by Dreams End » Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:46 pm
I started the hijacking, chiggerbit. And I'm sorry I did, as the summaries from newsmaking news and the long, detailed replies are worth moving over to the main Hamlin thread. (and to think that she took the time to reply twice, given the computer snafu.)<br><br>One curious thing about all of this is that, if the state does not believe there was a Satanic cult conspiracy, and surely they do not, then how can it not believe that Richard is mentally ill. Those seem the only two options, especially from the state's perspective. If this stuff isn't true, then wouldn't Richard have to be crazy to believe it and to force his wife to believe it as well? Even though we might find gradations of possibilities between those two extremes, I wouldn't expect the state to.<br><br>As I think about it, clearly Richard believes the SRA story. As I said, I think an insanity defense would have been easy for him. And using the news that Susan reported abusing the children as a moment that triggered a breakdown in him would make a lot of sense and be consistent with the facts as understood. Of course, in Catch-22 style, if he was "sane" enough to agree to be declared "insane" then he really wouldn't be "insane" at all. Insane is not a term of psychology, but of law and simply means whether the person was mentally competent to understand the difference between right and wrong at the time the crime was committed. Clearly, if one has delusions that a satanic cult is molesting your children and is out to do you in, then actions taken to prevent this would be consistent with "right" in your mind. So really I don't think he could be tried on this point, unless the prosecutor could find some "sane" motive for forcing his wife to buy into this stuff.<br><br>Susan's first letter is extremely familiar, as it could have been written by my wife to her own father. In fact, she had a conversation exactly like that with him just two days ago, for the exact same reasons (she didn't ask about sexual abuse...that's too tough, but she did ask about physical abuse.) So yes, chiggerbit is right, familiar terrain around here.<br><br>I guess I just can't understand Richard's response, assuming Susan's stories of childhood abuse did surface spontaneously. I understand about gathering data, but my first response, as would most husbands' I think, would be to look after my wife's mental health. If I thought she had been abusing her daughter, I would remove the daughter from the situation. And if I thought her father were involved in a powerful cult with military connections, I'd do what I could to protect my family first, not antagonize this dangerous man. I would fight, yes...but not in a way that further endangered my family. <br><br>As a lawyer, surely he had to know that his approach to Sid was...bizarre. Putting flyers up all over town? Paintballing buildings where abuse was alleged to occur? How about filing charges? How about hiring a private investigator to gather evidence? For the right price, you could have Sid's entire employment history, income history, investments and assets, and probably much more. A few hundred bucks and some investigator clicking a mouse a time or two, and there you have it. No guessing about Indio. No guessing about his past employment. And if there are "gaps" that at least confirms he was doing "off the record" stuff. <br><br>So, I could accept that he came unhinged after the abuse allegations, but unhinged is unhinged and I think that this would have been the defense to present.<br><br>If he wants, on the other hand, to present the broad conspiracy angle, why cut Riconosciuto out of the picture? Does he just expect the jury to take his word for it all? Does he have some evidence we don't know about? I think the whole thing shows a disconnect from reality which was either caused by or led to the whole SRA scenario. <br><br>The Bavaria thing was in a letter to me from Bradley.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>He only had Susan's molestation confessions and her claim that she and her dad were a part of a "Bavarian Satanic cult." I told Rick that sounded like the crazy Illuminati I'd read about and then I told him about MK Ultra and the story really seemed to fit her pattern. All of that came from me. He didn't make it up and didn't discuss it with his wife previously. I also got Ted Gunderson involved, but many people warned us about him and his involvement ceased early on.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I only talked to Richard Hamlin about 30 minutes in the jail, and he had little to say to me, I think, in part, because I am not a fundamentalist Christian. Bradley, on the other, hand was open-minded with me.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Somewhere on the other thread, Bradley downplayed the Christian angle and that it was not as big a deal as Richard had seemed to make it. I had asked, because Richard's feeling that it was specifically about bagging a "trophy Christian" did not ring true to me but sounded more like a religious delusion. While I know nothing of actual Satanic practices or whatever, "bagging a Christian" didn't seem like the kind of thing that a cult that has stayed carefully hidden for hundreds of years would do so casually.<br><br>So Bradley said that religion was, in fact, not that big a part of Richard's life, despite these statements..<br><br>Also, Richard and Susan lived a partying lifestyle, did they not? Am I remembering that correctly? Was there a big conversion experience? Also, and this is important I think, was Richard involved with any particular church or denomination? Although Bradley says it was his own research that led to the "Illuminati" perspective, a fundamentalist church might also have reinforced that idea.<br><br>I have to back off my comments on Bradley...I don't really mean to make him out as a bad guy. I really don't think that any rational person would pin their hopes on getting a guy off the hook by spinning SRA stories. As such, I can't really think of any other reason they'd introduce the concept unless they believed it. And Bradley says he suggested the idea initially, so that would seem to suggest that he simply wasn't buying into a delusional belief system. However the initial claim of a "Bavarian satanic cult" came from Richard who said it was the recollection of Susan. Unless she really was in an actual "Bavarian satanic cult" (which I don't completely rule out but find unlikely) the information had to come from somewhere....<br><br>Oh, I should add this about Gunderson's involvement. Again, via Bradley's email to me (we went back to communicating via the bulletin board...these emails were not about nonpublic info. I'd though I might be able to me of more assistance than I ultimately was, but due to the climate on the board at the time, I didn't know if I could simply post without hostile responses cluttering the thread.) <br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I also got Ted Gunderson involved, but many people warned us about him and his involvement ceased early on.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>Finally, I want to say about Newsmakingnews. I'm curious to know what that website is about...I mean who started it and why? And I don't mean this in a suspicious way, it is simply a unique site. <br><br>While entertaining these ideas of Satanic conspiracies, it seems a standard of research and evidence gathering has been maintained, with no defensiveness or indignation at other points of view. I see you have the Mae Brussel archives? Does NMN grow from her work or did you simply agree to host her archives. Either way, that alone is a great service. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dreamsend@rigorousintuition>Dreams End</A> at: 1/2/06 12:59 pm<br></i>