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True Crime Tuesday: Hidden Drugs, Crouching Indictment Edition

Short Stories #2 1948
In honour of Movember, today’s TCT contains a couple of tales regarding an entirely different sort of stash.

First up we have Jose Santiago, who really should have shook a leg when he saw the police coming – alas, he felt himself too clever. From The HuffPo:

Police in Wilmington, Del., arrested Jose Santiago on Friday after responding to a 911 call for a disorderly subject. When officials arrived on the scene, they saw Santiago, 51, in the middle of the street, NBCPhiladelphia.com reported.

Santiago seemed to be intoxicated and was yelling obscenities, but was taken into custody without incident, Officer Mike Ivey told Delaware Online.

Upon booking, the cops discovered Santiago had several outstanding arrest warrants. He also allegedly had 2.5 grams of crack cocaine and 2.8 grams of marijuana hidden inside his prosthetic leg, the Associated Press reported.

At least, however, the drugs in question were arguably Santiago’s own – Kent Wycliffe Easter, 38, and Jill Bjorkholm Easter, 39, went out on a different sort of limb. From NBC News:

The couple hatched the plot to retaliate against the [elementary school] volunteer who they believe was not properly supervising their son, prosecutors said.

The couple is accused of planting a bag of Vicodin, Percocet, marijuana, and a used marijuana pipe behind the driver’s seat of the woman’s unlocked vehicle and then calling police to report she was driving erratically and had drugs, the indictment said.

“(Kent Easter) is accused of telling the dispatcher that he was a concerned parent who had witnessed an erratic driver park at the elementary school,” the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “He is accused of claiming to have witnessed Jane Doe, whom he identified by name, hide a bag of drugs behind her driver’s seat in her car.”

The Marijuana Mob

FP297 – The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 3 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and ninety-seven.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 3 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp297.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Harm Carter meets his theoretically murderous neighbour.

 

The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

She was maybe forty, with hair that had likely been short-cropped a few weeks previous, but was hanging shaggily across her brow by the time she pushed open the shed’s green doors.

She moved along the lawn like a cat, keeping tight to the fence and stopping to test the air whenever an unexpected noise ricocheted down our little alley of backyards.

I was sure she was The Carpenter.

The Murder PlagueMy eyes ached from a lack of sleep, and my legs were stiff from my all-night vigil, but I felt vindicated somehow. Here was a clever someone deep in their homicidal delusion, and I was staying one step ahead. Nevermind that I hadn’t thought much of the shack before she’d stepped from it, I’d known someone would appear by dawn and here she was.

The woman did not check on the now no-doubt-dead fellow at the pool’s bottom, however. No, instead she hustled to my fence – our shared fence – and hopped over. It was as she made the jump that I realized there was a gun belt on her hip.

She paused when she discovered the patio entrance barricaded, but only long enough to slip in through a basement window that I hadn’t realized was open.

Moments later a bellowing hello ascended from the depths, and continued to be repeated throughout the ground floor.

My mind raced. Had The Carpenter seen me at my lookout? Perhaps someone so ingenious couldn’t actually be mad – perhaps she was sane, just as I considered myself, and she hoped to form some sort of alliance.

The shouting stopped as she mounted the flight to the second story, and I guessed that she’d considered that any further yelling would only unnecessarily give away her approach – that if I was going to answer, I would have by then.

Still, she came, and I grew increasingly certain she knew exactly where I was.

There was no place to hide. The bed was a child’s, and too low to the ground to fully cover me. The closet was crammed tight with brightly coloured craft-making kits and forgotten halloween costumes. Worse, if she did happen to be insane, neither spot would provide give me a chance to swing my blade in my defense.

In the end, when she entered, I already had my hands raised and my open palms clearly showing.

Now, you must understand that the infection is a self-reinforcing idea. You’re paranoid about appearing paranoid, so you do your best to act normal – except, of course, that there’s a murderous apocalypse outside your door and you probably SHOULD seem rather nervous.

I said, “well, hello.”

“Oh, uh, hi,’ she replied.

The astonishment on her face caught me off guard: Didn’t she know I was waiting?

In truth, misunderstood motives were the heart of the sickness.

Her fingers were on her gun belt, but I think my demeanour slowed her. Clearly I was hiding an unexpected surprise if I was so calm about being exposed, right?

I was no longer guessing at her intentions, however, as my corrupted brain had moved into a dance for survival. It decided flattery was my best option for extracting information.

“I’ve been observing your work,” I said, “you’ve got a brilliant set up over there. It was like watching a magic trick unfold when that fellow disappeared.”

Almost as if to underline the statement, the shattered ruin lying in the dark at the bottom of the pool began screaming again. I suppose the pain must have caused him to black out for a time.

The assumed Carpenter raised a brow at me. Her conversational tone was punctuated by the muffled pleading from across the way.

“It isn’t mine, actually,” she said. “Barry and Rhonda were always waiting for the end of the world, and I guess they finally got it. Rhonda vanished a couple days into their construction efforts, but Barry managed to last a few weeks before accidentally impaling himself in the middle of the night with a swinging pickaxe-thing he’d rigged above his bedroom door.

“Honestly, I was just over there collecting some of their food stash when I noticed you in my house. I knew the shed’s shotgun had already been set off, so I pushed the corpse all the way inside and hid. He didn’t smell terribly good, but he had a can of tuna in his pocket which made for a nice snack.”

I hadn’t recognized her from the scattered family photos that now seemed to stare at me. Her face had hardened and her stomach was now taut.

Worse, The Carpenter had been dead all along. As if the ghost of his madness, only his traps had lingered.

In retrospect, I think she was trying to goad me into an excursion. Maybe her confidence was up due to my raised hands. Maybe she hoped that I would head in and engage another of the pitfalls, thus making her scavenging that much easier.

Maybe it’s just tempting to make myself believe there was a threat.

“Frankly,” she continued, “I thought it was you who’d fallen into the Mortenson’s swimming hole. That’s why I came back.”

Whatever the case, there was no ulterior motive, no clever plan that had brought her directly to my perch – it wasn’t crazed genius, it was simply bad luck.

She leaned towards the window to peer at the dying man’s premature burial, and her touch slipped briefly from her pistol’s grip.

The bread knife I’d found in the kitchen dropped cleanly from my left shirt sleeve.

Was she infected? Likely, but I didn’t give her the chance to prove it.

Then the house was mine.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

True Crime Tuesday: Strange Loads Edition

Sport Magazine

Today’s True Crime Tuesday comes bearing strange gifts.

For example, our first story demonstrates that it takes a special kind of fetish to haul folks into illegal waters. The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Cedarburg police believe they have identified the man who has been impersonating a reporter and contacting female high school athletes in Wisconsin, […] Gary Medrow, 68, of the Milwaukee suburb of Greenfield, has multiple convictions over the past 30 years of improper use of a telephone and impersonating a police officer, according to police and court records. On Friday, Medrow was charged in Ozaukee County Circuit Court with two counts each of disorderly conduct and unlawful use of a phone.

This may seem like a straight forward, if creepy, case, and you may even be wondering how it ranked for inclusion in this TCT – please allow me to, er, lift some of the mystery:

In 1997, Medrow was convicted […] of unlawful use of a telephone and impersonating a police officer. In that case he made a collect call from the Milwaukee House of Corrections, said he was investigating a car crash and asked a Marshall woman if she could carry other women.

A 1998 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story that profiled Medrow, who at one time was a patient at Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, said Medrow had a fetish for “calling women and trying to persuade them to lift other women and carry them around.”

About two weeks ago, the caller called the daughter of Rob Hernandez, an assistant sports editor at the Wisconsin State Journal. The man indicated he wanted a photo of the Verona girls golf team in a pyramid or on one another’s shoulders, asked for the names of teammates and wanted to know their heights.

Mr. Medrow’s isn’t, however, the strangest load I’ve recently seen carried in the news – from Express.co.uk:

TEN sad-looking Shetland ponies were found in a night-mare position after astonished traffic cops stopped a dodgy-looking white van at a service station.

From: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/358383/That-doesn-t-look-very-stable-Ten-horses-found-crammed-into-van

How did the pony-crammers attempt to explain their unlikely cargo? Did they claim to be transportation managers for some upcoming Hobbit-related promo event?

Neigh.

In an even more absurd twist, the drivers – on their way to Romania when they were stopped at Offenbach, Germany – claimed they’d had no idea they had livestock on board.

Boys' Ranch

FP296 – The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 2 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and ninety-six.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 2 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp296.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds a home for himself amongst the infected maniacs.

 

The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 2 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

I could have helped. I would have, probably, if I was in my right mind.

The Murder PlagueThe doctors tell you about your lack of culpability, but Hitchcock’s doesn’t touch your memory. You dream of things you’ve done, details you’ve forgotten for years, and there are, of course, plenty of things you remember always; the feeling of resistance against the blade, or the smack of the hammer, or the simple thud of a trap being sprung.

You never escape the memory of the rush of victory against a hated enemy – even if that enemy is only the cancer patient grandmother from next door.

Sometimes you even dream that your delusions were true.

Now – when I was a boy we’d start our ball games with one lad tossing another a bat. They’d then hand-over-hand the handle till the winner grabbed the top. Meeting someone during the plague was like that, but coming out on top usually meant a knife in the other fellow

That’s how the following period felt in my mind: A series of escalations, with the opening toss of the bat being the chance revealing of the pool.

It was like staring at my opponent’s shadow and trying to guess what they looked like. I didn’t know if it was a man or woman, but I knew they were crafty. It must have taken quite a bit of work to construct the grid they’d laid across the pool, to hinge and balance the planks, then lay the sod camouflage.

Worse still, Capital City was largely powerless. Unless their fortifications had been built at the immediate onset of the plague, they’d used only hand tools.

It would mean less noise while getting the job done. Yes, I thought they were crafty indeed.

Without doing it consciously, I started thinking of my neighbour as The Carpenter.

I became convinced every object in my opponent’s yard was booby trapped, and that the homemade abyss was but one defensive line of many. The propane grill was obviously a bomb. The four broad steps leading to the rear patio door were likely break away, divulging some sort of foot-sole impaling devices beneath. Below the overhang of the house stood a green dutch-doored shed. Touching the latch would no doubt mean decapitation, or some equally ingeniously horrible fate.

Standing there, absentmindedly listening to the screaming while my thumb and forefinger still held the fuzzy pink curtain, odd ideas came to me; like lingering till the wind was favourable and trying to set fire to the opposite string of houses, or finding a car and rigging the gas pedal so that it slammed into the cream siding, or even just ringing the bell and seeing what would happen if I asked to borrow a cup of sugar.

All were discarded as distinctly too risky. I considered on.

Would The Carpenter appear to check the tiger in his trap? No, he or she would wait and see if the death throes brought anyone else – so, in turn, I would wait to see what The Carpenter would see.

My fevered mind began to feel my neighbour’s presence in the void they’d left. Of the four windows I could see clearly, two were covered with slat blinds and the others held thick floral-patterned drapes. I suspected the blinds in the bottom-right had been slanted just enough to allow a view of the outside, as neither row had been cracked for a better view, but every now and then I would come around to convincing myself that there was a flutter at the upper curtains. I was a fisherman uncertain as to if he was actually feeling nibbles on his line and never getting a solid bite.

The shrieking became wailing, and the wailing became weeping, then, no more than an hour later, there was nothing but silence.

It got late, and I got tired, yet I couldn’t leave my post. The Carpenter, I was sure, would hold out till the darkest moment of the night, then venture forth. By the time the moon was deeply within cloud cover, however, I was positive it would be dawn.

I peered carefully from behind my flimsy veil, determined to be just as crafty, and patient, as my worthy adversary.

At dusk the shed opened, and a thin faced woman stepped from its depths.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP295 – The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and ninety-five.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 1 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp295.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds a home for himself amongst the infected maniacs.

 

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The door to the house on Washington was open, but not too open. The driveway was abandoned and the garage left gaping at the street. The backyard faced onto other cookie-cutter suburban homes, but the front had a wide view of a playground that provided no place to hide. The exterior had the look of factory aged faux-brickwork, and the hedges had been painstakingly maintained before having run riot during the plague times.

It was exactly what I was searching for.

At first, though, I walked past it.

The Murder PlagueNow, I should clarify, it wasn’t as if I was strolling about like a grandmother on her way back from Sunday service. The madness of Hitchcock’s Disease had fully gripped my mind by then, and I managed forward momentum only through slow progress and carefully affected casualness.

I thought the rules had changed since entering the city. While hidden riflemen were an issue in the country, anyone crazy enough to shoot a stranger on sight was also too scared to give away their position so easily. So long as I wasn’t rushed by a knife-wielding maniac, I reasoned, I’d be OK.

That’s not how Hitchock’s works, of course – it was always more important to worry about the smiling man with extended hand than the risk that a slasher film villain would come barreling onto the street – but the viral fear running amok in my veins couldn’t consider that far.

Anyhow, I went around the block, moving cautiously, but not so cautiously that I appeared paranoid. Or so I hoped. Everything seemed a threat. A recycling bin brimming with plastic bottles, no doubt forgotten at the roadside during a panicked evacuation, became an improvised explosive device. The abode on the corner, whose door was slamming against its protruding deadbolt with every tug and thrust of the wind, was obviously a deathtrap bristling with shotguns and poisoned broken glass.

Every window contained a watcher, and every useful item I passed was clearly set there to lure me into danger. In my mind my chosen neighbourhood was against me, but I was smart, and sober, and sane, and I would use this clarity to kill any one of those murderous bastards who might attempt to show their heads.

This mix of anxiety and twisted justification carried me back to the molded-cement stoop of 276 Washington.

I did not pause in my approach, as I worried it would give extra time to anyone inside. Despite the fact that the house met the careful criteria I’d worked up during my walk, any delay was an excuse to envision a thousand threats, and my stomach was a knot. I was well into convincing myself that the whole thing was a trick when I finally entered the front hall, but, when I flipped the deadbolt it was like erecting a wall to keep the world out.

I immediately began to fear whatever might lurk beyond the barrier more than whatever might lurk on the second floor.

Moving through a small sitting area, I ignored the staircase and beelined to the kitchen. I located a stout knife, and, after some cupboard fumbling, a flashlight. I searched the ground level, then searched it again. I descended into the unfinished basement – largely used for storage – and turned over the boxes of Christmas decorations and photo albums. Just in case.

When I returned to the main floor, I searched it again. While arguing with myself about being trapped inside, I shuffled around the living room furniture to block the french doors that lead to the back patio.

Finally, I climbed the stairs.

Seven doors. Subtract two, as one was an open closet that had clearly been raided for blankets in a hurry and the other was a laundry room that stood empty in the gloom. The entry on my left I revealed a wall dominated by a slightly risque poster of a woman washing a sports car, and a number of logos and pictures from a number of bands that I’d likely complain about if I were to ever hear their music. I popped my head in and the place was a mess of clothing dunes and forgotten soda cans. Turning back, I scanned the bathroom, then encountered a home office that looked like it had never been fully unpacked despite being used regularly. Next came a nearly antiseptic bedroom, with a plush bed and a flatscreen on the opposing wall. I assumed it was the parents. The final chamber belonged to a girl of perhaps nine. There was a large framed picture of the family on her shelf, but I wasn’t terribly interested anymore as it didn’t seem as if any of them were on the cusp of leaping out to stab me.

Of course, my inspection hadn’t been about trying to piece together who these people were – no, I was allowed only to think in terms of traps and advantages. Could I use that lamp as a weapon? Perhaps I could rig it to the windows somehow to electrify the pane? Was that a murderer in the closet? No, it was just a Halloween mask hung on hook – but could I use the guise somehow? Was there some worth in a scarecrow? Perhaps as bait?

– and so it went until I noticed the spidery fellow.

From the shelter of the pink curtain I could see a square of 6 backyards – my own, the two on either side of my little plot, and most of those belonging to the three houses that faced us.

The creeper moved slowly. He’d peep over the fence, scan the windows of the house, then pull himself over. He was methodical about it, and every enclosure took at least ten minutes to clear. I can’t say exactly what he was seeking, but I suspect food. I did see him try one patio, but it was locked. Rather than shatter the glass and draw attention, he’d simply turned to analyze the next residence.

He’d made it perhaps a third of the way across the lawn directly behind my own when he disappeared.

The turf seemed to fall away beneath him, and I caught a brief flash of aqua blue ceramic tile, then the spring that held up the plank’s hinge must have snapped back into place. There was not a disordered blade of grass, and, even having just seen the trap door magic trick, I didn’t entirely believe it had taken place. At least, I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the screaming.

The potato sack sound of his landing made it obvious that the pool was drained – and rather deep.

It was then that I realized I likely had a neighbour.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

True Crime Tuesday: Chemical Imbalance Edition

Vigilante War in Buena Vista
Today’s TCT is all about a lack of control.

First up, via citypages.com, we find a patrol car responding to a “shots fired” call on Halloween night – instead of locating a shoot-out, however, they…

[…] found a group of juvenile boys, who said a man had driven up, pulled over and began to yell at them, accusing them of stealing candy from his child.

Candy theft is clearly a greater crime than pumpkin smashing, but neither is reason enough for vigilante justice – and yet:

Vigilante Wonder WomanThe boys described the suspect as a white male with an Asian female passenger in his car, the same description of a driver who was stopped earlier in the evening for driving erratically. During that traffic stop, the driver, identified as Hager, told officers that he was looking for “older kids” who had stolen candy from his child.

Police went to Hager’s home and found him “very eager” to talk to them. He told them that he was angry that someone had stolen candy from his child, so he got into his car – accompanied by his wife and two children – and went searching for the “kids” who were responsible for the theft, according to the complaint.

I can understand being upset that your child has lost his candy, but there’s bullying and then there’s bullying.

When he saw the group at 27th and Brunswick, he got out of his car to confront them, he told police. However, it appeared that none of them were taking him seriously and they were giving him “attitude,” he said, so he pulled a gun from his car, the complaint says.

[…]

Police arrested Hager and confiscated the unloaded AK-47.

AK47
The second entry on today’s menu – a fantastic suggestion by Strawsburg – also relates to control: In fact, there was a time, not so long ago, when the criminal in question held at least some control over the vast majority of home computer systems.

Then things got a bit crazy.

From Gizmodo:

Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run from murder charges, Belize police say. According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force’s Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye.

[…] Last Wednesday, Faull filed a formal complaint against McAfee with the mayor’s office, asserting that McAfee had fired off guns and exhibited “roguish behavior.” Their final disagreement apparently involved dogs.

At first I thought perhaps he had simply finally found the fellow who wrote Sobig.F – but the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

“Belize?” you may be asking yourself, “why Belize?”

Writing under the name “stuffmonger,” a handle he has used on other online message boards, McAfee posted more than 200 times over the next nine months about his ongoing quest to purify psychoactive drugs from compounds commercially available over the internet. “I’m a huge fan of MDPV,” he wrote. “I think it’s the finest drug ever conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown.”

What does that have to do with Belize?

MDPV, which was recently banned in the US but remains legal in Belize, belongs to a class of drugs called cathinones, a natural source of which is the East African plant khat.

[…]

McAfee’s purported interest in extracting medicine from jungle plants provided him a wholesome justification for building a well-equipped chemistry lab in a remote corner of Belize. The specific properties of the drugs he was attempting to isolate also fit in well with what those closest to him have reported: that he is an enthusiastic amateur pharmacologist with a longstanding interest in drugs that induce sexual behavior in women. Indeed, former friends of McAfee have said he could be extremely persistent and devious in trying to coerce women who rebuff his advances to have sex with him.

Clearly Mr. McAfee is suffering from something that a simple software update won’t fix, though it sounds like he may also be carrying some viral infections of a different kind.
Thrilling Mystery 1940