Weird stuff that interests me.

Actually no....

When your above a certain altitude on the mountain, stopping and helping is almost certain death for both of you. In fact the most dangerous part of the trip is the trek down the mountain. That is when most people suffer altitude sickness, lose their senses, walk the wrong way or stop completely to catch their breath and freeze to death.

Per http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081209221709.htm

"They found that most deaths occur during descents from the summit in the so-called "death zone" above 8,000 meters and also identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema...... Many of those who died developed symptoms such as confusion, a loss of physical coordination and unconsciousness, which suggest high-altitude cerebral edema, a swelling of the brain that results from leakage of cerebral blood vessels. Symptoms of high-altitude pulmonary edema, which is involved in most high-altitude-related deaths, were suprisingly rare....

Great stuff!
Not too many pictures of these two...

Donald Crowhurst and the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race
In 1967, the Sunday Times Newspaper of London had sponsored Sir Francis Chichester in his attempt to break the around the world sailing speed record. They bankrolled him, and followed his progress. Chichester succeeded, and the Sunday Times reaped major unexpected benefits in circulation and publicity as the sponsor.
In 1968, they wanted that same boost. But how to get it? Who and what would they sponsor? They didn’t want to risk sponsoring someone who failed. They decided that the next step after Chichester’s success was a non-stop around the world yacht race. To ensure that they’d sponsor the winner, they decided to sponsor the entire race, not just one applicant. To circumvent the possibility of a non-entrant completing his voyage first and scooping the story, they made entry automatic: anyone sailing single-handed around the world that year would be considered in the race.
There were no qualification requirements. Entrants merely had to start between June 1 and October 31. Whoever finished first got a trophy. Whoever finished with the best time got the 5,000 pound grand-prize. The route was simple: Start in England, sail south, then turn east around the Cape of Good Hope. Keep heading east, to the south of Australia, around the world through the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, then northward back to England.

There were nine entrants including:
Robin Knox-Johnson, a 28 year old British Merchant Marine
Bill King, a former Royal Navy submarine commander
John Ridgeway, a British Army Captain
Chay Blythe, a British Army Sergeant
Bernard Moitessier, a French sailor and author was thought to be a very strong contender
Bill Howell, an Aussie sailor
Nigel Tetley, a South-African born Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy
Chichester was to be one of the judges.
One of the most interesting entrants was Donald Crowhurst.

Crowhurst was a business owner and amateur sailor who designed and built a radio direction finder called the Navicator. He had mortgaged his business and house in order to pay for this trip. He also got money from a local businessman, Stanley Best. But Best's money came with a proviso: if Crowhurst failed to finish the race, he would have to pay for the boat himself.
To add even more pressure, Crowhurst hired Rodney Hallworth as his publicity representative. Hallworth was known to be very aggressive and manipulative in his efforts to garner publicity for his clients and himself. With Hallworth acting as his shill back in England, nothing Crowhurst did would fly under the radar.
The craft he chose, a Trimaran that he named the Tiegenmouth Electron, was fast and stable, but if it capsized, it was very difficult to right. Crowhurst felt he had this problem licked. He invented a method of automatically righting the vessel using a series of water pumps and inflatable buoyancy bags. He planned to market this invention when he successfully finished the race. Everything Crowhurst did was last minute. His boat was hastily prepared. Supposedly piles of safety equipment and supplies were left on the dock, and his self-righting equipment was never built. But still he got underway, albeit as late as possible, on October 31, 1968.
Ridgeway, Blyth, King and another entrant dropped out of the race before Crowhurst even started. As they rolled into December, only four remained: Knox-Johnson, Tetley, Moitessier and, surprisingly enough, Crowhurst.
But during the first week of December, it had become clear to Crowhurst that he could not complete the voyage. His ship, the Tiegenmouth Electron, had sustained much damage. He realized his sailing skills were not good enough for the upcoming voyage. Crowhurst felt he was faced with a dilemma; either he would die if pressed on, or face financial ruin if he quit.
So he decided to fake it.
He’d sail in a circle in the Southern Atlantic until enough time had passed, then he’d sail back to England. Crowhurst realized that his fake log books, which note weather, sailing conditions, and star positions, would come under a great deal of scrutiny if he won. His deception would most certainly be discovered. But Crowhurst was not a greedy man. If he came in last, he reasoned, his log books would have only gotten a cursory examination. He’d still get some attention as one of the few men who actually completed the race. He wouldn’t have to pay back Best, and he’d get some publicity for his business, his navigation system, and his new stabilization system.
Crowhurst shut off his radio. Officials in England inferred and extrapolated his position based on his false reports prior to radio silence.
Christmas Day 1968 was a strange day for the four racers, who were very far from friends and family. Crowhurst made a radio call to his wife on Christmas Eve, during which he was pressed for a precise position, but refused to give one. Instead, he told her he was "off Cape Town", a position far in advance of his plotted fake position, and even farther from his actual position, 20 nautical miles off the easternmost point in Brazil, just a little south of the equator.
Like Crowhurst, Tetley was depressed. He had a lavish Christmas dinner of roast pheasant, but was suffering badly from loneliness. Knox-Johnston, thoroughly at home on the sea, treated himself to a generous dose of whisky and held a rousing solo carol service, then drank a toast to the Queen at 3pm. He managed to pick up some radio stations from the USA, and heard for the first time about the Apollo 8 astronauts, who had just made the first orbit of the Moon. Moitessier, meanwhile, was sunbathing in a flat calm, south-west of New Zealand.
In mid-January, Crowhurst finally gave his position via the radio. It was, of course, a fake position; he was still off the coast of Brazil. The position he gave was misinterpreted as actually much farther along than he was claiming. Hallworth (Crowhurst’s sleazy PR guy) trumpeted him as the likely second-place finisher. Second only to Moitessier.
But a strange thing began to happen to Moitessier. While making the voyage, Moitessier had an epiphany, of sorts. He became disgusted with the whole idea of a sailing “contest.” Indeed, he had become disgusted with the excesses of the modern world. In mid February, his ship was observed sailing past the Southern tip of South America, and he was assumed by the press to be the likely winner.
After much debate with himself, and many thoughts of those waiting for him in England, Moitessier decided to continue sailing — past the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean for a second time, into the Pacific. Moitessier was going to ditch the race.
On March 8, while the entire world extrapolated his position and awaited his arrival in England as the winner in late April, Moitessier put a note in a tin can and slingshotted it into a ship near Cape Town, South Africa;
“My intention is to continue the voyage, still nonstop, toward the Pacific Islands, where there is plenty of sun and more peace than in Europe. Please do not think I am trying to break a record. 'Record' is a very stupid word at sea. I am continuing nonstop because I am happy at sea, and perhaps because I want to save my soul.”

Now only three remained in the race, including Crowhurst and his fabricated route.

Two days earlier, Knox-Johnston was finally spotted after a long period of absence. His boat was battered, but he was still afloat. It was beginning to look like Knox-Johnston would win the trophy for finishing first, Tetley would win the 5,000 pounds for the best time, and Crowhurst would finish an admirable third.
Knox-Johnston did indeed finish first, but his time would be weeks slower than either Tetley or Crowhurst fabricated race. Hallworth's constant publicity made it impossible for Crowhurst to back-pedal about his "progress."
Crowhurst opened up communications again and reported his position, saying that he could not possibly catch Tetley. He began to sail north towards England, and home.
Due to Hallworths generous extrapolations based on Crowhurst's false positions, Tetley began to think that Crowhurst was hot on his heels. In reality, Tetley was far ahead of Crowhurst's real position. However, he pushed his boat to the breaking point. Finally, on May 30, Tetley’s boat broke up and sank. Tetley radioed a mayday and was picked up, but he was out of the race.

And the only man left in the race, was Donald Crowhurst.

Hallworth broadcast that Crowhurst was going to win the 5,000 pound prize.
It was at this point that Crowhurst, after seven months of solitude on a boat, and seven months deceiving the whole world only to watch all of it unravel before his eyes, that he began to unravel himself.
Crowhurst’s radio broke in early June, and he spent three weeks trying to fix it. When he finally did, Crowhurst was bombarded with news of syndication rights, a welcoming fleet of boats and helicopters, and a rapturous welcome by the British people. It became clear that he could not now avoid the spotlight
Crowhurst had a copy of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity on board, and began a long narrative in his log books. He wrote about metaphysics, and time travel. He wrote about space, and God. He wrote poems. He wrote about evolution.
He wrote 25,000 words. That’s the equivalent of a 1,000 page novel. A 1,000 page treatise of a man slowly coming unhinged, written over the course of eight days.
On July 1, he wrote his final entry:

“Time - being a convenient construction anyway, a convenient absolute – has eluded me. Setting the GMT in the first place: it’s unnatural for a round world. Unnatural and unholy. This keeps us from knowing “true time,” God’s time, Einstein’s time. What we have is a convenient construction constructed of convenience. Without time, there can be no sanity. Einstein knew this; and as God holds all time, he is sanity itself. Life and a chronometer fuse into one. The end of time is the end of a game, this game. And I have committed the sin of concealment: the sacred principle of truth infusing all creation. I must resign the game. Deceit is unbearable, and God will not tolerate it. The sea is the last free place on earth, and my free will has brought me to this free place. Whoever finds this, please share these logbooks with England and the world. And for God’s sake look after my family. I salute my fellow competitors for their intrepid spirit and for setting out on this mad race in the first place. My end is not far away. The sea waits for me. God’s happy little game, always played inside my mind but recorded on the chessboard as not to sadden him, is finished. The Chronometer has stopped. The outcome is certain; I must resign. And to let you inside my soul, which is now “at peace,” I give you my book. I am what I am. I see the nature of my offense. It is finished. It is finished.
It is the mercy.”

It is believed that at this point, Crowhurst walked off his boat into the sea and killed himself.
The Tiegenmouth Electron was found drifting in the Atlantic ten days later. The log books were discovered, and the deception was finally uncovered. A collection was taken up for Crowhurst’s family. Knox Johnston, as the only finisher, was given the 5,000 pound prize in addition to his trophy. In a move that would touch all of England, he donated the entire amount to the Crowhurst family.

Hallworth sold his story and the logbooks to the Times newspaper for a fortune.

Nigel Tetley was awarded 1,000 pounds as a consolation for unnecessarily destroying his own boat. In the ensuing years, Tetley tried to raise money to outfit another boat and attempt solo circumnavigation again, but he never could. He was found hanging from a tree on February 5, 1972. It was later revealed that at the time of his death, Tetley’s hands were bound behind his back, and he was wearing women’s lingerie. The opinion offered by a pathologist suggested masochistic sexual activity. The coroner, noting there was no evidence that Tetley had deliberately taken his life, recorded an open verdict.

The officials in Tiegenmouth, England wanted nothing to do with the boat Crowhurst named after their town. It was ordered towed to Jamaica, where it was auctioned off. For a while, it was used for scuba lessons. Then it was partially destroyed in a hurricane. It was dumped on a beach called Cayman Brac, where it sits decaying to this day.

Here's an aerial view as of 1998:



As of 2012:

Japanese Holdouts From WW2
There were many of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout

Japanese Not Knowing WWII Was Over & Kept Fighting



Japanese Soldier Who Continued Fighting WWII 29 Years After the Japanese Surrendered, Because He Didn’t Know

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island in March 1975.

As you might expect, after living in the jungle doing what he thought was his duty helping Japan, now only turning out to be wasting 29 years of his life, and worse killing and injuring innocent civilians, this came as a crushing blow to Onoda.

On March 10th, 1975 at the age of 52, Onoda in full uniform that was somehow still immaculately kept, marched out of the jungle and surrendered his samurai sword to the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos, very unpopularly in the Philippines, but immensely popular in Japan, pardoned Onoda for his crimes, given that Onoda had thought he was still at war the entire time.

Fascinating Full Story: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...e-japanese-surrendered-because-he-didnt-know/

He is still alive @90 years old....




Japanese Army stragglers after the end of World War II

1945-1949

• Captain Sakae Ōba, who led his company of 46 men in guerrilla actions against US troops following the Battle of Saipan, did not surrender until December 1, 1945, three months after the war ended.
• Major Sei Igawa (井川省) volunteered as a Viet Minh staff officer and commander. Igawa was killed in a battle with French troops in 1946.[1][2]
• Navy Lieutenant Hideo Horiuchi (堀内秀雄) volunteered as an Indonesian volunteer Army Lieutenant Colonel. Horiuchi was arrested by Dutch troops on August 13, 1946, while his wounds were treated in a village after the battle with Dutch troops.
• Lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi and his 33 soldiers emerged on Peleliu in late March 1947, attacking the Marine detachment stationed on the island. Reinforcements were sent in, along with a Japanese admiral who was able to convince them the war was over. They finally surrendered in April 1947.[citation needed]
• On May 12, 1948, the AP reported that two Japanese soldiers surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam.[citation needed]
• Yamakage Kufuku and Matsudo Linsoki, two IJN machine gunners, surrendered on Iwo Jima on January 6, 1949.[citation needed]

1950s

• Major Takuo Ishii (石井卓雄) continued to fight as a Viet Minh adviser, staff officer and commander. Ishii was killed in a battle with French troops on May 20, 1950.[3][4]
• The AP reported on June 27, 1951 that a Japanese petty officer who had surrendered on Anatahan Island in the Marianas two weeks before said that there were 18 other holdouts there. A U.S. Navy plane that had subsequently flown over the island indeed spotted eight or nine Japanese soldiers on a beach waving white flags. However, the Navy remained cautious as the Japanese petty officer had warned that the soldiers were "well-armed and that some of them threatened to kill anyone who tried to give himself up. The leaders profess to believe that the war is still on." The navy dispatched a sea-going tug, the Cocopa, to the island in hopes of picking up some or all of the soldiers without incident. The Japanese occupation of the island inspired a movie.
• Private 1st Class Yūichi Akatsu continued to fight on Lubang Island from 1944 until surrendering in the Philippine village of Looc on March 1950.[5]
• Corporal Shōichi Shimada (島田庄一) continued to fight on Lubang until he was killed in a clash with Philippine soldiers in May 1954.[6]
• Lieutenant Kikuo Tanimoto (ja:谷本喜久男) volunteered as a Viet Minh adviser and commander. Tanimoto returned to Japan in 1954, after Vietnamese Independence.

1960s

• Private Bunzō Minagawa held out from 1944 until May 1960 on Guam.[7]
• Sergeant Tadashi Itō, Minagawa's superior, surrendered days later, May 23, 1960 on Guam.[8]

1970s

• Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, who served under Ito, was captured on Guam in January 1972.[9]
• Private 1st Class Kinshichi Kozuka held out with Onoda for 28 years until he was killed in a gunbattle with Philippine police in October 1972.[10]
• Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who held out from December 1944 until March 1974 on Lubang Island in the Philippines with Akatsu, Shimada and Kozuka, was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer in March 1974.[11]
• Private Teruo Nakamura (Amis: Attun Palalin) was discovered by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai, and surrendered to a search patrol on December 18, 1974.[12]

1980s

• Agence France-Presse has reported in April 1980 that Captain Fumio Nakahara held out until then at Mount Halcon in the Philippines. A search team headed by his former comrade-in-arms Isao Mayazawa believed it had discovered his hut.[13][14] However, no evidence that a Japanese soldier survived has been documented.

Awesome I always thought the stragglers thing was a myth. A construct for silly 1970's TV programs. It's cool to find out that not only was it real, but it happened so often...

I read all of them except the Banner Of Heaven book.

I love his stuff.

The year he did Everest was the worst year ever for deaths climbing that mountain. Even experienced mountaineers were biting it that season. The detail he gives about what it takes leading up to and actually climbing the mountain is incerdeible.

Into The Wild is a great book and a great movie. The Pat Tillman book was ok and predictable.

I agree same here. I remember in the 80's watching Gilligan's Island and other shows where the Jap from WW2 was a storyline....never knew there was some truth there...and the Japs killed a bunch of people in the Philippines until the 1970's thinking the war was still on...that is just nuts.

Albert DeSalvo; The Boston Strangler? One of many, or completely innocent? Part I
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the Boston Strangler. During the summer of 1962, seven women in the Boston area between the ages of 55 and 85 were sexually molested and strangled to death. Then the killings stopped for three months. Then seven more women were molested and killed between December 1962 and January 1964. Two of them were over 55. The other five were all under 25. Some of the women in this group were stabbed or beaten in addition, and one of the women wasn’t even strangled, she was just stabbed to death. The strangler did not force his way into any apartments, he seems to have been let in by each woman. In late 1964, Albert DeSalvo confessed to the killings.





Boston Strangler crime scene photos.

OK, folks. This last one is really bad. It's the Strangler's last vicitm. She was a 19 year old girl named Mary Sullivan. I'm not going to post it, you're going to have to click the link. And to answer your question, she was indeed found with a broom stuffed up her vagina. she also had a Christmas card leaning against her foot.

NSFW

http://www.bestgore.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/boston-strangler-crime-scene-mary-sullivan.jpg



Did you know Albert DeSalvo was never convicted of the Strangler murders? He was in jail for a series of rapes and sexual molestations that happened years before the Strangler murders.
The murders caused panic in the Boston area. Police enforcement was under great pressure to find the culprit. Assistant Boston Attorney General John S. Bottomly was assigned to head the Strangler Task Force. Bottomly was a controversial choice because of his lack of experience in criminal law. Edmund McNamara, the Boston Police Commissioner reportedly said, "Holy Jesus, what a nutcake." Novelist George V. Higgins, who worked for Associated Press at that time, said that he "never heard a reference to Bottomly without the word asshole attached as either a suffix or a prefix. I started to think maybe it was part of the guys name."
After months of dry leads, in desperation, Bottomly called in Peter Hurkos, a renowned psychic, to try and solve the case. Peter Hurkos was a Dutch psychic entertainer, who claimed his psychic abilities started when he fell off a ladder and hit his head at the age of thirty.
In his early career as a psychic entertainer, Hurkos purported that he employed his psychic powers to discern details of audience members' private lives that he could not otherwise have known. He was a 1950’s version of John Edwards. “The Skeptical Inquirer” published a transcription of such a reading in their fall 1978 issue:
Hurkos: I see an operation.
Subject: [no response]
Hurkos: Long time ago.
Subject: No. We have been lucky.
Hurkos: [somewhat angrily] Think! When you were a little girl. I see worried parents, and doctor, and scurrying about.
Subject: [no response]
Hurkos: [confidently] Long time ago.
Subject: [yielding] I cannot remember for certain. Maybe you are right. I'm not sure.

Well, with a resume like that, who wouldn’t entrust him with the greatest manhunt the city of Boston had ever seen?
In what should have been no surprise to anyone who wasn’t completely mentally imbalanced, Hurkos was no help to the Police. Several days after he concluded his consultation, he was arrested (and eventually convicted) for impersonating a police officer. Hurkos allegedly posed as a police officer in order to gather information that he could later claim to be psychic revelations.
The police had been unable to stop a rash of killings that had continued to terrorize entire swaths of Massachusetts for over two years, and they’d been humiliated by a phony psychic. Pretty soon, people low and high in the chain of command were going to start losing their jobs.
Like manna from heaven, Albert DeSalvo fell into their laps.
Albert DeSalvo was not a criminal mastermind, or a cool, calm and collected con man. The best word to describe DeSalvo was “pathetic.” DeSalvo was a construction laborer with a German wife and two small children who supplemented his income with petty, small time break-ins. He’d break into an apartment and steal anything he could find. He also had a voracious sexual appetite. A few years before the Strangler murders started, DeSalvo was caught breaking into a house and admitted to not only the break-in, but also being “The Measuring Man.”
“The measuring Man” perpetrated a series of strange sex offenses in the Cambridge area. A man in his late twenties would knock at the door of an apartment and if a young woman answered, he would introduce himself: "My name is Johnson and I work for a modeling agency. Your name was given to us by someone who thought you would make a good model." He would hasten to assure her that the modeling would not be in the nude or anything like that, just evening gowns and swimsuits. The pay was $40 an hour. He had been sent to get her measurements and other information if she was interested. Apparently a number of women were interested and flattered and allowed him to take out his tape measure and measure them.
He seemed like a nice enough person with a charming, boyish smile. When he was finished, he told them that Mrs. Lewis from the agency would be contacting them if the measurements were suitable. Of course, there was never any call from Mrs. Lewis because neither she nor the modeling agency existed. Eventually, some of the women contacted the police. When asked why he perpetrated this pathetic charade, he responded: "I’m not good-looking, I’m not educated, but I was able to put something over on high-class people. They were all college kids and I never had anything in my life and I outsmarted them."
Like I said before; pathetic.
DeSalvo was convicted and went to prison for a few months. He was released two months before the strangler killings started.
Almost three years later, DeSalvo was again arrested, this time for a far more serious crime. DeSalvo had broken into the Boston apartment of a woman whose husband was at work, and sexually molested her. He stuffed her underwear in her mouth and tied her in a spread eagle position to the bedposts with her clothes. He kissed her and fondled her, and then he asked her how to get out of the apartment. "You be quiet for ten minutes." Finally he said “I’m sorry,” and fled. The victim easily identified him; one thing’s for sure, DeSalvo was readily recognizable, with very odd and distinctive features.



You know how a lot of people look different in every picture you see of them? I defy anyone to find any one of the millions of pictures taken of Albert DeSalvo where he doesn't look exactly like this picture.


DeSalvo readily confessed. He also readily confessed to being “The Green Man.” The Green Man was a nickname given by Connecticut area police to a sexual assailant who wore green pants. He admitted to breaking into four hundred apartments and a couple of rapes. He had assaulted some 300 women in a four-state area.
One thing it’s very important to understand about Albert DeSalvo. He was a blowhard. Everyone knew this about him. Whatever anyone did, he had to one-up. He always had a story about how important he was, or how amazing some feat he performed was. While I think it’s quite likely that he was indeed The Green Man, I also think it’s quite likely that he overstated the number of victims. Seriously, 300?
Albert was in prison for a few weeks. It became obvious that something wasn’t quite right with Albert, so he was moved to The Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane for observation. While he was at Bridgewater, he met another inmate named George Nassar. A highly intelligent, highly manipulative murderer, Nassar became Albert’s “confidant.”

Shortly thereafter, Albert confessed to being the Boston Strangler. He wasn’t a suspect. There was no evidence linking him to the murders. He just came out and said it.
Why?
Well, Albert figured he’d be spending the rest of his life in an institution for the rapes anyway, and he wanted a way to get some money for his family. There was a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Strangler. DeSalvo and Nassar figured Albert could confess to the murders, Nassar could rat on him, and they’d split a cool $110,000. You see, these two geniuses figured that the reward was given on a per victim basis, and since there were 11 victims, the total reward would be $110,000. This, of course, was complete nonsense. The reward was a flat $10,000. But Albert confessed.
Albert told his lawyer, the world-famous F. Lee Bailey, "I know I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life locked up somewhere. I just hope it’s a hospital, and not a hole like this [Bridgewater]. But if I could tell my story to somebody who could write it, maybe I could make some money for my family."
Bailey questioned Albert. His recollection of the murders, the women, the apartments was so detailed and vivid that Bailey was completely convinced Albert was the Boston Strangler.
Bailey knew the police would love to proclaim the Strangler case “solved,” so he struck a deal. He agreed to have Albert confess to the Strangler murders for immunity. Let’s face it; Albert was probably going to be in a mental hospital for the rest of his life just for the Green Man rapes. Let’s just proclaim Albert the Strangler in the press, never try him on it, and let him avoid the death penalty or prison. The Police agreed.
Then the Police interrogated Albert. They spoke to him for hours every day. After a few weeks, they had over 50 hours of taped confessions from Albert. They declared him the Strangler. Of course, the Police had a vested interest in proclaiming Albert the Strangler. Finally, they could say they solved the case.
In early 1967, Albert was tried on the Green Man charges. Bailey wanted to prove that Albert was insane. In order to do that, he wanted to introduce Albert’s confessions to the Strangler murders. The judge said that was inadmissible evidence. The jury found that Albert was sane, and that he was guilty of the Green Man molestations. They sentence him to life in prison.
Bailey was livid. He said, "My goal was to see the Strangler wind up in a hospital, where doctors could try to find out what made him kill. Society is deprived of a study that might help deter other mass killers who lived among us, waiting for the trigger to go off inside them."
But was he really guilty? Did Albert DeSalvo actually murder those women, or was it just convenient for all involved? Is the real murderer still enjoying his freedom today, almost 50 years later?
Stay tuned for Part II…

Albert DeSalvo, Part II

Why the doubt? What are the reasons some feel Albert DeSalvo couldn’t have possibly been the Boston Strangler? Let’s count the ways:
1. 1. There is absolutely no physical evidence that links Albert DeSalvo to the murders. None. No fibers. No tracked-in dirt or plants. Nothing stolen from the murders was ever traced to DeSalvo. Nothing.
2. 2. There are no witnesses who say that Albert was the Strangler. In fact, there were witnesses who saw the Strangler (or Stranglers, as many people feel more than one man commited these crimes), and none of them say it’s Albert. As mentioned before, Albert is a very distinctive looking man. One witness was in his apartment when a man knocked on his door looking for the apartment of a woman who would become one of the Strangler victims later that evening. He says it wasn’t DeSalvo. Another witness saw a man in the bathroom window of 19 year old Mary Sullivan (the really bad victim picture above). He says it wasn’t DeSalvo. Then there’s this. A woman who lived in the same apartment building as one of the victims answered the door to a man who said he was sent by the super to paint the apartment. She refused to let him in. Later on, another woman was killed by the Strangler in that building. She and another woman, who survived an attack by the Strangler came down to the Bridgewater to see if they could recognize Albert. Albert was hanging around with his pal Nasser, as usual. Neither woman thought Albert was the Strangler. Both, however, thought Nasser bore a striking resemblance to the man they had seen. But neither could be sure. Could it be that Nasser was actually the Boston Strangler, and he was setting Albert up to take the fall for his crimes? It’s been done before…
3. 3 What about all the details Albert knew about the crimes and the crime scenes? The Strangler murders were one of the most widely reported news items in the history of Massachusetts. The newspaper accounts were extraordinarily detailed. The Record American printed up a chart, along with the victims photos, called "The Facts: On Reporters Strangle Worksheet." This chart was a summary of all the important details of each crime, what victims were wearing, their hobbies, affiliations, etc. Some feel that DeSalvo had memorized this chart because in his confession to John Bottomly, he regurgitated not only the correct data on it but the few pieces of misinformation it contained as well. Many feel that the Police knowingly and intentionally fed Albert information while questioning him, and only released a highly edited version of the confession tapes. They’ve heard the full version, and they feel it completely exonerates him. Mary Sullivan’s nephew, who has listened to the tapes in their entirety has said, “Police say he had to be the killer because he knew things that only the killer would know, but when we listened to the confession tape, it's completely wrong. He confessed to events that simply never happened." The entire Sullivan family doesn’t think DeSalvo killed Mary. They think she was killed by her ex-boyfriend. That would explain why there was no forced entry into her apartment. But like many other leads in the various Strangler killings, they were no longer pursued once DeSalvo confessed.
4. 4 The murders were so disparate, there’s no way they were perpetrated by just one person. Just a few of the obvious ones; look at the second victim picture above of the woman tucked delicately into the bed, and compare it to the carnage of the third, really bad picture. Serial killers also usually select similar victims. The Strangler’s victims were all over the map. Some young, some old. Some attractive, some not. Some black, some white. Some short hair, some long. The implication is that these were individual murders perpetrated by several different people. That’s what the experts have always thought, since day one.

OK, this last one doesn’t deserve a bullet point, because it’s so big. As I mentioned above, no one in Mary Sullivan’s family thinks Albert DeSalvo killed Mary. In 2000, the exhumed her body. They found semen on her pubic hair. They were able to isolate it, and compare the DNA to DeSalvo’s. It did not match. Albert DeSalvo did not kill Mary Sullivan, although he confessed to it.

By 1973, Albert had been in prison for six years. One night, he called his psychiatrist. He was frightened. He wanted to speak with him as soon as possible. He had something to tell him. He also wanted a reporter present. The Psychiatrist was convinced Albert was finally going to come clean about the Strangler murders. Albert was in the infirmary under special lock-up, trying to ride out whatever danger he felt he was in until he could speak with the shrink. But he never made it to the meeting. He was stabbed to death in the infirmary. His Psychiatrist said, “Somebody had to leave an awful lot of doors open, which meant, because there were several guards one would have to go by, there had to be a fair number of people paid or asked to turn their backs or something. But somebody put a knife into Albert DeSalvo’s heart sometime between evening check and the morning."

No one was ever convicted for his murder.

that broom chick was hot!

Well, we don't really get a good look at her, but from what we can see she's definitely light-years ahead of the other victims in the looks department...

Saw this on a Reddit a few days ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrare

He was a hero to the white power movement

Damn! That's pretty freaky! I urge readers of this thread to click on the link if they haven't yet. great read!

Welcome to Centralia Pennsylvania. Welcome to Hell.






Centralia was a small coal mining town in Columbia County Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Centralia’s population peak was around 3,000 in the 1890’s, and was steadily decreasing through the 1950’s, like many other small coal mining towns.
On or about May 27, 1962, the town set fire to their garbage dump as they usually did every year. But this year, the dump was in a new location; an abandoned strip mine. The fire was allowed to burn for a long time (they wanted to get rid of the garbage, right?) and they never fully extinguished it (don’t worry, it’ll burn itself out). Somehow, the fire ignited the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines underneath the town.
Cursory efforts were made to stop or contain the fire. But they were incomplete. It cost a lot of money, you see. So the fire burned on.
And on. It burned for years. It burned for decades. In 1966, the two rail lines in the area stopped serving Centralia. By the mid seventies, people began to fall ill due to the poisonous gasses. A gas station owner noticed that the contents of his underground fuel storage tank seemed hot, so he measured the gasoline’s temperature, and found it to be a troubling 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Pavement and roads cracked spewing forth noxious gasses.
In 1981, a sinkhole about 4 feet wide and 150 feet deep opened up under the feet of 12 year old Todd Dombrowski . Luckily a quick-thinking relative was able to pull him out of the hole, away from certain death.




At that point, it was decided that something had to be done. About $7 million had been spent fighting the fire up until that point, and it had been entirely ineffective. The estimated cost to properly contain the blaze was $660 million… in 1981 dollars. It was decided that $660 million was a shit-load of money.
In 1980, Centralia had over 1000 residents. In 1984, the state of Pennsylvania spent about $42 million and basically bought the whole town. They relocated most of the residents, but a few stalwarts remained. By 1990, there were 63 residents left. In 1992, the Governor of Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain, and condemned every building in Centralia.
The US postal service revoked Centralia’s zip code.
Route 61 was the major road that ran through Centralia. It doesn’t anymore. A detour was built around the town, and large piles of dirt were dumped on the original Route 61 to prevent vehicle access.



The abandoned Centralia portion of Route 61 is cracked and emitting poisonous gas. It’s also littered with graffiti.






Some GPS’s don’t even recognize the existence of Centralia. One of the only ways to find the town is this tiny sign outside of Ashland, PA.




By 2000, there were 21 official residents in Centralia.
By 2010, the official number was down to 10.
These people spend their time in court trying to stay in Centralia, although I have no idea why. Some residents say the whole thing is a government conspiracy to get their hands on the “valuable” mineral rights of the town… even though the government has actually held the mineral rights to the town for over 20 years and not done any mining whatsoever.



In 2016, the few remaining residents in the town of Centralia still plan to open the time capsule that was buried in 1966.

Scientist say that it could take 250 years for the fire to burn out entirely. But that's just a guess; it could be longer.

And a SFN link: one of the oddest members of SFN, an incredibly unattractive woman who named herself "BooBear" used to come onto SFN and ask for money to pay her property taxes and other stuff.



She lived in a town neighboring Centralia named Shamokin. Shamokin also had vast environmental problems, and houses in the area were for sale for under $10,000.

Fascinating! Never knew of the fire....

Coming real soon, some nutty stuff about one of America's favorite movie stars...

Eddie Murphy’s Bagman





On May 2, 1997, one of the hottest show-biz careers was on the brink of ruin. At 5AM, Eddie Murphy was stopped by police. Next to him was a Samoan transvestite hooker named Shalomar. “Her” real name was Atisone Kenneth Seiuli.




In less than a year, on April 22, 1998 Seiuli would be dead. The coroner ruled that she fell off the roof of her five-story apartment building.
But on that night in 1997, Seiuli had warrants out for her arrest, so the police took her in. They sent Eddie home with no charges, but the next day, it was all over the tabloids. A number of transsexuals and drag queens claimed carnal encounters with Murphy dating back to the early 1980s; the star, it said, had "disguised his shameful double life" for years. Drag queen Karen Dior dished that he and Murphy had performed oral sex on each other in the backseat of the actor's limo. A transsexual called Summer St. Cerely opined that Murphy "seems utterly obsessed with men dressed as women and the way [they] live." Another transsexual called Tempest gave a deliciously detailed account of her alleged dalliance with Murphy, saying he was particularly fond of feet and derived audible pleasure from licking her toes. "He was grunting and groaning, enjoying himself," Tempest told the tabloid. She further divulged that Murphy smelled of Drakkar cologne and wore "cream-colored brief.” The Enquirer had an interview with Seiuli. She said she had been trolling for johns, dressed in tight bell-bottoms and a black tank top, when Murphy drove up. After Seiuli got in, she claimed, Murphy placed two $100 bills on her leg and asked if she liked to wear lingerie."I said yes," said Seiuli. "He said, ‘Can I see you in lingerie?' I told him, ‘Whenever I have the time.’ He said, ‘I'll make the time.'" Murphy also wanted to know what kind of sex Seiuli liked, and she replied that she was "into everything."
“Team Murphy” circled the wagons. Eddie’s Lawyer at the time was Marty “Mad Dog” Singer, a corpulent, pugnacious ex-New Yorker renowned in Hollywood for his brass-knuckles defense of celebrity clients.




But he was in a panic. This was a bad one. Then he got a call from Paul Barresi. Barresi said he could find these transvestites, get them to recant their stories and quash any kiss-and-tell books they were planning to write. Once they recanted, the tabloids would have to retract their stories rather than risk a libel suit.
Barresi was a classic tinsel-town hustler. In the mid-seventies, he posed for Playboy in a pictorial layout with Cassandra Peterson who would become Elvira, Mistress of the Dark years later.
NSFW


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ujBzZz6TI0E/TLU6_buB0aI/AAAAAAAAACg/bdIAbs4S17A/s1600/5y4edegerg.jpg


Barresi started acting in gay porn films. Eventually, he produced and directed them. All this while he was married with three kids. He also became a personal trainer to the stars, including David Geffen, Joan Rivers, Johnny Carson's wife Alexis and Go-Go's drummer Gina Schock. But sometimes these stars wanted him to be more than a trainer; they wanted him to be their “muscle.” Barresi became a self-proclaimed “last-resort guy.” When summonses needed to be served, or money needed to be collected, they asked for his help. Barresi insists he never used violence. He said it was all intimidation and bluff.
Barresi had experience in this kind of thing; you see Barresi was about as immoral as anyone who had ever walked the earth. In 1990, he told the National Enquirer that he had a 2-year affair with John Travolta starting in 1982. A few months later, he completely retracted the story in a letter sent to Travolta’s attorney. The Enquirer had no choice but to retract the story too.
In the early 1990’s, Barresi was trying to sell the Enquirer Michael Jackson molestation stories. He had been approached by a couple of Jackson’s servants who claimed they saw Jackson inappropriately touch a young boy. Barresi recorded the conversations. But the servants tried to cut Barresi out of the deal when an attorney said he could get them more money than Barresi could. Barresi said “screw this,” and sold the tapes to the Enquirer himself for $15,000. Then he noted some discrepancies in the stories on the tapes. He sold them to Jackson’s lawyers for another $45,000. So Barresi presented the evidence, then discredited the same evidence, and pocketed $60,000 playing both sides of the street. The Jackson servants wound up making nothing.
Now, Paul Barresi’s job was to neutralize the transsexuals. With his porn connections, it didn’t take Barresi long to find the transsexuals quoted in the tabloids. Barresi offered them payoffs to reverse their stories and coached them to give false testimony. He personally squired two of them to “Mad Dog” Singer's law office, where they declared under penalty of perjury that they'd lied to the tabs about having sex with Murphy. One walked out with checks totaling $15,000.
Years later when asked about it, “Mad Dog” Singer, at first denied that Paul Barresi ever worked for him in any capacity—until pay stubs from Singers firm to Barresi totaling over $3,000 for work on the Murphy/Enquirer account were produced. Then he admitted that Barresi had been hired as an investigator. “Mad Dog” Singer initially declined to comment on whether any transsexuals had been paid. However, when 1099’s were produced, Singer at first implied that perhaps they had been forged, but then acknowledged that at least one had been hired as a “consultant.” Singer denied any knowledge of any witnesses being paid to reverse their testimony (a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison, plus hefty fines) even though both Barresi and the witnesses readily agree they did.
“Mad Dog” Singer filed multimillion dollar libel suits against the tabloids with great fanfare and publicity. Then very shortly thereafter, he quietly dropped the suits. Not only did he drop the suits, but he offered to pay the tabloids legal fees to forget the whole thing. This is something that is never done in instances like this. Some theorize “Mad Dog”/Eddie did it because they decided they’d lose more in publicity then they stood to gain even if they won. Others felt it was because the tabloids had an army of transsexuals ready to testify that they’d been with Eddie.
As was his M.O., Barresi turned on Singer eventually. Once the checks stopped coming, Barresi turned all his tapes and pay stubs and notes for coaching witnesses over to the media, which is why we know about it now.
But what about Shalomar?
Atisone Kenneth Seiuli refused to recant her story. She was a transvestite hooker, and Eddie knew it. He propositioned her. That’s all.
Atisone died in a predawn fall from her apartment house on Berendo Street, where she'd been sharing digs with a man then visiting his mother in El Salvador.




Her body was found in a pool of blood, clad only in a black bra padded with silicon pouches and a black leather bikini thong. (Both garments, noted an apparently fashion-conscious investigator from the coroner's office, were from Frederick's of Hollywood.)



The young transsexual struck the pavement with such force that her nasal bone was driven through her skull into her brain. The coroner's report said a towel was found tied to a railing atop Atisone's building, just above an open window in her fifth-floor unit.




The towel ended about two feet short of the window, and fingernail scrape marks trailed eerily down the building's facade. Neighbors reported that Atisone and her roommate sometimes accidentally locked themselves out and entered the apartment by climbing down from the roof on a fire escape and through a living-room window. But the landlord had recently nailed that window shut following a burglary.
On the night of her death, Atisone, who'd worked at a local club until 4 a.m., had left her keys inside the apartment and apparently tried to lower herself to the open window with the towel. "Supposedly, this had happened before, and what she would do was go up to the roof and climb down to an open window on her balcony, but this time, that window was shut," says LAPD homicide detective Andy Cicoria, who investigated the death. "So she had to try to swing into the other window, by a towel. The distance into the window was a few feet less than the length of the towel, so when she swung down, she missed, and she fell."

An autopsy found no drugs or alcohol in Atisone's blood, and the coroner ruled the death an accident.
Despite the odd circumstances, there was exactly zero evidence that Atisone was murdered or that Murphy was in any way involved in her April 22, 1998, death
A memorial service was held at a Hollywood mortuary. Eddie Murphy, ex-good Samaritan, did not attend.

dumbest and lamest thread ever

...aaaaaaaand thanks for your comment!

Great post mama!

Eventually it will all come out. Just like it is with Travolta right now.

Rainbow Man

If you grew up watching sports in the seventies and eighties, then Rollen Stewart was someone you couldn’t avoid.




Known by many simply as “Rainbow Man,” Rollen would attend a national sporting event, wear a rainbow afro wig and a loincloth and situate himself where he would be sure to wind up on camera. His first appearance was at a Portland Trailblazer game in 1977. For years he cruised around the country getting on TV, smoking pot in his hotel room, and getting laid. Sports cameramen and producers hated him. They saw him as a distraction to the TV audience, and tried unsuccessfully to keep him off the air.
After the 1980 Superbowl , he had “an awakening.” "I had gone in my fur loincloth and wig. The girls loved it. Everywhere I walked, they were patting my butt. I could have held a thousand women in my arms that day, and yet I walked out of there sad. It was the shallowness. I was being seen all over the world, but never as myself," Rollen said.
That night, after returning to his hotel room he found Jesus, while watching a television show called Today In Bible Prophecy. "I fell to my knees there in that room and allowed Jesus to take control of my life..."

That’s when the “John 3:16” signs were added to the mix. John 3:16 is a reference to a bible passage that reads: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This was Rollen’s new message.
Rollen amped up his appearances, attending 12 sports events a month. He lived on one meal a day and massive amounts of pot.
In 1984, Rollen married Margaret Hockeridge, who was also a born again Christian.
Well, you may not believe it from the story so far, but it turns out that Rollen was a little unstable. During the 1986 World Series, he freaked out and started choking his wife when she supposedly held one of his signs in the wrong spot. Maybe Rollen was a Red Sox fan…




By the late eighties, the Rainbow Man shtick had run its course. Rollen’s wife left him, his car was totaled in a accident, and the money just plain ran out. Rollen ramped up his antics to “get the word of the impending rapture out.” He set off an air horn at the 1991 Masters as Jack Nicklaus lined up a putt. He started setting stinkbombs at various public and religious places.
On September 22, 1992, believing the Rapture was only six days away and having prepared himself by watching TV for 18 hours a day, Stewart began his last "presentation." Posing as a contractor, he picked up two day laborers in downtown LA, then drove to an airport hotel. Taking the men up to a room, he unexpectedly walked in on a chambermaid. In the confusion that followed he drew a gun, the two men escaped, and the maid locked herself in the bathroom. The police surrounded the joint, and Rollen demanded a three-hour press conference, hoping to make his last national splash. He didn't get it. After a nine-hour siege the cops threw in a concussion grenade, kicked down the door, and dragged him away. As police led him away, he was asked by reporters why he did it. "To get the word out," he shouted back at them flashing his famous wacky smile.
About to be given three life sentences for kidnapping, Rollen threw a tantrum in the courtroom and now blames everything on a society that's "bigoted toward Jesus Christ." A cop who negotiated with him by phone during the hotel standoff had a better take on it: "With all due respect, maybe you look at a little bit too much TV."
Rollen is now serving three lifetime prison sentences for the three kidnapping charges. He was last denied parole in 2010. He is eligible to apply again in 2017.

The Station Nightclub Fire
The Horror. The Horror.
On February 20th, 2003, The Band Great White was scheduled to perform at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. What occurred that night was a confluence of events, a “perfect storm” of circumstances that resulted in the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in US history.
And the whole thing was caught on video.
The band played their opening number, “Desert Moon.” Almost immediately, stage mounted pyrotechnics called “gerbs” started a controlled spray of sparks on the stage. In just a few seconds, the fire starts.
A local TV news cameraman was on hand to get some footage for a piece his TV station was doing on (believe it or not) nightclub safety. Below is the video.
Horror movie directors could take pointers from this video. It is horrifying. There is minimal, if any gore, but the panic is palpable. It is one of the most emotional pieces of video I have ever seen.




At 10 seconds the pyrotechnics start. At 27 seconds, the fire is plainly visible behind the band. People are starting to notice that this isn’t part of the show. The cameraman starts moving away from the stage toward the exit. By 40 seconds, most of the crowd seems to realize it’s time to get out. By 45 seconds, the fire has completely engulfed the stage. The band stops playing. At 58 seconds, the fire alarm starts going off.
Freeze the frame at 1:00. 30 seconds have elapsed between the first visible flame. Now you start hearing shrieks and yells. At 1:30, a woman starts yelling “WHERE’S MY HUSBAND?! WHERE’S MY HUSBAND?!” 1:00 has elapsed since the first flame.
OK, here’s what I think is the worst part of this. Freeze the frame at 2:00. That pile of people is the exit to the club. Notice the black smoke pouring out from above their heads. Notice how almost no one can get out. People are desperately trying to pull people out of the doorway, but the interior of the club is already filled with choking black smoke.
It just gets worse and worse. At the 4:25 mark, you can see a man in a striped shirt reunited with his girl, and they embrace. A momentary emotional relief, but it’s fleeting. At the 5:00 minute mark, the cameraman walks around to the stage exit in the rear. He screams “anyone inside?” There is no answer. The fire’s been burning for less than 5 minutes, and you can already hear the fire truck sirens, but really it’s already too late. As the cameraman walks back to the front, you can hear the screams fade in again. It’s as if he’s walking into hell. At the 6:20 mark, you can see someone on fire exiting the club.
By about the 7:30 mark, you realize that anyone who’s ever going to make it out of the club already has. The rest are dead.
Out of the 462 in the club stat night, 132 got out uninjured. 230 were injured. 100 people died, including Great White guitarist Ty Longley.
How could this many people be killed or injured? Now, this was a small club, the longest distance to an exit was 60 feet. How could the fire spread so quickly? How could this happen?

The Cause(s)
It turns out there were a few major reasons:
1.
The pyrotechnics the band used coupled with the materials at the club. There was egg-carton polyethylene foam on wall and the ceiling that was ignited by the gerbs.The purpose of the foam was to dampen noise. It was not fire resistant or fire treated.The fire consumed the foam quickly, generating large quantities of dense black smoke. As the foam burned, it spread fire to the wood-frame structure; it became a "typical" building fire. The speed at which the fire burned was a significant factor in the large loss of life and can be primarily attributed to the pyrotechnics and the polyurethane foam.
2.
No sprinkler system. Because the Station Nightclub was in a building constructed in 1946, it was thought to be exempt from sprinkler system requirements. But it wasn’t. On the night of the fire, The Station was required to have a sprinkler system, but it didn’t. Local fire inspectors didn’t properly interpret the requirements. Below is a video recreating the fire as it actually happened along with a computer simulation:




Here is a video of how it would have happened if there had been a sprinkler system installed:




3.
The exits were inadequate.





Door 1 in the above diagram is the main exit, two double-doors. However, occupants would have to pass through door 5 (a single, three-foot wide door) in order to get to the main exit. When people are in an unfamiliar environment, they almost always go out the way they came in. Doors 2 and four (both single doors) went largely unused. Most occupants didn’t even know the kitchen exit (door 3) existed. There are some rumors that bouncers turned away patrons attempting to exit via door 4 because it was “for the band only,” but there is no official corroboration of this.

The diagram below shows where the bodies of victims were found. As you can see, 58 of the 100 victims were found around doors 1 and 5.





Here is a computer simulation of the crowd reaction to the Station Nightclub fire. The people colored red reacted the quickest. The people colored white, less so. The floor color indicates the smoke density. The darker the color, the denser the smoke.





The Aftermath

Criminal prosecution

Who do you blame? Well, there was plenty of blame to go around.

The first person criminally prosecuted was Michael Biechele (pronounced BEE-klee), Great White’s tour manager. Biechele personally ran the controls for the pyrotechnics that started the fire. Against his lawyers' advice, Biechele pled guilty to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter on February 7, 2006, in what he said was an effort to "bring peace, I want this to be over with." Biechele made the following statement in court:

“For three years, I've wanted to be able to speak to the people that were affected by this tragedy, but I know that there's nothing that I can say or do that will undo what happened that night.
Since the fire, I have wanted to tell the victims and their families how truly sorry I am for what happened that night and the part that I had in it. I never wanted anyone to be hurt in any way. I never imagined that anyone ever would be.
I know how this tragedy has devastated me, but I can only begin to understand what the people who lost loved ones have endured. I don't know that I'll ever forgive myself for what happened that night, so I can't expect anybody else to.
I can only pray that they understand that I would do anything to undo what happened that night and give them back their loved ones.
I'm so sorry for what I have done, and I don't want to cause anyone any more pain.
I will never forget that night, and I will never forget the people that were hurt by it.
I am so sorry.”

The judge sentenced Biechele to 15 years, with four to serve and eleven suspended, with three years probation. With good behavior, Biechele could be out in about 16 months. He was released in 22 months. While in prison, Biechele had written 100 personalized letters of apology to the families of each victim. The victims families were most supportive of Biechele, some even going as far as to call him a scapegoat. One of the victims parents wrote a letter to the judge that said, in part: "In the period following this tragedy, it was Mr. Biechele, alone, who stood up and admitted responsibility for his part in this horrible event... He apologized to the families of the victims and made no attempt to mitigate his guilt."

The owners of the nightclub received similar reduced sentences.

Civil Settlements

As of 2008, nearly $175 million has been offered in settlement to the families of the victims from various sources, including:

$30 million from the TV station employing the cameraman who shot the above video. It was claimed that he impeded the escape route and didn’t help others get out, he just continued to film.

$815,000 from JBL speakers who were accused of using flammable material in their speakers.

$5 million from Anheuser Busch, and $16 million from the local Anheuser Busch distributor, for making the victims drunk I guess.

$25 million from Sealed Air Corp. They made the egg-crate foam.

$10 million from the State of Rhode Island, and the town of West Warwick for not noticing that the building was not up to code.

$1 million from Great White.

$813,000 from the owners of the club.

Moar!!!!