There is a sense of familiarity to a story about a cat getting caught up in a tree. This is one of these stories but with a twist. This story is not so much about the cat, rather it is about the downright un-neighborliness of a Phoenix police officer who seemed willing to thwart the efforts of his neighbor to recover his cat.
It all began on Dec. 23, when homeowner, Michael, realized that his cat named Brutis had escaped from the house. When Michael finally tracked Brutis down, he was stuck in the branches, two stories in the air, on his neighbor’s property. So Michael knocked on his neighbor’s door and explained that his cat was stuck up in the tree. The neighbor, a Phoenix Police Officer, said there was nothing he could do and that the cat would probably come down on its own.
Brutis did no such thing. On Christmas day he was still in the tree. The Arizona Humane Society was called but their ladder was too short to rescue Brutis. They suggested that Michael leave food at the trunk of the tree to entice the cat to come down, but to Michael’s surprise the police officer refused to let him leave any food. The officer would not let him back on the property, claiming that he was concerned that if someone got hurt while trying to get the cat on his property, he would be liable. Michael tried squirting water from a hose at his own house at the cat. Brutis did not budge.
“It seems like I just have to sit here and watch my cat starve to death or freeze to death,” Michael said.
A Phoenix Police spokesperson, Sgt. Tommy Thompson, said the officer did what he could to help the cat. He said the Humane Society called the officer an “angel” who did all he could.
When I spoke to the Arizona Humane Society they advised that the officer was very patient and did everything he possibly could to facilitate the rescue of the cat throughout the course of this incident. In addition, because of the large amount of attention this story has gained, which garnered complaints, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office sent investigators to look at the possibility of animal cruelty. I spoke with the supervisor, who went to the scene, and he told me that the officer had done absolutely nothing wrong and the cat was fine.
The news media got involved and aired Michael’s efforts to rescue Brutis. Due to the publicity received, the police department began to receive negative phone calls and emails attacking the officer. The officer even had derogatory things written on his sidewalk.
On Dec. 29, Brutis was still in the tree. That was when Toni Smith and Terry Toman who are with Citizens for North Phoenix Strays decided to try to get the cat down.
“There’s some friction here between these neighbors and I said I could care less about the people I just want to go up and get the cat,” said Smith.
Smith and Toman said they chose to go behind the home on a public sidewalk and lean a 25-foot ladder against the cop’s back wall. In this way, they figured they were not on his property. Just as they were about to get the cat, Smith said, “This guy comes barreling out of his house, flashed his gun and his badge, and started screaming and freaking out.” Toman added, “It’s a little overkill”. They had to retreat without the cat.
Both Smith and Toman said they were willing to sign a waiver guaranteeing they would not sue the officer if they should hurt themselves while rescuing Brutis.
“Its just a cat in the tree. Why can’t we just go there and get the cat and move on” said Toni Smith.
The next day Dec. 30, possibly due to all the attention, Phoenix Police Officers from the Desert Horizon Precinct obtained a large ladder and with several officers securing the ladder, one climbed up the ladder and removed the cat from the tree. Brutis the cat appeared in excellent condition and was returned to its owner. Michael said Brutis is a bit tired, scared and skinnier after 9 days in the tree, but by all accounts appears okay.
“I’m pretty happy, he lost a lot of weight up there, he was a little chubby when he went up and he’s kind of boney now,” Michael said.
Michael said he has no hard feelings for the people who own the tree the cat was stuck in, he’s just glad to have Brutis safely home.
“He wasn’t allowed out in the first place…specifically for this kind of reason,” Michael said. “And I don’t ever want him to get out again. I’d like to think he learned his lesson, but he’s probably not that smart. He couldn’t figure out how to get out the tree.”
Robert Aragon, 55, of Jerome, ID., is in the Blaine County Jail. He has been charged with second degree murder and felony injury to a child. He made an initial appearance December 29, 2008 in 5th District Court, where Judge Mark Ingram appointed a public defender for him. His bond was set at $500,000.
His 11-year-old daughter, Sage Aragon, is dead. Her frozen body was found, barely visible under windblown, drifting snow at about 2:00 am December 26, 2008 by search dogs. She was wearing a brown down coat, black shirt, pink pajama pants and tan snow boots. She was pronounced dead at 4:15 a.m. at St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center south of Ketchum.
His 12-year-old son, Bear Aragon, was found alive at around 11:00 pm on Christmas night, wearing only long underwear. Apparently delusional from hypothermia, he had discarded his jacket, pants and shoes. He was treated and released from hospital.
These unfortunate events began on Christmas morning when Robert Aragon was driving his two kids, Sage and Bear, to visit their mother, JoLeta Jenks, who lives in West Magic Reservoir. According to his cousin, Kenneth Quintana, who went along for the ride, they were supposed to meet the kids’ mother halfway along the way. However, their car got stuck in a snow drift near the intersection of Highway 75 and W. Magic Rd., about 10 miles away from their destination. It was decided that the kids should start walking towards their mother’s house, Kenneth would go back to the highway to get help and Robert would stay with the car.
“I just want everybody to know that Bob did not send his kids out to die – he didn’t,” Quintana said. “He didn’t even want to let them go, but the kids were confident, hell I was even confident in that she (the mother) was going to be there.”
Eventually they got the car out of the snow and Robert and Kenneth returned home. They assumed that the kids had made it safely to their mother’s house. Around 4:00 pm JoLeta Jenks called Robert to find out why her kids had not yet reached her house. Robert explained what had happened and, with Kenneth, drove back in the car to start looking for the kids. In the meantime JoLeta called the police.
“They didn’t even call me, telling me they were walking,” she told the Times-News.
Robert and Kenneth found the spot where they had gotten stuck earlier and tried to follow the kids footprints in the snow. They lost track of them in the blowing snow and were forced to return back to the car when the weather started getting worse.
The police organized a search party in the knee-deep snow and they eventually found the boy at around 10:00 pm about 4.5 miles away, dressed only in his underwear. The girl was not found until 2:00 am the following morning about 2.7 miles away. According to JoLeta, who later questioned her son, Bear, the children had a disagreement on what to do when they got lost in the snow.
“(Bear) kept on telling her: ‘Let’s go, Sage, let’s go, Sage,’” Jenks said, recalling what her son told her. “She said, ‘No, I’m going back.’”
Sage was pronounced dead at a Ketchum hospital; preliminary autopsy results indicate she died of hypothermia. Officials say temperatures in the area at the time the girl was missing ranged from 27 degrees above zero to minus 5.
Robert Aragon was arrested and charged with second degree murder in the death of his daughter and felony injury to a child in the case of his son. He was emotional during his appearance before Judge Mark Ingram:
He banged his head on the defendant’s table as Ingram read the charges against him, The Times-News reported. After Ingram noted that second-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, Aragon said “Oh my God” as he banged his head on the table one final time.
JoLeta Jenks and Robert Aragon are not married. While she said she doesn’t understand the decision Aragon is accused of making in letting the children walk to her house, Jenks added:
“I don’t need to sit and yell. I know he’s going through hell right now.”
Roland “Jack” Auslander, 69, buried his 100-year-old mother, Herta Auslander, not in a cemetery, nor did he have her cremated; Roland buried his dead mother in a freezer chest at her home in Cooks Fall, N.Y.There she remained for more than a year before being discovered by the New York State police. An autopsy revealed that the woman died of natural causes – cardiac disease – so foul play is not suspected in her death.
However in the meantime, for more than a year Roland was happily cashing her social security checks. The police, naturally, would like to have a chat with Roland – but he has disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since his mother’s body was discovered months ago.
Roland is also no stranger to trouble, he has been locked up several times in Sullivan County Jail and in the Woodbourne Correctional Facility on drug charges. Court records show he was convicted of buying more than 3 ounces of cocaine in Livingston Manor in 1987. He was imprisoned on drug charges again in 1999 and was released in 2003.
“He will eventually appear and we’ll ask him what Mom was doing in the freezer,” said Les Hyman, a senior investigator with the state police in Binghamton.
When Roland surfaceshe will likely be facing criminal charges of fraud and forgery related to cashing his dead mother’s social security checks. He will probably not face any charges for stuffing his mother in the freezer, which would at best be a violation of the public health law.
According to his attorney, Gerald Orseck, Roland has already paid back the roughly $20,000 that he accumulated from his mom’s Social Security checks. Orseck said he has no clue where Roland is hiding.
This is not the first time Roland has disappeared. When he was out on bail, about 10 years ago, on a cocaine charge, he skipped the court date for his sentencing. He wasn’t found until more than a year later, on a farm in Essex County, in Northeastern New York, where he was dressed like an Amish person.
“He was pretending that he was Amish, laying low, working on a farm,” Sullivan County District Attorney Steve Lungen recalls.
Has Roland gone Amish again? The police would certainly like to know: Where is Roland Jack Auslander now??
Working on the principle that thicker lenses are more powerful than thin ones, Prof Silver’s spectacles can be adjusted by injecting tiny quantities of fluid. The tough plastic glasses have thin sacs of liquid in the center of each lens. They come with small syringes attached to each arm with a dial for the wearer to add or remove fluid from the lens. Once the lenses have been adjusted, the syringes are removed and the spectacles worn just like a prescription pair.
This invention will enable millions of people who do not have access to eye care professionals to have eyeglasses for the first time. They will work for both far-sighted and near-sighted people. A trial project, supported by his company, Adaptive Eyecare, and the Department for International Development, has already seen thousands of pairs distributed in Third World countries. Prof. Silver has now set his sights on India. He plans to distribute more than one million pairs a year in that country, with the eventual goal of reaching one billion people, worldwide, by the year 2020. See a short video presentation of his invention here.
Hear a presentation sponsored by The Conversations Network of Prof Joshua Silver as he describes how he developed his liquid-filled corrective lenses and his plans for the future. Click the arrow below.
An unidentified 28-year-old woman was brutally raped and beaten for 45 mins by a gang of 4 men. She was then thrown out of her own car and left naked on the street. During the attack the men told her she was targeted because she was a lesbian. Authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests and prosecution in the case.
“I’ve lost sleep over this. I am sickened,” said police Chief Chris Magnus. “While every sexual assault is a terrible crime, this particular case is especially horrific because multiple individuals acted together in the commission of this assault, and because of the hate-crime aspect.”
The victim, who police describe as openly gay, parked her car on the 1500 block of Visalia Avenue, Richmond, Ca., at about 9:30pm. While walking away from the car she was approached by four men on foot. “One of the suspects struck the victim with a (blunt) object,” Lt. Mark Gagan said. “There was very little interaction between the victim and the suspects. From that point, the physical assault turned into a sexual assault.”
“She was beaten, she was robbed and she was sexually assaulted,” Gagan said. A few minutes into the sexual assault, one of the men told the group that someone was approaching and they forced the victim into her car. They took her to a desolate area near the Bay Area Rapid Transit tracks, about seven blocks away, to the 1300 block of Burbeck Avenue where they continued to rape her, both inside and outside the vehicle.
During the attack, which lasted for about 45 minutes, the suspects made several statements about the victim’s sexual orientation. She also had a rainbow sticker on her license plate that identified her as being supportive of the gay community. After the attack, the suspects fled in the victim’s car, leaving her there naked in the street, Gagan said.
After the men left she was able to get help from a nearby resident, who called for the police and an ambulance. She was treated for her injuries at a hospital and released.
Although the four men participated in the attack to varying degrees, they are all being sought on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, carjacking, kidnapping and rape in concert with an enhancement for committing a hate crime.
“It’s rare to find four adults willing to condone behavior this extreme and violent. It’s clear that some of them behaved as followers, but all of them are responsible for what happened,” Gagan said. “They should know that their best chance (for leniency) would be to turn themselves in and cooperate with our investigation before we identify them and apprehend them on our own.”
The police have descriptions of the four suspects:
The first suspect, the leader of the group, was described as a Hispanic man in his 30s. He was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed 180 pounds and had black hair, brown eyes and a mustache.
The second suspect was a black man in his early 20s. He was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 170 pounds and had black hair and brown eyes. He goes by the nickname “Blue.”
The third suspect was described as a Hispanic man about 18 to 20 years old. He goes by the nickname “Pato.”
The fourth suspect was described only as a Hispanic man about 18 to 20 years old.
“The Richmond Police Department is pleading for the community to come forward and help us find the people responsible for committing this vicious crime,” Gagan said. “We are hoping that residents know who these people are. People need to pick up the phone.”
Anyone with information about any of the suspects is asked to call Detective Ysenia Rogers at (510) 672-1717.
There is no nice way to say this. The life of an innocent little 2-year-old girl, Caylee Marie Anthony, was extinguished and her body dumped in the woods near her grand-parents house. Her mother, Casey Anthony, sits in jail, accused of killing her baby daughter even though the girl’s body had not yet been found. Read more about the case here.
In a press conference Dr. Jan Garavaglia, the Orange County medical examiner confirmed that the skeletal remains of a young child found in the woods on December 11, is that of Caylee Anthony. The remains were confirmed to be Caylee’s through a DNA match. The cause of death was determined to be homicide but the medical examiner could not say exactly how.
Roy Kronk, the meter reader who found the remains and called the department four months ago, directing them to the site three times, came forward. He read from a prepared statement, telling reporters that
“Back in August of this year, I previously reported to Crimeline and to the sheriff’s communications center that I had spotted something suspicious, a bag in the same area. I have been and will continue to cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation by the sheriff’s office and the FBI,” Kronk said.
At a news conference,Capt. Angelo Nieves, a Sheriff’s Department commander, said investigators were looking into whether Kronk’s tips, called in August 11, 12 and 13, were properly followed up. In one of those phone calls, Kronk reported seeing a gray bag on the side of the road, Nieves said. On August 13, a deputy responded to the site and did a “cursory search” but found nothing, Nieves said. He said the department was investigating the “thoroughness” of the deputy’s response but would not identify the deputy. Nieves also said that searchers combing the site after the skull’s discovery had found “significant skeletal remains” consistent with those of a small child on the outer perimeter of the search area.
Kronk is not the only one, or the first, to have pointed police toward the site containing the remains. KioMarie Cruz, Casey Anthony’s childhood friend, also told police to investigate the same wooded area near Hidden Oaks Elementary School a month before the meter reader.
Cruz said that she and Anthony “pretty much used to hang out there most of our time,” would “snack on food for hours” and went there to “get away from our parents.”
The Sheriff’s Department followed up on that tip, but the wooded area was covered in floodwaters, preventing a search. Nieves said the water may have been present at the time of the meter reader’s tips as well.
Caylee Marie Anthony died a horrible death but at least there is some closure in knowing that her body has been found. What follows next is the trial of Casey Anthony for the murder of her daughter. Will justice be served??
The night of August 22, 2006 would change the life of Dymond Milburn, 12, and her family forever. Before the night was over Dymond, an honor student attending advanced classes at Austin Middle School, would be falsely accused of being a prostitute and assaulted by 4 undercover Galveston police officers – while hanging unto a tree limb, yelling “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” - requiring that she be hospitalized. According to the lawsuit:
The examining physician found that Dymond suffered injuries from multiple blows to the head, face, neck, lower back, left shoulder, and left hip/waist area. She suffered a contusion to the back of the head (where she was struck with a flashlight). There were abrasions on her arm and wrist. Her throat was swollen; she had difficulty swallowing, nausea and vomiting, and hoarseness of voice due to being struck in the throat. She had black eyes, scalp lacerations, tenderness of the vertebrae. She was experiencing double vision and loss of hearing. Dymond’s ear drum and nose were also injured (blood in ear, bruised nasal septum, and nose bleed).
This 12-year-old black girl, not yet a teenager, was mistaken for a prostitute because, according to the police, she was dressed in “tight shorts”. The police were investigating a report of 3 white prostitutes and a drug dealer who were supposed to be located two blocks away from where they encountered Dymond, who was in front of her parents house.
Still not content to leave the family alone, three weeks after this unfortunate event, the police showed up at Dymond’s school to arrest her, in front of the entire class, for assaulting a public servant! They claim that she was arrested because she fought back against the plain-clothed police officers who were trying to arrest her in front of her own home. It didn’t matter that she was innocent and they, the police officers, were at the wrong address.
It all began around 8pm when the breaker went out at the Milburn home. Dymond’s mother, Emily, asked her daughter to go outside and turn the switch back on. Emily was busy preparing her kids for school the next day. So Dymond went outside to find the breaker. As she was heading towards the switch, a blue van pulled up to her and 4 undercover police officers jumped out.
Without identifying themselves as police officers one of them grabbed Dymond saying: “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.” Dymond did not go quietly. She grabbed a tree and started sceaming “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” so loudly that she could be heard by the neighbors. The police reacted by covering her mouth and beating her about the head and throat. The officers involved were: Sergeant Gilbert Gomez, Officers David Roark, Justin Popovich and Sean Stewart.
Wilfred Milburn, Dymond’s father, was on the balcony when he heard his daughter’s cries for help and came outside. Emily Milburn also heard the cries and ran outside. When they arrived outside, Dymond was hysterical and holding on to the tree with one arm; two officers were striking Dymond in the head, face and throat. At no time did the supervising officer (Gomez) on the scene intervene and stop the illegal seizure and assault. Officer Roark hit Dymond in the back of head with a flashlight, hit her neck, throat, slapped her across the face, and told her to get off the tree.
Wilfred Milburn told the officer “that’s our daughter. She’s twelve.” The officer responded, “I don’t care if she’s twenty-two, thirty-two, or forty-six. Tell her to calm down.”
As a result of the Officers’ assault, Dymond suffered from pain in the back of the head, lower back pain, a sprained wrist with abrasions, and throat, neck and face pain. Her parents took her to the University of Texas Medical Branch for treatment. They arrived at the emergency room at 9:24 p.m. on August 22, 2006. Dymond was treated for head injuries and multiple contusions.
On Friday, September 15, 2006, at 10:00 a.m., twelve (12) year old Dymond Milburn was arrested for assaulting a public servant. The arrest took place while Dymond was at school.
This incident so traumatized Dymond that she had to seek professional help.
Since the incident, Dymond has had regular nightmares in which police officers are raping her, beating her, and cutting off her fingers. Her fear prevented her from participating in normal activities (going outside to play) which she no longer considered safe. Dymond sought psychological treatment, and on October 31, 2006, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the incident which is the subject of this lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, Dymond claims that she has also experienced: Loss of appetite, loss of normal functioning, and negative effect on school grades due to trouble concentrating in class, all associated with the beating suffered at the hands of the law enforcement officers.
The police version of the storyis, of course, not quite the same.Thefollowing is a statement from the lawyer for the officers, William Helfand:
Both the daughter and the father were arrested for assaulting a peace officer. “The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off.”
Also, “The city has investigated the matter and found that the conduct of the police officers was appropriate under the circumstances,” Helfand says. “It’s unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest.”
The charge of assaulting a public servant, brought against Dymond Milburn, was taken to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day. A new trial is set for February.
“I think we’ll be okay,” says Anthony Griffin, Dymond’s defense lawyer. “I don’t think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who’s just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she’s a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She’s scared to death.”
Griffin says he expects to enter mediation with the officers in early 2009 to resolve the lawsuit.
There are laws against naming your children (or changing your own name) to something inappropriate. Such names referring to: obscenities, “fighting words”, racial slurs, bodily functions etc. would be rejected. Nevertheless some parents choose names that are unusual and sometimes a little silly for their kids. Some examples are: Apple Martin, Peerless Price and Poppy Petal. Although there is nothing wrong with any of these names, it may cause the kids some embarrassment or even ridicule from their peers.
However it takes a special kind of parent to name their kids after notorious figures in history. The Campbells are one such couple.They have three young kids:
Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, a girl named for Nazi head Heinrich Himmler, turns 1 in April
Joycelynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in February.
Adolf Hitler Campbell who just turned 3
Heath and Deborah Campbell believe that the holocaust never really happened. They have swastikas in each room of their home. In the foyer were boots worn by a Nazi solider named Daniel. They lay next to a skull with a swastika on its forehead. The living room is decorated with war books, German combat knives and, of course, swastikas. There are swastikas on walls, on jackets, on the freezer and on a pillow.
The Campbell home is kept neat aside from scattered toys and other evidence three children live there. It’s small, but it’s what the Campbells can afford. They live in a rented half of a one-story duplex just outside Milford, a borough in Hunterdon County. They say they aren’t racists but believe races shouldn’t mix.
Disabilities, the couple says, have left both out of work: Heath Campbell can’t landscape or pump gas because he has emphysema, and Deborah can’t waitress because she has a bad back. They live on Social Security payments.
The Campbells ran into a problem when they tried to order a cake from their local ShopRite supermarket for their 3-year-old son’s birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, said she phoned in her order last week to the ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son’s name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request. That’s right the store refused to decorate a cake wishing Adolf Hitler Campbell a happy birthday!
“ShopRite can’t even make a cake for a 3-year-old,” said Deborah Campbell, 25, who is Heath’s wife of three years and the mother of the children. “That’s sad.”
Karen Meleta, a spokeswoman for the ShopRite located in Greenwich Township, said the grocer tries to meet customer requests but rejects those deemed inappropriate. She said the Campbells had similar requests denied at the same store the last two years and said Heath Campbell previously had asked for a swastika to be included in the decoration. The store has also refused to make a cake bearing the name of Campbell’s daughter, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in February.
“We believe the request to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” she said.
The grocer offered to make a cake with enough room for the Campbells to write their own inscription. But the Campbells refused, saying they would have a cake made at the Wal-Mart in Lower Nazareth Township. The Campbells say Wal-Mart made cakes for Adolf’s first two birthdays.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the store won’t put anything illegal or profane on a cake but thinks it’s important to respect the views of customers and employees.
“Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability,” Anna Taylor, the spokeswoman, said from Bentonville, Ark.
Heath Campbell,35, said some people like the names but others are shocked to hear them. “They say, ‘He (Hitler) killed all those people.’ I say, ‘You’re living in the wrong decade. That Hitler’s gone,’” he said.
“They’re just names, you know,” he said. “Yeah, they (Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They’re not going to grow up like that. Other kids get their cake. I get a hard time,” he said. “It’s not fair to my children. How can a name be offensive?” he asked.
Barry Morrison, a director at the Philadelphia office of the Anti-Defamation League, which works to stop anti-Semitism and bigotry, said the organization had never heard of children named for Hitler, Himmler or Aryan nations. He found the names offensive and commended ShopRite’s decision.
The Campbells, Morrison said, “might as well put a sign around their (the children’s) neck that says bigot, racist, hatemonger. What’s the difference? Why not call the kid Peace or Tranquility or Hope or Acceptance?
“It’s doing them (the children) a tremendous disservice, and it’s cruel that parents would place these names on children,” he said. “It’s a mark upon them. It sets them apart for ridicule, derision, attacks.
Robert M. Gordon, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, said the names would hurt the children. “Certainly society is going to be hostile towards those kids, especially when they go to school,” Gordon said. More than that, he said, the children would be harmed by their parents’ views.
“By the time they get to school, they will already have been damaged,” Gordon said. “Any parent that would impose such horrific names on their children is mentally ill, and they would be affecting their children from the day they were born. Only a crazy person would do that.”
Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because “no one else in the world would have that name.” He sounded surprised by all the controversy the dispute had generated. He said his ancestors are German and that he has lived his entire life in Hunterdon County. He said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.
“Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That’s fine, I don’t really care,” he said. “That’s his choice.”
Is it possible that the bodies of 32 students were buried decades ago in shallow graves on the grounds of a former reform school for boys? Four former students of the school once known as the Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianacertainly think so. They call themselves the White House Boys. They took their name from the single story concrete building at the school where they claim beatings, tortures, sexual abuse and murders were carried out by guards.
Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida has ordered an investigation into the allegations by the White House Boys. In a letter Crist asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the graves and determine whether any crimes were committed.
“Questions remain unanswered as to the identity of the deceased and the origin of these graves,” Crist wrote in his letter to the FDLE.
“The main goal is to determine the location of the graves, who owned the property at the time, and determine if any crimes were committed,” FDLE spokesman Kristin Perezluha told CNN.
The White House Boys – Roger Kiser, Michael McCarthy, Bryant Middleton and Dick Colon -who are all now in their 60′s, found each other on the Internet, after Kiser started a Web site. They began to talk about experiences at the reform school and eventually decided to go public, and call for an investigation.
What could get a boy sent to the White House? Talking to a black inmate, saying the wrong thing, or having the wrong facial expression at the wrong time could get one sent to the White House building, which contained two rooms where the beatings and abuses took place. One room was for black inmates, the other for whites.
Roger Kiser, in the video below, relates his own experience at the hands of guards in the White House:
Reached at his home in the Florida panhandle, Middleton, 64, was told by a CNN producer that the governor ordered the probe.
“My god! That’s remarkable. My god! That’s all I ever wanted,” he said. “That will begin a lot of the healing for those that survived that school.”
“Some of us will never get over the brutality, the sexual assaults and the fear. But this is a major step in the right direction,” he said.
Middleton told CNN he was “an incorrigible youth of 14 or 15″ when he was sent to the reform school for breaking and entering. During a 30-minute phone interview, he recounted story after horrific story about his time there.
Middleton said he took six trips to the concrete White House, where he endured brutal beatings. He says boys were regularly struck with a metal-reinforced double strap with a long wooden handle.
“You could hear it coming through the air and when it hit your body, the pain was unbelievable,” he recalled. “They just beat you to the point of unconsciousness, or you could no longer understand what was happening to you.”
He recalled another occasion in which he and another boy decided to get drunk. They mixed orange juice with rubbing alcohol. It make Middleton sick and his friend intoxicated. A guard confronted the other boy, and began to treat him roughly, Middleton said.
“He dragged him to the administration building and I never saw him again. He never came back to work or to the cottage,” Middleton told CNN. “He literally disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Dick Colon, 65, is a successful electrical contractor in Baltimore, Maryland. But in the 1950s, he acknowledged, he was a wayward youth who gritted his teeth through 11 beatings inside the White House.
Colon said he remembers entering the laundry one day, and his life, he said, has never been the same. Inside a large tumble dryer, was a black teen. The White House boys, who are all white, told CNN that black kids at the school were beaten even more savagely than white kids.
“I said to myself, ‘What’s going to happen to me, if I take him out?’ ” he told CNN. He recalled being about 15 feet away from the boy in the dryer. He thought about helping him, but was afraid.
“I said to myself, I can’t do it, cause I’m gonna be the next one in the God-d– dryer if I take him out,” he said. “I turned my back and walked out and it torments me every day of my life.”
Colon established an educational trust fund at the same campus, for high academic achievers, today operated by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice
The following is an excerpt from a narrative written by Michael McCarthy. It describes the beating he received when he was caught after having run away from the “Florida School for Boys“. Read the entire story here.
Pointing to the army cot, the director gave the instructions:
“All right now, son, it’ll go easier on you if you do as I tell you. You’re to lay down on the cot on your belly; turn your face to the wall. If I were you, I’d stuff the corner of that pillow in your mouth. Once we begin, don’t turn your head. Don’t cry out or scream if you do, we start all over again. Place both hands on the cot frame and keep hold of it. Do not try to get up or try to stop us. If you do, we’ll send for some kitchen boys to hold you down. I’d try to stay as relaxed as you can; you’re less likely to be hurt.
Now get this straight in your head. Every boy is told about running away. You knew the punishment; you’ve seen boys brought back to your cottage from here. You knew what to expect when you were caught. So you asked for this…… You best do as I said and stick the corner of that pillow in your mouth.”
Mike caught the pillow corner in his mouth, turned his head flat on its side, shut his eyes, and waited. Seconds, minutes of clenched waiting. His body trembled. Sweat ran under his arms; sweat ran down the crack of his ass, the white-cotton shorts turning damp, clinging to the skin of his buttocks. He lay there in the silence, waiting for it to begin.
The Paddle. Two strips of quarter-inch polished leather, two feet long, over two inches wide, separated by a sixteenth-inch piece of taut, pliant sheet metal. Attached to a four-inch round hand grip, the leather was perforated on either side midway down, with one-eighth-inch holes, ending in a half-inch long taper. The effect brought the whipping weapon down in a cracking slap that drove through the thinness of the cotton shorts, into the upper tissues of the skin. Halfway through the beating, the holes were filled with blood-covered flesh.
The first stroke exploded. The sound like the booming Ka-Pow of a shotgun slammed into his ears as the impact of the blow penetrated into the tissues of his ass. The second stroke was higher, cutting just across the top elastic of his shorts. Crack-Pow. The boom echoed louder off the barren walls; the shock of pain cracked into his lower back. He was driven deeper into the mattress. The mattress and springs pushed his body up to meet the third stroke: Crack-Pow. The skin on the back of his thighs was ripped upward with the stroke’s completing.
Somewhere between the twenty-third and twenty-sixth, he succumbed to deep guttural moaning, biting the pillow deeply so it was tight against his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He knew nothing would ease the pain as the Director, in his practiced, methodical manner, alternated the strokes first to the middle buttocks, then to the back of the legs, then to the small of the back, then hit just one cheek, the tapered end snatching and tearing at the inside of the crevice.
At the thirty-first stroke, the boy went into a state of semi-shock. The blows passed into his body, sending a numbing wave into his groin, on into the mattress, pushing him deep into the springs. At the thirty-sixth stroke the boy lost track of numbers. Then, without apparent reason, after ten or twelve more, it ended.
For the first time since the beginning, the Director spoke: “All right now, get up.” The boy tried, but nothing moved. “I said, get on up.” The boy again tried to move his legs, to turn, but nothing worked. “If you don’t get up off that cot like I told you, we’re going to start all over again. Now get up.”
Pulling against the bed frame, Mike moved his body from the cot. Pushing, he turned toward the Director who was already looking out the door to the Colored Boys’ Room where Woody was waiting; the long strap hung hot and ready in his hand. An image of a hard-hewn woodcutter awaiting the next load of logs filled the boy’s mind. Crying, he finally managed to sit upright on the sagging cot……
The school is now known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. The graves under investigation are located at the end of a dirt road in the back of the school. Each of the more than 30 graves has a white metal cross without any name, date or identifying marks. The White House Boys believe that some of those graves contain the bodies of former students of the school who were beaten to death and buried there.
“We haven’t been able to find any information on those graves, we don’t know what those graves hold,” he said. “I’d like to know what those graves are myself.”
There are lingering questions no one seems able to answer: Why was there no outcry from the parents of boys who disappeared? Why did no one look for them?
Colon and Middleton say they’re valid questions. They firmly believe that bodies will be found and that they will be the bodies of both black and white boys.
“I believe, in my own heart, that there has been a coverup,” Middleton said.
Added Colon, “White, African-American, they’re all there … I believe they will find crushed skulls, and broken bones — and hopefully, one day, the murderers.”
Scott Wagar, 50, of Willmar, Minn. had endured 8 years of having his home toilet-papered and egged by neighborhood teens at homecoming…..so he devised a plan. Little did he know that his plan would land him in trouble with the law.
According to police, on Sept. 16, Wagar used night vision goggles and saw 15-20 people running toward his place. He told them to leave and sprayed them with the fox urine. He also struggled with one teen who he says grabbed him from behind.
Of course this kind of vigilante action attracted the attention of the local police. Scott was arrested. He pleaded not guilty in Kandiyohi County District Court to misdemeanor assault and other charges. He was released on personal recognizance (no bail).
An indignant Scott in an interview with the Associated Press claims he is innocent and had every right to defend his own property. He says groups of teens have been toilet-papering and egging his house during homecoming for about eight years, and each year it gets more destructive. He says he sprayed the kids with a mixture of one-third fox urine and two-thirds water because“it stinks, but it doesn’t hurt anything.”
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