IS FLORIDA the Most Evil State?

[sunny]

Only in Florida...

A Vero Beach man faces a domestic violence charge after authorities said he assaulted his girlfriend with a cheeseburger. An Indian River County Sheriff's Office arrest report said a 22-year-old man and his girlfriend got into an argument as they sat in a car in front of their home.

The report said the man would not let the woman out of the vehicle, so she threw his drink out of the car. In response, the man allegedly grabbed her arm and smashed the cheeseburger into her face. The pair got out of the car, and authorities say the man again took the McDonald's sandwich and put it on her face.

The man was released on $1,000 bond Wednesday.

SF Gate

PEMBROKE PINES, Florida (CBS4) ― A Pembroke Pines elementary school student has been suspended for 10 days and will likely be expelled for allegedly robbing a younger classmate at knifepoint.

The incident happened in a bathroom at Pines Lakes Elementary School on Taft Street, according to Broward school district spokesman Keith Bromery. A 7-year old boy reportedly held a kitchen knife to a 6-year old's nose and demanded his money. The younger student handed over a dollar and the older boy left. The 6-year old was not hurt.

The younger boy's mother reported the incident to the school who called Pembroke Pines police. The state attorney's office will review the case to determine if any charges should be brought against the older boy who will likely be expelled to an alternate school for children with discipline problems.

This was just the latest incident at Broward schools in recent weeks, including a middle school student who brought a gun to class and the Fort Lauderdale deadly shooting of Dillard High sophomore, Amanda Collete, by a 15-year old classmate.

CBS4

Florida man attacks his father with Christmas tree

PARRISH, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say a Florida man who lives with his parents has been charged with attacking his father with a Christmas tree and its metal stand.

According to the Manatee County sheriff's report, 37-year-old Thomas Edward Lackie was arrested and charged with felony assault last week.

Authorities say to use its steel base to strike he threw the 3-foot Christmas tree at his father but missed. They say he then tried tried to use its steel base to strike him. His father and mother subdued him.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that he denied trying to strike his father.

Authorities didn't immediately return a call by The Associated Press seeking information on the incident and whether Lackie has a lawyer.

AP

[teamdaemon]

Annie,

Instead of putting California in the number 2 slot I would suggest New Jersey instead. New Jersey was the last state to end slavery.

[mentalgongfu2]

Is size all that's important? Omaha alone makes Nebraska a contender for the top 10 most evil states at least. There's Franklin/Gosch connections and a hub of data-mining company corporate headquarters, to start. And have you ever tried to drive in Omaha? God bless the delivery drivers in that city.
And who knows what goes on in along the dark backroads of the rest of that never ending state? I doubt anyone can manage to stay conscious driving through it to find out. The Interstate trip through Nebraska is the most boring length of scenery in a geographic region full of long stretches of boring scenery.

And Enid, Oklahoma seems to be a weird, and perhaps evil, place; although the state as a whole probably doesn't rank.

[IanEye]

The Interstate trip through Nebraska is the most boring length of scenery in a geographic region full of long stretches of boring scenery.

They declared me unfit to live
Said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world...

[lea123]

John Keel makes a pretty good case for West Virginia (this quote, however, comes from Book One of Peter Levenda's Sinister Forces)

Keel mentions the discovery that Native Americans shunned West Virginia, and that no Indian tribes can be identified as "indigenous to that State." He refers to maps of pre-Columbian tribes...in which the area we know as West Virginia is marked as "uninhabited." No one seems to know why the Indians didn't settle there, when the land itself would certainly have supported a large population in terms of fish, game, and vegetation. What is found in West Virginia, however, are petroglyphs and other evidence in stone pointing to the existence of wandering Europeans. There is also a heavy concentration of Adena sites northwest and northeast of Charleston, sites that date to the first millennium BC. Keel wonders if the Native Americans avoided West Virginia because of something they knew, and something the Europeans didn't know. Something inherently strange about the place. A sinister force.

For my money, though, nothing beats the sheer repressive creepiness of parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, especially Lancaster, York and Harrisburg.

[marmot]

[brainpanhandler]

Murder in the Panhandle
The tragic slaying of Byrd and Melanie Billings may be a more complicated case than it seems.



If you talk to those who knew Byrd Billings over the years, two portraits of him emerge. One was of a wealthy, bighearted man who, along with his wife, Melanie, adopted 13 children, most of them with special needs. The couple took in kids with Down syndrome, autism, and fetal alcohol syndrome, and raised them lovingly in a nine-bedroom mansion in Beulah, Fla., near the Alabama border. They lavished them with clothes and toys and annual trips to Disney World. When one of the older girls had her senior prom, they outfitted her in a white Cinderella-style dress and rented a stretch limo. The Billingses "had the capacity to love lots of children who others were unable to care for," says Suzy Watson, who taught two of the youngsters.

Yet the other Byrd Billings was erratic and bullying. Some of his actions involving the children were bizarre. In 2004, for instance, one of the kids with Down syndrome was accidentally burned in the bathtub by scalding water. The boy later died during treatment from an air bubble that entered an artery. After an incident like that, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) typically investigates (though the agency wouldn't confirm that it did so in this case). Billings concocted a strange scheme involving DCF, in an attempt to keep the agency at bay, says lawyer Robert Beasley, who has represented Billings on other matters in the past. Billings tried to trademark seven of the adopted kids' names. Then, each time DCF referred to one of them in correspondence, he claimed a trademark violation and demanded $10 million—in silver coins, for some reason—from the agency and from specific employees. Eventually, a DCF attorney told him to send all communications to the legal department, and Billings stopped.

In his business dealings, Billings could be similarly combative. "Some days, you didn't want to deal with him," says Tim Higley, a former employee. "One time, he threw a baseball bat at a guy doing some remodeling work," because he considered it subpar. It's unclear how Billings was wealthy enough to afford his sprawling mansion. He once owned a strip club, the Back Seat Lounge, but the more significant moneymakers were apparently an array of ventures tied to used cars. Billings handled all aspects of the trade: sales, financing, and repossession. His interest rates and fees were notoriously steep, says Higley. In fact, his financing company was cited and fined twice by the state for imposing excessive charges on buyers, says Crystal Spencer, a former lawyer for the Billings family. As part of his work, Billings also associated with decidedly unsavory characters at times, according to three people who did business with him and declined to be named out of fear for their personal safety.

All of this is now the focus of intense scrutiny, given that Billings and his wife were murdered last month. Within days, authorities arrested eight suspects and retrieved a safe stolen from the couple's house. None has entered a plea yet, though arraignments are scheduled to begin on Thursday. The crime was elaborately conceived, but certain basic elements, like the motive and the connection between the victims and the suspects, remain shrouded in mystery. At first, officials insisted that the motive was robbery. But last Friday, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said at a press conference that it was "a possibility" that the slayings were a contract hit.

As authorities continue their investigation, the case is only getting more convoluted. It features a collection of dubious characters, Byzantine relationships, and elaborate swindles that are fantastical even by Florida's baroque standards. "There is nothing about this case that is a straight line," Morgan told NEWSWEEK. "It's a running con game." ....


http://www.newsweek.com/id/210663

[nathan28]

BPH, I pushed that into the gen. discussion because I couldn't find a way to treat it all light-heartedly.

[orz]

[Maddy]

Full Hate crime report by NCH

Report: Fla. leads country in attacks on homeless

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- For the fourth straight year, an advocacy group has ranked Florida first in the nation in violence against the homeless.

A National Coalition for the Homeless report released Saturday cited 30 attacks last year, including three deaths. Even more incidents here and across the nation are thought to go unreported.

Activists say teenagers who carry prejudices against the homeless are behind most of the violence.

Nationwide, 106 attacks were committed against the homeless last year, an improvement from the 160 documented in 2007 but still far more than the 60 recorded a decade ago.

Advocacy groups in Florida are lobbying to pass laws that would protect the homeless under hate crimes legislation.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

NUMBER 10: Intimidated Witness #1: Atta's American girlfriend.

Mohamed Atta had an American girlfriend with whom he lived for two months in Venice, FL., a lingerie model named Amanda Keller. You haven’t heard her story because she was intimidated into silence by the FBI.

In the aftermath of the attack she spoke only a dozen words to the press: “I can't really discuss anything. I'm afraid I'll get in trouble."

...

http://www.madcowprod.com/index60bb.html

[MinM]

George Armistead Smathers

George Smathers - The Education Forum

I am very interested in the role played by George Smathers in the assassination. Although he claims to have been JFK’s friend, he had long ceased to have supported him and appears to have been LBJ’s man (Smathers was definitely closer to LBJ political views).

I am also interested in George Smathers relationship with Bobby Baker and Fred Black (the Serve-U Corporation).

Smathers was also the man who was trying to link the Kennedys with the death of Marilyn Monroe. At the time of the assassination of JFK his secretary was Mary Jo Kopechne...

Mary Jo Kopechne : Biography

[daba64]

I would like to bolster support for California, my home state, as one of the most evil. It is the west coast headquarters of Scientology as well as the home of SRI, Vacaville prison, LSD experiments in Haight Ashbury, the Manson family, the Chowchilla kidnappings and, of course, the pr0n industry.

And as the Show Business Capital of the World, southern California is a magnet for the world's pretty, who once here are subjected to all manner of exploitation and degradation. And that's just the ones who make it. The rest are relegated to a life of desperation, misery and poverty--servicing the wealthy and eventually used up and thrown on the trash heap. Or shot in the face by Phil Spector. Take your pick.

[monster]

Florida man butchers wife and five children

Admits killings to reporters, blames crime on 'spirit'

A Florida man admitted to reporters that he killed his wife and five "innocent" children, adding that he wants to be executed "right away" so he can be buried with them on Saturday.

Mesac Damas, 32, said he wanted to take his own life, but did not have the courage to go through with it, "because if you kill yourself, you're not going to heaven."

Damas made the statements to a Naples Daily News reporter as he was being led into a Haitian police vehicle in Port-au-Prince. Damas was returned to the United States late Tuesday following his capture in Haiti.

Damas faces six counts of premeditated first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife, Guerline Damas, 32; and the couple's five children -- Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; Megan, 3; and Morgan, 11 months, police have said. The six bodies were found Saturday in the family's North Naples, Florida, home after relatives called police saying they had not been heard from.

Asked by the reporter in Haiti why he killed his family, Damas responded, "Only God knows." Questioned further, he blamed the crime on his mother-in-law. "Her mom pretty much made me do it -- the devil, her spirit, whatever she worships," he said.

Damas added, "When I did it, [my] eyes [were] closed but right now my eyes are open." He repeatedly asked the reporter, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ," and stated, "The devil exists."

Police said an arrest warrant was issued for Damas on Tuesday "based on information and evidence collected thus far in the investigation and statements made by Damas to a federal agent after his detention in Haiti."

Police have not said how the five were killed, but Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk described the scene as "horrific."

The Naples Daily News, citing the warrant, reported that the woman and children were stabbed and their throats were slashed.

Damas had used a one-way ticket to fly from Miami to Haiti. Later, he told reporters that he had gone to Haiti to say goodbye to his family. He claimed that he had planned to turn himself in.

Police had asked the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help in locating Damas. The FBI's legal attaché in the Dominican Republic notified authorities in Collier County, Florida, that a man believed to be Damas was taken into custody Monday by the Haitian National Police.

"Information obtained by [the sheriff's office] shows Damas was found hiding near a hotel in the capital city of Port-au-Prince," a sheriff's statement said Tuesday.

Police earlier said the judge who signed the arrest warrant ordered that Damas be held without bond upon his return to Florida. If convicted of six counts of first-degree murder, Damas could face life in prison or the death penalty.

Mesac and Guerline Damas had a history of domestic violence, police said. Mesac Damas was arrested in January, and in June he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery charges against his wife. Police said they did not believe he served any jail time, and did not think a restraining order was currently in place regarding the couple.

However, an arrest warrant was issued Monday for Damas on charges of violating probation stemming from the January arrest.

Guerline Damas' family released a statement Tuesday through the sheriff's office, saying she was "the best mother, sister and daughter in the world. She was caring and loving, and we miss her very much."

"This is a family tragedy and we want the community to realize that domestic violence is a serious issue," said the statement from the family. "If you have friends or family who are in an abusive relationship, please try to get them help. And to those women who are being abused, please love yourself enough to get help."

The family said its main concern was getting Damas back into the country "to face what he has done and get justice for our sister and daughter and her children. ... We ask that you keep our family in your prayers."

The Damases had been married about 10 years, Rambosk said. He did not know how long they had lived in Naples.

The six bodies were found about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, a day after police had visited the home to check on the family, Collier County sheriff's Capt. Chris Roberts said.

A family member had asked police to conduct a welfare check on the home Friday, saying they had not heard from a resident there, Roberts said. Responding officers knocked on the door and got no answer, he said, but they saw nothing that aroused their suspicions.

The following morning, the family member became more concerned and filed a missing persons report, Rambosk said. Later, authorities requested a key to the house from property management, as well as authorization to enter.

[JackRiddler]

My favorite Bugs Bunny all time!

Do you know where I might find it online? Thanks!