Providentia

A Tale of Two Killings

"TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN WASHINGTON!  P. BARTON KEY, U.S. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KILLED BY HON.  DAN'L SICKLES of NEW YORK"

News of the murder of U.S. District Attorney Philip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key of Star Spangled Banner fame) on February 21, 1859, would have been electrifying enough by itself.   That Key had been killed by New York Congressman Daniel E. Sickles, a prominent politician and lawyer who believed that Key had been romantically involved with his young wife ensured the full attention of Washington society.   

Daniel Sickles was certainly no stranger to scandal.    Having been first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1847 (with the help of the notorious Tammany Hall political machine to which he belonged), his marriage to Teresa Bagioli in 1852 helped alienate his family and hers as well (he was thirty-three while she was only fifteen at the time).   Whatever misgivings people had about the age difference didn't prevent Sickles from holding a diplomatic post in London before returning to the U.S. and winning his first seat in Congress in 1857.   Despite his successful marriage to Teresa, Sickles also had a long association with notorious New York courtesan Fanny White and had even taken her with him to London while the pregnant Teresa was left at home.   

Whether it was being neglected by her husband or the humiliation of the very public affair he had been having with Fanny, Teresa's affair with the handsome and charismatic Philip Key was the apparent trigger that led to murder.  According to the lurid news coverage that I was able to track down, Sickles had heard rumors of the affair and confronted his wife, who "sighed as acknowledgment of her guilt."  Though he ordered Key to leave his wife alone, Sickles decided that threats alone wouldn't be enough.  Later seeing Key near Lafayette Square, across from the White House, Sickles left his nearby house to confront him.  After accusing Key of "having dishonored him and destroyed his domestic peace," Sickles then shot him twice.  One bullet was lodged near Key's right side, while the other bullet was lodged in his right side near the femoral artery.  Falling to the ground, Key begged Sickles not to kill him, but Sickles fired a third time, and Key died at the scene.  

Though there is no plaque to mark the site of the shooting, it’s hard not to appreciate just how public the killing was.   Having visited Lafayette Square once or twice, I can certainly picture the crowds who must have seen the murder.   Whatever was going through Sickles’ mind at the time, the prospect of getting caught didn’t seem to have dissuaded him in any way.

After the shooting, Sickles went to the nearby home of his friend, Attorney General Jeremiah Black.   Black urged Sickles to turn himself over to the police, which he promptly did.  In the meantime, Key's body was taken to the nearby National Club house where an inquest had little trouble determining that Sickles had been responsible for his death.   There were numerous witnesses, after all.  

Though Sickles was taken to jail and charged with murder, he was still visited in prison by some of the most prominent members of Washington society.  Then-President James Buchanan even sent a note of support which likely explains the special treatment Sickles received in jail.  He was even allowed to keep his gun and use the warden’s office to meet his prominent visitors privately.  Despite the favorable treatment, Sickles knew well that he would stand trial soon.

As one newspaper story I found pointed out, "the high position of the parties in this tragedy has caused the most unusual excitement."   Despite facing a possible death penalty, Sickles attracted a lot of sympathy (even though his infidelities were well-known).   Newspapers also related all the details of Sickles' visits from various family members describing his young wife's emotional torment over the role she played in the whole scandal. 

Looking over the newspaper coverage of the case, I couldn't help but be struck by the almost total support Sickles received from Washington society.   At the same time, there was virtually no sympathy for Teresa Sickles or Philip Key (which likely distressed both their families).  That Teresa likely had to endure far worse from her husband's affairs was dismissed as irrelevant.   If she was mentioned at all, it was for being a remorseful adulteress who drove her husband to murder.  

Sickles immediately began putting together a "dream team" of prominent attorneys to defend his case.  The team included Edward M. Stanton (later Secretary of War), fellow New Yorker James T. Brady  (both Brady and Sickles were Tammany Hall cronies), and Brady's partner, James Graham.   Under their legal guidance, Sickles agreed to plead temporary insanity (the first time this had ever been attempted in a U.S. trial).  

The real defense would be the "unwritten law" allowing a man to murder to avenge the sexual "dishonor" of a wife, daughter, or sister.   Beginning around 1840 (likely sooner), men who went on trial for cases very similar to Sickles' were typically acquitted because of the "unwritten law."   It was an often-slippery defense to try using in a courtroom, though.   Given the eminence of Sickles' victim and the murder that occurred near the White House, pleading temporary insanity likely seemed safer to his lawyers. 

The trial began on April 4 in a stuffy Washington courtroom with Robert Ould and J. M. Carlisle acting as prosecutors.   And it was quite a trial.   Edward M. Stanton and James T. Brady both gave stirring arguments on behalf of their client.  The fact that Stanton was a personal friend of the defendant helped add to the courtroom drama.    The "unwritten law" was central to their defense and their claim that Sickles was too mentally disturbed to be held accountable for his actions.   

Though the prosecutors attempted to bring up Sickles' infidelity to show that he wasn't too emotionally invested in his marriage, the judge excluded that line of testimony.   The prosecution then shifted to discussing the cold-bloodedness of his attack on Key and downplayed any supposed provocation.

The trial lasted for twenty-two days with numerous melodramatic scenes, highlighting the domestic drama of the case.   Members of the audience often cheered at something Brady or Stanton said despite stern warnings from the judge.    Stanton was particularly effective as he weighed in on the "sanctity of the marriage vows" and the husband's right to defend his home.   One commentator later said Stanton's performance was "a typical piece of Victorian rhetoric, an ingenious thesaurus of aphorisms on the sanctity of the family."   Newspaper editorials across the country weighed in on the case, and full details of Teresa's candid confession were leaked to the press (likely by Sickles' attorneys).  

Popular magazines such as Harper's Weekly ran pictures of Sickles in prison, often showing him in prayer or weighed down by the stress of the case and the horrors of being in prison (despite being far better treated than the average prisoner).   Many editorials even suggested that Sickles was a hero for "saving all the ladies of Washington from this rogue named Key."  There seemed little doubt that he would eventually be acquitted.

Not surprisingly, the defense worked.   After deliberating for only seventy minutes, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty, and the crowd went wild.   To prevent a mad rush to congratulate his client, Stanton asked the judge to release Sickles from custody which was immediately granted.  As one eyewitness reported, "Mr. Stanton, unable to repress the emotions of his big heart, . . . almost rivaled David when he danced before the ark of the Tabernacle."   Enthusiastic supporters serenaded Stanton, Brady, and Sickles that night at their homes.

After the acquittal, Daniel Sickles publicly forgave his wife for the affair (with no mention of his infidelity) and temporarily withdrew from public life.  If anything, the public seemed more outraged by Teresa than her husband, and she became a social pariah afterward.   Sickles never resigned from Congress, and his political career continued as strongly as ever.   It helped that he had the public support of then-President Buchanan (who was openly thrilled by the acquittal), not to mention the not-so-covert aid of the Tammany Hall political machine. 

Any political fallout from the acquittal was quickly overshadowed by the U.S. Civil War, which broke out soon afterward.  Daniel Sickles became a prominent figure in the Union Army and, ironically, his old courtroom adversary Robert Ould would become part of the Confederate Army.   Though he stayed in the army until the war's end, Sickles' military career ended after losing a leg in the Battle of Gettysburg.  Ever the showman, Sickles donated the fractured bones of his lost leg, complete with a miniature coffin, to the new Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., where they remain on display even today.  Eventually promoted to major general, Sickles moved on to a diplomatic career with postings to Colombia and Spain (and a rumored affair with the deposed Spanish queen).    After Teresa died in 1867, he remarried and had two more children with his second wife.  

Daniel Sickles died in New York City in 1914 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Though he is mainly remembered for his military and political career, the role he played in establishing temporary insanity and "the unwritten law" as legal defenses for murder can't be underestimated.   Both defenses would play a role in numerous murder cases as husbands would use the defense to escape punishment.  Never mind that many of these outraged husbands were often guilty of infidelity themselves, the "unwritten law" made murder perfectly legal so long as it was for the "right" reasons.  

But it only applied to men.   Any woman murdering under similar circumstances would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.   This became abundantly clear in the case of Kate Southern, a Georgia housewife charged with murdering a rival for her husband's affections in early 1878. 

According to the lurid news coverage,  Kate had married her husband, Bob Southern, despite the active opposition of Narcissa Fowler (frequently described in the newspaper coverage as a "woman of notoriously lewd character"), who had been sexually intimate with Bob before, and after,  his marriage.  Though Kate knew about the affair and had been "unsettled and annoyed by the knowledge," she seemed determined to keep Bob and Narcissa as far apart as possible.    On the other hand, Narcissa actively tried undermining Kate's marriage, including starting scandalous rumors about her and saying that "they would have no peace or satisfaction as long as (Narcissa) lived."  

A few months after Kate and Bob were married, Narcissa confronted Kate at a party where, under the influence of the whiskey she had been drinking, she began insulting Kate using what one witness later described as "epithets too vulgar and obscene to be written or spoken."   After finally provoking Kate into a fistfight, Kate's sister, Amorelli Hambrick, got involved.   Though Narcissa likely had no idea that Kate was armed with a knife, she learned this quickly enough when Kate stabbed her repeatedly. 

The newspaper coverage fails to mention whether Narcissa died at the scene or later, but Kate promptly fled.   Joined by her husband and other family members, she became a fugitive until a posse eventually tracked them down.   After being returned to Pickens County where the stabbing occurred, Kate Southern was charged with murder.  Her sister was also charged as an accomplice, while her husband was charged with helping her escape.

Kate's legal defense at her trial was far less spirited than what Daniel Sickles managed to arrange.  Many observers accused Kate's lawyers of mismanaging her defense, but their legal options were fairly limited.  There was no question of seeking any kind of defense based on the "unwritten law."   Though husbands could claim that a wife's infidelity was an attack on their "personal honor," wives were expected to endure the extramarital affairs of their husbands in silence.   Women could claim self-defense if they were being raped but killing an unfaithful husband or the other woman typically led to a criminal conviction.  Presumably, the courts didn't feel comfortable giving wives the same "license to kill" that husbands enjoyed.

And so it was with Kate Southern.  It probably didn't help that her defense attorneys failed to launch much of a defense on her behalf.   Many newspaper reporters commenting on the trial openly criticized the lawyers for not calling any witnesses on Kate's behalf or their failure to cross-examine many prosecution witnesses.    All they could come up with was a half-hearted insanity defense that failed to convince the jury.  Her conviction hardly came as a surprise to anyone though the penalty handed down by the judge certainly was.   Kate Southern was sentenced to death by hanging.

Almost immediately after news of the sentence got out, her attorneys mounted an appeal to Georgia's Governor to commute the sentence.   This included numerous depositions from Kate's family members (including her husband), which attempted to show that she was provoked into killing Narcissa.   It also helped that Kate had recently given birth, and descriptions of Kate in prison with her baby while she awaited her execution generated enormous sympathy.  Petitions with thousands of signatures (primarily from women) were sent pleading for clemency.

The campaign worked.   Kate's sentence was changed to ten years in prison to be spent in a Georgia prison camp.  Her sister, Amorelli, was sent to the same camp to serve her sentence.   Thousands of supporters later watched the train taking Kate to prison.  As one newspaper description I found reported, "at all the towns through which the train passed, the people (ministers, gamblers, women, and all classes) crowded to the depots to see and express their sympathy for her, and at Atlanta, where a large purse was collected for her benefit, the excitement was so great that the car windows were broken."    Her husband found work near the prison and was even granted conjugal visits (Kate had two more children during her time in prison).    After serving only three years of her sentence, she was granted a full pardon and allowed to return home.

Kate Southern largely faded into obscurity after she was released, but her case continued to generate controversy.  In the years that followed, more conservative newspaper editors accused Kate's supporters of allowing her gender to save her from execution and argued against granting clemency for women committing murder. 

And there would be no more clemency.  When Emma Simpson shot her estranged husband in 1919, believing that "the new unwritten law, which does not permit a married man to love another woman, will be my defense,"  even Clarence Darrow couldn't save her from being found "insane but guilty."  

While the number of cases claiming the "unwritten law" became less frequent by the 1920s, husbands committing murder  to defend their "personal honor"  still used the defense well into the 20th century.  In many U.S. states, the law allowing husbands to kill "interlopers" was formally enshrined into legal statutes (thus making it the "written law").  When and where the law could be used became a central sticking point for many judges who insisted that husbands could only kill in the "heat of passion."  If the husband allowed time for his anger to cool and to become more reasonable, then any homicide committed afterward became "deliberate revenge," and he could be prosecuted.

In Texas, for example, one statute held that "Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided the killing take place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance in or assent to the adulterous connection."    In other words, the couple had to be caught in flagrante delicto for the killing to be legal (it was eventually repealed in 1974).  Other states, including Georgia, New Mexico, and Utah, passed similar laws, almost all of which would be repealed by the end of the 1970s.

These days while husbands are no longer so free to kill to avenge "personal honor", the "temporary insanity" or "diminished capacity" defense is still around in one form or another.  Perhaps fittingly, these days, it is more likely to be used by women on trial for murdering their husbands due to domestic abuse (a.k.a. the "battered woman defense") than vice-versa.   Whatever the status of the "unwritten law" today, however, defense attorneys are still known to use it during murder trials simply because it might work.  There is often no telling what a sympathetic jury might decide to do in cases where they regard the husband (or wife) as being fully justified in murdering in the heat of passion.

And so, the legacy of Daniel Sickles and Kate Southern remains with us even today.

New True Crime Stories You Won't Believe Book Now Out

It's finally here.   True Crime Stories You Won't Believe:  Book Two follows up from the first book with a new collection of bizarre tales of crime and punishment.   They include:  

• The real story behind “Arsenic and Old Lace” and why the reality isn’t as lighthearted as Hollywood made it out to be.
• A case in which a dream helped solve a gruesome murder. Or did it?
• When a staunch Irish sea captain murdered almost his entire crew on the high seas and what happened afterward.
• Did a Ouija board drive an Alabama mother and daughter to commit murder?
• The story of Jane Toppan and what drove her to kill so many of her patients.
• The story of Blanche Monnier, whose family locked her away for decades to keep her from marrying the wrong man.
• Was the Devil responsible for the murder of Alan Bono?
• The true story of the Vampire of Le Muy and his bizarre need to steal corpses.
• The story of Bridget Cleary, whose husband killed her in the belief that she had been replaced by fairies.

And this is just a sampling of the stories you will find. Though you may well be acquainted with some of these stories, I try to be as complete as possible, including newspaper accounts and additional details from what other true crime writers have written about these cases.   

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The Carolina Kissing Case

It all began on November 1, 1958, in Monroe, North Carolina, when two boys, aged eight and nine, walked seven-year-old Sissy Marcus home from school. Though what happened next seemed innocent enough, it was only after Sissy got home and told her mother that she had kissed the two boys on their cheeks that all hell broke loose. Sissy's father and some of his friends picked up shotguns and searched for the two boys and their parents.

The fact that the two boys in question, nine-year-old James "Hannover" Thompson and seven-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson were African American and that the kiss took place in racially segregated North Carolina was enough to embroil both children in one of the most bizarre miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. During the late 1950s, the growing controversy over desegregation and fears surrounding "racial miscegenation" had already fueled racist tensions to an all-time high. Only three years earlier, 14-year-old Emmett Till had been lynched by a Mississippi mob for the "crime" of allegedly whistling at a white woman.

As for James Thompson and David Simpson, both boys were arrested immediately after the kissing incident. They were held in the local jail and not allowed to see their parents or legal counsel for over a week. They were also subjected to beatings to try to force a confession out of them. Though they were finally granted access to legal counsel, they were still held in jail for months and subjected to repeated harassment. On Halloween night, for example, a contingent of Klansmen visited their jail cell to intimidate them. This so terrified the two boys that they tried climbing the cell walls to escape. Finally, after three months in jail, they were finally charged and convicted of molestation following a brief trial during which their defense counsel was not allowed to be present.

Juvenile Judge Hampton Price sentenced both boys to indeterminate terms at the Morrison training school for Negro Boys. In defending his decision, Price reportedly commented that "since they just stood silent and didn't say nothin', I knew that was a confession of guilt." Monroe's mayor, Fred Wilson, also defended the decision stating that "such acts are not tolerated here whether involving white or colored at any age."

The case became a rallying point for white supremacist groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.). Almost immediately after their conviction, Robert F. Williams, local head of the NAACP, sent an impassioned telegram to President Eisenhower pleading for him to intervene. As Williams pointed out in the telegram, both boys had been denied proper legal counsel or the chance to face their accuser in court. "Please tell me, Mr. President," he telegram read, "when Negroes may expect your Justice Department to introduce the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution to this social jungle called Dixie." Though then-Press Secretary acknowledged that the telegram had been received, nothing further came of it. Once the boys began serving their sentence, public interest in the case quickly died down.

When newspapers covered the story, it was often to defend the sentence (one memorable editorial suggested that the boys were better off in reform school where they could count on better treatment than they received at home.) The newspapers also accused both boys of being incorrigible troublemakers who thoroughly deserved their sentence. All of which heightened the local animosity against the families of both accused. Not only were their parents and siblings subjected to verbal taunting, but both of their mothers were fired from their jobs as domestics. Even more alarmingly, members of the Ku Klux Flan riddled their houses with bullets numerous times and burned crosses on their lawns, something the local police did little to prevent.

It was only when famed civil rights lawyer Conrad Lynn was asked by the NAACP to take on the case that things began to change. Lynn had already made a name for himself by defending numerous unpopular cases and his unswerving support for African American civil rights. This included participating in the first Journey of Reconciliation in 1948, a historic attempt to overturn Jim Crow laws that would see him arrested for being caught sitting in a "whites only" section of an interstate bus. Once released on bail, he quickly resumed his bus journey.

But acting as an attorney for James Thompson and David Simpson was a frustrating experience for Lynn. As he would later relate in a 1994 newspaper interview, many black churches flatly refused to help finance the appeal he was trying to launch, and he was even branded an outsider by some of his opponents. "They had no guts," Lynn said in the interview. "They accepted the children as rapists. The blacks were more than willing to accept the stereotype of black men as rapists. And they also considered me a communist. That, and the fact that the kids were charged with rape, was enough for them."

He had more success visiting synagogues and liberal churches and finally securing a new hearing in Wadesboro, North Carolina. Meanwhile, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt took a personal interest in the case and petitioned North Carolina's governor, Lester Hodges, to intervene. Instead, Hodges and his hand-picked attorney general Malcolm Seawall came to Wadesboro to ensure the conviction was not overturned. Despite Lynn's defense, Seawall managed to sway the judge in the case with an impassioned tirade about the need to uphold "traditional values."

Not only did the two boys stay in jail, but their mothers were kept from seeing them for weeks. It took the efforts of a U.K. reporter, Joyce Egginton, to turn the case into an international scandal for North Carolina. Covering the trial for the London Observer, she secured permission to visit the boys in jail and managed to bring their mothers in as well. By smuggling in a camera, she could take a picture of the mothers embracing their children and visual proof that James and David had been beaten while in custody.

Egginton's story and the incriminating photograph were reprinted across Europe and Asia. The London Observer ran the photograph under the one-word headline, "WHY?" and the resulting international outrage put even more pressure on North Carolina's governor to overturn the conviction. This included demonstrations in numerous European cities, including a riot in Rotterdam that led to rocks being thrown at the U.S. embassy there.

While North Carolina officials offered a deal to the mothers of the two boys, which would have required them to admit to being guilty, the mothers refused, and their incarceration dragged on into 1959. Finally, after receiving a petition with over 15,000 names, Eleanor Roosevelt personally phoned President Dwight Eisenhower and asked him to intervene. The president, in turn, phoned Governor Hodges and immediately pressured him into releasing the two boys.

After three months of detention, James Thompson and David Simpson were finally released, and their criminal records were expunged. Unfortunately, that was all the consideration they would ever receive. Not only were they never compensated for their ordeal, but no official apology was ever given. As for Governor Hodges, he was openly embarrassed about the negative publicity over the case, but he also refused to make any apologies for what had happened.

As for James Thompson and David Simpson, they never really recovered from their ordeal. While David Simpson largely disappeared from the public record, James Thompson went on to have numerous scrapes with the law (which local newspapers declared to be "proof" that the original sentence had been deserved). In a 2011 interview, he speculated on how his life might have been if that long-ago ordeal had never happened. "Could I have been a doctor? Could I have went off to some college, or some great school? It just destroyed our life."

In that same interview, other family members shared their bitterness about James' experience. According to his sister, Brenda, having him home again after his time in jail "was like seeing somebody different, that you didn't even know. He never talked about what he went through there. But ever since then, his mind just hadn't been the same." She also shared her bitterness over his treatment by police and the courts. "My brother and his friend had to suffer on account of that," she said. "And I mean, they suffered. From one kiss. I've thought about that. It all started with a kiss."

To Hide in Plain Sight

The Doctors' Trial, which ended on August 20, 1947, led to the conviction of sixteen medical doctors involved in Nazi medical experiments and mass murder. While seven defendants were sentenced to death and nine others received prison sentences, not all the medical doctors who had been part of the Nazi war machine had gone on trial. It is to one of these doctors and how he eventually came to justice to which we now turn.

By all accounts, Werner Heyde's early life did not indicate what would come later. Born in 1902, he enlisted at sixteen to fight in World War One. After the war ended, Heyde completed medical training and became a psychiatrist. Despite serving in different hospitals and clinics, his career was utterly ordinary until joining the Nazi party in 1933. He found his new political affiliation very helpful in his career and used these connections to become a full professor at Wurzburg.

Heyde's chief mentor among the Nazis was Theodor Eicke, a former patient who had convinced him to join the party. Heyde rose quickly in party ranks and joined the SS in 1936. Being a trained psychiatrist, Heyde was the natural choice to form a neuropsychiatric unit in the SS and to become consulting psychiatrist for the Gestapo. His greatest contribution to the Nazi cause was his role in Aktion T4.

As head of the SS medical department, Heyde played a leading role in the planning and implementing of a  national register of mental patients and "defective" children and adults. Throughout World War 2, more than 275,000 "defectives" were killed across occupied Europe, and until 1941, Heyde acted as the chief "expert" who made the final decision concerning executions. Despite later being replaced by Paul Nitsche, Heyde continued administrating killing programs in concentration camps.

Under the later Aktion 14F13, the criteria for death were expanded to include all inmates deemed unfit due to disease. Heyde helped draft the criteria and trained the medical doctors to recognize these "signs" (usually based on an inability to work or being an "enemy of National Socialism"). His enthusiasm for his duties made him extremely popular with the Nazi hierarchy, and he quickly rose in the ranks. By 1945, he had become a full colonel.

And then the war ended...

In May of 1945, Werner Heyde was arrested by British troops and transferred to a prison in Frankfurt to be held for trial in Nuremberg. He somehow managed to escape custody on July 24, 1947. Purchasing new identity papers for himself under the name of Fritz Sawade, Heyde eventually gained a position as a sports physician in a school near Kiel, Germany.

Although family members and colleagues later admitted to knowing his true identity, "Fritz Sawade" had a highly successful practice for years. He even gave testimony as an expert witness in numerous forensic cases (including psychiatric testimony), which provided him with a very comfortable income. By 1959, Sawade's true identity had become an open secret to many local psychiatrists, government officials, and judges. But his flamboyant lifestyle and involvement in high-profile trials eventually led to Heyde's undoing.

During the war, Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt had been an active opponent of the Nazi regime. As an eminent neurologist, he saved many of his patients from Aktion T4. His wife spent four years in prison for making "spiteful and malicious remarks" about Hitler, and Creutzfeldt's home and clinic were destroyed by Allied bombings. After the war, he served as chancellor at the university in Kiel until he was dismissed by British authorities (they considered him too liberal), and he relocated to Munich.

While acting as an expert witness, he was outraged by one of Fritz Sawade's forensic opinions and decided to investigate. It must have shocked him when he recognized Sawade as the fugitive Werner Heyde. Realizing that Heyde had the quiet support of many local doctors and judicial authorities was likely an even bigger shock.  Despite opposition, Creutzfeldt and his two sons managed to be heard.

Werner Heyde was arrested in 1959 and held in custody for two years. In 1961, just days before his trial began, Heyde was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide. There was widespread suspicion that Heyde's death had been "encouraged" by medical doctors and authorities, fearing what would have come out during the trial. The case was officially closed with Heyde's death, and the matter was considered settled. The question of how a fugitive Nazi could live for years as a successful medical doctor and expert witness was never answered.

Hans Creutzfeldt died in 1964. Despite his eminence in neurology, his humanitarian efforts during the war, and his role in exposing Werner Heyde, Creutzfeldt was largely forgotten for decades after his death. Until that is, in 1995 when researchers reported on the existence of a new variant of a disease that Creutzfeldt had co-discovered with his colleague Alfons Jakob back in 1921. Through its link with "Mad Cow disease" and dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease became one of the most talked-about medical conditions in the world, and Hans Creutzfeldt finally achieved an odd sort of immortality.

Such is life.

The Mad Bomber

On November 16, 1940, a crude pipe bomb was found by police in Consolidated Edison's office building in Manhattan.  Although the bomb hadn't exploded, a note attached to the bomb threatened further attacks against the company.  The second pipe bomb was found nearly a year later.   Police received a note signed "F.P" (meaning "Fair Play") announcing that the bomber was planning to suspend the bombing campaign due to "patriotic feelings" for the "duration of the war."   Sure enough, the next bomb wasn't found until March 29, 1950, at Grand Central Station.  Between 1940 and 1956, a total of 33 bombs were planted in different sites across New York City, although no actual injuries would occur until 1953. 

The most devastating explosion was on December 2, 1956, when a bomb went off in a movie theatre in Brooklyn, injuring six people.  The bomb had apparently been planted inside one of the seats after the bomber cut open the upholstery.  With the escalating violence of the blasts and the taunting letters sent by "the Mad  Bomber" (the name that the media had for him), police were desperate to solve the case.  Inspector Howard Finney of the New York crime then decided to follow the advice of a fellow police officer and consulted Dr. James Brussel.

As New York state's assistant commissioner of mental hygiene and a prominent forensic psychiatrist, Brussel had modest success in solving previous cases but had never been consulted in a major case before.  Forensic profiling was still a largely experimental approach to solving crimes, and police were reluctant to consider it.  Brussel examined photographs of the various crime scenes and the bomber's notes.  In one of the first uses of offender profiling,  he concluded that they were seeking a "rather ordinary-looking man, quiet, polite, proper, and well-dressed." He added that the bomber would be "between 40 and 50 years old, foreign born—probably central European (possibly Slavic)—a Roman Catholic, and fairly well educated, sexually abnormal, probably single, living with his mother or maiden sister in Westchester County or Connecticut and, when police found him, he would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned".   Brussel persuaded the police to release the profile to the media in the hope that it would draw the bomber's attention.

The rationale behind the profile that Dr. Brussel developed on the Mad Bomber was straightforward enough.  He diagnosed the unknown offender based on his own clinical experience with similar offenders and also on prevailing theories relating to mental illness and physical build.  Since the bomber was likely suffering from paranoia, Brussel estimated that he would be around age 50 based on the year of the first bombing and the lifetime incidence of paranoid symptoms.  Brussel also stressed the "phallic" nature of the bombs and the likelihood that the bomber was suffering from an Oedipal Complex (the police were not too impressed with this conclusion).  His idea of publicizing the profile came from the bomber's eagerness for publicity, but police knew that most of the leads that the profile turned up would be false (still a common problem with profiling).

In an unanticipated development, the bomber phoned Dr. Brussel directly and warned him to "keep out of this, or you'll be sorry."  He then hung up before the call could be traced.  After numerous false confessions and poor leads, Consolidated Edison searched its own records and turned up a name that appeared to fit the profile.   George Metesky was a 52-year-old bachelor who had worked for Consolidated Edison for several years before developing tuberculosis.  Metesky had apparently blamed his health problems on the company and had written several threatening letters after being denied a disability pension.  Those letters were still on file, and they were quickly matched to the notes by "F.P."  When the police came to his Waterbury, Connecticut home, he confessed immediately (while he was wearing a bathrobe at the time, he did change into a double-breasted jacket before going to the police station)  

After Metesky's arrest, neighbors reported that he was a quiet man who lived with his sisters and had no visible means of support.  They noticed that he became friendlier and more animated after the Brussels profile came out, but nobody suspected him of being The Mad Bomber.  Police found a complete workshop in his garage where he had built his bombs, and he talked about his plans for an even bigger bomb that he would detonate in the New York Coliseum.   He would later claim that he had deliberately planned the blasts to avoid any fatalities.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Metesky was declared legally insane and committed to Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Beacon, New York.  He would never respond to treatment but was a model patient otherwise.  After being released in 1973, he lived quietly in his family home until his death in 1994. 

James Brussel's role in capturing the "Mad Bomber" propelled him to national fame and gave offender profiling new respect that it never had before.  Brussel was frequently consulted in later cases but was best known for his role in the Boston Strangler investigation.  While he is still viewed as the "father of psychological profiling," his inferential approach to offender profiling has not held up over time.  Later critics have pointed out that only one of his profiles was ever validated and largely relied on his clinical experience and assumptions that were frequently incorrect.  His success in the Metesky case (and his presumed success with the Boston Strangler case) represents his most notable achievements despite being consulted in numerous other cases. 

Modern offender profiling, as practiced by most law enforcement agencies, has a multi-disciplinary focus combining medico-legal death investigation, criminalistics, and psychology.  While commonly accepted standards have been adopted, changing demographics and increased publicity surrounding police procedures (including popular television shows) have made the profiler's task more difficult.  To this day, it remains an open question whether profiling is more of an art than a science.

The Case of the Pimlico Poisoner

When Adelaide Bartlett discovered the body of her husband in their stylish residence in the heart of London on the morning of January 1, 1886, she immediately dispatched the maid to fetch the doctor.    On hearing the news of  Thomas Edwin Bartlett's death, Adelaide's father-in-law immediately suspected foul play.  Not only was the dead man only 41 years old, but he had recently passed an insurance examination with flying colors and had been insured for the then-princely sum of four hundred pounds.  Though he had been complaining of fatigue in the final weeks of 1885, there was nothing to suggest any cause of death.  The first thing Edwin Bartlett Senior did when he came to examine the body was to smell his son's breath to see if he could detect any poisons.   The second thing he did was to ask authorities to look into what happened, especially considering his suspicions concerning Adelaide.

In the subsequent autopsy conducted on Thomas Bartlett's body, his stomach was found to contain a lethal quantity of chloroform.   Thomas had been suffering from various chronic illnesses, including rotting teeth, and was reportedly a fan of fad health remedies (such as animal magnetism) which he hoped would cure him once and for all.    Though he had visited his dentist on the day before his death, the question of how such a large dose of chloroform should have been in his stomach immediately raised suspicions.   His doctor, Alfred Leach, had admitted to prescribing chloroform for his patient but only in regulated doses.   Which still raised the question of how he came to be poisoned.   While police weren't prepared to rule out suicide, it was Adelaide's scandalous relationship with her tutor, the Reverend George Dyson, that led to an inquest returning a verdict of wilful murder. Adelaide and Dyson were both promptly arrested.  And so began what would become known as the Pimlico Poisoning Mystery.  

Thomas Bartlett had been a wealthy grocer and part of a very proper and close-knit  English family.  His marriage in 1875 to Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoile, who was both French and considerably younger than he was, caught everyone by surprise.    Adelaide's father, who was never publicly named but rumored to be an English nobleman,  had arranged the marriage to Thomas, apparently after only a single meeting.   Since Adelaide was illegitimate, her father was desperate to arrange a good marriage for her.   Not only would the marriage provide her with a legitimate name, but it would also ensure a respectable place in English society.  As part of the agreement, the father gave Thomas a rather sizeable dowry (which was promptly invested in Thomas' grocery business).   The arrangement also had Thomas agree to assume all responsibility for his young wife, including controlling her behavior, a major concern in Victorian times.

Thomas' father detested Adelaide from the beginning and often accused her of affairs, including one with Thomas' younger brother.  Which seems ironic considering that Adelaide would later insist that her marriage to Thomas had been "platonic" from the very beginning.    The accusations of infidelity and general animosity Adelaide received from her father-in-law caused her to run away from her home on several occasions  (Edwin would then accuse her of running off with other men).   Thomas eventually forced his father to apologize to Adelaide in writing, something Edwin would later claim he had only done to make peace with his son. 

Though the accusations of infidelity stopped (at least for a while), Adelaide and Edwin continued to despise one another.  When Adelaide became pregnant in 1881 (apparently after repeating begging Thomas for a child),  things became even more nightmarish.   The pregnancy was a difficult one from the beginning, especially since Thomas refused to allow anyone but female midwives to tend to his wife.   Even when one of Adelaide's nurses pleaded with him to allow a male doctor to treat her, Thomas flatly refused to allow any man to "interfere with her."   When the baby was stillborn, Adelaide was devastated.   She would never become pregnant again, and they went back to their old "platonic" relationship.

Most of the details surrounding the later married life of Thomas and Adelaide would only come out in open court after his death.   Edwin Bartlett would reluctantly testify that his son once told him that a man should have "two wives, one for companionship and one for work."    Other people who knew Thomas would often hear him say the same thing, albeit more crudely.  Another of Thomas' quirks was his reluctance to allow Adelaide to have any female friends or acquaintances visiting.  Instead, oddly enough, he insisted on surrounding her with male acquaintances and often encouraging her to become physically intimate with them. 

One particular favorite was Wesleyan minister George Dyson.    Not only was Dyson a frequent visitor to the Bartlett home, but he was also hired to tutor Adelaide and act as a spiritual counselor to the couple.   Thomas had so much confidence in Dyson that he even asked him to be the executor of the new will he had drawn up.  The exact nature of the relationship that Adelaide, George, and Thomas actually had would become the fodder for lurid gossip during the criminal trial.  According to witnesses, George Dyson often arrived as early in the morning after Thomas left for work and would stay for the rest of the day.  He even kept his own coat and slippers at the house.     Thomas also paid for George to accompany them when they went on vacation.

Though Thomas' father had no trouble accusing Adelaide and George of conspiring to poison his son, the testimony Adelaide would provide was much more lurid.  Among other things, she testified that Thomas had openly encouraged George to become intimate with her and even asked them to kiss in his presence.  "He seemed to enjoy it," she said.   George Dyson was much more nervous testifying about his relationship with Adelaide.   He admitted confessing to Thomas about his growing fondness for her.   Thomas, for his part, seemed quite pleased and suggested that George and Adelaide write letters to each other.  The letters themselves were never entered into evidence (assuming they hadn't already been burned) though Thomas did change his will shortly before his death.  

This new will, with George Dyson as executor, was much the same as the previous one except for removing the sticky clause insisting that Adelaide not be allowed to remarry after his death.   But there were far more lurid revelations to come in a murder trial that would have Londoners crowding into the courtroom and eagerly reading their evening paper for the latest details.

When the trial of Adelaide Bartlett and George Dyson opened on April 12, 1886, it was an immediate media sensation considering the lurid details.   Not only was Adelaide accused of poisoning her husband with a fatal dose of chloroform, but the (ahem) unconventional aspects of her married life with Thomas Edwin Bartlett would become prime fodder for gossip on both sides of the Atlantic.   Along with the titillating details of adultery, there was also the forensic evidence provided by the prosecution experts, which focused on one single question:  how did Adelaide do it? 

Ironically, while George and Adelaide went to trial together, the prosecution's only real interest was in building up their case against Adelaide.   For that reason, the acting prosecutor in the case, Attorney General Sir Charles Russell, immediately asked that all charges be dropped against George Dyson, and he was promptly acquitted.  This paved the way for George to be called as a prosecution witness (as a defendant, he wouldn't have been able to testify for himself).   It was Adelaide alone who went on trial for murder (and faced a possible death sentence if convicted).  

Defending Adelaide was prominent trial lawyer Sir George Clarke who, according to rumor, had been hired by her still-unnamed father.   While Clarke would insist that Thomas had actually taken the chloroform to commit suicide, the defense and prosecution were both left with the problem of explaining exactly how the chloroform had entered the dead man's system.   One major stumbling block for the prosecution's case was that there were no tell-tale traces of the chemical burns, which would certainly have been found in Thomas' mouth and esophagus if Adelaide had poisoned him.   On the other hand, George Clarke argued that the lack of burns suggested he had gulped the chloroform down rather than drinking it unknowingly the way the prosecutor claimed.

Despite the mystery of how the chloroform had entered Thomas' system, the fact that Adelaide had several bottles of chloroform in her possession, which George Dyson had purchased for her,  was certainly damning.  What made things even more suspicious was Dyson's curious decision to purchase the chloroform in small amounts at different shops rather than in one large bottle (under British law at the time, purchasing large amounts of medical poison meant having to sign one's name in special register pharmacies were required to keep).   George Dyson insisted that he had purchased the chloroform at Adelaide's request though he claimed not to have realized until later how suspicious his different purchases would have seemed to police.  

As for Adelaide, her reason for purchasing the chloroform helped add to the sense of scandal surrounding the case.   Since Adelaide was prevented by law from testifying on her own behalf, it was left up to her family doctor, George Dyson, and Thomas' father to share the bizarre details of the case.  According to Dr. Leach, Adelaide had told him that she purchased the chloroform to curb her husband's "sexual passion."   While she and Thomas had apparently decided to refrain from sex following the stillbirth of her only child, Adelaide was disturbed to discover that her husband "manifested some desire to renew sexual intercourse with her."   Since she and George Dyson were already involved, she decided to purchase the chloroform so that she could wave it under Thomas' nose, "lulling him into a kind of stupor, and so prevent him giving effect to his sexual passion."  

But this was only one of the lurid revelations that came out during the trial.   People in attendance audibly gasped at hearing that no less than six condoms were found in Thomas Bartlett's pocket.   Also, known as "French letters," condoms were fairly crude affairs in those days, but the fact that Thomas Bartlett had them at all was considered horrifying.   Then there was the discovery of a "marriage manual" in the Bartletts' apartment.  Though  tame by modern standards,  any book containing explicit references to sexuality and birth control was deemed pornographic in Victorian times, and the presiding judge, Sir Alfred Wills, devoted considerable time during his final summation about the dangers of such a book for women (he described it as "reading which helped to unsex them.")  Judge Wills also insisted that the jury would have to pity Adelaide considering her husband "could throw such literature her way and encourage her to read it"  and that "One has learned to-day what is the natural and to be expected consequence of indulgence in literature of that kind."  

Since Thomas Bartlett was, like all Victorian gentlemen, expected to protect his wife from corrupting influences, the presence of the book, as well as the condoms in his pocket, cast serious doubt on Adelaide's description of her "platonic" marriage.   Abandoning any claim to being objective, the judge seemed determined to sway the jury to find Adelaide Bartlett guilty.   He ended his summation by stating:  "When a young wife and a younger male friend get discussing, in or out of the presence of the husband, the possibilities of his decease within measurable time and of the friend succeeding to the husband's place, according to all experience of human life, the life of the husband was one that an insurance office would not like to take."

But the jury was less impressed by the available evidence than the judge and prosecutor had hoped.   It only took them two hours of deliberation to find Adelaide not guilty.   On hearing the verdict, the people in the courtroom and the corridors outside promptly started cheering, something that Judge Wills, who was likely disappointed at the trial's outcome, regarded as an "outrage."   Still, Adelaide was free to go.

Despite the evidence presented during the trial, public sympathy had largely turned against Thomas Bartlett, who was regarded as the chief villain in the case.  As the husband, it had been his responsibility to protect his wife from corrupting influences and to maintain a normal household, children and all.    Though the prosecution tried to present Adelaide as a scheming adulteress who had poisoned her husband to be with her lover,  Adelaide's lawyer convinced the jury (and the public) that his client was incapable of murder.   Simply by saying nothing (she never gave any statement regarding her guilt or innocence), Adelaide's meek appearance helped win the sympathy of everyone associated with the case.

There were still a few people convinced that Adelaide had gotten away with murder, however.   One skeptic, famous surgeon Sir James Paget, greeted the verdict with his now famous quip:  "Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!"  

But Adelaide continued to stay silent about the case and her life with Thomas.   After her acquittal, she managed to disappear from public notice completely (probably with her father's help), and nothing was ever heard about her again.   As for George Dyson, the notoriety surrounding the case and his unconventional relationship with Adelaide forced him to leave Great Britain.   Despite conflicting stories over whether he had emigrated to Australia or the United States, nothing more was really heard about him either.

But the case of the Pimlico Poisoning would continue to fascinate true crime buffs well into the present day.   Transcripts of the case are still available online, and there have been various attempts at solving the mystery of Thomas' death once and for all.  Along with books and radio programs describing the case, there were at least two notable attempts to bring the story to life on the silver screen.   Alfred Hitchcock once stated that he had planned to make a movie about the case but had ultimately decided against it.    The 1986 movie My Letter to George, starring Jodie Foster, was loosely based on Adelaide Bartlett's story.

So, did Adelaide Bartlett kill her husband?  You be the judge.

Shooting Teddy Roosevelt

1912 was a very unusual election year.

Although William Howard Taft was running for reelection, the Republican party had been badly split between the conservative faction backing Taft and the reform faction that had supported former president Theodore Roosevelt.  After an acrimonious Republican Convention, Taft was renominated and Roosevelt completely broke away from his party.  Leading a large contingent of disgruntled Republicans, Roosevelt launched the Progressive Party (more popularly nicknamed the "Bullmoose Party") and announced that he would run for an unprecedented third term as President.   While Taft and his supporters denounced Teddy Roosevelt as being power-hungry,  the presidential campaign quickly became a three-way race between Taft, Roosevelt, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.   

Despite tensions running high, nobody was expecting what happened on October 14, 1912 while Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  

After attending a dinner at Milwaukee's Gilpatrick Hotel, President Roosevelt prepared to leave for a speech to be given at the Milwaukee Auditorium.  Just as he was entering his car, however, a nondescript man approached and shot Roosevelt at close range.  Fortunately, the bullet's momentum was slowed by passing through Roosevelt's spectacles case and all fifty pages of the prepared speech in his jacket pocket (long speeches can be useful).   While the bullet lodged in his chest, Roosevelt decided that he wasn't that seriously injured since he could still breathe normally (although he was clearly bleeding).  Turning down suggestions that he go to the hospital, he insisted on giving his speech as planned.   The shooter, a 36-year-old Bavarian immigrant named John Flammang Schrank, was taken into custody. 

Roosevelt still refused to go to hospital even though his aides noticed that blood was pooling around his feet in the car as they were driving to the auditorium.   Ever the showman, Roosevelt worked the shooting into his speech by showing the audience his bloody shirt and the bullet hole in his speech.  He also quipped that "it takes more than that to kill a Bullmoose".  Ben Hecht was covering the speech for the Chicago Journal and later described it in his autobiography A Child of the Century:

Surgical bandages wrapped the thick torso under his short cut-away coat.  Teddy's voice was fainter and squeakier than I had ever heard it.  He held up his hand for silence...and we gave him the auditorium.  He looked as if he might topple over, if he kept standing too long.

The audience was completely riveted by the speech and Roosevelt's bravery.  After the speech, he was rushed to hospital where doctors determined that he wasn't seriously wounded.  The position of the bullet in his chest was considered too dangerous to remove by surgery and the doctors decided just to leave it in place.  He would carry the bullet for the rest of his life.

As for John Flammang Schrank, the doctors examining him were left to learn about him and his reasons for shooting Theodore Roosevelt.  They learned that he was born in Bavaria (now part of Germany) in 1876 and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was nine years old.  Largely raised by his aunt and uncle,  he inherited an estate worth approximately $25,000 after their deaths.  While not a fortune even in those days, it was enough to make him comfortable.   After their deaths and the death of his fiancee, he sold off all of his property and drifted around the East Coast working odd jobs as a bartender and reading the Bible.  He developed a local reputation for hanging around bars and public parks and mainly stayed out of trouble.   As to his reason for the shooting, Schrank would admit that he had no personal animosity towards his intended victim.

According to Schrank, he had been visited one night by the ghost of assassinated President William McKinley who had told him that Theodore Roosevelt (his vice-president at the time) had masterminded the assassination.    Schrank claimed that McKinley's ghost had visited him more than once and, on the most recent haunting, had told him to stop Roosevelt from winning his third term.  Schrank then bought a gun and began following Roosevelt on his presidential tour.   Among Schrank's papers was a journal that he had kept which described his obsession with Roosevelt.  After passing up another opportunity in New Orleans, Schrank followed Roosevelt to Minneapolis and shot him after hearing that he was at the Gilpatrick Hotel.   When he was arraigned in court in Milwaukee on November 12, 1912, he pled guilty to the shooting stating that "I did not mean to kill a citizen, Judge.  I shot Roosevelt because he was a menace to the country.  He should not have a third term.  I did not want him to have one.  I shot him as a warning that men must not try to have more than two terms as President".   The court appointed a committee of five doctors to examine Schrank and they concluded that he was certifiably insane and suffering from "insane delusions, grandiose in character". 

While Theodore Roosevelt was recovering from his gunshot wound, his two opponents actually halted their own campaigns to give him a chance to recover (modern American politicians could take a lesson from that).   Although he was able to make two more speeches, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign was effectively over.  In the election that followed,  Woodrow Wilson won with 6,293,000 votes and 435 electoral college votes.   Roosevelt came in second with 4,200,000 votes and 88 electoral college votes.  Taft received 3,485,000 votes and only 8 electoral college votes.  We'll likely never know how Schrank's assassination attempt influenced the election and its outcome.   Although Theodore Roosevelt's public life essentially ended after the election, he took the shooting in stride stating that "I did not care a rap for being shot.  It is a trade risk which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course.  For eleven years, I have been prepared any day to be shot". 

In 1914, John Flammang Schrank was sentenced to the Central State Mental Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin where he would remain until his death in 1943.  He continued to insist that he had no animosity towards the "citizen Roosevelt" and seemed genuinely moved to hear of his death in 1919.   According to his obituary, Schrank had been diagnosed with "dementia praecox paranoia" and had been a model prisoner during his time in the hospital despite not associating with the other inmates.  He had no visitors during his entire 31-year hospital stay and no living relatives at the time of his death.  After Schrank died of bronchial pneumonia on September 16, 1943, his body was donated to Marquette University Medical School for dissection.  Many of the letters that he wrote to his doctor at the hospital are still part of the permanent collection at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

It seems fitting perhaps that Schrank should have the final word in describing his motives for the shooting.  According to one story, the guards assigned to transfer Schrank to Central State Hospital commented that the surrounding countryside was good for hunting and fishing.   After one of them asked Schrank if he ever hunted, his simple reply was:  "I only hunt Bull Moose". 

BC Court Told That Actor Killed Mother to Protect Her from Violence He was Planning

When Ryan Grantham shot and killed his mother on March 31, 2020, he meant it as a prelude to the violent rampage he was already planning.  The 24-year-old British Columbia actor had accumulated an arsenal, including guns, ammunition, and Molotov cocktails to be used on his intended target, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but decided to kill his mother to spare her the anguish of his planned murder-suicide.   After rehearsing his mother's killing, and even taking videos describing his intentions, he then shot his 64-year-old mother, Barbara Waite, in the head while she was playing the piano in the Squamish, B.C. townhouse in which they both resided.   

Leaving his mother's body behind to be found later, he packed his arsenal into his car and began driving towards Ottawa.   Given the distance involved, he soon reconsidered his target and began planning a mass murder in a closer public location (such as Simon Fraser University where he had been a student.)   After testing out one of his Molotov cocktails in a remote area, he then turned himself over to police who charged him with his mother's murder.   Since his arrest, Grantham has undergone multiple forensic assessments as mental health professionals attempted to determine his mental state.   

Reports submitted to the court indicated that the defendant had been experiencing intense clinical depression in the months leading up to his mother's murder.   He had also purchased new firearms despite already being a gun owner and member of a local gun club.   In her case for the prosecution, Crown Prosecutor Michaela Donnelly outlined the clear premeditation shown by the defendant before and after his mother's death.   In what she described as a "heartbreaking breach of trust," Donnelly said that  Grantham " was seeking to save his mother from something he was s going to do ... That is something different than altruism,"  She also added that "Barbara Waite loved her son very much, was an excellent parent and in her mind had no reason to fear him."  Grantham has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder which carries an automatic life sentence.   The Crown is also asking that he be ineligible for parole for at least seventeen years.   Court proceedings are expected to wrap up shortly.

Ryan Grantham has been acting since he was nine years old and has appeared in numerous B.C.-based TV shows.   These include Supernatural, Riverdale, and iZombie.  He has also appeared in films such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. 

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Does Psychosis Play a Role in Most Mass Shootings?

Even as we reel from yet another school shooting, this time leading to the death of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas (and with many more since), we are still faced with the same inevitable question of how such shootings can be prevented in the future.   

To counter calls for stricter gun control, many newspapers and politicians have instead placed the blame for the Uvalde shooting on the presumed mental illness of the shooter in question, much as they have in previous shootings. For example, following the 31 deaths resulting from mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas in August of 2019, then-President Trump publicly stated that "mental illness and hatred pulled the trigger, not the gun." He also called for broader institutionalization of people with mental illness to prevent more shootings, regardless of any actual indication of violent behavior.

But even as budgetary concerns are leading to major cutbacks in mental health funding across the United States and elsewhere, media speculations linking mental illness with violence adversely affect how people with serious mental illness are treated. While studies consistently show that the mentally ill are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than vice versa, mass shootings such as the one in Uvalde make treating mental illness far more difficult as a result.  

To read more, check out my new post in Psychology Today

Countering violent extremism and radical rhetoric

How do extremist sympathizers respond to counter-radicalization efforts? Over the past decade, programs to counter violent extremism have mushroomed around the world, but little is known of their effectiveness. A new study in the journal International Organization uses social media data to examine how counter-radicalization efforts shape engagement with extremist groups in the online world. Matching geolocated Twitter data on Islamic State sympathizers with granular information on counter-extremism activities in the United States, research finds that, rather than deradicalizing, these efforts led Islamic State sympathizers to act strategically to avoid detection. After counter-extremism activities, the group's supporters on Twitter who were in the vicinity of these events began self-censoring expressions of support for the Islamic State, altered profile images and screen names, and encouraged followers to migrate to Telegram, an encrypted network not viewable by the public. These findings reveal previously unknown patterns in the effects of counter-extremism programs in the digital era. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Catholic Exorcists Complain of Overwork Due to Too Many Possession Cases

The 16th annual exorcism held recently by The Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome has drawn in 120 attendants,  a record number according to sources.   Despite the controversy surrounding the rite, the demand for exorcists worldwide has been spurred on by Pope Francis I who has publicly endorsed the Catholic Church's role in helping "those possessed by evil."  This has helped produce a "Pope Francis Effect"  with more cases of demonic possession being reported in Europe, Africa, and South America.   

While the exorcism course's organizers have acknowledged the need for more support from mental health professionals to help distinguish between mental illness and genuine possession, many families remain adamant in demanding exorcisms rather than accepting that someone is mentally ill.    As a result, many exorcists attending the course openly admitted to being overworked and not receiving proper help from mental health professionals and bishops.

In one recent case, Roman Catholic priests in northern Italy conducted a nine-hour exorcism on a  26-year-old woman who became violent during confession and hurled insults in different languages, including Latin.  "The young woman had already been seen by an exorcist in Verona, but on Sunday, her parents brought her here, probably to have another go at curing an evil she had suffered for some time," said one priest to reporters.   While the woman's father insisted that her problems were due to mental illness, her mother and other family members insisted that she be exorcised instead.  

The exorcism was conducted at the Saint Mary of Mount Berico church in Vicenza, Italy,while other churchgoers and emergency crews were prevented from entering the church until afterward.   When official exorcist Father Giuseppe Bernardi failed to drive out the demon, other priests stepped in to assist.   After the ritual was over, she fell into a deep sleep which they took as a sign of success though she had undergone previous exorcisms.  The liberation can not happen immediately. It depends on the strength of the presence and on the entity of the evil one," said one priest.   

While Father Bernardi insisted that he had previously consulted psychologists about the woman's case, this is not always the case.  Other attendees at the exorcism course also described being called in to conduct exorcisms for a range of other medical conditions, including COVID-19.  

At present, Italy has 290 exorcists with some dioceses even operating exorcism hotlines for people demanding the rite.  Meanwhile cases of exorcisms being conducted worldwide by religious figures hoping to "drive out evil."  Many of these exorcisms have been carried out with the permission and even participation of family members and have led to fatalities and subsequent assault or murder trials.   Preventing such tragedies in future may require a miracle in itself.