VICTIM'S ADVOCATE - Part Four

In my last post I discussed - "Victims and Agents". I did so rather briefly, considering the scope of the subject. In most cases we have more than one, or two choices... and quite obviously doing nothing is always a choice. So that makes three choices we have, in general, when confronted by life and all it's opportunities and surprises. And tragedies...

It's the internet that changed things for me, and many others - for good and bad... it is the internet which is why I'm here, to state the obvious. What isn't obvious is what things were like prior to the internet. I came of age in 1974... it wasn't until 1992 that I had access to a computer, and the internet. Prior to that, I may have written editorials for newspapers, but I didn't. I find it ironic that within my lifetime I am given the opportunity the WWW has given to me. Ironic in the sense it's frightening... because never before in human history has communication on such an immediate and world-wide scale existed. Yet now it does.

In this, what is probably my conclusion for this series, I wanted to describe some of my own personal experiences as well as tragic cases I followed in the past that led up to my involvement in two real-life cases as a "victim's advocate".

1) ~1964: I was with my family - sister and parents in San Francisco. My father was there on an all expense paid convention. I've mentioned this before, so to make a long story short, I was 8 years old and i left a dept store, thinking my parents had gone back to our hotel... an 8yo walking alone on the streets of SF. I bumped into a guy dressed in a black trench-coat... he showed me a badge that said he was "secret service"... since I was lost, I trusted him, and he got me to my hotel. It just so happened there was a convention of Supreme Court Justices also. So he really was SS.

2) ~1968: HS was rough on me - I was an easy target for bullies. To help boost my confidence my parents thought karate classes would help. I had just earned my yellow belt, and soon after a class i was downtown waiting for the city-bus. A man asked me if I could use to make some money helping him move into his apartment - at the Boy's Club. Full of Confidence and totally nieve I said sure... I walked up the street with the guy bragging about my karate skills... ended up in a one room room, to have him lock the door behind us. There was nothing to "move"... but during the walk he's admitted to working as a counselor at my town's public beach, and with children. I rushed out with an excuse to leave, unlocked his door and entered a corridor with identical looking doors. I had no idea which door was the stairwell!!! I found it, my heart pounding... and made it home. When I told my parents they didn't believe me. It was 1968 afterall.

3) ~1982: I was living in a rooming house in the Boston MA area... I was a recent resident... a small town guy in a big city. I was so lonely... drank a lot. One night, quite unexpectedly I bumped into a fellow rooming house roomy... seemed decent enough and he said, "hey, want to go to the Chelsea strip club, have a few beers - I'll drive", and I said "sure", scared of nothing. I got in his car and we started driving... it seemed odd the way we were going to Chelsea, but I was busy talking too. Suddenly, and it was sudden, we were driving through the area in Boston where I90 turnpike starts - I forget the name of the area, but it was downtown Boston, and suddenly a half a dozen or more Boston police cruisers converged on the car I was in. We were at the side of the road in less than 10 seconds, the guy driving, that i was with was ordered out of the car, the 38 cal hand-gun stuffed into the back of his jeans was removed, and I was told by the police to "leave".

Yes, I had met my first serial killer and I had been his likely target. No drugs were involved - unless my being intoxicated counts as a drug.

It took me several years to shake off the fear that event caused me...

As far as those victims stories I found that further encouraged me:


1) Martha Moxley: Wikipedia Link ... October 30, 1975 - she was 15 years old. Murdered in her back-yark... her neighbor was convicted many years later for her death. I read: Mark Fuhrman's 1998 book, Murder in Greenwich. 


2)The Butts family Murders: Butt's Family Murders ; Gerri Faye Butts, 29, and her daughters, Jessica, 11, and MacKenzie, 3. Ironically this case which I could only read about and do nothing, ultimately led to a friendship with Glen, one of the Texarkana investigative officers... whom I met while helping in the Brianna Maitland case. He is now a prominent criminal profiler and works for the US military.


3) Dru Sjodin - 2003: Dru Sjodin - this is the first case I felt I was "involved in... she was missing for almost a year... it was widely publicized. You might say I had a feverish need to help... and with Google Earth and all I succumbed to a form of assistance that has a name, and has actually been researched by the US ARMY - it's called "remote viewing", a psychological ability to see things from afar. Admittedly, i was no help, although I e-mailed in my ideas. I never did hear from anyone, and they did find Dru. It was extremely tragic, and a short time later... I read where two persons within hours of me had disappeared.

I ask myself now, as I did then... why get involved? I was fortunate to hear Pres. George H.W. Bush say at a college... "it's okay" to want to help those less fortunate than ourselves, victims... even though there's a selfish sense of feeling good from doing so... I say fortunate, because I felt "guilty" or like I was" in the way" offering my assistance. See, there's no hero's when it comes to solving a missing person case. They either aren't solved, or when solved, it's not pleasant. It's not a troop of boy scouts you've led on a rugged camping expedition, or saving someone's life... because in both cases I found myself involved in, foul play is very likely, and the families involved are suffering in the worse way possible.



 I'll conclude with an experience I had Memorial Day 2005... it was a beautiful Spring day, and I went metal detecting in the area in Woodsville, NH, where Maura Murray "had her accident". By then i was also spending a lot of time on her family forum, as Sherlock. Where she disappeared was a hour or so from where I lived - much closer than Brianna Maitland. I had let the family know I'd be there. Got their okay.

It was a nice drive to the location. I parked, legally off the road. I got my gear and looked around. There was a open forest across the road, then next to my car a small field. Seems like 100 yards further in all directions was private land. Unless you walk further east, across a road and there's lots of wilderness. So this is what I did for several hours that day.

Back at my car later, I was just finishing the small field next to my car a second and last time. I started to pack up and a Woodsville police cruiser pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the road, and the officer was watching me.

I love America. I got in my car, thirsty and tired, and the cruiser followed. All right, i thought, i know where this is going... so a half-mile or so down the road there is a country store. I pulled in there and parked. So did the officer. I went over to his car!

"Hi" I said as he got out of his car, and he voiced similar in response. I said, "I noticed you are following me".

Considering it was a holiday, many people were out enjoying themselves, I was rather annoyed, yet curious.

He asked me what i was doing, and for my drivers licence. I told him and gave it to him. I explained I was helping the Murray family find their daughter, Maura, missing in the area.

He smiled and said - "haven't heard of the case - but then I'm new here". He gave me back my license and drove off. I went into the country store unable to miss the Missing Person's Poster for Maura Murray tacked to the door.

And that's what a "Victim's Advocate" does... we shake our heads a lot!!!

Not really, but there are those moments.

VICTIM'S ADVOCATE - Part Three

Subtitle: AGENTS and VICTIMS...

More on why and how I became a "victim's advocate"...

There's a new tv commercial for insurance that's been airing for awhile now... can't quite get it out of my head. It features not a gecko, nor a foxy cartoon femme fatale, but rather it stars a very amiable, attractive woman who can't not smile and can't not suppress her enthusiasm as she asks potential buyers questions, and generally pops back with -"Discount, Discount, Discount!"... Ahhhh.  Reminds me of my early years, 17 - 21.Only in my case it was "Victim, Victim, Victim!"

It seems in so many ways we are a society of victims. Our earliest colonists were "victims", in so many ways... many died ... many suffered, many went crazy... but here we are today, still in many ways "victims" of one sort or another. And it's true, we can be victims in so many ways. 

Back to my early 20's... sometime around 1974 I got stoned on marijuana. After all the horror stories I'd heard I was certain I would die soon after. My brain would melt, or I'd go crazy and within a week would be injecting myself with heroin.

Ironically, I was fine... in fact, I was more than fine. ... it was divine intervention... at a time in my life where I was near the end.

Back then, I did what most other middle class boomer's did after graduating HS, we went off to college. No break... had to keep the conveyor moving... what John Lennon of Beatles fame called "the Merry Go Round" ... well, I had to get off. 

Given the proper way I was raised as a child into being a teenager, I'd love to be able to say, like so many talented people say, "I'm sorry, I used and it was a big mistake". But I won't do that. See... prior to using, yes, I was enrolled in a college to become a physicist, or a teacher.  But seriously, not being a "man from Mars", I was not good with math, and I was a loner. Why would I want to teach a classroom of students still shell-shocked from HS? So, no, things were not going well at all.

Until I got stoned... do you know that a lot of people really are beautiful, that nature is alive, the earth is a great planet to live on, that silence is a symphony and art is divine? Where I had been settling into adulthood, which began at 18 back then, with anger, resentment, mindless pursuit of an education I may have been interested in, since I've loved electronics and chemistry my whole life, I really wasn't that person. 

Almost overnight I realized my life's dream... I wanted to be a writer. I didn't want to hate people, and feel vengeful... I wanted to discover people... I wanted friends. I wanted experiences... I wanted to face my fears... and write.

And a short-story I'd read at age 8, "R Is For Rocket", the short story within called "Frost and Fire", came to mind... I realized what i needed to do to become all that i could become would be "to work among the scientists", those who would now be called professors. With a community college in town, I realized the one way I could do that was to get a job as a custodian. Honestly, I don't know how I knew that, I just did. I figured three years... I vowed that whatever it took, if I had to sit at the entrance to the HR dept, I would get that job. By then i had quite college... sold my car, moved near campus, and loved to walk and ride my bike. I submitted an application, and as you should already know, I got hired within a very short time. I was the 3 - 11 custodian, at the fine Arts center at the college. My life exploded with friends, knowledge, and hope.

But first I had to understand what it was to be a victim. Because that is what i was... in so many ways. The answer came a year or so into the job when I became friends with an English professor. It all came down to two things - was I a victim, or was I an agent?  Being a victim is a part of the human-condition. Being an "agent" is something we can learn to be to overcome being a victim.

However, in some cases the victim cannot be an agent. They may need an advocate to help. And many years later... that is where I found myself. With years of experience with people of all kinds, experiences both very scary, yet others so very beautiful... I found myself unable to resist the urge to help....

Next time... the stories of persons that were victims, of serious nature, and my eventual participation in two missing person's cases. 

    

VICTIM'S ADVOCATE - Part Two

I'm eccentric... I admit it. I started out as an inquisitive child... the class clown, and had to know how everything worked, by taking it apart - rarely to be put back together. From there became, even more inquisitive and learned eventually how to put things back together. I learned about relationships, and mostly how they fall apart, and can't be put back together. I still hope... but for what, I don't know.

Within the past 5 years, to give you an idea of how awkward this whole "victim's advocate is, I applied for a job, and under a category called: "Special interests or hobbies", I wrote "victims advocate". I wished I hadn't - it can mean so many things, like workplace whistle-blower, but oddly, they did call me, to inquire about temp work. But, I don't think I'll put that down again... not something to tell an employer, in fact, not much that I write here can I share with an employer... which is too bad.

If only we could be free to be ourselves... if only we as a society could recognize the difference between offensives where people get hurt and those where they don't - like having pot, for example - in NH it's a $2000 fine and up to a year in jail for a joint. Serious crime!There are sentences for violent crimes which are much less severe, and people get hurt. I just can't see the logic in that.

This blog series is about victims and advocates. So the question I hope to answer is, why am I involved? Maybe because I read online news, and made a phone call. Maybe more...

Until 4th grade, I was coming along okay... but come 5th, and a family move, things changed. It was partly because of me - I was the underdog, and sensitive... my parents figured a new town, new beginning. They also bought a more expensive house in a expensive neighborhood.

My 1st memory of my new 5th grade school was having a guy kick my feet out from under me, while I leaned against the hallway wall. It only got worse...

I finally graduated... obviously skipping past my school experiences, to one night around 1969, when after the fact, I found out my sister who slept in the room next to me, got a knock on her bedroom window. She was around 15. She often would skip out her window and party... I found this out later. I was straight as an arrow then, ultra-right, and I didn't question authority. My sister didn't trust me with those secrets. It happened on this night, my sister didn't feel well... she told the guy at the window "no". And went back to bed.

Within the next couple of days news broke that a local teen was missing, and a ransom from his father, a doctor, was demanded. The father paid the ransom only to bury his young son, whom the kid-nappers killed. The person's responsible were arrested... the mastermind... he was the guy I most feared at my school, in my own grade level, who bullied me often, and, he was the guy knocking on my sisters window the night the teenager disappeared. My father was rumored to have money - he didn't, believe me. My sister was their intended victim... and that's just the beginning.

The purpose of this post is to share why I became a "victim's advocate". I've since retired (so to speak)... it's really more than I can handle. The reality of the emotion involved, and the uncertainty can't be understated. In my next post, more on why...

VICTIM'S ADVOCATE - Part One

There are victims and there are victim's advocates. We come in many types and styles. Prior to the availability of the internet, the best a person could do was write an editorial in a newspaper. Nothing much would happen - if he really knew something 9she didn't dial 911, either because (s)he figured what he knew wasn't really that important, or it didn't exist. Perhaps, that's the way it should have stayed that way... but it didn't. So now, there are advocates for many issues. Mine is for the victim.

***

I've been a voracious reader my whole life... sci-fi, murder mysteries, true-crime, etc... But to be honest, it took several self-death defying moments, personally, before I could get involved, that and the fact that the WWW was now at my fingertips.

I first suggested this topic, "victim's advocate"  to my fellow blogger, Slam Dunks, available HERE, when I was a "guest writer" on his series about Brianna Maitland, FBI Link.  Brianna Maitland, 17, disappeared the night of March 19, 2004, in Montgomery VT. She has not been found, her disappearance remains a mystery. Slam and I discussed it, as a topic, and it was obvious it wasn't one of those usual topics. Meaning, it went into the cupboard.

Link to Slam Dunk's first post for Brianna is: HERE. I was invited to be a guest writer somewhere around Post 14 after I wrote to him, and volunteered. I had become involved in late 2004, by then, Brianna had been missing 5 years. 

The question I get a lot, is "what's it to me?" "Why get involved?" The answer is, I'm already involved. The "why"... well, that's fate. I called her parents and offered to find her "missing car keys" with my metal detector. One thing led to another.

The basic facts are that I read about her disappearance in the news, online. I read that she was considered to be of "questionable character", in that drug abuse was suspected. It was likely, the news-papers reported, that she "ran away, to escape a drug debt". A month earlier another young woman, Maura Murray, disappeared in Haverhill NH, 90 min. SE of there. Coincidence? I expect, the answer is yes. The cases were different, then, but the Brianna case bothered me. The Murray case too, but for different reasons. With Brianna the case rested on her alleged "character". And I had to really wonder what the press was alluding to when it reported that police were suspicious of her disappearance as a "drug-related problem", and not something worse.

When it comes to "black and white" thinking I get annoyed. When it comes to "drugs", I always am left wondering, what drugs? They, the free press, don't mean alcohol... if they did, and they love that topic too, they would say it - alcohol. But in this case, a 17 year old woman disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and the hairs on my head stood up because there was an alleged "drug problem" with her disappearance, and to me, something didn't seem right. There was something rotten... and it wasn't in Denmark!

In my next post I will continue with my experiences. This is just an introduction.

***

Until next time, my favorite quote from the:

Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

SOURCE: Wikipedia - "Declaration of Independence"

We hold these truths to be self-evident..." 

We are all unique, we are all the same... quite the paradox then... little surprise to me that I stand up for someone less fortunate than myself. It's my friends that are perplexed... "why get involved?"

Why? Because I got screwed by the system too! And I have a voice... where others don't.
anonymous