VA - Couple & two teens found murdered, Farmville, 15 Sept 2009 #7

[Farmvillian]

Probably would have been newsworthy only if the court had rejected this motion. Also, I think we can expect news coverage of this case to diminish over time until some additional details emerge. The more gory and outré the details, the more coverage the story will get at that time.

A news crew was outside the courthouse yesterday. I would think more today, but maybe not with the Appomatox killings.

 

[DoctorZ]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...01/19/AR2010011904322.html?hpid=moreheadlines
yep,seems to be the same old story,started out as a domestic dispute,guy shot his wife and son and then went on a rampage....if there was gun control,this guy wouldn't have had a gun imo...

The only problem is that gun control only stops people who obey the law in the first place. It would be next to impossible to stop guns from being smuggled into the US.

 

[DoctorZ]

Here's a news story: http://www.nbc12.com/Global/story.asp?S=11846856

It says the trial isn't likely to be until next fall and expresses some concerns with the testing of the evidence. I guess we have a lot of time to kill now.

 

[peace_gurl]

He had on a bullet proof vest. You think it was planned?

They believe has traps set inside the home and out. State police looking for bombs.

 

[dangrsmind]

The only problem is that gun control only stops people who obey the law in the first place. It would be next to impossible to stop guns from being smuggled into the US.

Already true. Illegal arms such as automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades are smuggled into the U.S. and transfered to Mexican drug gangs for example.

 

[dangrsmind]

He had on a bullet proof vest. You think it was planned?

They believe has traps set inside the home and out. State police looking for bombs.

Some people I know wear them to work.

 

[peace_gurl]

Ok guys, I have had enough.
My aunt’s great-nephew, Bo, is one of the victims. Just a 16 year old boy visiting his girlfriend. I was up most of the night. Oh, how I love the death penalty. BTW, this is real personal, so please don’t blast me with I feel sorry for Christopher Speight.

 

[peace_gurl]

Some people I know wear them to work.

He was a security guard.

 

[dangrsmind]

Hey, Dangrs, this is right up your alley. I used to study with a Prof named... damn, I can't remember his name... David Phillips, maybe? Univ CA San DIego. Anyway, he did studies of suicide clusters and similar things. Maybe murder clusters, too. Perhaps others have explored this. Know anything?



(well, that'll keep him busy for a few hours, heh heh)

I don't know that much about research on violent crime hot spots. I was working with fraud prevention systems, so we were dealing with organized rings that traveled from city to city conducting what would be more appropriately called a "spree". We detected one such spree in the Los Angeles area through link analysis.

Now in the case of a hot spot, you have a cluster of events which are spatially correlated. Most often this is due to a single perpetrator or group of perpetrators. There are various reason for these of clusterings depending on the situation, but a few examples include desirability of targets in a specific area, distance to travel, and gang related activity.

Here we have something a bit different. A group of seemingly unrelated violent crimes which are spatially correlated, but committed by otherwise unrelated individuals. The only example I've read about that fits this model is the work on airborne lead and violent crimes. In this work, clusters of violence due to the presence of higher concentrations in specific areas are reported.

This case is complicated by the fact that we have McCroskey traveling to the area and only being exposed to any environmental factors for about a week before the crime. So if it is an environmental factor at the root it would have to be fast acting and present in the destination location where the crimes were committed. One thing that might explain this sort of phenomenon would be the distribution and use of extremely strong dangerous drugs such as PCP or meth, or perhaps tainted drugs. I'm not really suggesting this as a theory as there is no evidence for it, I am just saying this is the type of thing that could explain an observed spatial cluster.

 

[tapu]

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I was wanting to think about.... Phillips correlates the wildest things to clusters of suicides, murders, black on white violence, etc. Amazing stuff he pulls out of his studies.

I'll try to find some researching and thinking time about all that. If you get a chance, check where phillips is headed with all this. There might be something of interest related to VA et al.

 

[peace_gurl]

http://www.myspace.com/skatrboy93
Another 16 year old gone.
His girlfiend's name Emily

 

[tapu]

Oh, peace_gurl, I feel your sadness.

 

[dangrsmind]

These articles from Dr. Philips look relevant/interesting...

"The impact of fictional television stories on U.S. adult fatalities: New evidence on the effects of violence in the mass media," American Journal of Sociology 87: 1340-59 (1982).

"Strong and weak research techniques for analysing the impact of capital punishment on homicide," Rutgers Law Review Symposium Issue on Punishment 33: 790-98 (1981).

"The found experiment: a new technique for assessing the impact of mass media violence on aggression," pp. 259-307 in Public Communication and Behavior, Volume 1, 1986.

"Clustering of teenage suicides after television news stories about suicide," in New England Journal of Medicine, 315:685-689, 1986 [lead Special Article] (with L. Carstensen; DPP as main author). This paper and a companion piece by M. Gould and D. Shaffer were the subject of an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

I haven't retrieved or read any of his papers yet though...

 

[dangrsmind]

He was a security guard.

There you go...

 

[dangrsmind]

Dangrsmind: this guy is perhaps an exception to your rule that there would be no effective civilian fighters in a revolution type scenario (going back to our gun control topic). Too bad we are losing them to those crazy chips they put in their heads that make them go all gun wild (tongue in cheek kinda).

Sorry for continuing OT. um..

Hey, SKR sucks.

I don't know. He took out some unarmed civilians and downed an unarmed and unarmored helicopter. Not quite the same thing as fighting off a trained and organized military force or facing down one of these beasts:

FWIW, I worked on some algorithms for this thing.

 

[PAXIMUS]

Dude shot down a helicopter?

I am impressed.

Also it seems that you have a little murder hot spot brewing there in Central Virginia. I wonder why.

Mind controlled assassins out of Langley. You know this.

 

[dangrsmind]

they have just as much of a chance to defend themselves with a taser ...if he only had a knife or a baseball bat maybe he would have still killed his wife and his son,maybe not but certainly not the others..

I'd rather have a crossbow than a taser.

E.g. http://m.qctimes.com/vmix_7a4d5038-82fc-11de-aa19-001cc4c03286.html

 

[coastal]

Ok guys, I have had enough.
My aunt’s nephew, Bo, is one of the victims. Just a 16 year old boy visiting his girlfriend. I was up most of the night. Oh, how I love the death penalty. BTW, this is real personal, so please don’t blast me with I feel sorry for Christopher Speight.

I am so sorry for your loss, peace_gurl.
We are.

 

[dangrsmind]

Here's a news story: http://www.nbc12.com/Global/story.asp?S=11846856

It says the trial isn't likely to be until next fall and expresses some concerns with the testing of the evidence. I guess we have a lot of time to kill now.

It is true that crime labs are backed up and in many cases they aren't even analyzing the available forensic evidence. In the case for which I was juror as an example they didn't even test the blood type of the blood found on the weapons or at the scene. They didn't take fingerprints from any of the weapons either. It makes me wonder if there is something wrong though, i.e. no forensics connecting Sam to the weapons or perhaps just something especially complex and challenging about the evidence supporting the state's case.

One possibility is that the extreme state of decay and damage to the bodies could make it difficult to prove exactly what the murder weapon was. If all you have is a pulverized mess it might, be pretty hard to say exactly what did the pulverizing without a lot of work such as examining small bone fragments. Sorry for the graphic description there, but this is a real possibility here I think.

 

[wadahoot]

Thankfully, he 'just' hit the fuel tank, but they landed safely.
Here's the URL for the WS thread http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94197

Gurl ... have you read about the 4+ bombs that LE are detonating? See, I don't get this ... I want to say the guy is a crazy nut, but obviously he won't get an insanity thing, as it was well planned out, if he's taken the time to lay traps for first responders.

Bo looks like a total doll on that FB pix. I'm SO very sorry.