Mike 03
Mike 03's JournalDidn't know this. Thanks for posting.
I don't know the case other than the depiction of it in the first Amityville Horror and in brief descriptions.
In familiar mass murders like that, sometimes the killers put the victims back in bed (or otherwise arrange them), although that is incredibly easy for the investigators to see.
Did DeFeo use a silencer?
I'm guessing he shot his parents first, since they were the adults who could fight back and posed the biggest physical threat to him carrying out his plan. (Parents will almost all of the time fight to the death to protect their kids in a situation like this.)
I'm reading the ages of the other child victims as: Dawn (18), Allison (13), Marc (12), and John Matthew (9).
The younger children were probably too scared and might have frozen in their beds, paralyzed in fear and with little choice but to comply and do what they were told to do. Children in general sleep more deeply than adults and less likely to awaken due to noises.
The parents were each shot twice. The children were each shot once, almost like he was in a hurry to finish the heinous act, not wasting time on a second shot. Not to be morbid, but he likely killed them in a particular order of most-to-least physically threatening to him personally, which may not necessarily be by age. At 18 years of age Dawn is basically an adult but not knowing anything about her personality or assertiveness or her relationship with Ronald, I can't really imagine how she would react to a situation like this.
I'm assuming toxicology was performed and the investigators ruled out that any of the victims had been sedated in advance (say, at dinner)?
Haunting case.
Russia also loves--and will promote--any migrant crisis in a western democracy:
This extends beyond mere sympathy. France’s FN has accepted millions of dollars in funding from the Kremlin, while Germany’s AfD seems to have benefitted from Russian largesse as well. It’s therefore not surprising that the leaders of those parties have warm, praising things to say about Mr. Putin and his regime, viewing Russia as a bulwark of conservatism and an ally against migrant invasion.
https://observer.com/2016/04/how-the-kremlin-manipulates-europes-refugee-crisis/
An observation from Anne Applebaum's book "Twilight of Democracy"
The movement to destroy a democracy is also a reaction against meritocracy, waged by people who cannot seem to do very well in the countries in which they find themselves, preferring an arrangement where loyalty and unquestioned obedience to the autocrat gets you farther than ingenuity, skill, hard work or education. (Paraphrasing a concept from her new book).
It's revolting.
I glimpsed Twitter this morning and saw "Dementia Joe" was trending.
It's like criticizing the allied soldiers liberating the concentration camps in WW2 by saying, "Their uniforms were wrinkled."
This article reminded me of something:
In 2019, the Jair Bolsonaro administration approved 474 new pesticides for use — the highest number in 14 years. Pesticide imports to Brazil also broke an all-time record, with almost 335,000 tons of pesticides purchased in 2019, an increase of 16% compared to 2018.https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/brazil-sets-record-for-highly-hazardous-pesticide-consumption-report/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20Jair%20Bolsonaro%20administration%20approved%20474,2019%2C%20an%20increase%20of%2016%25%20compared%20to%202018.
There was concern in the United States over this as well. Maybe the Biden administration should look at our Brazilian imports and see if we are importing produce that is contaminated with these controversial pesticides Bolsonaro pushed through. Just speaking for myself, that reckless orgy of pesticide approval scared the hell out of me.
This is electric third rail stuff:
After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak—research they hadn’t disclosed and continued not to admit to. In its January 15 statement, the State Department alleged that although the Wuhan Institute of Virology disclosed some of its participation in gain-of-function research, it has not disclosed its work on RaTG13 and “has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.” That, by itself, did not help to explain how SARS-CoV-2 originated. But it was clear that officials believed there was a lot of risky coronavirus research going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world was simply not aware of.
There are some revelations in Bob Woodward's second Trump book Rage having to do with the US/China relationship and the coronavirus that, when I read it, I thought would cause a reassessment of this subject, if not some headlines, but it was ignored, maybe because of all the other bombshells in that book (and I didn't want to write about it either). At the time of the outbreak, China completely shut down domestic travel in and out of Hubei province, but it continued to allow people inside Hubei province to fly to the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. So, while I really really don't want to believe any of this, there are some strange things.
Salon is kind of getting embarrassing
Lindsey Graham is a lot like the character Tom Ripley in the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley.
He selects people he thinks are powerful, idealized figures and wants to become them and vicariously share their power by hanging around them and becoming their best friends.
Interesting article on Spoliation motions: Spoliation is a Discovery issue...
Spoliation Sanctions Are a Discovery Issue, Not a Last-Minute Trial TacticAct, don’t wait, or the court can refuse to consider an untimely spoliation motion.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/pretrial-practice-discovery/practice/2019/spoliation-sanctions-are-a-discovery-issue-not-a-last-minute-trial-tactic/
Here's a story about this that is not behind a paywall
Russian intelligence reportedly used fake news sites to spread misinformation about coronavirus vaccineshttps://www.theverge.com/2021/3/7/22318113/russia-intelligence-fake-news-spread-misinformation-coronavirus-vaccines
The sites, identified as New Eastern Outlook, Oriental Review, News Front, and Rebel Inside, have emphasized the side effects of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine as well as other western pharma companies’ vaccines, stoking concerns about whether the vaccines are effective or had been rushed through the US approval process, the WSJ said.
The sites don’t have large audiences, but officials said their false stories are often picked up and circulated by international media. They typically focus on true news reports about rare side effects of the vaccines, but fail to provide accurate context that shows the vaccines are safe for most people. “Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies,” a State Department spokesman told the WSJ.
In addition to the campaign to discredit Western vaccines, Russia’s state media and Twitter accounts connected to the Russian government are also trying to boost the profile of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
I despise Putin.
Perhaps a 13 minute delay for Hitler and his entourage on November 8, 1939
It's so hard to pick but just off the top of my head I can't resist...
Delay Hitler's 1939 speech at the Bürgerbräukeller by a mere 13 minutes and potentially prevent nearly all of WW2. (Poland had already been invaded). Without a war in the European theater to distract the United States, it's unthinkable Japan would have bombed Pearl Harbor.
Accompanying Hitler that night were Goebbels, Heydrich, Hess, Himmler and others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser
It's a bit of a roll of the dice since we can't know for sure Hitler would have been killed, but you said we could change one event, so I'm changing it to "Hitler and his entire entourage were killed."
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Gender: MaleHometown: Modesto California
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Current location: Arizona
Member since: Mon Oct 27, 2008, 06:14 PM
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