Lance Reenstierna & Tim Pilleri: Episode 84

This is an interview with Karen Mayotte, a potential witness in a possible major crimes case. So, wouldn't police have wanted to watch the entire interview before it became public?

Was Episode 84 reviewed by LE before it was shown online?

What if Mayotte had, even if unknown to her, said something important that LE did not want publicly known? 

How, and by whom, were editing decisions made? Was law enforcement involved in this editing?

If Tim and Lance knew LE requested certain parts edited out, then are Tim and Lance, in effect, working for LE? If so, for how long have they been working for LE?

Didn't Tim and Lance, by Lance's own admission, turn over to law enforcement a list of names of those who attended one of their Somerville appearances?

Have Tim and/or Lance and/or Josh Leonard signed confidentiality agreements with any law enforcement agency?

If LE requested certain parts of the interview edited out, then would that not clue in Tim and Lance to something important?

What might be inferred had law enforcement told Tim and Lance, after reviewing the entire interview, that there was nothing in the interview that could not be seen?


Also, how many college educated women in Massachusetts with advanced degrees, who are roughly 30 years old (when Renner interviewed her), have 4-5 kids? IMO, statistically speaking, Karen is yet another person involved in this case who's more than likely pro-life/religious. In fact, the kidney thing Karen mentions near the end of the episode is a popular debating tactic used in the abortion wars.

Regardless of Mayotte's beliefs, which I would almost certainly respect, there sure are a surprising group of pro-life, Christian Church, anti-Muslim, trigger-happy, truther extremists hanging around this case, including a few cops and ex-cops. Not to mention a lot of liberal, pro-choice (for lack of a better term) pro-fems.

These two groups are normally at each other's throats, but there are times, and maybe the Maura Murray case is one of them, when they make for strange bedfellows. 

As Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker write in the their book, Satan's Silence:ritual abuse and the making of a modern American witch hunt:

Feminists were particularly susceptible to sex-abuse conspiracy theories. Indeed, the alliances women's activists struck with conservatives around these claims often turned bizarre: as when Gloria Steinem contributed money and public support to a ritual-abuse proponents' group whose coordinator later claimed that it was the U.S. government, and not an ultraright militia movement devotee, who bombed Oklahoma City's federal building in 1995.

This is why people like Maggie Freleng, for example, might be found working from time to time with someone like John Smith.

Have any other groups, such as those speculated to exist by "FalconsClaw0002," signed confidentiality agreements with law enforcement?

All of this, of course, brings up a much larger issue: to what extent are apparently civilian/journalistic efforts actually a clever front for law enforcement?  Sound far-fetched? Just read Anna Funder's (Stasiland) interview with former East Germany's (GDR/DDR) leading "journalist" Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler. Read how all governments use so-called journalists to further both criminal and political aims. They are not all journalists; they are too often cheap propagandists.

The problem with this is, especially in the age of social media, that the line between objectively presented information and the corrupt aims of authoritarian (overt or Trumpian) become blurred. Podcasts become not the voice of the people, or just a section of the people, or just a couple of ordinary guys; they become the mouthpieces for an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian government - whether left, right, or even both.

They become lowlife snitches, which always furthers authoritarianism more than anything else.

The 2016 Hampshire College Protest

connection is the first thing I noticed about Matamoros.

Grace Lucas and Horror Theater Vids

I can’t say it’s exactly a lift to see the reaction - of someone who says she is a Hadley resident no less - to the way Scare Theater represents me: as a monster, a lunatic, as the subject of "horror theater vids," as Grace Lucas puts it.

Naturally, I wonder whether people like Grace, and her friends and family, speculate about me. Do they discuss me at the kitchen table? Spread the word around town? Make sure everyone knows I live among them? Do they drive past my home to get a better look at me? Do they think about slashing my tires, pushing me around? Punching me? Kind of like this recent comment on the same Scare Theater video?

Which is pretty light stuff compared to comments like these, that expressed a desire to beat, torture, or kill me.

I assume commenters like Grace know that I see their comments. Why wouldn’t I? After all, I’m the subject of the very video on which they are commenting. I am the person Grace Lucas and many others in the Hadley area are talking about. Why would I not monitor the comments on Scare Theater? 

I just don't know whether Grace and her family and friends, considering the nature of the Scare Theater video, might be nervous that I actually live among them, maybe even next door or just down the street, that I stand near them at the grocery store or pass by them at the mall or on the sidewalk. That I stroll past their schools, sit behind them in church or at town meetings. I hope not.

A Troll Turd

Carole Lord Wants to Move?

Carole Lord writes: "I live in Hadley.... Well im moving!" I can only assume she means Hadley, Massachusetts.

What is the purpose of saying something like this? To let me know that my neighbors, and people all around this small town of Hadley, are watching me? Keeping tabs on me? Talking derisively about me? Isolating me? Maybe cooking up a little vigilante justice? Reminds me of my next-door neighbor’s comments not that long ago.

Should I just automatically assume Carole Lord has kept this to herself and not gossiped about it? Discussed it with her family or friends? Spread it around? Shared it online? Or was she put up to it by a local cop who hopes to build a fashionable case of cyberstalking? Or is “she” herself a local cop? In the age of social media, anything is possible.

Carole Lord claims that I’m making her move out of town? Seriously? Doesn’t take much, does it? A little Scare Theater and away she goes. Because she believes Scare Theater??? I hope the door doesn’t hit her on the way out. (No, I don’t think Lord means this literally.)

Just the same, I’m not to believe that the purpose of Scare Theater’s video is to collect as many threats and attempts to ostracize me as possible; all based on total lies, lies that ordinary people are all too easily convinced to believe?

I have no idea who Carole Lord is or whether she is even a real person, but the message inferred is clear: people, assisted by local police, all over town are wagging their tongues. No job interviews, no new friends, no friendly neighbors, not even a church supper (blocked a couple of years ago by two "open and affirming" Congregational churches).  I better watch my back? Is that the message? 

No exaggeration: this is what the early stages of fascism look like. No, I don’t mean Nazis or Communists. I mean fascism with a small “f.” Sure, vigilantism, both spontaneous and sustained, has been going on forever. But now it has the blessing of local police, which means it’s state sponsored. It’s no longer just some whacky townies. It’s fascism. This is your government talking.

Fascists are selective. They focus less on ethnic heritage, such as being Jewish - although they do that, too - than on random fears within themselves but projected onto others.

They beat, ridicule, torture, murder, and ostracize women who have had abortions, men who drink too much, homosexuals, mere readers of political pamphlets with which they disagree. And men who laugh on YouTube for no known reason.

They constantly, in concert with police, keep people under surveillance, intimidate them, spread nasty and false rumors about them. In no small numbers do they focus on people they regard as merely odd – misfits, the socially unskilled, the handicapped.

It is striking not only that the Happy Anniversary video has been uniformly mis-characterized from the start, but that there is such a huge audience hungry for whatever red meat is dangled in front of them by the latest huckster – with the avid assistance of local police.

Significantly, people want to believe that Maura Murray was the victim of a horrible crime, probably on a lonely road in New Hampshire. They believe this for about the same groundless reason they themselves imagine that I’m a monster of some kind, a boogeyman, a Boo Radley.

The need of fascists to feel victimized is a constant theme with them. The chance – the very good chance – that Maura Murray ran from the Vasi hit denies them the perverse luxury afforded by self-victimization. Unfortunately for them, it’s impossible to identify with Maura Murray if she’s a common criminal. She must, then, in their minds, be elevated to the status of a Missing White Woman. 

Boogeymen and White Women: an incendiary brew that enlarges the authority zone of fascist local police while comforting the cowards of Hadley, Massachusetts.

Never Enough

Here's a hypothetical example of a self-fulfilling prophesy started by cops. Historical precedent can be found in Michael R. Ebner's thoroughly researched book, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Pages 57 and 82 are very helpful.

The parallels are relevant to our own times, illuminating and frightening. The emphasis placed by police on surveillance, including open shadowing, is beyond worrisome. Those who have not experienced it themselves turn a blind eye, deny it happens, facilitate it by vilifying and ridiculing the state's target of surveillance. This is what fascism looks like, always led by cops.

******************

Typical online bullying by proxy cop

Above, fascist police claim the bullied are dangerous, need to be spied on. They recruit often unreliable rumormongering informants from bullied person's friends, neighbors, teachers, even family. All of them gossip, which on social media, never ends, is never enough.

Bullied person discovers fascist-state surveillance, considers it further bullying.

Bullied person learns of fascist-state surveillance, which once started has no end, tolerates no criticism, operates in secrecy without oversight. Police can't get enough of it.

Maura Murray Family's True Friend

Is this the kind of person Maura Murray's family has endorsed and used - for fourteen years! - as their New Hampshire spokesperson?

I've always sort of liked John and tried to accommodate his unique style, but this? Especially in these times? No. Not for a single second.

Will Fred, Julie, or Kurtis Murray distance themselves from this?

Will even one other person say one word about this?

It's despicable.

*******************

Here's the same meme.

Or check out the Happy Merchant meme.

And other similar memes such as the Angry Merchant and the Worried Merchant. 

The Anti-Semitic Meme of the Jew.

*******************

I have directly informed Julie Murray, Tim Pilleri, James Renner, and Erinn Larkin of John Smith's tweeting of the anti-Semitic Merchant meme. I hope, despite our differences, we can all strongly and conspicuously condemn Smith's behavior.

John Smith and others

might, if they haven't already, ponder this recent Exeter NH case concerning Robert Frese. 

The Exeter police chief, William Shupe, went criminal on Frese when, if he felt compelled to do anything at all, he could have gone civil.

The Union-Leader: "Frese believes the [criminal] misdemeanor charge is meant to revoke the suspended sentence included in his plea deal, which would land him in prison for 2 to 4 years."

Although the charge against Frese was eventually dropped, cops everywhere surely must applaud Shupe for having sent a strong signal about the risks of criticizing police.

The sentiment in the above meme became reality in the charge against Frese.

The meme was posted by Guardians of the Thin Blue Line, the same group from which another meme, widely described as racist, was recently shared on the Hadley Police Department's official Facebook page by, according to the Gazette, a police admin, Sgt. Ken Hartwright.

The meme was taken down from Hadley PD's page after they were alerted to it by one or more Hadley residents who found it deeply offensive.

While I did not attend the Kumbaya, paper-it-over meeting at the Hadley station (I wasn't exactly invited), I found it hard to accept Hartwright's explanation as described in the Gazette.

Hartwright allegedly said he skipped over the first half of the meme, which was about the Starbucks arrests, and took in only the second half of it, about the Florida assassination of two cops. But somehow he posted the whole thing.

The false equivalency of the entire meme was quickly and emphatically pointed out. I'm just not sure how posting half a meme makes much sense, but that was apparently Hartwright's explanation.

Coincidentally, Hartwright, according to his own personal Facebook page, lives in Vernon CT, 

which is a good drive from Hadley. So, naturally, I recalled the "mcsmom" of Topix.

And I wondered whether they share the same-but-different implicit feelings about a Missing White Woman as opposed to, say, a Balkan immigrant left for dead on Triangle Street in the town next to Hadley. Or is that another false equivalency?

I don't think so.

In fact, I think it's becoming increasingly clear, despite claims like those by UMPD's Sgt. Jeffrey Skinner, that there is a troubling convergence of, on one hand, racist authoritarianism within right-wing law enforcement and, on the other hand, a sexist authoritarianism within left-wing social justice movements, a convergence frequently and virulently exemplified in the Vasi/Murray case(s). 

This marriage of convenience is maintained, in this instance, by the vigilante swiftness with which Vasi's known plight is contemptuously swept aside in favor of the imagined fate of a young, attractive, and, of course, helpless (thus needing the protection only men can provide, as if women were objects like vintage cars) white woman who is known only to have disappeared after she went to a liquor store.

No matter how much attention is focused on Maura Murray and New Hampshire, nothing changes what BSG saw.

Nothing about the Saturn's Haverhill spinout changes what happened to Petrit Vasi in Amherst, Massachusetts, a case that both right-wing police and left-wing SJWs have consistently gone out of their way to trivialize, dismiss, and ignore.

In this week’s NYT Book Review, Timothy Snyder writes the following about Benjamin Carter Hett’s recent book, The Death of Democracy: “...the Nazis were the great artists of victimhood fiction.”

No one does victimhood fiction in this country, in these times, better than police on the far right and SJWs on the far left. Strange bedfellows indeed, as the Vasi/Murray case(s) continually demonstrate(s).

Helena Murray and Chris King

I'm pretty sure the woman on the left is the late Helena Murray - for many years the leading spokesperson for the Murray family - and I think the man wearing the hat in the background is Chris King. I imagine the photo was taken at UMass-Amherst. 

I'm not really sure what the connection to the Floyd trial was all about, but I think King did say that people in the Murray camp were quite happy with him, King, for some reason, and, I think, wanted to throw him a party - at the Dutch Treat?

King, of course, is well known for his tireless and detailed coverage of the Kenney-McKay double homicide in Franconia, May 2007, as well as his interest in the Floyd trial itself, held later about a separate incident.

As I was told, but don't myself know, King caught a ride from Massachusetts to Floyd's Franconia trial with a frequent Maura Murray/Topix poster, Snowy, a woman from Massachusetts.

I am puzzled by the apparent interest of the same people in both the Floyd case and the disappearance of Maura Murray.

***************

Not that it's related, but it should be noted that King's coverage of the Jason Vassell case shed a much needed light on the racism of law enforcement in the Amherst area. Considering the far-right, anti-immigrant tendencies of many of the Vasi investigators, I'm not totally surprised.

I wonder whether Maggie Freleng

while she was at the Greenfield Recorder, ever worked with George W. Claxton. 

Claxton, for years, covered crime for the daily paper.

Det. Kevin Rowell of the Greenfield Police Department, a near-daily source for Claxton (G.P.D., not Rowell), once told me how much he enjoyed Claxton's writing style. I did, too, immensely.

If I recall correctly, I think Claxton left his Recorder job some years back for the greener pastures of Homeland Security, a smart career move, considering the future of small-town presses. But he's much missed in Franklin County.

Freleng could have learned a lot from someone as talented and experienced as Claxton.

**************

Did a cop help Maura Murray disappear?

Obviously, the key is

vernal pools, anthills, and spalted maple. Good gosh!

Another day,

another comment, this time on Scare Theater's Youtube channel.

YouTube remarks posted 07 June 2018

I have no idea who this YouTube Lance guy is, but I think anyone would have to wonder whether the Facebook person with the guns is the same as the YouTube person who left the comments.

The YouTube Lance person joined YouTube 2 1/2 years ago, but no activity? Just a lurker? So many of these.

I thought Threat Assessment and Management got concerned about stuff like this. But I'm guessing probably not in this case, just like David E. Sullivan's Northwestern District Attorney's Office. They're only interested in those who, like me, call them out on it, They're only interested in those who are bullied, even, I'll bet, most especially, if they're bullied by cops. As I've pointed out before, the Northampton High School resource officer is quoted in the Gazette as saying as much. What a perfect way for cops to make innocent people they don't like the objects of their scrutiny, aka further harassment.

This wouldn't be the first time guns have shown up. Someone named Trixy did it a while back. They have an insatiable appetite, they just cannot get enough Stephon Clarks. 

No matter how you look at it, this kind of thing probably won't stop until I'm dead. Cops, especially in western Massachusetts, apparently love it.

You Struck Him

You drove right into Petrit Vasi. He was on Triangle Street. You hit him with the front of your car and you left the scene. You crippled him for life. Did you see him? Did you see his face? Was it accidental? Did you think he was a dog? You left the scene. Are you still alive?

Joseph O Anderson and Sam Ledyard

Anyone ever wonder about this guy?

I sort of forgot about him until I went to follow John Smith on Twitter yesterday and saw a "Lady of the Dunes" person following Smith; so I, out of curiosity, followed LotD.

I'll come back to Sam/Joseph later, but for now... Agreeing to out yourself in Boston Magazine, circulation a half-million? Is that somehow good for your law practice? I wonder what his law partner at the time, Dena Rando, thought of that.

Was doxing yourself in a prominent Boston-area glossy an attempt to lure critics of Sam Ledyard into committing some sort of offense - such as stalking, threatening, or defamation - against a suddenly revealed real-life Joseph Anderson?

Consider this, sent to me via Topix a few years ago:

In case the text in the above JPEG image is unclear, the penultimate sentence reads, "There seems to be some suspicion around the [Maura Murray] community that you may have been the person who threatened Sam." Just for the record, no, I never threatened Sam. But one could easily infer an attempt by Vanderbilt to worry me.


Here's how Epter (acronym of Peter) commented almost immediately after Billy Jensen's article appeared in the online edition.

Below is a comment on an old blog of mine, from a Sam Ledyard.

Just for the record... In about 2000, on the way home one night, I helped a woman get away from a man who had beaten her.

And she, as "Sam" maintains, just totally out of the blue, a dozen years later, contacted, of all people, Sam Ledyard? Without the avid assistance of Greenfield police?

No, I did not forcibly restrain her. I was a bystander, and I intervened, an action now advocated by SJWs and fashionably called by them "bystander intervention." When I grew up, this action had no politically correct connotation; it was simply the right thing to do. Period.

I offered this woman a ride to a populated, well lighted area located about sixty seconds away (Greenfield Subway on Federal St.), next to a pay phone, and urged her to call either NELCWIT or the Greenfield police.

After she got out at Subway, she said, "You're going to call the cops, aren't you?" I told her yes, I have to. I drove up the street to the next pay phone, at Dairy Mart (now a car lot), and called the Greenfield police myself.

Why should I not have concerns about something like Sam's query? Why would Sam's email not discourage me from ever again helping anyone who is being beaten? Why should I not just turn my head and keep on going?

But just as (mostly far-right) cops drench themselves in self-victimization, so too do SJWs, who, as this case illustrates, are all too happy to ally themselves with their political enemies on the right when they are both conveniently attracted by the twin compulsions of victimhood and excessive authority. And don't forget about the great lubricant of strange bedfellows: grant money.

Why should I not suspect a twisted, corrupt, malicious, fascist kind of Social Justice Warmongering - a mirror image of what is frequently criticized by SJWs as the authoritarian impulses of only the far right - when the far left itself shares exactly these same impulses and hostile behavior?

Why should I think, as RC Stevens suggested to me about seven years ago, that all these people online are only a bunch of half-wits on disability? I doubt Ledyard/Anderson is a half-wit on disability. He's an attorney who practiced in Quincy MA - coincidentally the same town in which Helena Murray worked as a legal assistant. 

And another little something, also from a Sam Ledyard, wondering whether I might be connected to the 1974 unsolved Provincetown homicide known as the Lady in the Dunes case. 

What is the purpose of this? Seriously?

Why would Fred Murray

with, presumably, his own family's approval, choose John Smith as his more or less official representative in New Hampshire? Nothing against Smith here, whom I sort of like personally, but isn't image important? Fred sees nothing wrong with using a Truther to represent him to the public?

Why does almost no one question this? In fact, almost no one asks important questions about who Fred surrounds himself with except, persistently, James Renner - to Renner's good credit. (Ditto for Renner's curiosity about Troy Allen or Troy Killman or whatever name he uses.)

I mean, Fred issued, through Smith, a couple of refutations, directed at Renner as far as I could tell, that normally would have been released by someone like Fred's attorney, Terry O'Connell.

I just don't see how keeping on board a so-called conspiracy theorist helps you convince people you're after all the facts. 

Unless there's another reason to use someone like Smith.

Cold N Holefield and John Smith

I've posted this before, but I think it needs repeating because it's one more indication that the internet's discussion of Maura Murray's disappearance is not entirely, um, uncontrived? These nearly identical tweets occurred within, I am pretty sure, a few minutes of one another. Makes me wonder whether Cold N. Holefield is somehow connected to John "Wolfman" Smith. 

Maura Murray ran and ran and ran

through the intersection of North Hadley Road and Roosevelt Street a zillion times before she crashed her father's Corolla there. 

Stop on the side of Rt. 116 near the Massachusetts Avenue/North Hadley Road overpass on any but the worst-weather day of the school year and watch how many athletes run in small packs from campus down Mass. Ave./North Hadley Road, and then onto Roosevelt Street. I'll bet Erinn Deborah Larkin knows this, but I don't think anyone's ever asked her about it. Why has no one ever asked her about this?

So, Maura was more than just slightly familiar with the intersection. She had run through it on foot many times and probably driven through it at least a few times, too; otherwise, she would not have taken that route at that hour. She knew exactly where the stop line was. She was not deceived by the placement of the flashing red light and guardrail. No way.

IIRC, according to Renner, the Hadley responding officer, Mark Ruddock, and/or the Hadley Police Department have said Maura might have been later cited for something called "inattention," which is another way of saying distracted driving. But if she was distracted because she was on a cell phone, whose was it?

Not that it matters much now, but if Maura had later contested prosecution for the Vasi hit, then an earlier citation or conviction for driving while distracted at the Corolla crash would almost certainly have buoyed the Commonwealth's case. But who the heck would be thinking thoughts like this anyway?

UMass Police Department Sgt. Jeffrey Sheepdog Skinner

Here's a little thing posted online by Jeffrey "Sheepdog" Skinner.

My brothers and sisters in Law Enforcement are free to share this - [not that I'm LE, but this was posted on Facebook, the very place UMass police caution people about using]

Time to set the record straight! 

I have recently learned that there are some people out there who are declaring that the Thin Blue Line symbol and it's variations are symbols of Nazi supporters, Fascists, and Alt-Right groups. There are two ways to look at this- 1: This ISN'T really being used by these groups, but the people who are saying this is know that this symbol is used by Law Enforcement and its supporters, and are trying to intentionally cause a divide between LEO's and their community partners. Or 2- this IS the case and these groups are trying to change the interpretation and meaning of these symbols, from something good to something evil.

Either way, know this - If you see me with a Thin Blue Line symbol on my vehicle, or on my clothing, etc; I am NOT a supporter of any group that thrives on hate, prejudice, and disrespect. In fact, i vehemently and passionately disagree with the opinions and politics of many [emphasis mine] of the Nazi/Fascist groups that I've learned about. 

But i AM a supporter of the REAL Thin Blue Line group. A group of people who stepped up to do the right thing when others won't. Who will step in when something is wrong. Who are ready to defend others when they can't defend themselves. We are a group that prides itself on respect for ALL people. Together, we represent that line, at times which is very thin, but that will never be truly broken, that stands between good and evil; between crime and order; between violence and peace; and between hate and love. We are Law Enforcement Officers. 

And this is why i will not stop displaying the Thin Blue Line symbol. I will not let hate and disrespect win. 

There are wolves out there y'all. Some of whom are disguised as sheep. But i am a sheepdog, and i will do my absolute best to keep the wolves away from our flock. That is my commitment to my friends, my family, and even complete strangers. 

Be safe, and look out for one another; we're all in this together.

Not a Nazi? Really? Okay, maybe Skinner's not a Nazi in the narrow sense of being a member of the Hitler-inspired American Nazi Party or whatever its variations in America are called these days. But in the everyday, broader sense, "Nazi" means excessively authoritarian. You know... as in dictators, tyranny, that kind of thing; including left-wing versions sometimes known as Stalinism. Excessive authority is what I'm getting at.

But don't ask him about parking regulations or you might get thrown off campus for two years by the UMass police. For asking about parking regulations??? Oh yeah, that and showing Skinner a folded-over picture of an unidentified Saturn, a picture that revealed only its 2003-2004 parking sticker on the car's left rear passenger window, another subject verboten (excuse the word) in online discussions like those on Reddit, etc. 

How many times has it been claimed, without evidence, that Maura Murray's car was, with no doubt whatsoever, parked in Lot 12 the Thursday night before she vanished? Therefore, according to this convenient assertion, the Saturn could not possibly have struck Petrit Vasi?

The fact that Maura's Saturn was assigned to Lot 12 does not mean it was always parked in Lot 12. But a lot of people seem to dislike this inconvenient truth.

Southwest Circle, for example, located very near Melville Hall, is about a mile from where Vasi was hit; it's right next to where Maura was working Thursday night. And the only official indication that UMass can provide of Maura's working hours indicate she got out of work at midnight, just minutes before Vasi was hit, right about the time she was on her cell phone talking to her boyfriend.

I don't care what Skinner says in his tossed-salad of an essay, or opinion piece, or statement, or rant, or whatever you want to call it.

When an ordinary, law-abiding citizen wants to know whether a student's car could have been parked - four years earlier! - very near Melville Hall, on or near SW Circle, and as a result of his having asked this entirely straightforward question he's kicked off campus for two years without any explanation, yes, that's the exercise of excessive authority, which a lot of people call being a Nazi.

Because that's just what "being a Nazi," in common parlance, really is: the unreasonable exercise of excessive authority. Which we don't do here in America. Except for those like Skinner who worship the authoritarian cult of the thin blue line and keep trying to call it something else. Sheepdog, my ass. 

And Skinner, while a senior and police cadet at UMass, worked with Maura Murray?

*************

I would add this about the willingness of police to suppress constitutionally protected speech, even though it's not a Massachusetts case.

BonquosGhost on Reddit

What BonquosGhost wrote above is total malarkey. The comment, in this Reddit thread, is punctuated so that technically, yes, it is, in the very narrowest sense, literally true. But it was still written in order to deceive. 

In plain English, the Amherst Massachusetts Police Department never issued any such statement.

Think about someone who would do this. Think about someone who even could do this, who would think this way. Think about why it would be done. And then think about why someone like this would spend so much time on Reddit. And who knows where else?

Once again, when it comes to talking about the notion that Maura Murray hit Petrit Vasi, there is intense pushback.

And this is just one example.

The fact that BonquosGhost - such a name, haha - sometimes comes, more or less, to my defense, in this thread and others, does not excuse the effort to deceive as shown above.

Erinn Deborah Larkin and Fred Murray

Can someone please explain why Larkin is, as her own recorded "interviews" seem to indicate, so friendly with Maura Murray's father, Fred? I mean, despite her choice of "Guerrilla Ontologist" as a moniker, she strikes me as an intelligent, principled, and polite person; certainly way more than most people who discuss Maura Murray's disappearance.

By comparison... As much as I think Maggie Freleng has soiled the reputation of pseudo-journalism, Freleng, at least compared to Larkin, keeps her distance from the person she's - I was going to say interviewing, but that's not quite the right word - talking to in apparently informed terms.

But Larkin makes no such pretense. Don't get me wrong. I truly like Larkin, which is why I'm so puzzled by her behavior. She's generally a credit to clear thinking - when she wants to be. But when it comes to Fred and his daughter's disappearance, it's like she's lost her objectivity compass. She just seems to cozy right up to him, indulge him, not actually question him like Freleng did.

What we have here IMO is a smart, level-headed interviewer like Larkin cuddling up to Fred while a confused and poorly informed yahoo like Freleng really acts like a reporter and correctly maintains her professional distance. Is this not entirely backwards?

It's not hard to see why Fred might have wanted to talk to Larkin, who's a UMass alum, near Maura's age, a runner (former UMass track team member, no less), and obviously sympathetic to Fred. Almost a substitute daughter.

I could be wrong, but IIRC Larkin even admitted that her questions were submitted in writing before she actually even met Fred. Presumably, Larkin knows how that looks.

So... I can only wonder whether she's keeping Fred in the dark by play-acting out these absurd Haverhill police and local dirtbag conspiracy theories with him. Seriously. I cannot believe she doesn't know better. She must. Yet she spoon-feeds Fred total tripe.

How come? And, more importantly, how come nobody else asks why?

Douglas Parkhurst and Maura Murray

This is one of the most interesting stories (this one appeared in the Washington Post) I have read about delayed justice in cold hit-and-run cases. The Portland Press-Herald, of course, has covered it extensively, as have other outlets.

(I don't blame anyone for not wanting to click a link in a blog post, so just Google "Douglas Parkhurst" and "Carolee Ashby" and you'll find the story.)

This quote from the WaPo story:

Parkhurst wrote in his confession that he had lied to police about the damage to his car in 1968. “I don’t know why the police never challenged me on this. I wish they did. I would have told them the truth.

Why are Capt. Ronald Young and/or Chief Scott Livingstone of the Amherst Massachusetts Police Department silent about any connection between the Vasi hit and the subsequent disappearance of Maura Murray? If they wanted to comment, they could. They have certainly been asked, but they refuse to respond.

No Cop Interest in Maura Murray Saturn Damage

Why are police not even slightly interested in the fact that the person who vandalized my backyard might be connected to the Petrit Vasi hit-and-run?

Much of this blog

is taken from my other blog. I didn't want the narrative of Curious Case to be overwhelmed and ultimately steered off-course by the comment sections, so I disabled them on the other blog. I just wanted to keep a story going without distraction. But I think, just maybe, here is a good place to jot down some of my random thoughts and see what a few other people have to say.

Remember, it's experimental, exploratory. I might, from post to post or even within a single post, write completely contradictory thoughts. Not a lot of careful crafting or discipline going on here, at least right now.

Although I'm allowing comments on this blog, I might be unpredictably picky and not allow too many.  I'll see what happens. Maybe there'll be little interest and then comments won't be a concern.

I'm not here for justice for Petrit Vasi himself. I'm here because Petrit Vasi was almost killed and he was crippled for life. Unlike Maura Murray, Petrit Vasi is an actually known crime victim. Maybe the hit itself was accidental, but leaving the scene was totally wrong.

I have little interest in the disappearance of Maura Murray; nothing against her, just not interested very much. However, I'll probably spend a lot of time on the Maura Murray Case (whatever the "Maura Murray Case is) for what it might reveal about the Petrit Vasi hit-and-run, hereafter referred to as the Vasi hit.