them to suspect the alleged victim lied.”

“It’s closed,” Lt. Frank said. “That’s the end of it.”

Well, that’s not quite the end of it. What about Stephanie Kirkland’s embarrassment at being hauled off to jail like some serial child molester? What about the statements police and prosecutors made sliming Kirkland? What about the fact that the accuser finally admitted that she made the whole thing up? Why wasn’t the accuser’s background checked in the beginning? Why is she not being charged? Since she’s not being charged, is she receiving counseling or psychiatric help?

Finally, what about the reporting of the story? Articles in newspapers are assumed by many to be the lasting public record of an event. Will the local media subpoena police reports, court documents, and other records from the case? Will they interview all participants to determine why an innocent girl was arrested before she was even questioned? Or why everyone in town seemed to know the accuser was lying except the cops? Or why many in the media blindly accepted the police version as truth? That’s the real story.

Once, after having been acquitted of sham charges of larceny and fraud, Raymond Donovan, Secretary of Labor under President Ronald Reagan, yelled at the prosecutor, “Give me back my reputation.” Later, he stated that when he was reading a newspaper article about his arrest, he thought, That’s what people will read forever.

No doubt, Stephanie Kirkland feels much the same way.

“The way it looks now,” she said, “is [that] I did something but they just can’t prove it. If I go apply for a job and they ask me if I’ve ever been arrested...they won’t ever look past ‘have you ever been arrested?’ and [they’ll] throw that [job application] out the window.”

Website of a Murderer

Internet Scam
by Robert A. Waters

Like the age-old Internet Nigerian scam, it amazes me that anyone could fall for the messages posted on the anti-death penalty websites of death row inmates. Most are so far from the realm of reality that it makes one question the mental health of those lost souls who take these sites seriously. Take, for example, this ad from an inmate convicted of murdering two innocent teenagers.

For many years, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP) has maintained a website for Randall Scott Jones. Here’s a sampling: “Looking for a friend, any age, male or female, who can look through these bars and see me for who I really am.” Now that’s a loaded statement—-could it be that the person looking through the bars sees a cold-blooded double-murderer?

There’s more. Switching to the third person, Jones writes, “Randy has been described as a ‘bright, caring person,’ who ‘never had a chance.’” He then describes his horrible upbringing and states that his cries for help went “mostly unheeded.” While Jones may have had a lousy childhood, so have millions and millions of others who lived successful lives and never murdered anyone.

“Later that year, Randy went into the US Army as an ear, nose, and throat specialist.” An ear, nose, and throat specialist? Isn’t that a doctor? That is, a physician? Someone who has spent a decade in med school and a few more years in specialized training?

No matter. Jones didn’t last that long in the military. According to his webpage, he was “honorably discharged based on less than satisfactory performance.” Seems he kept oversleeping because he was depressed.

According to court documents, on the night of July 26, 1987, Jones and Chris Reesh were carrying a 30-30 caliber rifle that Jones had stolen from his girl-friend’s father. On that night, they were taking target practice at the Rodman Dam recreation area near Palatka, Florida. When Jones’ truck became stuck in the sand, they walked to a Chevrolet pickup where teenagers Matthew Paul Brock and Kelly Lynn Perry were sleeping in the cab. What followed were two cruel, heartless murders and a perverted sexual assault.

A few weeks later, Jones and Reesh were arrested in Mississippi. Jones was driving the stolen truck belonging to murder victim Matthew Brock. Items from Perry and Brock were found in Jones’ room. He confessed to killing the couple.

An article in the online magazine Forensic Science by Hal Tam reads: “Without waking the couple in the pickup, Jones shot both Perry and Brock in the head at close range. He and Reesh then dragged the bodies into the woods nearby. They towed Jones’ truck from the sand with Brock’s pickup and left with both trucks. Later Jones returned to the crime scene, moved the bodies further into the woods, and raped Perry.”

Semen taken from Perry's body was tested for DNA and matched that of Jones. The jury took only fifteen minutes to find him guilty. Jurors recommended that he be executed, the first time DNA was used in a death penalty case.

For twenty years, Jones has fought his sentence.

For twenty years, his victims have not achieved the justice they deserve.

While there are legitimate reasons to oppose the death penalty just as there are legitimate reasons to favor execution, websites such as Jones’ diminish the victims (who are never mentioned) and cast doubt on CCADP as an advocacy group.

The Murder of Clevie Tedder

“Deland, Fla., April 11, 1910. A jury today brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree against Irving Hanchett, the boy that stabbed Miss Clevie Tedder to death on February 12. The judge immediately pronounced the death sentence. Hanchett met Miss Tedder on the road and made improper proposals and when she refused him and threatened to tell, he set upon her with a knife and stabbed her sixty-three times.” Fort Wayne Sentinel.

Although this murder happened in the backwater town of Glenwood, Florida a hundred years ago, it had all the ingredients of today’s headlines: sexual violence, an incorrigible juvenile, and the age-old question of what to do with a teenaged killer.

On the morning of February 12, 1910, thirteen-year-old Clevie Tedder was riding her bicycle to school when she was attacked. Glenwood, an unincorporated town of 400 souls, was a few miles north of DeLand, home of Stetson University. Most residents worked for Bond Lumber Company.

The Tedder family was well-known and well-liked in the community. Irving Hanchett, on the other hand, was a “juvenile delinquent.” He was currently on parole from the Connecticut State School for Boys in Meriden. The sponsor of his parole, William Woolsey, owned an orange grove near Glenwood and had sent the boy to Florida for a fresh start.

An article in the Atlanta Constitution relates some of the details of the case. “A bicycle,” the article reads, “which the girl was riding, was found 100 yards from where her body was discovered, indicating that her assailant had struggled with her for this distance after knocking her from her wheel. In the body of the girl sixty-two (sic) knife wounds were counted. She was literally cut to pieces.” It was obvious to observers that Clevie had fought her attacker almost to the end. The blood trail, shoe prints, and ripped clothing strewn along the trail attested to the violence of the attack. In addition to the knife wounds, the girl had been brutally beaten.

Volusia County Sheriff E. L. Smith was called to the scene. He quickly organized a posse to search for the killer. As the searchers fanned out, the Washington Post reported that “the sheriff secured bloodhounds, and followed a trail to the orange grove of William Woolsey, where young Hanchett was employed. In the room of the boy were found bloody clothes and the knife with which the murder is believed to have been committed.” The blade was bent, and Hanchett had cuts on his hands. In addition, his shoes fit the prints of the assailant found in the sand near Tedder’s body.

Hanchett was lucky he wasn’t lynched then and there. As soon as the searchers heard that he’d been arrested, they rushed to the Volusia County jail intent on stringing him up. Sheriff Smith was barely able to avert a lynch party by sneaking the young suspect out the back door to a waiting car. He took the boy to Orlando, fifty miles south. There Hanchett was placed in a more secure jail, as much for his own protection as for that of the community.

Two months later, Hanchett went on trial. Judge Minor S. Jones, a flamboyant Confederate veteran and circuit-riding judge who had once presided over the divorce of Henry Flagler, held court. Hanchett took the stand and confessed in graphic detail to the horrific attack. It was said that he sensationalized his account in order to be found insane.

It didn’t work. Instead, he was found guilty of murder in the first degree.

A few days before Hanchett was to be hanged, the Syracuse New York Post Standard editorialized about the case: “Sentence of death for a boy of 14 (sic) seems like an outrageous working of criminal law. It is revolting to human nature to think of leading a child to the scaffold, no matter how heinous the crime, and for any other crime than that for which Irving Hanchett has been accused the courts of Florida would doubtless have refused to convict him. Concerning that crime law in the South does not claim to be judicial.” The article continues, becoming more condescending and more muddled, eventually concluding that unlike New York, Florida and Connecticut were barbaric – Florida because the state planned to hang the murderer and Connecticut because its juvenile justice system rejected “the teachings of Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, Judge Lindsay, and William R. George.”

The article never mentioned the victim’s name, nor the probability that a few years in prison was unlikely to rehabilitate the killer.

The last chapter was written by the Chicago Daily Herald in a brief, one-sentence squib: “DeLand, Fla., May 7, 1910 – Irving Hanchett, the 15-year-old Connecticut boy who was convicted of the murder of Clevie Tedder, a girl, 13 years old, near this place on the evening of Feb. 12 last, was hanged here.”