Monday, September 6, 2010

Last day of the holiday weekend everyone is dragging

I went swimming yesterday and the water was so nice. It's overcast today so it will probably be cooler. The pool changes according to the weather. If it stays overcast all day, might be uncomfortable. But I am making the most of these last days of summer.
Dan left a message for me on FB that he would be by Tuesday or Wednesday. He will probably be very busy at the Sheraton coming off the holiday today. I will find out where he is living now and all the scoop.
Dante is still in Calif going to school. His mother just came back from two weddings in the family, so am hoping to hear how he is doing there. All the workers have to come back and go to work so they can't speak for a few days. Ha.
I am kind of wiped out emotionally from going over to Mary and son Paul Patrick's to see the case study done on ID called Phoenix Serial Shooters yesterday. Paul, one of the victims, was able to enlarge on what we were seeing on screen making it all the more affecting. He described how a medic who was back from war ran across the street and virtually kept him alive until the paramedics could get there. He said he could feel himself fading and the guy would keep flicking his eyelids and telling him to hang on. He was going into shock and about to expire.
Believe me, these killers had the whole city of Phoenix terrorized through 2005 and part of 2006 when a bar friend of one of the shooters led police to the pair. Before they could pick them up police were going up and down streets warning everyone out walking late at night to get off the street. Paul said he thought about the serial killers and went back to the house once, but decided to go again to get cigarettes and was shot on his walk to an all night convenience store. He said as soon as he was hit he knew it was them.
They showed one horse that was still standing that had been shot in the side. Blood was running down. One guy was shot and killed who was homeless and asleep on a bus bench. One young girl was in her pajamas walking down to her girlfriend's house late at night thinking she was in a safe neighborhood. Her parents did not even know she had left the house. That was one of the most brutal and shocking murders since she was so young.
I do not think there has ever been a worse series of shootings by two people in Arizona. To make matters worse another serial shooter who raped women and killed a number of them was active at the same time. Paul said they were competing. He was called the Baseline Killer and he was amazingly caught not too long after Dale Hausner and Dieteman were apprehended. The bar friend of Dieteman who was to testify died unexpectedly of MRSA after surgery on his elbow before the case went to trial.
At some point in the show the cells where the killers were housed was shown, and then Paul was shown at the open door of his bedroom where all his paraphernalia required to keep him alive could be seen. He said, "And here is my cell where being shot by them put me!" He said that he got to say what he wanted to say, and this is so true. We often forget what the survivors of a shooting have to go through for the rest of their lives with injuries that make normal living impossible.
Paul told me he would talk on camera with me. I am going to wait for them to recover from the viewing downtown somewhere where all those involved in the show got together. Very impressive police work was done on this case to apprehend all three serial killers in such a relatively short time. Many serial killers go on taking victims for years before they are caught. We were all amazed these cases were broken relatively fast. But it was a tip from a concerned citizen that was critical.
I lived for 20 years on the west side where gun fire erupted on a regular basis and somebody had to pay the price by being shot. Living in poor violent neighborhoods has left me with a vested interest in violent crime.
I am pretty sure that those who are too sympathetic with the law breakers dont live in those neighborhoods or they would probably appreciate more the role law enforcement must play to try to rid the streets of violent killers.
In the case of the Phoenix Serial Shooters, Hausner and Dieteman, nobody felt safe. Everyone who walked the streets after dark was a potential victim.
We are not going to forget that reign of terror by men without a conscience very soon!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You sent me the book on these serial killer and I haven't had the heart to read it yet. I followed everything in the paper when I lived in Phoneix. Crazy guys. You didn't mention that other serial killer than was killing prostitues. He worked a couple of blocks from you at Fat Cats.
Yesterday I was watching msnbc from all that footage shot in prisons. I couldn't believe the violence...and they release these angry men out on the unsuspected society. There has got to be a better way to rehab people. America has a bigger prison population than any country in the world. Some say it is slavery, controlled by gaurds and wardens. With everyone out of a job there is going to be more violence as more people get hungry. One robber up here appoligized to a woman all the time he was robbing her saying...I need the money for my kids. He promised to call back and tell her where her grandmother's jewelery was pawned.
Ofcourse he never did. Linda


Herrad

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