I noted a weird thing today. I thought I'd throw this up and see what you guys thought.
Brown fat? Ever heard of that? Don't you dare say...Well, I knew this big Samoan once...I run a family blog here in the trailer park.
All thru May and the 10th of June, as reported here in "41 Days of Hell", I did the meat and cheese diet (Atkins) which included upwards of 36 eggs per week.
On June 9th I weighed 252. On Jun 11th, just before taking my Iditarod motorcycle ride as noted in "Donner, Party of One" I weighed 254. Today, I stepped on the scales at 247. Today marks the first day since my return. Not only is that weight loss significant but it occurred on my gym's scales which are conveniently slanted upwards 5 pounds or so. I did not eat particularly good or bad on the 4 day trip and I did not exercise. As I mulled over the possibilities and what happened- it dawned on me that I was freezing my ass off most of the trip. Three days of at least 3 hours (5 hrs. on day 2) of bone chilling temps on the bike.
It begged the question. Could all of that freezing my ass off- have the unexpected benefit of weight loss?
I came home and googled this. Pretty interesting. Who knew? http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/health/how-cold-temperatures-cause-weight-loss-20140226
Monday, June 16, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The Education Scam- The Sunday Collage
A week or so ago, I was on one of the sites that I frequent, but for the life of me I can't think of which one it was. One of the commenters, a particularly ego driven guy, had written a long comment about how people should shut up and quit whining about the lack of good jobs. For his part this commenter said that he had gone back to college at age 42 and had gotten re-trained for a new occupation and that he was sick of hearing people whine about the lack of jobs. He did not specify what his new occupation was.
I have to tell ya, I sensed a little bullshit. So I asked him, "how did you pay for it?" Instead of just answering with the truth- he said something cynical about taking out loans for his education like everyone else. I wasn't able to open up a dialogue because he is just another guy out there in angry land.
With over a trillion in student loans due and payable- politicians and King Obama are now modifying the interest payments for outstanding student loans. Therein lies the crux of what I'd like to talk about today.
Doesn't it seem a little odd that with this fantastic economy that we are supposed to be enjoying- that millions of students can't pay back their student loans?
The field of education has been very fertile ground for predatory lenders. They know that people want to improve their economic standing and their lives. Standing to gain just as much if not more- were colleges and universities who could ratchet up tuition and fees to astronomical levels if lenders simply financed students in advance.
You want to talk about inflation? There is no other sector anywhere, including health care, where the costs have gone this parabolic. How does 500% since 1985 sound? On an annualized basis, student costs have been driven up nearly 18% per year for the last 30 years.
Talk about unsustainable. Maybe the government will pass another law forcing us to buy college tuition next.
There is nothing that compares to this. Interestingly enough, our government statistics regarding consumer price inflation do not include the insanely rising costs of education nor the interest people are forced to pay. Here's a great chart from Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/college-costs-surge-500-in-u-s-since-1985-chart-of-the-day.html
The credentialing of America is one of the greatest scams of our lifetimes.
Here in Boise, at Boise State University, it costs 21,000 dollars a year to attend school. It would cost me 10,000 dollars to attend and my house is close by. The university forces students to purchase health care insurance, and how they are able to get away with that or have any standing in my health care needs, is beyond baffling and fodder for lawyers. Here's their cost schedule sans the force placed health insurance. http://admissions.boisestate.edu/cost/
Colleges and universities are driving up costs wherever they see opportunity.
One of the latest scams is the "Commercial Driver's License" or CDL. Back in my day, you simply took a written test and they added heavy trucks as an endorsement on your driver's license. Not any more. Now that the Federal Government has gotten involved, getting a CDL will cost you about 5000 dollars. The College of Western Idaho offers a course for that amount. http://cwidaho.cc/program/professional-truck-driving
Let me be clear here. I don't mind that the government wants to license educated drivers. What I do mind is that bankers, colleges, and the government are conspiring and exploiting people for vast sums of money to learn how to drive a truck- something we used to be taught to do in a week of so. Learning to drive a truck is not rocket science.
The Williston Basin is absolutely screaming for water truck drivers and paying them 70-100k annually. They can't get them because of ridiculous costs and regulations such as this.
For those of you who have read "Atlas Shrugged" the author, Ayn Rand, may seem like a prophet. All of this was predicted by her decades ago.
Which brings me to the heart of the matter. How is it that American corporations are able to demand credentialed employees while averting all of the costs of the education that they demand? How is it that they've been able to place the financial burden of education on prospective employees with not even a firm job offer?
Therein lies the greatest con of them all. You get to go out on a limb, pay 100 grand or so, to obtain whatever education corporate America demands- and then beg them for a job. Once hired, you find yourself in a 100 thousand dollar hole and you can't even afford an entry level home. Worse yet, you become an obedient little sheep. You do what you are told because if you don't- they'll jettison you for a vast pool of people most of which will be happy to become the next good little sheep and you'll wind up committing resume' suicide.
That in a nutshell, is the state of affairs in America. I'd like to leave you with one last thought.
When I graduated high school in the late 70's, you could land a good job with nothing more than a high school diploma and a lot of hard work. Since that time, corporate America took all of those jobs and off shored them. Think Apple and GE.
Ya wanna know what I think their next trick will be? As soon as they are able, American corporations will offshore all of the white collar jobs as well. At Boeing in Seattle, they are bringing in the Chinese. Someday soon, perhaps when 40 million or so educated Chinese or Indian people enter the workforce, you will see corporate America drive down the salaries of tenured and experienced employees. The educated people making decent money are going to be laid off and replaced with folks making half the salary of the workers they are replacing.
Without strong unions, there is no stopping this.
That's the false sense of security that comes with a 100k education nowadays. Employees are disposable and easily replaced. It happened to the high school graduates, it's going to happen to the college grads just as soon as their replacements have been trained.
Ross Perot predicted all of this and I'll be damned if the Americansheep public would know what a decent human being looked like even when he told the truth. Instead we got Bill Clinton. We probably deserve all of this.
Somewhere in Texas, Ross smiles.
I have to tell ya, I sensed a little bullshit. So I asked him, "how did you pay for it?" Instead of just answering with the truth- he said something cynical about taking out loans for his education like everyone else. I wasn't able to open up a dialogue because he is just another guy out there in angry land.
With over a trillion in student loans due and payable- politicians and King Obama are now modifying the interest payments for outstanding student loans. Therein lies the crux of what I'd like to talk about today.
Doesn't it seem a little odd that with this fantastic economy that we are supposed to be enjoying- that millions of students can't pay back their student loans?
The field of education has been very fertile ground for predatory lenders. They know that people want to improve their economic standing and their lives. Standing to gain just as much if not more- were colleges and universities who could ratchet up tuition and fees to astronomical levels if lenders simply financed students in advance.
You want to talk about inflation? There is no other sector anywhere, including health care, where the costs have gone this parabolic. How does 500% since 1985 sound? On an annualized basis, student costs have been driven up nearly 18% per year for the last 30 years.
Talk about unsustainable. Maybe the government will pass another law forcing us to buy college tuition next.
There is nothing that compares to this. Interestingly enough, our government statistics regarding consumer price inflation do not include the insanely rising costs of education nor the interest people are forced to pay. Here's a great chart from Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/college-costs-surge-500-in-u-s-since-1985-chart-of-the-day.html
The credentialing of America is one of the greatest scams of our lifetimes.
Here in Boise, at Boise State University, it costs 21,000 dollars a year to attend school. It would cost me 10,000 dollars to attend and my house is close by. The university forces students to purchase health care insurance, and how they are able to get away with that or have any standing in my health care needs, is beyond baffling and fodder for lawyers. Here's their cost schedule sans the force placed health insurance. http://admissions.boisestate.edu/cost/
Colleges and universities are driving up costs wherever they see opportunity.
One of the latest scams is the "Commercial Driver's License" or CDL. Back in my day, you simply took a written test and they added heavy trucks as an endorsement on your driver's license. Not any more. Now that the Federal Government has gotten involved, getting a CDL will cost you about 5000 dollars. The College of Western Idaho offers a course for that amount. http://cwidaho.cc/program/professional-truck-driving
Let me be clear here. I don't mind that the government wants to license educated drivers. What I do mind is that bankers, colleges, and the government are conspiring and exploiting people for vast sums of money to learn how to drive a truck- something we used to be taught to do in a week of so. Learning to drive a truck is not rocket science.
The Williston Basin is absolutely screaming for water truck drivers and paying them 70-100k annually. They can't get them because of ridiculous costs and regulations such as this.
For those of you who have read "Atlas Shrugged" the author, Ayn Rand, may seem like a prophet. All of this was predicted by her decades ago.
Which brings me to the heart of the matter. How is it that American corporations are able to demand credentialed employees while averting all of the costs of the education that they demand? How is it that they've been able to place the financial burden of education on prospective employees with not even a firm job offer?
Therein lies the greatest con of them all. You get to go out on a limb, pay 100 grand or so, to obtain whatever education corporate America demands- and then beg them for a job. Once hired, you find yourself in a 100 thousand dollar hole and you can't even afford an entry level home. Worse yet, you become an obedient little sheep. You do what you are told because if you don't- they'll jettison you for a vast pool of people most of which will be happy to become the next good little sheep and you'll wind up committing resume' suicide.
That in a nutshell, is the state of affairs in America. I'd like to leave you with one last thought.
When I graduated high school in the late 70's, you could land a good job with nothing more than a high school diploma and a lot of hard work. Since that time, corporate America took all of those jobs and off shored them. Think Apple and GE.
Ya wanna know what I think their next trick will be? As soon as they are able, American corporations will offshore all of the white collar jobs as well. At Boeing in Seattle, they are bringing in the Chinese. Someday soon, perhaps when 40 million or so educated Chinese or Indian people enter the workforce, you will see corporate America drive down the salaries of tenured and experienced employees. The educated people making decent money are going to be laid off and replaced with folks making half the salary of the workers they are replacing.
Without strong unions, there is no stopping this.
That's the false sense of security that comes with a 100k education nowadays. Employees are disposable and easily replaced. It happened to the high school graduates, it's going to happen to the college grads just as soon as their replacements have been trained.
Ross Perot predicted all of this and I'll be damned if the American
Somewhere in Texas, Ross smiles.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Donner, Party of One
Very often, while traveling hither and yon on my Harley, I spot some man or woman or both trapped in a vehicle. Maybe their kids are screaming or they are screaming. Maybe they are scowling or looking out the window maybe even playing the "I am not going to talk to you game" that 70% of adults use to solve their differences. Or maybe I hear the sounds of Milli Vanilli playing on the radio.
So in some smug, sort of secret way- I find myself feeling sorry for the occupants of cars. Unfortunately, today was not that day. Today, I felt sorry for me. Mr. Donner. The moron who decided to scale Lolo Pass from Lewiston to Missoula on his motorcycle. "Look honey, that guy must be freezing!"
Today the tables were turned.
There have only been two times in my riding life where I have had to throw on everything in the bag. Today was the second time. The first time occurred in Sept. 2007, during a blizzard which extended from Taos, New Mexico to Snowville, Utah. Back then, that was the pinnacle of dumbassery. With four inches of slush on the road- that day is still my crowning achievement. Today, just gets a silver medal.
As I am writing this, you should know that the heater is on high in my room. I have draped my jeans over that heater- jeans which actually got wet through my chaps.
The weather was a perky fifty five degrees or so which plummeted as I climbed the 215 mile pass. The declining temperatures were aided by multiple rain showers which together conspired to turn my nuts into a couple of caraway seeds. That I am able to even type right now is a testament to my dedication and commitment to my readers here at FG.
Still free and worth every penny.
So in some smug, sort of secret way- I find myself feeling sorry for the occupants of cars. Unfortunately, today was not that day. Today, I felt sorry for me. Mr. Donner. The moron who decided to scale Lolo Pass from Lewiston to Missoula on his motorcycle. "Look honey, that guy must be freezing!"
Today the tables were turned.
There have only been two times in my riding life where I have had to throw on everything in the bag. Today was the second time. The first time occurred in Sept. 2007, during a blizzard which extended from Taos, New Mexico to Snowville, Utah. Back then, that was the pinnacle of dumbassery. With four inches of slush on the road- that day is still my crowning achievement. Today, just gets a silver medal.
As I am writing this, you should know that the heater is on high in my room. I have draped my jeans over that heater- jeans which actually got wet through my chaps.
The weather was a perky fifty five degrees or so which plummeted as I climbed the 215 mile pass. The declining temperatures were aided by multiple rain showers which together conspired to turn my nuts into a couple of caraway seeds. That I am able to even type right now is a testament to my dedication and commitment to my readers here at FG.
Still free and worth every penny.
 |
| We tried to kill them- they killed us. |
 |
| On top of Whitebird Hill where the cavalry got whipped |
 |
| Lochsa River- approx. same temp as photographer |
 |
| Snow on Lolo Pass |
 |
| Like the Grizzly Motif |
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Keeping Name, Changing Content
I had a few people email me about my proposed changes.
A couple of them, especially Mark W., convinced me that the name- "Frankenstein Government" was sort of iconic and aptly described whatever type of nanny state government we have devolved into.
I came up with that name after the government, and especially Hank Paulson and Congress, wrote blank checks to all of the crooked bankers who should now be out of business or locked up. That those bastards are free and thriving- makes me sick.
When the criminals are made whole, and an innocent society is victimized, that's when you know your government has truly left the fucking rails.
But I am going to slowly change the content.
This week I want to talk about the corporate oligarchy preying on our culture. I think I'm gonna take a little trip on Elvis around Thurs just to get out of town for a while. Maybe I will do a little "on the road" piece with pictures of weird shit.
Yea. That sounds fun.
A couple of them, especially Mark W., convinced me that the name- "Frankenstein Government" was sort of iconic and aptly described whatever type of nanny state government we have devolved into.
I came up with that name after the government, and especially Hank Paulson and Congress, wrote blank checks to all of the crooked bankers who should now be out of business or locked up. That those bastards are free and thriving- makes me sick.
When the criminals are made whole, and an innocent society is victimized, that's when you know your government has truly left the fucking rails.
But I am going to slowly change the content.
This week I want to talk about the corporate oligarchy preying on our culture. I think I'm gonna take a little trip on Elvis around Thurs just to get out of town for a while. Maybe I will do a little "on the road" piece with pictures of weird shit.
Yea. That sounds fun.
Friday, June 6, 2014
This Ain't Welcome Wagon- The Sunday Collage
So this is a war story and something new here. I think it was the summer or fall of 1993.
We received a call at our police department from a neighboring county about a double homicide that had occurred in a home just N. of Gooding, Idaho- about 60 miles away. The caller was the Gooding County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy, a guy by the name of Steve S. Steve said that the two murder victims had been last seen playing pool in a bar in Gooding with two unknown men. A witness in the bar said that the two men referred to themselves as "brothers" and said that they lived in Hailey. Steve wanted to know if we knew two brothers from Hailey capable of committing what was a pretty gruesome set of murders. A frenzy killing he called it.
Off the top of my head, I said "no."
After hanging up the phone I turned to my best friend and co-worker, Jeff, and asked him about it. After coming up with a couple of possible brother combinations, Jeff said to me-"ya know, Tommy and A.J. refer to themselves as brothers, even though they are only cousins."
Tommy Peterson and Robert "AJ" Johnson were a couple of small time criminals who lived in Hailey and were well known to our police department. Recently, one of them had shoved one of our police officers on a disturbance call, an incident which I was surprised to learn did not result in a trip to jail. Mostly they got in trouble for petty things although one of them was on felony probation. While we discussed the possibility that these two were the "brothers" in question, I remembered that one of them had family ties in the Gooding area. I can't remember now which one it was.
I began to search our records for a current address. The address we had was old. I checked with probation and parole and they had the same address. (I would later discover that the State of Idaho, Probation and Parole, had completely lost track of Tommy. In fact, he had not checked in for months and no warrant had been issued.)
While searching our records, I discovered that AJ had just filed a home invasion report with our police department. That report had actually been taken by the Chief of Police. In it, AJ claimed that two or three Mexican men had forced their way into his apartment and beat him up as he sought refuge in a bath tub. Not only did he not know any of the men- but he did not offer up any motive for why anybody would burst into his apartment and beat him up at 8 a.m.! They didn't take anything either. That didn't make sense. And in the policing world...
things always tend to make sense. In the end anyway.
Why did AJ report this crime? AJ reported several injuries he had sustained and oddly, he had reported this a day and a half after the murders in Gooding had taken place.
I contacted Steve in Gooding. He told me that the female murder victim had put up "one hell of a fight." Her boyfriend had been bound and his throat slashed. She had been struck over the head with a tire iron, raped, bound, stabbed, and she was eventually drowned in a bath tub. Steve said she was known locally for brawling and would have inflicted some damage of her own as she defended herself. They had found scrapings of hair and blood underneath her fingernails.
It became clear to us that AJ was building an alibi for his whereabouts and/or injuries by reporting a home invasion. More likely, he sustained his injuries while committing the murders. So we formed a plan based on the pretense that we were investigating the home invasion. Of course that would give us an opportunity to question Tommy more thoroughly and take a closer look at his injuries. He would be forced to comply since he was the "victim" of the home invasion and we were simply investigating that alleged complaint.
I remember thinking at the time, that Tommy and AJ were just a couple of small time hoods. I had a hard time believing that they could murder anyone.
We interviewed AJ at his apartment that night. He was visibly nervous. He couldn't describe his attackers, his answers were evasive and non helpful, and his story just didn't make sense. At the end of the interview, I asked him if I could see the injuries he had sustained during the "attack." I will never forget looking at the top of his scalp that night and seeing three fingernail sized grooves or trenches dug into the top of his head from back to front. Those were the kinds of horrific injuries that a desperate victim would inflict as she fought for her life. I wondered if AJ had actually looked at his own scalp. Had he clearly seen that damage- I don't think he would have offered to show it to us.
As we walked down the sidewalk and back to the squad car that evening, I remember looking at Jeff and saying, "These guys killed those two" although I'm sure my speech was a little more colorful than that.
The following day we contacted Gooding. They told us that Tommy and AJ had voluntarily walked into the police department that morning and had given them a statement and that they were no longer considering them suspects.
I was in shock. I contacted the Chief Deputy and told him what had transpired during our interview. I told him matter of factly, "these two are guilty."
That's about the time the weird stuff started happening.
The one thing you don't ever want to do, particularly with another agencies' case, is to trespass on it and destroy it. We had choreographed everything we had done by first obtaining permission from Gooding County and then discussing it with Steve, the Chief Deputy. So, win or lose, we had used the best collective common sense available to all of us at the time.
One of our first tasks was finding the car they had driven that night. It was an old Cadillac and we could not find it. We asked a tenant of AJ's apartment complex who we trusted to keep an eye out for their car. A day or two later he called when he found the car in the parking lot. Tommy was driving it. By that time we had a probation violation warrant for Tommy (for a variety of things) so we simply waited for him to get in the car and drive it. That way we were able to arrest him and impound the car which we locked in a large storage unit for safekeeping until we could get a search warrant and contact state lab personnel to search the car for trace evidence.
I don't remember whether they used luminol or amido black (tests for blood) on the interior of that car. What I do remember is the lab people telling us that there was human blood all over that car, virtually everywhere. Seats, armrests, door panels, handles.
Eventually we locked up AJ before he fled.
Our local sheriff's office decided that they would interview these two and get involved in the investigation while we were holding them in our jail. Given that opportunity, AJ spun some grandiose yarn about how Mexican drug dealers were going to his girlfriend's apartment that night to kill her. Having opened Pandora's Box, the sheriff decided then that it would be prudent for several of us to keep her place under surveillance all night long to keep her from getting killed. I was so angry. We spent the entire night, geared up and crawling through weeds, based on a complete fabrication by a murder suspect because our local sheriff just had to get involved.
At that point, with those two locked up, we just sort of withdrew from things. Slowly the facts began to emerge but you never really get all of the facts. A great interviewer told me once- that the bad guys always keep a few things to themselves.That is very true.
So this, from recollection, is sort of the crime summary and epilogue. Tommy and AJ had been in Gooding playing pool at a bar with the two victims. The victims left the bar first and went home. Sometime after that, Tommy and AJ were driven to that residence by their niece. They knocked on the door or just snuck in. It is believed that they struck the female victim over the head with a tire iron. At some point, they tied up her boyfriend and cut his throat. He died in his bed. The female victim put up a quite a struggle and after being tied up, raped, beaten, and stabbed- she was drowned in her own bathtub. That was where she was found. Tommy and AJ then left the residence using old county roads where they dumped their bloody clothing while enroute back to Hailey.
It is an odd thing but I have always thought that AJ's false report of his home invasion, up to an including his taking refuge in his own bathtub, mirrored the events as they unfolded that night at the victims' home.
I never really understood what their motive was. Was it rape? Robbery or a drug rip off? What were they so angry about? The other part of that story that has always mystified me was the order in which they did the things that night at the victims' home and why they included their underage niece as a getaway driver. How, when, and why did they recruit her after leaving the bar that night?
I suppose some of these things are probably buried in the Gooding County Sheriff's Office report. I know the niece cooperated with police. For their part, Tommy and AJ traded the death penalty for life in prison. Murder trials are notoriously expensive and rural Gooding County was probably relieved not to have to waste a million bucks they did not have.
While writing this, I stumbled onto an appeal these two had concocted a couple of years ago. They weren't the sharpest guys on the block back in 1993 and I can see that 21 years in prison hasn't done much to improve that.
http://magicvalley.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/convict-claims-innocence-in-murder/article_4b676f82-7b7b-59f1-8087-f365ad652984.html
We received a call at our police department from a neighboring county about a double homicide that had occurred in a home just N. of Gooding, Idaho- about 60 miles away. The caller was the Gooding County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy, a guy by the name of Steve S. Steve said that the two murder victims had been last seen playing pool in a bar in Gooding with two unknown men. A witness in the bar said that the two men referred to themselves as "brothers" and said that they lived in Hailey. Steve wanted to know if we knew two brothers from Hailey capable of committing what was a pretty gruesome set of murders. A frenzy killing he called it.
Off the top of my head, I said "no."
After hanging up the phone I turned to my best friend and co-worker, Jeff, and asked him about it. After coming up with a couple of possible brother combinations, Jeff said to me-"ya know, Tommy and A.J. refer to themselves as brothers, even though they are only cousins."
Tommy Peterson and Robert "AJ" Johnson were a couple of small time criminals who lived in Hailey and were well known to our police department. Recently, one of them had shoved one of our police officers on a disturbance call, an incident which I was surprised to learn did not result in a trip to jail. Mostly they got in trouble for petty things although one of them was on felony probation. While we discussed the possibility that these two were the "brothers" in question, I remembered that one of them had family ties in the Gooding area. I can't remember now which one it was.
I began to search our records for a current address. The address we had was old. I checked with probation and parole and they had the same address. (I would later discover that the State of Idaho, Probation and Parole, had completely lost track of Tommy. In fact, he had not checked in for months and no warrant had been issued.)
While searching our records, I discovered that AJ had just filed a home invasion report with our police department. That report had actually been taken by the Chief of Police. In it, AJ claimed that two or three Mexican men had forced their way into his apartment and beat him up as he sought refuge in a bath tub. Not only did he not know any of the men- but he did not offer up any motive for why anybody would burst into his apartment and beat him up at 8 a.m.! They didn't take anything either. That didn't make sense. And in the policing world...
things always tend to make sense. In the end anyway.
Why did AJ report this crime? AJ reported several injuries he had sustained and oddly, he had reported this a day and a half after the murders in Gooding had taken place.
I contacted Steve in Gooding. He told me that the female murder victim had put up "one hell of a fight." Her boyfriend had been bound and his throat slashed. She had been struck over the head with a tire iron, raped, bound, stabbed, and she was eventually drowned in a bath tub. Steve said she was known locally for brawling and would have inflicted some damage of her own as she defended herself. They had found scrapings of hair and blood underneath her fingernails.
It became clear to us that AJ was building an alibi for his whereabouts and/or injuries by reporting a home invasion. More likely, he sustained his injuries while committing the murders. So we formed a plan based on the pretense that we were investigating the home invasion. Of course that would give us an opportunity to question Tommy more thoroughly and take a closer look at his injuries. He would be forced to comply since he was the "victim" of the home invasion and we were simply investigating that alleged complaint.
I remember thinking at the time, that Tommy and AJ were just a couple of small time hoods. I had a hard time believing that they could murder anyone.
We interviewed AJ at his apartment that night. He was visibly nervous. He couldn't describe his attackers, his answers were evasive and non helpful, and his story just didn't make sense. At the end of the interview, I asked him if I could see the injuries he had sustained during the "attack." I will never forget looking at the top of his scalp that night and seeing three fingernail sized grooves or trenches dug into the top of his head from back to front. Those were the kinds of horrific injuries that a desperate victim would inflict as she fought for her life. I wondered if AJ had actually looked at his own scalp. Had he clearly seen that damage- I don't think he would have offered to show it to us.
As we walked down the sidewalk and back to the squad car that evening, I remember looking at Jeff and saying, "These guys killed those two" although I'm sure my speech was a little more colorful than that.
The following day we contacted Gooding. They told us that Tommy and AJ had voluntarily walked into the police department that morning and had given them a statement and that they were no longer considering them suspects.
I was in shock. I contacted the Chief Deputy and told him what had transpired during our interview. I told him matter of factly, "these two are guilty."
That's about the time the weird stuff started happening.
The one thing you don't ever want to do, particularly with another agencies' case, is to trespass on it and destroy it. We had choreographed everything we had done by first obtaining permission from Gooding County and then discussing it with Steve, the Chief Deputy. So, win or lose, we had used the best collective common sense available to all of us at the time.
One of our first tasks was finding the car they had driven that night. It was an old Cadillac and we could not find it. We asked a tenant of AJ's apartment complex who we trusted to keep an eye out for their car. A day or two later he called when he found the car in the parking lot. Tommy was driving it. By that time we had a probation violation warrant for Tommy (for a variety of things) so we simply waited for him to get in the car and drive it. That way we were able to arrest him and impound the car which we locked in a large storage unit for safekeeping until we could get a search warrant and contact state lab personnel to search the car for trace evidence.
I don't remember whether they used luminol or amido black (tests for blood) on the interior of that car. What I do remember is the lab people telling us that there was human blood all over that car, virtually everywhere. Seats, armrests, door panels, handles.
Eventually we locked up AJ before he fled.
Our local sheriff's office decided that they would interview these two and get involved in the investigation while we were holding them in our jail. Given that opportunity, AJ spun some grandiose yarn about how Mexican drug dealers were going to his girlfriend's apartment that night to kill her. Having opened Pandora's Box, the sheriff decided then that it would be prudent for several of us to keep her place under surveillance all night long to keep her from getting killed. I was so angry. We spent the entire night, geared up and crawling through weeds, based on a complete fabrication by a murder suspect because our local sheriff just had to get involved.
At that point, with those two locked up, we just sort of withdrew from things. Slowly the facts began to emerge but you never really get all of the facts. A great interviewer told me once- that the bad guys always keep a few things to themselves.That is very true.
So this, from recollection, is sort of the crime summary and epilogue. Tommy and AJ had been in Gooding playing pool at a bar with the two victims. The victims left the bar first and went home. Sometime after that, Tommy and AJ were driven to that residence by their niece. They knocked on the door or just snuck in. It is believed that they struck the female victim over the head with a tire iron. At some point, they tied up her boyfriend and cut his throat. He died in his bed. The female victim put up a quite a struggle and after being tied up, raped, beaten, and stabbed- she was drowned in her own bathtub. That was where she was found. Tommy and AJ then left the residence using old county roads where they dumped their bloody clothing while enroute back to Hailey.
It is an odd thing but I have always thought that AJ's false report of his home invasion, up to an including his taking refuge in his own bathtub, mirrored the events as they unfolded that night at the victims' home.
I never really understood what their motive was. Was it rape? Robbery or a drug rip off? What were they so angry about? The other part of that story that has always mystified me was the order in which they did the things that night at the victims' home and why they included their underage niece as a getaway driver. How, when, and why did they recruit her after leaving the bar that night?
I suppose some of these things are probably buried in the Gooding County Sheriff's Office report. I know the niece cooperated with police. For their part, Tommy and AJ traded the death penalty for life in prison. Murder trials are notoriously expensive and rural Gooding County was probably relieved not to have to waste a million bucks they did not have.
While writing this, I stumbled onto an appeal these two had concocted a couple of years ago. They weren't the sharpest guys on the block back in 1993 and I can see that 21 years in prison hasn't done much to improve that.
http://magicvalley.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/convict-claims-innocence-in-murder/article_4b676f82-7b7b-59f1-8087-f365ad652984.html
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Forty One Days of Hell
I can only get so fat and then well, I get pissed off.
The worst thing about getting old is that with a complete loss of testosterone and human growth hormone- a man's body only requires about 6 calories per day. Everything else is stored as fat.
So when you eat like a pig like I do- sometimes consuming an entire bowl of oatmeal with a few blueberries sprinkled on top- you can expect to participate in at least one "Iron Man" competition or marathon that month to cancel out the effects of that one bowl of oatmeal.
There is always some nutrition nazi willing to point out the flaws in anything I consume. I usually find them at the gym. They are usually in their 20's and they believe that they have been blessed with a body that will never age, knees that will perform flawlessly forever, and a brain that tells them they are special. I wish I could see them 30 years later humping a treadmill.
I am in absolute awe. When I was a young man- I could eat an entire semi trailer full of twinkies without gaining a single ounce. Now that I am roughly the age of Methuzaleh, all I can safely eat is celery washed down with purified water.
Growing old sucks. I've never found the alternative visually appealing either.
So when I stepped on the scales May 1, I weighed 282 pounds. That's when I got pissed.
Sometime in the 90's I was introduced to a miracle called the Atkin's diet. I call it the meat and cheese diet. You can eat eggs, meat, cheese and some meat, cheese, and eggs. Maybe a black olive here or there. And baby- it works.
I do it every 18 months or so, generally when my belt buckle starts carving a big notch in my flesh.
I love it when people say, "isn't that diet unhealthy?" I say to them- matter of factly now- "yes it probably is, however carrying around an extra 40 pounds of blubber isn't exactly healthy either."
I am not one of those guys who can diet for 18 months hoping to lose 15 pounds. I don't have that kind of glacial patience. When I diet, I bring the fucking pain. Now.
Farm animals die. Roosters hump. It has always been this way. And only now and then- do I allow myself a pineapple slice on a pile of cottage cheese washed down with that horrible tasting almond milk. I throw in two miles of running every day. And when the smoke clears...
I expect to lose 31 pounds in 31 days. So when I stepped on the scale this morning at 254- I was three pounds short of my goal for May. This of course has now triggered an additional 10 days of hell wherein I will finally stop when I arrive at 242 pounds with absolutely no hint or trace of a man boob having ever existed on my manscape. I will probably add another mile of running every day.
Then ever so slowly, through summer, fall, and the holiday season and all of 2105- a combination of apple pancakes, cinnamon rolls, bridge mix, pizza, pasties, pork chop sammichs, hash browns, french fries, and ice cream- will all begin to work their evil charms and restore me back to the full sized man that I used to be. Some 18.5 months from now, this whole nasty cycle will repeat itself.
Fat and angry is no way to live your life. I have to figure out some reasonable way to eat within my means. The thought of another 41 days of this shit seems a little unbearable to me right now.
Brian
The worst thing about getting old is that with a complete loss of testosterone and human growth hormone- a man's body only requires about 6 calories per day. Everything else is stored as fat.
So when you eat like a pig like I do- sometimes consuming an entire bowl of oatmeal with a few blueberries sprinkled on top- you can expect to participate in at least one "Iron Man" competition or marathon that month to cancel out the effects of that one bowl of oatmeal.
There is always some nutrition nazi willing to point out the flaws in anything I consume. I usually find them at the gym. They are usually in their 20's and they believe that they have been blessed with a body that will never age, knees that will perform flawlessly forever, and a brain that tells them they are special. I wish I could see them 30 years later humping a treadmill.
I am in absolute awe. When I was a young man- I could eat an entire semi trailer full of twinkies without gaining a single ounce. Now that I am roughly the age of Methuzaleh, all I can safely eat is celery washed down with purified water.
Growing old sucks. I've never found the alternative visually appealing either.
So when I stepped on the scales May 1, I weighed 282 pounds. That's when I got pissed.
Sometime in the 90's I was introduced to a miracle called the Atkin's diet. I call it the meat and cheese diet. You can eat eggs, meat, cheese and some meat, cheese, and eggs. Maybe a black olive here or there. And baby- it works.
I do it every 18 months or so, generally when my belt buckle starts carving a big notch in my flesh.
I love it when people say, "isn't that diet unhealthy?" I say to them- matter of factly now- "yes it probably is, however carrying around an extra 40 pounds of blubber isn't exactly healthy either."
I am not one of those guys who can diet for 18 months hoping to lose 15 pounds. I don't have that kind of glacial patience. When I diet, I bring the fucking pain. Now.
Farm animals die. Roosters hump. It has always been this way. And only now and then- do I allow myself a pineapple slice on a pile of cottage cheese washed down with that horrible tasting almond milk. I throw in two miles of running every day. And when the smoke clears...
I expect to lose 31 pounds in 31 days. So when I stepped on the scale this morning at 254- I was three pounds short of my goal for May. This of course has now triggered an additional 10 days of hell wherein I will finally stop when I arrive at 242 pounds with absolutely no hint or trace of a man boob having ever existed on my manscape. I will probably add another mile of running every day.
Then ever so slowly, through summer, fall, and the holiday season and all of 2105- a combination of apple pancakes, cinnamon rolls, bridge mix, pizza, pasties, pork chop sammichs, hash browns, french fries, and ice cream- will all begin to work their evil charms and restore me back to the full sized man that I used to be. Some 18.5 months from now, this whole nasty cycle will repeat itself.
Fat and angry is no way to live your life. I have to figure out some reasonable way to eat within my means. The thought of another 41 days of this shit seems a little unbearable to me right now.
Brian
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