Stupid Question ™
April 26, 2002
By John Ruch
© 2002
Q: What happened to the girl who inspired the Boomtown Rats song “I Don’t Like Mondays”? Did she ever explain her crime?
—Zoni Macaroni
A: On Monday, Jan. 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer sat in her San Diego house and started shooting children at the elementary school across the street.
Back then, middle-class school violence was still a novelty. So was Spencer’s explanation: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
Bob Geldof, singer of the Irish New Wave band Boomtown Rats, turned the striking incident into “I Don’t Like Mondays,” with the chorus, “Tell me why/I don’t like Mondays/I want to shoot/The whole day down.”
The song topped the UK charts in late 1979 but was widely banned from US airplay. Tori Amos covered it on last year’s “Strange Little Girls” album.
Spencer, a small girl with long strawberry-blonde hair, was sensitive and artistic. But she had a record of theft, drug abuse and animal torture. She once smashed out the windows of the Grover Cleveland Elementary School—her old elementary school, and later her shooting target.
As children were arriving for school on Jan. 29, she opened fire on them with a .22-caliber rifle with a telescopic sight—a Christmas present from her father. She fired about 40 shots over 20 minutes until the police blocked her line of fire with a garbage truck. She killed the principal and head custodian, and wounded a police officer and eight children ages 7 to 10.
She remained holed up in the house for more than six hours. Phoned by reporters, she gave various versions of the “I don’t like Mondays” line. She told police that she had been drinking and taking pills, and surrendered peacefully.
Coincident with the release of “I Don’t Like Mondays,” she pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Now 39 years old, Spencer is still in prison, having been denied parole at least three times. She has received her GED and studied electronics. She is being treated for epilepsy and depression.
At her first parole hearing, she claimed the state had faked evidence against her and kept her drugged, and that it was possible her victims had actually been shot accidentally by police. She said her real targets were hallucinated “commandos” she saw besieging her house.
At her 2001 hearing, she apologized and said, “With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible.” She said she doesn’t remember saying the “Mondays” line.
She also accused a relative of physically and sexually abusing her.
It was also reported that, when her affair with a fellow prisoner soured, she responded by heating a paper clip and branding the words “courage” and “pride” onto her own chest.
Brenda is housed at the California Institution for Women near Corona, California. She’ll be eligible for parole again in 2005.
Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts
March 28, 2008
Hijacking Planes To Cuba
Stupid Question ™
Jan. 10, 2002
By John Ruch
© 2002
Q: Why did bank robbers and other fugitives of the 1970s hijack planes to Cuba? Did Castro really welcome US criminals?
—Sister Nancy
A: Through the years, a politically correct version of airplane hijacking has been welcomed by various governments.
Skyjacking began in 1947 as an escape method from Communist countries and was praised by the US as such, even when crew members were murdered. The first golden age of skyjacking was 1947-1956, with 22 skyjackings, 18 involving escape from Communism.
Cuban skyjackings followed the same pattern. The first were actually from Cuba to the US—mostly former members of Batista’s dictatorship fleeing Castro’s 1959 revolution. The US welcomed the skyjackers—even the murderous ones—as heroes, prosecuted none, and typically kept and sold the airplane. One skyjacker even became a US airline pilot and a member of the pilot association’s Flight Safety Committee.
The tables turned on May 1, 1961, when Cuban expatriate Antulio Ramirez Ortiz performed the first US-to-Cuba skyjacking. Babbling a bizarre story about warning Castro of an assassination plot, he was hailed as a hero in Cuba and nicknamed “Numero Uno.”
Meanwhile, a panicked US made “air piracy” a federal crime and started talking about the exact same safety measures it’s still talking about now.
But it still didn’t prosecute Cuba-to-US skyjackers, welcoming them as political symbols of Cuban decay.
Ramirez indeed turned out to be only Number One of many more skyjackers, the majority of whom were welcomed by Castro as political symbols of American decay.
At first there were a few similar expatriate-Cuban skyjackers. But then homegrown radicals followed suit—to join the revolution, flee charges or just get attention. And then common criminals on the lam started imitating the radicals. It snowballed into 69 successful skyjackings from 1968 to 1973, with “Take me to Cuba” becoming a catchphrase. More than 50 percent were fugitives.
Most skyjackers, and especially the common criminals, had no idea what life in Cuba was really like. They just knew it had no extradition and that everybody was going there. Most of them were in for severe culture shock and ended up returning to the US to turn themselves in.
Skyjackers who were obvious thugs were simply jailed or thrown out of the country. The experience of the rest depended on whether they were real revolutionaries (or could fake it) and could adjust to life in a struggling, authoritarian, agricultural country. Most criminals weren’t and couldn’t. They were kicked out or allowed to leave. Some who protested social conditions were jailed and tortured.
The few who truly adjusted got the socialist perks of free health care and housing, plus a monthly stipend and no work requirements. They were usually housed together in dorms (one known as “Hijack House”) and later in apartments and hotels. William Lee Brent, a fugitive Black Panther, taught high school and had a radio show.
By 1975, there were about 100 US skyjackers in Cuba. Today, about six remain.
Jan. 10, 2002
By John Ruch
© 2002
Q: Why did bank robbers and other fugitives of the 1970s hijack planes to Cuba? Did Castro really welcome US criminals?
—Sister Nancy
A: Through the years, a politically correct version of airplane hijacking has been welcomed by various governments.
Skyjacking began in 1947 as an escape method from Communist countries and was praised by the US as such, even when crew members were murdered. The first golden age of skyjacking was 1947-1956, with 22 skyjackings, 18 involving escape from Communism.
Cuban skyjackings followed the same pattern. The first were actually from Cuba to the US—mostly former members of Batista’s dictatorship fleeing Castro’s 1959 revolution. The US welcomed the skyjackers—even the murderous ones—as heroes, prosecuted none, and typically kept and sold the airplane. One skyjacker even became a US airline pilot and a member of the pilot association’s Flight Safety Committee.
The tables turned on May 1, 1961, when Cuban expatriate Antulio Ramirez Ortiz performed the first US-to-Cuba skyjacking. Babbling a bizarre story about warning Castro of an assassination plot, he was hailed as a hero in Cuba and nicknamed “Numero Uno.”
Meanwhile, a panicked US made “air piracy” a federal crime and started talking about the exact same safety measures it’s still talking about now.
But it still didn’t prosecute Cuba-to-US skyjackers, welcoming them as political symbols of Cuban decay.
Ramirez indeed turned out to be only Number One of many more skyjackers, the majority of whom were welcomed by Castro as political symbols of American decay.
At first there were a few similar expatriate-Cuban skyjackers. But then homegrown radicals followed suit—to join the revolution, flee charges or just get attention. And then common criminals on the lam started imitating the radicals. It snowballed into 69 successful skyjackings from 1968 to 1973, with “Take me to Cuba” becoming a catchphrase. More than 50 percent were fugitives.
Most skyjackers, and especially the common criminals, had no idea what life in Cuba was really like. They just knew it had no extradition and that everybody was going there. Most of them were in for severe culture shock and ended up returning to the US to turn themselves in.
Skyjackers who were obvious thugs were simply jailed or thrown out of the country. The experience of the rest depended on whether they were real revolutionaries (or could fake it) and could adjust to life in a struggling, authoritarian, agricultural country. Most criminals weren’t and couldn’t. They were kicked out or allowed to leave. Some who protested social conditions were jailed and tortured.
The few who truly adjusted got the socialist perks of free health care and housing, plus a monthly stipend and no work requirements. They were usually housed together in dorms (one known as “Hijack House”) and later in apartments and hotels. William Lee Brent, a fugitive Black Panther, taught high school and had a radio show.
By 1975, there were about 100 US skyjackers in Cuba. Today, about six remain.
March 27, 2008
Voiceprint Machines
Stupid Question ™
Jan. 25, 2001
By John Ruch
© 2001
Q: How can voiceprint machines identify a voice even when it’s disguised?
—Dave Williams
A: Actually, there’s no evidence that they can. Indeed, even proponents have dropped the term “voiceprint,” because it incorrectly suggests the subjective practice is as reliable as fingerprinting.
“Spectrographic voice analysis,” as it’s called today, was first proposed during World War II. But it came to fruition only in the 1960s, when Bell Labs physicist Lawrence Kersta set out to ID bomb-threat callers for the New York Police Department.
Using a device called a sound spectrograph, he claimed to ID voices with 99.65 percent accuracy. Kersta trademarked the word “voiceprint,” founded Voiceprint Laboratories and established an International Association of Voice Identification. Like the fellow quasi-science of polygraphy, voiceprinting relies on arbitrary judgments and an unproven, reductionist hypothesis: in this case, that every human voice is unique and can be reliably discerned by a machine.
Voiceprinting is admissible evidence in only a handful of states, and then mostly as a tool of corroboration rather than primary identification.
Since the voiceprinting method is strong biased toward giving a positive result, this helps explain its claims of high success rates: in most cases, it’s used to identify a single, already known suspect, who in the US is statistically likely to be found guilty simply by going to trial.
The method begins by getting a recording of a suspect’s voice to compare to a source recording. Whenever possible, the suspect is made to say the exact same words in the exact same way—even with the same disguise, if applicable.
First the examiner listens to the recordings, noting similarities (not differences; it’s biased toward positive ID) and selecting especially close ones to run through the spectrograph. This device records sound waves as a printout that shows the frequency and intensity of the sound. The examiner compares printouts of the sample sounds for similarities and differences in the squiggly lines; only at this point do differences count.
The results of this subjective process are then rated on a subjective scale: twenty similarities and no differences is a positive ID; fewer than 20 and no “unexplained” differences is a probable ID. The error rate of voiceprinting is unknown, though scanty studies suggest anything from 6 to 29 percent.
It probably helps that most cases brought to examiners (about 60 percent) are rejected for having “poor” recordings or “not enough information.” In the similar, and better investigated, world of computer voice-recognition programs, difficulties are rampant and manufacturers are happy with an “equal error rate” in which the number of false positives equals the false negatives.
Since the human voice has a large behavioral element, there is probably no error-free way to ID it. And almost no research has been done on the effects of illness, emotional states and deliberate disguise on the method. Indeed, in 1974, California tossed voiceprinting out of its courts specifically because there was no evidence that it could ID disguised or mimicked voices.
Jan. 25, 2001
By John Ruch
© 2001
Q: How can voiceprint machines identify a voice even when it’s disguised?
—Dave Williams
A: Actually, there’s no evidence that they can. Indeed, even proponents have dropped the term “voiceprint,” because it incorrectly suggests the subjective practice is as reliable as fingerprinting.
“Spectrographic voice analysis,” as it’s called today, was first proposed during World War II. But it came to fruition only in the 1960s, when Bell Labs physicist Lawrence Kersta set out to ID bomb-threat callers for the New York Police Department.
Using a device called a sound spectrograph, he claimed to ID voices with 99.65 percent accuracy. Kersta trademarked the word “voiceprint,” founded Voiceprint Laboratories and established an International Association of Voice Identification. Like the fellow quasi-science of polygraphy, voiceprinting relies on arbitrary judgments and an unproven, reductionist hypothesis: in this case, that every human voice is unique and can be reliably discerned by a machine.
Voiceprinting is admissible evidence in only a handful of states, and then mostly as a tool of corroboration rather than primary identification.
Since the voiceprinting method is strong biased toward giving a positive result, this helps explain its claims of high success rates: in most cases, it’s used to identify a single, already known suspect, who in the US is statistically likely to be found guilty simply by going to trial.
The method begins by getting a recording of a suspect’s voice to compare to a source recording. Whenever possible, the suspect is made to say the exact same words in the exact same way—even with the same disguise, if applicable.
First the examiner listens to the recordings, noting similarities (not differences; it’s biased toward positive ID) and selecting especially close ones to run through the spectrograph. This device records sound waves as a printout that shows the frequency and intensity of the sound. The examiner compares printouts of the sample sounds for similarities and differences in the squiggly lines; only at this point do differences count.
The results of this subjective process are then rated on a subjective scale: twenty similarities and no differences is a positive ID; fewer than 20 and no “unexplained” differences is a probable ID. The error rate of voiceprinting is unknown, though scanty studies suggest anything from 6 to 29 percent.
It probably helps that most cases brought to examiners (about 60 percent) are rejected for having “poor” recordings or “not enough information.” In the similar, and better investigated, world of computer voice-recognition programs, difficulties are rampant and manufacturers are happy with an “equal error rate” in which the number of false positives equals the false negatives.
Since the human voice has a large behavioral element, there is probably no error-free way to ID it. And almost no research has been done on the effects of illness, emotional states and deliberate disguise on the method. Indeed, in 1974, California tossed voiceprinting out of its courts specifically because there was no evidence that it could ID disguised or mimicked voices.
Witness Protection Program
Stupid Question ™
April 27, 2000
By John Ruch
© 2000
Q: What happens to people who enter the witness protection program? Do they really give you a fake job and make you have plastic surgery?
—Mick the Weasel
A: Actually called the Witness Security Program (WITSEC), the program was established in 1970 to protect Mafia snitches by changing their identities after trial.
At least 7,000 witnesses have been through WITSEC, along with about 9,500 family members.
To get in, you have to convince the US Attorney General’s office that you have valuable testimony and that giving it risks your life.
Then you and your immediate family go to the Witness Security Safesite and Orientation Center in Washington, D.C., for psychological, medical and vocational testing, and a polygraph test. You also get counseling about the trauma of “disappearing.”
You then sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” in which US marshals agree to give you a new identity and home. In exchange, you agree to stay hidden, stay clean, never return home and testify in court.
You lose all contact with friends and extended family, with the possible exception of letters sent through WITSEC-run mail drops.
You discard anything that might identify you, from old yearbooks to your car (though you can usually keep pets). You are then given airplane tickets to a new US town selected by the marshals, typically at least 1,000 miles away. You choose a new name and invent a fake family tree back at least to your grandparents. All previous records on you are sealed, even from the police. You also get a “code red”—a phone number to call in case you’re in danger.
You get basic documents—Social Security card, driver’s license, birth certificate and any others you’re entitled to (from passports to diplomas).
You’ll get about $2,000 a month for bills until you’re settled, and may get help in finding a used car, house and job. You won’t get a fake credit or job history (in fact, you agree to pay all your old bills), and employers are usually told that you’re in the program.
That’s the average set-up, anyway. Actual treatment ranges from drug lords allowed to keep billions in ill-gotten gains to ex-bikers who got $30, a plane ticket and nothing else.
It’s unclear whether WITSEC has ever paid for plastic surgery; a new haircut is usually enough. Witnesses are trained to create cover stories and given information on their new hometowns.
Since 97 percent of WITSEC witnesses are themselves criminals, many have to serve time before relocation. They do it in one of five special WITSEC prison units that are extremely cushy, with free telephones, cable TV and almost anything else the witness can afford to ship in.
April 27, 2000
By John Ruch
© 2000
Q: What happens to people who enter the witness protection program? Do they really give you a fake job and make you have plastic surgery?
—Mick the Weasel
A: Actually called the Witness Security Program (WITSEC), the program was established in 1970 to protect Mafia snitches by changing their identities after trial.
At least 7,000 witnesses have been through WITSEC, along with about 9,500 family members.
To get in, you have to convince the US Attorney General’s office that you have valuable testimony and that giving it risks your life.
Then you and your immediate family go to the Witness Security Safesite and Orientation Center in Washington, D.C., for psychological, medical and vocational testing, and a polygraph test. You also get counseling about the trauma of “disappearing.”
You then sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” in which US marshals agree to give you a new identity and home. In exchange, you agree to stay hidden, stay clean, never return home and testify in court.
You lose all contact with friends and extended family, with the possible exception of letters sent through WITSEC-run mail drops.
You discard anything that might identify you, from old yearbooks to your car (though you can usually keep pets). You are then given airplane tickets to a new US town selected by the marshals, typically at least 1,000 miles away. You choose a new name and invent a fake family tree back at least to your grandparents. All previous records on you are sealed, even from the police. You also get a “code red”—a phone number to call in case you’re in danger.
You get basic documents—Social Security card, driver’s license, birth certificate and any others you’re entitled to (from passports to diplomas).
You’ll get about $2,000 a month for bills until you’re settled, and may get help in finding a used car, house and job. You won’t get a fake credit or job history (in fact, you agree to pay all your old bills), and employers are usually told that you’re in the program.
That’s the average set-up, anyway. Actual treatment ranges from drug lords allowed to keep billions in ill-gotten gains to ex-bikers who got $30, a plane ticket and nothing else.
It’s unclear whether WITSEC has ever paid for plastic surgery; a new haircut is usually enough. Witnesses are trained to create cover stories and given information on their new hometowns.
Since 97 percent of WITSEC witnesses are themselves criminals, many have to serve time before relocation. They do it in one of five special WITSEC prison units that are extremely cushy, with free telephones, cable TV and almost anything else the witness can afford to ship in.