|
I find it amazing people hike in these extremely hot conditions and don't really think about it. I went to Zion park in the middle of summer and its got running water at the visitor centre for everyone and loads of easy trails and I wasn't really expecting it to be as hot as it was so I went through water really quickly. Then a family go to somewhere called death valley, get out into the heat and don't think maybe they're underprepared
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 23:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 17:59 |
|
|
Ozz81 posted:I thought the same thing a long time ago..."wouldn't it be great if these idiots were just hooting at other idiots looking for sasquatch?" That's why the best paranormal show is Weird or What?! It's hosted and narrated by William Shatner, who demonstrates concepts like alien abductions by making a dollar store alien toy hump a Barbie. The dramatic re-enactments are hilariously bad, but still hilarious. The show talks about some genuinely interesting stuff from time to time, but it never seems to take itself too seriously. It's dumb as hell, but refreshing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 23:24
|
|
|
Jack Gladney posted:Is vocal fry what Ira Glass does, or what those old Delicious Dish SNL segments were making fun of? I've never been able to figure out what it's supposed to be. vocal fry is when your vowels get creaky but it's mostly just used as a dogwhistle for "I do not want to listen to a woman speak because girls are icky amirite" tbqh
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2015 23:43
|
|
|
The disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon - my theory, part 2 (continued from part 1) April 9 - I believe that on this day, Lisanne Froon struck out alone down the arroyo (the deep seasonal rain gulch, they are apparently called quebradas in Panama) to try to find the trail again herself. I think that Kris Kremers was dead at that point because I don't think Lisanne would leave her behind, because if they were going to try that it would have been done sooner when Lisanne was stronger and because I believe Kris was more badly injured\incapacitated than Lisanne and needed her care. When the searchers began to discover remains, one of the first things they found was Kris' foot, still in her shoe, and then later her pair of shorts, often described as "neatly folded on a rock" (though I have never yet found a primary source that goes into that kind of detail on them, anything I've found in newspaper or police reports just says the shorts were found and had definitely been taken off and were not mixed in with remains as they would have been if worn.) This is another key point of confusion in the mystery, because most people recounting these events either imply or outright state that the shoe and the shorts were found together (they weren't, they were found miles apart) and that it's inexplicable the shorts were removed unless there was violence of some kind. I don't think that was the case. I think that Kris fell and hurt herself badly, and it was a lower body injury of some type (broken leg, broken ankle, blown knee, etc) that made her not only unable to walk, but also made it very painful to move around at all. Personal anecdote again: when I was on a second trek in Nepal I blew out my ACL climbing a mountain called Kusum Kangaru. Getting back to Lukla walking on that leg sucked, but one of the worst things about the injury was trying to pee or crap along the trail (or in a Nepali squat toilet) with a leg that it was agony to bend. It required this sort of awkward tripod position, a lot of jolting of the bad knee, and a great deal of cussing (alcohol both helped and exacerbated the problem.) I took to wearing my "camp" and sleeping sundress all of the time because it was just easier to hike the skirt up to pee than to pull down a pair of trousers. If Kris injured one or both legs, Lisanne may have taken off her shorts for her at some point to make it easier to help her with calls of nature, and to avoid hurting her by pulling the shorts up and down. It was warm weather (90F during the day, low 70s at night) and likely they were huddled together at night. Kris would have stayed warm enough. Something else I think supports this theory is that in the picture of Kris's shoe, there is the shoe and the foot. There's no sign of the thick dark hiking socks that Kris in wearing in the earlier photos. I think Lisanne took off Kris' shoes to remove her shorts, then put her shoes back on without bothering with the socks. (It's also very possible that the sock just collapsed into the shoe as the foot decomposed. There is only the one photo.) They probably chose to rest on and around the flat rock seen in the photo of the signal stick; the rock would have been cool during the day and would have been more free of insects than the arroyo floor. Kris was probably lying on or leaning against this rock on the night of the photos, when her red hair appears in one of the 90-plus snaps. Lisanne, depending on how she was hurt, might have stood on the rock as long as she could, lifting the camera as high as she could over her head, firing the flash until the camera was dead. It must have been heartwrenching beyond belief when that battery finally stuttered out and Lisanne knew no one had seen it, but at least she knew that people were looking and that they were close. If Kris died that night or the next day, Lisanne would have nothing to lose by striking out on her own (again assuming that she was more mobile than Kris) and trying to find the searchers and/or the trail. She would have been very weak by then with hunger and dehydration -- presumably the girls could get a certain amount of water from moisture condensing around them on the rocks, but it wouldn't have been much -- but again, nothing to lose. So she left Kris and started walking down the arroyo to try to find the trail again. Her iPhone would have been very close to dead by this point (it seems like a minor miracle to me that it lasted this long) and with the idea that searchers were physically close by and to conserve the battery, I think she didn't turn the phone on for the next two days while she struggled slowly through the jungle, trying to find the trail or rescue, until she couldn't go on any more. I doubt she made it very far in total, probably not more than a mile or two at the very most, before she exhausted what was left of her strength and couldn't go any further. Maybe she even found the trail, or was following a track close to the trail. On April 11 just before eleven o'clock in the morning, a last power-on of the iPhone is recorded. This was when Lisanne accepted that she wasn't going to find the searchers and switched on the almost-dead iPhone for the final time. It stayed on for five minutes, but the PIN to unlock it was never entered and a call was never made. Possibly she was too exhausted, possibly the phone just ran out its charge before she could put it in (it was on for five minutes, but she was dehydrated, starved, dying.) No matter what, it was probably not too far from where Kris' body lay that Lisanne's fell when she couldn't walk any more. But it wouldn't have taken much geographical distance between Lisanne and the location of Kris' body to put them in two very different water channels when the rainy season came two months after their disappearance. Instead a lot of the mystery hay is made of the fact that what has been found of them was not found together, but instead very far apart. The map below, like much of what is available on the web about this case from amateur sleuths, is not reliable in its details, but it is useful in giving an idea of the terrain. The markings for the beginning of La Pianista, Mirador (the viewing spot at the summit) and Quebrada #2 (where the last picture of either of the girls, one of Kris in a deep arroyo, was taken) are accurate, as are the markings for H12 and H13, which are overnight search camp locations. The pelvis and shoe were not found together, as the blue dot seems to indicate; they were several miles apart. There is a tremendous amount of confusion even among the official sources as to where exactly the bones and other items were found, but per DNA testing there's none about whom they belonged to; the pelvis was Lisanne's, the foot in the shoe was Kris', as was the rib found later. The shorts were, again, several miles away from the other remains. And then there's the backpack.  Lisanne's black backpack was brought into Boquete on 14 June by an elderly couple from the local Ngöbe-Buglé tribe of natives, Angel Palacios and his (unnamed in the reports) wife. They said the wife had found it caught on a bush on the banks of the Culebra river, which runs parallel to the Pianista trail, when she left off tilling their rice field and went down to the river for a drink. The backpack contained Lisanne and Kris' bras, their phones, the camera, empty water bottles, about $85 in currency, and several of Lisanne's id cards, including a photo id. The couple recognized her as one of the missing girls and brought in the backpack, an arduous journey of almost four days into Boquete from their tiny tribal settlement of Los Romeros past Boca del Toros. The implications were clear; Kris and Lisanne were dead, and their bodies and possessions were being swept down the continental divide into the river by the torrential rains of the monsoon season that began in June. I've never been to Panama, but I have been in Costa Rica during the rainy season and India during monsoon season. If you've never been in a tropical rainstorm, it's hard to understand the sheer force and volume of water that can fall in just hours. It's what dug those deep, deep ruts in the jungle floor like the one I think Lisanne and Kris fell into. It broke apart their corpses, sweeping Kris' foot and Lisanne's pelvis down the mountain into the river and then far downstream, and the backpack even further: past Boca del Toro all the way to Los Romeros. That makes sense to me, it made sense to local inhabitants familiar with the terrain and the seasons, it made sense to the authorities. But one thing doesn't make sense and I think it's the only genuine mystery of their disappearance. I'm an avid kayaker and I have spent a lot of time on, in, and around the water, both the ocean and local swamps and rivers, and the first thing I thought was that there was no way that backpack had been in the river. The backpack itself had some dirt and leaves on it, but otherwise was clean and bright. The fragile items inside, including the camera, two phones, and two pairs of sunglasses, were completely undamaged. More than that, when the backpack was opened it was reported to be neatly packed, not damaged and with items destroyed and in disarray as you'd expect from an inexpensive nylon daypack bouncing around a roaring flood-swollen river against rocks and strainers. The force of the water tore Lisanne and Kris' (decomposed by then, undoubtedly extensively scavenged) bodies to pieces, but it left their daypack and its contents looking like new? It made no sense to me at all. It still makes no sense to me, unless you assume that Angel Palacios and his wife were not telling the truth about how the backpack was found. I don't think they were. The part of La Pianista used by the locals is mostly used by local men "commuting" on foot between the area of Boca del Toros and surroundings and Boquetes, either to bring cattle and produce to market, to work as guides for tourists in Boquete, or to buy supplies. Many of these people are Ngöbe-Buglé and they have a long history of being abused, mistreated, and railroaded by the Panamanian government. They are reportedly very kind and friendly people, but they have good reason to fear and distrust the police and officials. If I was an inhabitant of Los Romeros and one of the men of the village brought in a tourist backpack he'd found along the La Pianista trail, one that I recognized as belonging to the two missing Dutch girls, I know my heart would sink. The media furor over their disappearance had flared up again enormously with the discovery of the bones, the heat was back on the Panamanian government hard to explain what happened to them, and already there had been multiple wild allegations in the press and internet (and in local Boquetes gossip) that maybe Lisanne and Kris had been murdered, maybe raped too, on the trail. Maybe by a local, maybe by a guide. Maybe by a Ngöbe-Buglé. And now here is their backpack in the hands of a Ngöbe-Buglé man, probably young, maybe already working as a tour guide; the perfect scapegoat to throw under the bus for the "crime." I don't think I have to do much convincing of how reasonable that fear is to most people familiar with Central and South American governments. My conjecture is that when the backpack was found, the Ngöbe-Buglé of Los Romeros were selfless enough to take that risk (or, if you're cynical, they were not about to lose out on the $30,000 reward offered) but they knew whoever turned it in was going to be suspected, so they had a tribal council meeting (that part is actually from a news report, only Palacios said the council meeting was after his wife found the backpack) and decided the official finders should be the least suspicious people available, the rice-farming old man Angel Palacios and his wife, who almost never left the village and would have alibis for the whole time of Kris and Lisanne's disappearance. The only problem was, if they never leave the village, how do they claim to have come by the backpack? The river. I live near a tidal river, and I can tell you that as a river rises and falls, everything imaginable comes along with its inexorable pull. The locals were used to finding all kinds of things on its banks after a hard rain, everything from drowned cows to furniture to farming implements. It had already brought down pieces of the girls' bodies close by, this could be just one more thing thrown up by the Culebra in flood. The girls were already known to be dead, so there was no way the accurate location of the backpack could help them now; the Ngöbe-Buglé of Los Romeros could tell their story with one change and do the right thing, get the reward, and the true finder would be safe from scrutiny and the possibility of a political lynching. It was just a small lie, after all. And that's what I think happened to Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers, God rest their poor young souls. The one remaining question that no one will ever answer, but is often asked, is why would they have kept going on La Pianista past the Mirador lookout. The path didn't go bad right away, but it becomes noticeably rougher almost immediately and turns very rough long before the point where I think Lisanne and Kris realized they were lost. They had the whole beautiful length of La Pianista back down to Boquete to enjoy; what could have tempted them to go the other way, into the deep forest? There's no way to tell for sure, but I have my own guess. There was evidence found on Kris' laptop that the girls had googled info about La Pianista before their hike and asked several locals for info about it. They were both outdoorsy people; they planned to fill their first and second day in Panama with hiking and enjoying its natural beauty. And one of the most famous treasures of the Panamanian rainforest is a bird called the Resplendent Quetzal.  It's known to avid birders (of which I am one) as one of the rarest and most beautiful birds on earth. A sighting of it is a triumph, and the quetzal is famous far beyond birder circles; there's even a major trail outside of Boquete named Quetzal Trail. You can also find quetzals along La Pianista. But these beautiful birds have been hunted nearly to extinction by poachers and souvenir collectors for their gorgeous plumage, and they are extremely wary of humans. It's well-known that you don't see quetzals on the lower easy part of the La Pianista trail, a birding acquaintance of mine who has been to Panama told me. Only on the rough part, only on the jungle part. Only on the dangerous part. I imagine one or both of them urging for the push on past Mirador, glowing with energy, filled with happiness as they are in their last few photos, on the track of the most beautiful bird in the world. Maybe it was the quetzal they were looking for, or maybe a certain flower or butterfly or tree; maybe the jungle just looked temptingly cool and green on a hot afternoon and the trail still seemed easy, the scenery still lovely, the weather still smiling, everything beckoning them onward and forward deeper into the forest, and so joyfully they went.   Rest in peace, Kris and Lisanne.  bonestructure has a new favorite as of 16:40 on Jun 11, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 00:05
|
|
|
Anyone thinking of scrolling past all that, please reconsider and read it. This is very well thought out and explained, really touching stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 01:59
|
|
|
wyntyr posted:Anyone thinking of scrolling past all that, please reconsider and read it. This is very well thought out and explained, really touching stuff. Off topic, but as someone born and raised in Columbus, I'm really enjoying the posts.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 02:31
|
|
|
A while ago in this thread there was an article posted about a hospital in New Orleans that had to do the unthinkable and decide which of their patients they were gonna save during Hurricane Katrina. Any one know where I can find it?
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 02:55
|
|
|
Volume posted:A while ago in this thread there was an article posted about a hospital in New Orleans that had to do the unthinkable and decide which of their patients they were gonna save during Hurricane Katrina. Any one know where I can find it? Can't remember if this was the exact linked article, but it's definitely worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& Edit: relevant Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Medical_Center_and_Hurricane_Katrina
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 03:08
|
|
|
Volume posted:A while ago in this thread there was an article posted about a hospital in New Orleans that had to do the unthinkable and decide which of their patients they were gonna save during Hurricane Katrina. Any one know where I can find it? ... so Triage, then?
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 07:48
|
|
|
Volume posted:A while ago in this thread there was an article posted about a hospital in New Orleans that had to do the unthinkable and decide which of their patients they were gonna save during Hurricane Katrina. Any one know where I can find it? http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/12355903-171/in-katrinas-aftermath-new-orleans
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 07:53
|
|
|
HonorableTB posted:Wyntyr, I was born and raised in LaGrange and I never heard about any of that. We did have our own spooky stuff though, like notorious psychic/"seer" Mayhayley Lancaster just north of us. I can do a write up about her if anyone's interested. She was a very old woman who was involved in a police investigation and despite not being involved in any way, told the detectives exactly where to find the bodies of murder victims. The whole story is very creepy because she knew about things she couldn't possibly have known. Was this in the Atlanta metro area? Cuz my uncle had a younger sister who went missing and they consulted a psychic and found her body and the whole thing just struck me as absolutely bizarre and so seemingly far fetched.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 08:46
|
|
|
Volume posted:A while ago in this thread there was an article posted about a hospital in New Orleans that had to do the unthinkable and decide which of their patients they were gonna save during Hurricane Katrina. Any one know where I can find it? Throughly recommend the book about this incident http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/17/five-days-memorial-sheri-fink-review
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:03
|
|
|
Talking about books, what's the best books if I want to read up on hosed up crimes or serial murderers?
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:09
|
|
|
Tired Moritz posted:Talking about books, what's the best books if I want to read up on hosed up crimes or serial murderers? I enjoyed Ann Rule's books. She wrote a book about Ted Bundy (she worked with him at a crisis hotline before he was captured) and a bunch of others about various crimes. I read all her early stuff and liked how she went into the family histories of the criminals and victims alike.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:22
|
|
|
These posts about Egbert, Connie and family, Kris and Lisanne and the strangler dude are exactly why I come in this thread, great (and very sad) reads.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:48
|
|
|
Tired Moritz posted:Talking about books, what's the best books if I want to read up on hosed up crimes or serial murderers? Bloodletters And Bad Men is a classic, but I have no idea how up to date it is or if it's still in print.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:58
|
|
|
Tired Moritz posted:Talking about books, what's the best books if I want to read up on hosed up crimes or serial murderers? Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, .44, Torso, and B.T.K are good ones
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 12:58
|
|
|
bonestructure posted:Rest in peace, Kris and Lisanne. It sounds like it's been made to be a horror movie - like the one about the 2 swimmers left on the Great Barrier Reef. Very unnerving. If you ever get lost with an iphone, make sure to take as many mysterious and strange pictures as possible before you die. Taking one that might be a Bigfoot gains more points.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 13:15
|
|
|
Comstar posted:It sounds like it's been made to be a horror movie - like the one about the 2 swimmers left on the Great Barrier Reef. Very unnerving. Super bonus points for a short video of nothing but darkness while you whine about "it's here" and "I can hear it".
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 13:28
|
|
|
All the hike chat has reminded me of a thread I once read on AskReddit titled something like "Hikers of Reddit, What's the weirdest thing you've come across". Here's the thread for a wide range of wacky stories (most of which are likely bullshit): http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/227hzo/hikers_and_backpackers_of_reddit_what_is_the/ Here's the text and links from the post I saved: gadela08 posted:
Those photos sent shivers down my spine when I saw them. Those girls in Panama were in an all to similar situation and shows that there doesn't need to be some conspiracy to get hosed up in the wilderness.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 14:57
|
|
|
Some interesting material here, some creepy, some funny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deathsquote:258 AD: The deacon Saint Lawrence was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian. Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over—I'm done on this side". He is now the patron saint of cooks and firefighters. quote:1567: Hans Steininger, the burgomaster of Braunau (then Bavaria, now Austria), died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard. The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch. quote:1978: Kurt Gödel, the Austrian/American logician and mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 15:02
|
|
|
Mincher posted:All the hike chat has reminded me of a thread I once read on AskReddit titled something like "Hikers of Reddit, What's the weirdest thing you've come across". Yeah people think I'm a bit paranoid for bringing two days of water, a survival blanket, tourniquet, knife, flint, and food for two days on even a short hike. Even if I won't need it, I worry that I'll stumble across someone who does.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 15:10
|
|
|
I'm glad the super-long effortpost wasn't annoying.  Thanks, people who enjoyed it. It's all speculation and could be completely wrong in the details, but I think whatever the true answer to Lisanne and Kris' "mystery" is, it doesn't involve anything more than bad luck and a tragic accident. That's not a controversial position here, but they will flay you alive for saying that on Websleuths. You can say any other crazy poo poo you want (the candy wrappers in the signal stick photo are actually from condoms! They were sex-trafficked! That vaguely green plant-shaped thing in the background of one of the dark photos is their sex-slaving captor! They killed Lisanne and chopped off Kris' foot to make her behave and now she's a sex slave in a Buenos Aires brothel!) and they'll eat it up with a spoon, but mundane bad luck in the wild, never. It was a riot watching Midwestern retirees and LE wannabes tell posters who actually live in Boquetes (and were helpfully translating local newspaper articles) that they didn't know poo poo about seasonal rains and water patterns or trail conditions and dangers in their own town.Wasabi the J posted:Yeah people think I'm a bit paranoid for bringing two days of water, a survival blanket, tourniquet, knife, flint, and food for two days on even a short hike. Even if I won't need it, I worry that I'll stumble across someone who does. I have an old sturdy cross-body bag that I use hiking and kayaking, and I keep it packed with a first-aid kit, boater's whistle (protip: even louder than those orange hiking whistles), two uncrushable steel water bottles, leatherman, a mini maglite, a space blanket, power bars and gorp, and something that was really expensive but worth it: a small waterproof VHF radio with a built-in GPS personal locator beacon. I bought that when I owned a sailboat, but I've kept it ever since because it igives me a lot more peace of mind when I'm out kayaking or birdwatching alone in places where I don't get a cell signal. I get a ton of poo poo from my friends for over-preparing, too. Edit: Hey, look, I can post a wikipedia link finally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon Those personal GPS locators are about $300 for a good one (don't even bother with the cheapie ones), but look at the stats on lives saved with them. Imagine if Lisanne or Kris had owned one. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, might be a good investment. Edit edit: Holy poo poo, that reddit post 
bonestructure has a new favorite as of 17:52 on Jun 11, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 17:11
|
|
|
quote:1978: Kurt Gödel, the Austrian/American logician and mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else. Really? Starve to death rather than fix your own drat dinner? His wife must have been so happy to get out of the hospital and find out she was free from that jackass.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 17:18
|
|
|
GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:Bloodletters And Bad Men is a classic, but I have no idea how up to date it is or if it's still in print. My dad had a copy of this! I used to spend hours leafing through it, reading up on the most famous cases and then looking for the rare female serial killers. There were also other notable criminals in there, like the world's best pickpocket. Great book to leave lying around your house if you want people to look askance at you
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 17:28
|
|
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deathsquote:2012: Erica Marshall, a 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric chamber kicked the wall, released a spark from its horseshoes and triggered an explosion. Holy poo poo. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/9079168/Equine-expert-killed-as-horse-shoe-sparks-explosion-heard-30-miles-away.html quote:Mrs Marshall, a 28-year-old newlywed, was monitoring a horse receiving oxygen therapy when the animal kicked through the wall of the pressurised hyperbaric chamber. New D'uh Protocol: Before putting horse in highly oxygenated, metal-walled hyperbaric chamber, remove it's friggin' shoes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 18:11
|
|
|
Filox posted:horses http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3695000&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post440389800
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 19:03
|
|
|
Are horseshoes a thing you can put on and take off easily? I thought they were semi-permanent. Better idea: sedate the drat horse.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 19:06
|
|
|
Wasabi the J posted:Yeah people think I'm a bit paranoid for bringing two days of water, a survival blanket, tourniquet, knife, flint, and food for two days on even a short hike. Even if I won't need it, I worry that I'll stumble across someone who does. Yeah having things at hand should an emergency pop up is a good and decent thing to do. Even if you're not doing anything involved like hiking or sports.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 19:10
|
|
|
pookel posted:Are horseshoes a thing you can put on and take off easily? I thought they were semi-permanent. Horse shoes have to be removed regularly, as the horse's hoof, like your toenails, keeps growing and needs to be trimmed. The shoes have to come off for that. This horse had been in the chamber before and hadn't reacted badly, so they didn't sedate it. Another moment of stupid, though possibly understandable. Sedating horses can be a somewhat tricky business; vets probably try to avoid it when they can. This was the wrong time to play safe with the drugs, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
considering that being unconscious changes and slows your breathing, and the horse was receiving oxygen therapy, perhaps there were clinical reasons not to sedate the horse? I'm not really gonna play blame-the-victim second-guessing games about it myself though because I'm not a veterinarian and might be talking through my rear end
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 19:39
|
|
|
Always always always tell someone where you are going, when you expect to be back, and let them know once you are back. And if you decide to take another trail, let them know that so if you don't show up, SAR isn't looking in the wrong place. Taking most of the Ten Essentials doesn't take up that much room.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 20:15
|
|
|
monster on a stick posted:Always always always tell someone where you are going, when you expect to be back, and let them know once you are back.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
pookel posted:This applies to first dates, too, especially if you are female. I tend to do so even when I'm simply commuting to work. I ride the city bus and do some walking that involves crossing 4 and 6 lane roads. Moving vehicles are a greater everyday danger to me than the weirdo who chatted me up the other morning.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 23:34
|
|
|
InediblePenguin posted:considering that being unconscious changes and slows your breathing, and the horse was receiving oxygen therapy, perhaps there were clinical reasons not to sedate the horse? I'm not really gonna play blame-the-victim second-guessing games about it myself though because I'm not a veterinarian and might be talking through my rear end The Ruddha horse quotes (ctrl+f horse) on this page back up how ridiculously easy it is for horses to die or kill themselves so odds are that horse was going to die regardless of whether it exploded or not http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3520914&userid=91217&perpage=40&pagenumber=3
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2015 23:59
|
|
|
Tired Moritz posted:Talking about books, what's the best books if I want to read up on hosed up crimes or serial murderers? Under the Banner of Heaven Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery Killer on the Road Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars I: The Creation of a Serial Killer Are all ones that I thought were pretty decent to pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2015 00:16
|
|
|
There's a book by Peter Vronsky that's just called Serial Killers that's pretty thorough as a history and as a theory of what a serial killer is. There's also a very goofy appendix that explains the odds of survival behind various strategies of escape if you are ever captured by a serial killer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2015 00:27
|
|
|
I like Gregg Olsen as a true crime writer. Harold Schachter is good on historical stuff, if a bit too purple in his prose.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2015 04:01
|
|
|
When last we left the fair city of Columbus, Halloween was canceled, the Police Department had a patsy in lockup that they were being forced to admit wasn’t the Stocking Strangler, and two more women lay dead. So now it’s time for The Stocking Strangler Part Five: The Circle Clan! (Yeah, it’s the Ku Klux Klan) The city of Columbus was in the grip of a panic. Women who were thought to be targets were being encouraged to move in with male relatives, or if unable to do that, to form “communes” for their own protection, thinking that there would be safety in numbers. Detective Richard Smith of the CPD had an idea – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Before the killing spree began, Smith was the head of a proactive anti-robbery campaign called CARES, the Columbus Anti-Robbery Enforcement System. Thinking of the panic buttons some businesses had, Smith advocated for fitting potential murder victims with similar panic buttons. Detective Richard Smith posted:Now, I had to profile the elderly women and widows who lived alone in Wynnton and tell them, as if they didn’t already know, that they were likely victims of the strangler. The harder task was to convince them that they were going to be safe, that we were going to protect them. They didn’t have family, so we were it. Detective Smith installed dozens of alarms around the Wynnton area, activated by panic buttons in the bedrooms of potential victims, and activated by pressure pads placed under the carpet outside their bedrooms. Very expensive and cutting edge technology for the time, the alarms would signal police directly on their radio bands. Smith felt strongly that this would possibly mean the difference between life and death for a potential victim, and could lead to the police catching the “Columbus Maniac”. Unfortunately, all it led to was many false alarms. Some women triggered the alarms every time they heard a noise outside, leading the police to take their panic buttons away. The alarms did lead to quick, massive responses from police – Smith recalls a time when an alarm sounded a half mile from his position and by the time he arrived, he had to park three blocks from the home, as so many law enforcement officials were already on scene. Even so, everything was not perfect – Kathy Spano recalls lying in her bedroom in the heart of Wynnton listening to the police band. One night police noticed someone suspicious and gave chase on foot, some purportedly with K9 units. The next day the police were forced to admit that their fleeing suspect, whoever he was, managed to elude the police by hiding in a hollow beneath a bush. Law enforcement’s proactive methods weren’t always exactly legal, either, often violating the fourth amendment (if my armchair lawyering is correct). Anyone, but especially African-American men travelling through Wynnton were subject to being stopped and subjected to a sort of pro forma field interview, including their personal information, all their movements for the past few days, and in extreme cases, asked for saliva and hair samples. Many of those stopped were students, on their way to the primarily black high school in the area, provoking resentment from their families. While the stop and frisk method of policing likely had no real effect on the Strangler’s activities, flooding the Wynnton area with uniforms seems to have worked. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went without any attacks by the Strangler. Many began to hope that perhaps the Strangler had moved on. In the middle of December, struggling under the twin burdens of increased payroll hours and decreased response to other areas of the city, Columbus Police Department suspended the special patrols in Wynnton. Y’all might recall that a similar decision was made after the arrest of Jerome Livas. It had the same result this time – once the patrols were gone, the Strangler struck again. Kathleen Woodruff was a widowed heiress to the Coca-Cola fortune living in the Wynnton area of Columbus. Her family was (and remains) extremely well-heeled, she counted author Carson McCullers (of Oprah’s Book Club favorite The Heart is a Lonely Hunter fame) amongst her close friends, and had homes in Paris, Columbus, and north of town in Harris County. She primarily split her time between the home in the Wynnton area and Harris County, enjoying the warm Georgia weather. (Note to Columbus and Lagrange Goons that I’ve talked to recently: didn’t think y’all would see Harris County mentioned on SomethingAwful like, ever, did ya?) David Rose notes that Kathleen’s house has been torn down since the slaying, but I remember where it used to be located: it’s in a well-lit intersection, would be notable to anyone who was even passingly familiar with the area, and years later (in the 90s) a friend of my family who also might have been considered a target recalled the day it was torn down. I don’t remember her words exactly, but she told me that you always knew “good people” lived in that house, just by the way it looked. And having not known her, I can only say that from what I can tell, Kathleen Woodruff was a good person. Her late husband, George C. “Kid” Woodruff was once coach of the University of Georgia football team, commanding the demanding salary of one dollar – all for the love of the game. He attended the storied Columbus High School, played quarterback for UGA in the early 1900s, coached between 1923 and 1927 and was instrumental in ensuring that “The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” – Auburn / Georgia – was played in Columbus for many years. (Columbus is located in Georgia but is only a short drive from Auburn, Alabama, a fact that Auburn haters use to predicate the nickname “West Georgia University” on Auburn. Columbus is therefore something of a neutral territory for the game, and I for one would love to see the game return to Columbus as opposed to alternating between Auburn and Athens, but it seems unlikely to ever happen.) “Kid” Woodruff served on everything from the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, and he had a basketball arena and football practice field named after him at University of Georgia. THAT’S the kind of money we’re talking about when we talk about the Woodruff family – “bought Coca-Cola, has buildings at UGA” kind of money. I can’t think of a contemporary equivalent that would be universally understood amongst Goons, but trust me that the Woodruffs are and were a big deal around Columbus. (For any of you who don’t understand why I spent most of that paragraph talking about UGA – college football is a religion in the South, perhaps more so than actual religions. Trust me, non-Southerners, the Southern folk are, right now, really impressed by the Woodruff family. But I digress.) “Kid” Woodruff passed away in 1968, and I don’t believe Kathleen ever remarried. Living alone, as a well-known widow and being of the advanced age of seventy-four, Kathleen must have known she was a particularly vulnerable target of the Columbus Maniac / Stocking Strangler. I often wonder if the person who killed her knew who she was, because  there are significant differences in this assault as opposed to other Stocking Stranglings .Y’all are smart folks and have guessed by now that Kathleen met her end. (I mean, by now she’d be 112 years old if she hadn’t been murdered, so she’d pretty much be dead now either way…) I’ll let David Rose tell the tale. The Big Eddy Club by David Rose posted:The last person to see her alive apart from the strangler was her servant of thirty-three years, Tommie Stevens. At 5:00 pm on December 27, Mrs. Woodruff called her (ed. Note: Yes, Tommie is a woman’s name) over to where she was sitting at the kitchen table, checkbook at the ready. The next day was Tommie’s birthday, and Kathleen gave her a gift of $20 before Tommie left for her own home in Carver Heights. “Next morning, when I came back – I always kept my own key – I unlocked the door and I noticed the light was on in her room, which it always be,” she told the trial of Carlton Gary almost nine years later. It was between ten and eleven, and Tommie noticed nothing out of the ordinary. She was surprised that Mrs. Woodruff wasn’t yet up, but went into the kitchen to make her some eggs for her breakfast. Only then did it occur to her that her employer “was sleeping mighty late.” Mrs. Woodruff had plenty of lingerie near at hand for a strangler who seemed fixated on using stockings to do the grisly deed, but instead, she was strangled with an item that had a special piece of significance for her family – a University of Georgia football scarf . Only two years earlier, she and her son George Junior – himself an alumnus of UGA like his father and uncle before him – had been photographed for the cover of the program of the then highly anticipated Georgia – Clemson football game. Mrs. Woodruff showed obvious signs of strangulation, including petechial hemorrhages and a fractured hyoid bone. She had not been subjected to that massive blow to the face and head that other victims had suffered. She had, however, been raped.Two days later, our intrepid reporter Carl Cannon had the following to say: The Columbus Ledger posted:Special Columbus police patrols which had cruised past Kathleen K. Woodruff’s 1811 Buena Vista Road house every night since October 25 were called off two weeks ago because the “stocking strangler” had been silent, police confirmed. The city, now, was in a grip of panic and for the first time, outrage seemed to follow in equal measure. Mayor Mickle held press conferences to assure the public that everything possible was being done, and that “We are going to solve this problem. We are going to make arrests”. For many in the community, the hollow assurances of the Mayor – assurances that had been given repeatedly since September, with little results to back them up save the arrest of Jerome Livas, a man so mentally disabled that he was barely able to sign his own name, a man who was willing to confess to the assassination of President McKinley but who insisted on his innocence when asked about his actual accused crime! Some citizens were fed up, like Mr. E. Jensen who wrote in to the Ledger: A Letter to the Editor posted:We the people of Columbus, Georgia, are sick! We have a terminal disease called fear, and soon, it will be the death of us all. But the trouble is, it’s justified. My fear stems not so much from the criminal element, but… the ineptness of local law. We are now center stage. The world is watching us through the networks. And now what do we do? We let the world see our sloppy police work and our praying mayor! Mickle, get up off your knees and do something! For ordinary citizens, letters to the editor may have been enough. For the Ku Klux Klan, they wanted stronger action. The Klan started in Tennessee but I believe by this time they’d relocated their headquarters to Stone Mountain, Georgia. The Klan never had much of a presence in Columbus, but when they started posting flyers around the Wynnton area saying they’d be marching TO PROTECT THE WHITE MATRONS OF WYNNTON, people noticed. Many citizens were outraged that the vigilante racist terror group was advertising their actions; some few were excited and wished to join them. Aside from a (as I recall – I have no idea where some of my old original research is) small demonstration involving a march down Macon Rd. / Wynnton Rd. very little actually came of it – but the declarations by the Klan had a terrifying effect on the citizens of Columbus. Few enough of them were willing to travel in the Wynnton area by night; with the Klan on the march, even fewer dared leave their homes. Fear, dreadful fear gripped the hearts of much of Columbus. That fear would grow as a deathly silence fell over Columbus, as the Strangler went silent again. Next time: I don’t even know what all I’ll cover, but at the very least, A WOMAN SURVIVES!
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2015 05:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 17:59 |
|
|
(Note to Columbus and Lagrange Goons that I’ve talked to recently: didn’t think y’all would see Harris County mentioned on SomethingAwful like, ever, did ya?) No, I did not. Columbus is a very interesting place, to be honest. The dead mills, bleak suburbia, trailer park sadness, newly enlisted militia and 3rd world ghettos make for a very strange place. Btw, I went to Wynnton Preschool. I'll have to ask my grandparents about all this, I'm sure they remember. It's interesting to think how insular the fear must have been before cable news and the internet.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2015 07:10
|
|