Or, how it appears that the DEA might now be getting a little help from Blackwater.

[Read more →]

That guy who shot up the Unitarian church in Tennessee yesterday during a kids’ performance, killing two? Sounds like a talk radio fan:
The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, […]

[Read more →]

Apropos to the discussion of former state Rep. Tom Armstrong’s halfway house for sex offenders, and the hullaballoo which followed it from Conestoga to Marietta.
Florida, like Pennsylvania, has laws about where sex offenders can live. Local communities passed their own laws:
Florida, like many states, barred offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds, […]

[Read more →]

Been following the discussion on security cameras in Lancaster, something on which I’m ambivalent; Citydweller puts forth a decent case here, and I’ve actually had this argument with some others. But the way I see it, what does a security camera mounted on a telephone pole see that a uniformed officer walking the beat or […]

[Read more →]

Remember that Missouri mom who created the fake MySpace page in order to spy on, and then belittle, a 13-year-old neighbor girl who then killed herself?
The mom’s been indicted:
Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict […]

[Read more →]

I’m not quite sure how I missed this the first time ’round, but it just came up here in the office that, in its attempt to better inform students and other members of the “campus community” and beyond about emergency situations, Millersville University will be installing sirens.
Sirens?
“The sirens are just more ways to communicate to […]

[Read more →]

Here’s what I don’t understand about the Stephen Spiese case, the grotesque contradiction at the heart of it all:
Lots of people come forward to defend Spiese at his sentencing, noting too that he has worked extensively with children, whose lives he has enriched. And I don’t doubt that he has done just that.
But one particular […]

[Read more →]

And so we see another young male going out in a blaze of glory, taking eight others with him.
It’s always young men. It’s always those nursing a grievance against society - Fate/God has been cruel to me, now I will have my revenge upon faith/upon God. I shall inflict injustice upon the world, as it […]

[Read more →]

What is this - Ocean’s 32?

[Read more →]

I caught Ray Schoenke in the car on his way home from Lancaster, where he’d presented Mayor Rick Gray with a check for $1,000 from his fledgling organization to help fight gun crime in Lancaster.
Which, while nice, might not seem too significant. Until you consider that Schoenke heads a gun group called the American Hunters […]

[Read more →]

Suburban Philly kids trash house, get a “sweet deal” from the judge, aren’t even on the hook for the $18,000 in damages they caused - and the victim feels like she’s the one being published:
Imagine having your house ravaged by hard-drinking teenagers who doused your clothes with urine, pooped on your piano, and played catch with […]

[Read more →]

Just wrapped up a three-minute phone interview for Fox News (!) on the Haines murder. National attention continues to focus on this - the CrimeBlog thread, if anything, has heated up since the arrest was announced; indeed, I’d link, but CrimeBlog seems to be down, “has exceeded its CPU quota” - which also happened Saturday night, […]

[Read more →]

We’d heard that Alec Kreider was going to be arrested about 5 p.m. Saturday. But we were asked to hold off on interviewing neighbors until the actual arrest happened - some of them, we were told, were assisting with the case, providing the cops with information, and there was concern that if we swooped in […]

[Read more →]

Another shooting in Lancaster, this time outside the Blue Star. This, on the heels of this story I wrote for our newspaper this weekend, pointing out that violence is up in both the city and the county. But of course, we’re comparing apples and oranges.
The violence in the county, in one way, is scarier. Because […]

[Read more →]

Thinking aloud on this one. Or writing aloud, whatever.
My office is right in the middle of downtown Lancaster, and on Tuesdays and Fridays I’m over at market - Meck’s, mostly - and down to the bank or the drugstore or even the pawn shop at the end of the block down by Prince Street, looking […]

[Read more →]

This isn’t exactly the kind of thing that fills you with confidence, is it?

Caption: State police Sgt. Greg Riek leads a team of state police cadets down Peach Lane this morning, before beginning a final search of the grounds around the Haines’ home and their neighbors’ yards in Manheim Township.
(Richard Hertzler, New Era)

[Read more →]

Spoke with Steve Huff from CrimeBlog last weekend for the story on the continued spat between the DA and the coroner. Interesting guy; has been following these kind of crimes for quite a while, and when you do that you develop a certain perspective, perhaps a certain type of expertise.
I won’t reprint his hunches here, […]

[Read more →]

This one’s a different sort of call. You  might have seen the story of the Liberty University student, Mark David Uhl, who was arrested the day of Jerry Falwell’s funeral with several homemade bombs - “sort of like napalm,” said a sheriff, in five soda-sized cans. Authorities aren’t quite sure what Uhl planned to do […]

[Read more →]

As mentioned previously, CrimeBlog is all over this case, and some interesting if very, very speculative new stuff today. Take all of it with several shakers of salt:
Tips from readers and an online investigation have revealed that Kevin Haines had one male friend who had some troubling traits, and that friend may be among the […]

[Read more →]

Blossom Hill Saturday felt strange, foreboding. I spent considerable time there as a teenager - I mostly grew up in Manheim Township, the guy who played drums in my band in high school (coincidentally, the guy who again is playing drums in my current band) lived in Blossom Hill and still does.
It was always a confusing neighborhood […]

[Read more →]