esprit de corps

One of the most mystifying things about the Jordan Brown case is why the police never seriously pursued an investigation of Kenzie Houk’s former boyfriend Adam Harvey, the only character in this whole sordid affair with a known motive for seeing Kenzie dead.

It was Adam Harvey, after all, who had been engaged in a bitter paternity and child-support battle with Kenzie and who, after paying for the support of Kenzie’s youngest daughter Adalynn for years, discovered through DNA testing that Adalynn is not his daughter afterall—and that Kenzie had not been honest with him in more ways than one.

She had cheated him of his money and cheated on him by sleeping with another man. That’s blood-boiling, seeing-red motive. Why would the police ignore it?

And it was Adam Harvey who was the object of not one, but two PFA (protection from abuse) orders taken out against him by Kenzie in 2006 and 2008. These documents are public record and surely would have been accessed as a first step in any honest police investigation. Why then could the police overlook key statements made by Kenzie herself that:

(From the 2008 PFA regarding a February 3, 2008 incident)

“ADAM CALLED MY MOTHERS AND THREATENED TO TAKE MY WHOLE FAMILY OUT WHEN HE COMES TO TOWN. HE HAS LEFT SEVERAL MESSAGES THREATENING TO HURT ME AND MY FAMILY. I AM IN FEAR OF HIM HURTING ME PHYSICALLY OR MY FAMILY. HE HAS A DRINKING PROBLEM THAT IS UNCONTROLLABLE. HE HAS THREATENED TO HIRE SOMEONE TO HURT ME SEVERAL TIMES. I HAVE BEEN TALKING TO SHENANGO POLICE AND THEY LISTENED TO THE MESSAGE ON MY MOTHERS CELL PHONE AND SUGGESTED TO ME TO GET A PFA.”

(emphasis added)

(And from the 2006 PFA regarding a May 26, 2006 incident)

“WE WERE ARGUING REGARDING MY NEICE THEN ADAM AND I STARTED TO ARGUE. I SAID SHUT UP AND ACT LIKE THE ADULT AND HE CAME INTO THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS COOKING AND THREW THE FOOD OUTSIDE AND STARTED TO ARGUE AGAIN. HE THEN THREATENED ME. I WENT TO LEAVE IN MY CAR AND HE TOOK THE KEYS; THREW THEM AT ME AND PUSHED ME AGAINST THE STEERING WHEEL. HE LEFT A BIG BRUISE ON MY FOREARM. ADAM ABUSES ALCOHOL AND DRINKS DAILY. HIS BROTHER SHOWED UP AND THREATENED ME AND THEY BOTH LEFT WHEN THE POLICE ARRIVED. THE POLICE SUGGESTED I GET A PFA.”

Elsewhere on the same form, Kenzie cited the following as prior incidents of abuse that Adam had allegedly committed against her: ”MENTAL ABUSE; THREATENING TO KILL ME OR HAVE ME KILLED BY HIS FRIENDS IN HILLSVILLE.

(emphasis added in both quotes)

Now, let us consider the timing of the murders in relation to Adam’s discovery from the DNA evidence that Kenzie had played him for a royal fool. According to what Chris Brown has told me, Adam discovered Kenzie’s infidelity and deception only a week or two before she and the baby were murdered. There was not even an opportunity for Adam to cool off. He must have still been boiling with rage on February 20^th.

So why were the police so quick to dismiss Adam Harvey as a suspect? The police say that even though he’d returned to Newcastle from where he’d been living and working in North Carolina, Adam had a “solid alibi” on the morning of the murders because he was sleeping at his parents’ home on Boston Avenue and his truck was surrounded by newly-fallen snow. There were no tire tracks when the police arrived, and his father vouched for him.

Yet given his relationships with lowlife friends (and at least one family member who had threatened Kenzie), Adam certainly had the opportunity to hire someone or otherwise arrange with somebody to have Kenzie killed. His background report says he earns between $50,000 and $75,000 a year—so he probably had the means to pay. Everyone knows that such arrangements leave no snow tracks. Given the victim’s own assertion and belief that Adam could have hired a surrogate to do the hit, the police characterization of Adam’s alibi as “solid” is, by any reasonable judgment, an overstatement to say the least.

Why would the police have been so quick to back off?

And remember, more than a year ago Jordan’s lawyers received a tip that Adam had tearfully admitted to a friend at a party, “I killed my old girlfriend,” and this tip was passed on to police in writing—though more than a month later Trooper Jeffrey Martin, who was heading up the murder investigation, denied to reporters any knowledge of this letter which had been addressed to him. So what was really going on? Why did Trooper Martin apparently lie?

It was a mystery to me until last night when a reader sent me a clue which suggests there is much more to this story than one sees on the surface. This clue is an example of how eventually, given enough time and digging, the whole true story will eventually be revealed.

This reader’s e-mail began: “When they run into problems, sons of fathers with status are kept out of the news and courts. But I’ve never seen it at the expense of an eleven year old boy.

“This guy, who is in his sixties and lives at the same address as Adam J. Harvey (ex-boyfriend of Kenzie), is most  probably his father. If he is, take a look at who he is:

Detachment Listing and Detachment Officers / Department of Pennsylvania

Marine Corps League

http://www.pamcleague.org/mcldetoff.htm

New Castle Marines #788  (4/01/09)

Commandant: Charles Harvey / 506 Boston Ave / New Castle, Pa 16101 / (724) 654-7309

Sr. Vice Commandant: Ronald E. Jones / 1600 Grove Ave / New Castle PA 16101 / (724) 658-5448

Jr. Vice Commandant: David L. Thomas / 426 Fairgreen Ave / New Castle PA 16101 / (724) 654-1178

Judge Advocate: John P. Wherthey / 2414 Anne Dr / New Castle PA 16105 / (724) 652-7901

Jr. Past Commandant: Claude D.Shorts / 109 Germanski La / New Castle, PA 16102 / (724) 667-9422; Dan Chuey 132 S. Myers Ave / Sharon PA 16146 / (724) 699-6872

Adjutant: Richard W. Nonnemacher / 1201 Highland Ave, Apt #1 / New Castle PA 16105-2645 / (724) 657-8746

Paymaster: Gerald F. Kern / 414 E. Moody Ave / New Castle PA 16105 / (724) 652-4371

Chaplain: Emmett W. Shaffer / 315 Jones St / New Castle PA 16101 / (724) 652-9245

Sergeant-at-Arms: Fred Humphries / Conner School Road / Wampum PA 16157 / (724) 535-7243

“Now I understand why the police were so quick to accept the feeble alibi and drop Adam Harvey as a suspect. It may also explain why the media comments in PA are so negative; why the justice system in Newcastle is denying Jordan his rights; why Melissa had her posts on Topix deleted; why I had unusual difficulty–several times–posting to CBS Local Pittsburgh in response to a poster called “Dallas” who was knowledgeable, smooth, and polite—but adamant beyond reason considering his education (IMO), that Jordan was guilty. This news would explain much of what is happening to Jordan,” he said.

“It looks like the police and prosecution were not inept but something much worse.”

These are the reader’s conclusions, not mine. However, he has aroused my curiosity enough that I have initiated background checks on everyone connected with this Marine Corps League chapter. We will be looking for any connections whatsoever to the police, prosecutors, and other authorities in Lawrence County. We are using databases not available to the public and our cybersleuths and other investigators will keep digging until we discover the truth about exactly how this blatant miscarriage of justice has been engineered.

In time the truth will come out and any persons who are accessories to the murders and to the framing of an innocent child will be held to account. (Neither one is an insignificant crime, but a serious felony involving prison time.) If anyone knows something they are hiding, this is their last chance to come forward and avoid more serious consequences for themselves and their loved ones.

The Marines’ famous slogan is “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful), and signifies the dedication and loyalty that individual Marines have for “Corps and Country”, even after leaving the service. It is easy to see how loyalty between Marine veterans could become so personal that loyalty to Country, its laws and ideals, could become lost among drinking buddies—and we do know from the long line of DUI convictions in the public record that Charles Harvey and his sons have been heavy drinkers.

Now is the time for some sober reflection. This absurd story has played out far too long. It is time for grunts and civilians alike to be faithful to the truth and restore justice in Western Pennsylvania.

It’s time to wake up and heed what a wise champion of freedom named Voltaire once said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

۞

Groove of the Day

Listen to the Angels performing “My Boyfriend’s Back”

oral arguments

Anyone expecting a showy Inherit-the-Wind legal show will be disappointed today.

While today’s oral arguments before the Superior Court in the matter of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Jordan Brown will certainly be momentous, the hearing itself will consist of each side having 15 minutes to state its case before a panel of three judges, and then it will be over. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

After the hearing is over and the attorneys give their obligatory courthouse-step media interviews, we may be waiting weeks or even months to learn what the court decides.

Representing the Neanderthal State will be Pennsylvania Chief Deputy Attorney General Christopher D. Carusone, head of the Appeals and Legal Services Division of the Attorney General’s Office. He will likely be backed up by Deputy Attorney General Anthony J. Krastek, the attack dog prosecutor assigned to win this political case by any means necessary. 

Representing Jordan Brown, who was 11 years old at the time his future stepmother Kenzie Houk and her unborn baby were murdered (and who is now 13), will be Lourdes M. Rosado, Associate Director of the renowned Juvenile Law Center, which is based in Philadelphia. She will be backed up by Jordan’s local defense attorneys Dennis Elisco and David Acker. 

The judges hearing the arguments will be Cheryl Lynn Allen, Judith Ference Olson and Senior Judge Robert Colville.  

The Superior Court will not hear arguments about whether Jordan is innocent or guilty of this crime, nor will it hear arguments that Jordan has been incarcerated for almost two years without any credible evidence, physical or otherwise, that he even committed this crime. It will not hear arguments that the murders were more likely caused by Kenzie’s former boyfriend Adam Harvey, who had repeatedly threatened to have her murdered over a bitter child support and paternity battle in which he and Kenzie had been embroiled up until the time of her and the baby’s murders.  

Instead, today’s hearing will focus on the issues surrounding the state’s intention to try Jordan as an adult which, were the state successful in gaining a conviction, would entail a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole—a barbaric penalty if inflicted on a child and proscribed by international law. 

Here is a description of the issues to be addressed today, as lifted from the Juvenile Law Center’s website:

Juvenile Law Center, along with private attorneys David Acker and Dennis Elisco, filed this brief to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on behalf of Jordan Brown, an eleven-year-old charged with the murder of his stepmother.  The trial court had denied Jordan’s decertification to the juvenile justice system, holding that in order to demonstrate his amenability to treatment within the juvenile system, he had to first take responsibility for the offense. If convicted in the adult system, Jordan will receive a mandatory life without parole sentence and will be the youngest person in the country tried as an adult.  This brief argued that the trial court’s interpretation of the transfer statute (42 Pa.C.S. § 6322) requiring Jordan’s confession at the pre-adjudicatory decertification hearing in order to demonstrate his ability to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system, was in violation of Jordan’s right against self-incrimination and rights to due process and fundamental fairness under both the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions.  

An amicus brief filed by the Campaign for Youth Justice, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and attorneys from Baker McKenzie, argued that the trial court failed to consider developmental research confirming that children are more amenable to treatment and rehabilitation.  The brief also provided a historical overview of the Pennsylvania juvenile justice system and demonstrated that the juvenile system is better equipped to try Jordan and provide rehabilitation and treatment to Jordan if found delinquent. The adult system would provide severe consequences to Jordan.  Finally, amici argued that there is consensus among other states and the international community that disfavors trying youth as young as Jordan as adults. 

Like you, I will be standing by to read media reports to see if the hearing holds any surprises. Please return to this Diary post later in the day for more news.

۞

As far as I can see from the news reports out of Pittsburgh, nobody pulled a rabbit out of the hat today.

The Superior Court judges asked good questions of the lawyers on both sides of the case. Based on reports from people who were at the hearing, the judges seemed to direct their sharpest questions at Mr. Carusone, who seemed caught up short in answering them, particularly questions related to whether Jordan’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination were violated by Judge Dominick Motto. They wondered aloud, and described their concerns as “troubling,” about whether Jordan would have been forced to give up his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in order to be certified as a juvenile. Unbeknownst to Mr. Carusone, Ms. Rosado had been involved in a case upon which the state had based its absurd logic–Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Davis–and Ms. Rosado was able to authoritatively demonstrate to the judges that the state had interpreted this case backwards. In a highly unusual move, one of the judges publicly complimented Ms. Rosado on the quality of her presentation. 

Yet questions and compliments are a far cry from a ruling, and the time Jordan continues to be incarcerated will continue to accrue as the wheels of justice slowly grind on and on.

About the most exciting thing on the news today was a TV reporter leaning forward and delivering his lines in a stage whisper, like he didn’t want to disturb the judges’ deliberations just beyond the courtroom door. It was really… hmmm… tense.

Debbie Houk was interviewed again, repeating her worn-out line that nothing would bring her babies back and that they should lock up the boy and throw away the key. Not a note of doubt or compassion.

(She’ll have a hard time adjusting when Jordan is found innocent.)

۞

Groove of the Day

Listen to Richie Havens performing “Motherless Child”

words matter

Yesterday was quite an emotional day for me—all of it, on balance, quite positive, and all of it experienced over the telephone. The day was sandwiched between lengthy calls with the fathers of Jordan Brown and Paul Gingerich, and the meat-and-cheese of the day consisted of conversations with family, friends, and others who make my life so meaningful and worthwhile.

My mind was set at ease by the call with Chris Brown, from whom I had not heard in quite a while. I was relieved to hear that he continues to be holding up under the pressure of living in a community that simmers with self-righteous hatred against him. He is dealing with an income tax audit brought down upon him by the Houks over the matter of his having claimed Kenzie’s daughters Jenessa and Adalyn as his dependents—which they were—on his tax return. His bank account is still frozen by the IRS, but at least none of the Houks’ friends have pulled a gun on him as has happened in the past. Chris avoids going out in public anymore, and his friends and family continue to offer moments of respite which get him through the ordeal. He and his mother continue to make daily visits to Jordan, who is also holding up. Chris encouraged me to write to Jordan, who more than anything enjoys receiving letters from his friends and supporters on the outside. Kind words matter, Chris said.

I had a long conversation during the day with Steven Sydebotham, one of the founders of the Children’s Hope and Voice network, with whom I had only communicated before by e-mail. I think both of us were apprehensive before the call about how it would go. The truth is, there are a lot of people who are drawn to these sensational cases for some pretty warped reasons, and I think both of us feared that one or the other would end up being disappointed. Yet as it turned out, this was not the case at all. Within five minutes, after an exchange of just a few words, both our minds were set at ease. I was blown away by the things that Steven and his co-founder Tonya have accomplished and are setting out to do. I am looking forward to working with them for the benefit of kids who get themselves mired in our country’s screwed-up youth justice system.

Just as I was preparing to shut down the computer, phone, and power system for the night, I received a call from Paul Gingerich’s dad, who is also named Paul.

(By the way, there are so many Pauls in my life, I will hereafter refer to young Paul Gingerich as “Paul Henry,” which is how his dad refers to him. This will help you keep straight which Paul I’m writing about.)

Paul Henry’s dad was returning home from a business trip, so we talked for a long time as he drove. It was our first conversation, and after we had exchanged enough words to size up one another, he readily agreed to our working together for the benefit of his son. We spoke of deep things, and some far-ranging things, too—but always returned to Paul Henry’s redemption. I think we both understand, like, and trust one another and we agreed to be brutally honest with one another should disagreements ever arise—which is exactly the way I like it. I am not one to mince words, nor is he.

When I woke up this morning, there was an e-mail waiting for me from Tammy, which I have posted as a comment to today’s Diary entry. She asked me to remove her full name from yesterday’s post, which I am not going to do.

All day yesterday the background noise of the radio continued the speculation about whether the nasty state of public discourse had anything to do with the Tucson shootings, which drives home to me the fact that our words do matter in what happens in our world (we are all connected in surprising ways), and that all of us must be responsible and accountable for what we say.

(I had, as an experiment, included her e-mail address in yesterday’s post to see what would happen. As far as I can see, no one clicked on it, which pleases me. We are a very civil lot on this site, and I thank you all for your respect and restraint. I did, though, remove Tammy’s e-mail address first thing this morning.)

Please read her response, and be understanding and compassionate and kind. Tammy deserves our respect. Put yourself in her shoes and remember the Golden Rule. We all say things we regret, but that does not make us bad people.

Your words matter, too.

۞

Groove of the Day

Listen to Otis Redding performing “Try A Little Tenderness”

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blue christmas

While most people are dreaming of a White Christmas, Jordan Brown is looking forward to the nightmare of spending a second Christmas in detention for a crime he did not commit, and with no clear timeline in sight for a chance to be exonerated and returned to his anguished father. For Jordan, this will be a very blue Christmas, indeed.

Thanks to research by Matt Stroud of the Innocence Institute of Point Park University and an excellent story released yesterday (at http://innocenceinstitute.org/uncategorized/a-question-of-responsibility/), for the first time the name of Kenzie Houk’s former boyfriend, Adam Harvey, has finally been made public, as well as other information in Kenzie’s own words about how Harvey had “left several messages threatening to hurt me and my family. I am in fear of him hurting me physically or my family. He has a drinking problem that is uncontrollable. He has threatened to hire someone to hurt me several times.”

What Matt did not disclose in his story is the reason that Harvey was mad enough at Kenzie to threaten to hire someone to hurt or murder her: that they had been involved in a bitter paternity and child support dispute, and after having submitted to DNA testing—and after having supported his “daughter” financially for some time—Harvey discovered the child was not his after all. Matt’s story did not question why the police would have failed to investigate this motive (while they had no evidence of motive for Jordan), nor why they accepted Harvey’s alibi and did not investigate whether he had, in fact, hired someone to hurt Kenzie as he’d allegedly threatened.

I imagine that Adam Harvey’s Christmas will be so much better than Jordan’s. I can only imagine that he is relieved that the police did not investigate his reported drunken and tearful admission to one of his friends at a party that he’d killed his girlfriend. He’s probably grateful that the curiosity of no one in the media was aroused about why he of all people should have been seated with the Houk family at one of Jordan’s courtroom hearings.

Former trooper Janice Wilson will be having a better Christmas than Jordan, too. She must be happy that she was promoted to the rank of corporal after having garnered so much publicity for having collared an 11-year-old child within 24 hours of the crime. Now that she has retired from the state police, she must be happy she can collect a pension while also collecting a salary in her new job as an investigator for Child Protective Services. She must be pleased that her presumed coercion of an incriminating witness statement from Kenzie’s daughter has not yet been exposed. And she must be happy, too, that the media has not yet picked up on the story told in the halls of the Lawrence County courthouse about her role in the wrongful conviction of Hank Kimball for 1994 murders that he, like Jordan, did not commit.

Even former prosecutor John Bongivengo will be having a better Christmas than Jordan. Now that he knows that all the physical evidence upon which he based his charges against Jordan has come back from the crime lab clearing Jordan, Bongivengo must be relieved that he will not have to prosecute the case with only a coerced witness statement and courtroom theatrics to rely upon.

But the person who will be having the best Christmas of all is governor-elect and Attorney General Tom Corbett, whose protection of incompetent police and his office’s “tough on crime” prosecution of a bogus case helped win him higher office. Now that he will be moving on to the governor’s mansion, and because he was careful not to become personally associated with the Jordan Brown case, he is probably imagining that his Teflon qualities will protect him even if the truth of Jordan’s innocence and wrongful imprisonment are established in court. He can always claim he didn’t know.

All these nasty adults will be having a good Christmas at the expense of an innocent child whose life they have permanently changed and scarred, regardless of the eventual outcome when the case finally goes to trial. In February Jordan will have been locked up for two years—an eternity in his short young life, and an eternity for his father, too.

۞

Groove of the Day

Listen to Elvis Presley performing “Blue Christmas”

jordan’s appeal

Late Tuesday Jordan’s attorneys received word from the Pennsylvania Superior Court that their petition for a hearing appealing Judge Motto’s decision to try 12-year-old Jordan Brown as an adult has been granted. The court docket has the hearing scheduled for Friday, August 13^th in Pittsburgh.

Chris Brown contacted me yesterday and said, “Oddly as it may seem, this is two in a row for us. A glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.” Jordan’s attorney Dennis Elisco said he was relieved by the court order. “I can uncross my fingers now, I guess.”

Predictably, Debbie Houk complained she is growing tired of delays.

In the March hearing which resulted in the judge’s outrageous ruling, the state argued that Jordan is not amenable to rehabilitation as long as he refuses to confess to a crime he did not commit, while the defense met all statutory requirements to show that Jordan is amenable to rehabilitation and should therefore be tried as the child he is.

If Jordan is convicted of first- or second-degree murder as an adult, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. If his case moves to juvenile court, the state could not hold him beyond his 21st birthday if he were convicted.

All of this is, of course, beside the main point that Jordan is innocent and being railroaded with tainted and misconstrued evidence.

I am not superstitious, but the Friday the 13^th docket date is a reminder that the state appears determined to carry out this miscarriage of justice, and that plenty could still go wrong for Jordan.

We’re not out of the woods yet.

too quiet in pa

Since the appeal of Judge Motto’s decision to try 12-year-old Jordan Brown as an adult was filed, things have apparently been too quiet for some people.

So true to form, Kenzie’s parents have been stirring the pot—or their cauldron, I should say. Last week they attended a meeting of the Lawrence County Commissioners to ask why Jordan is being housed in an Erie youth facility where he is being treated humanely at a cost to the county and state of $239.34 a day and being allowed “privileges” such as daily visits from his father and the ability to play checkers with the staff. They want to see Jordan moved to the county jail where he would be housed with violent adults at a lower cost to upstanding taxpayers like themselves.

If this story were happening seventy years ago in the South and Jordan were black, he would already be swinging from a tree if the Houks had their way. Every story of injustice must have its Ewell Family, and in this case the Houk Family is it.

One of the commissioners answered the Houks saying that the judiciary is independent and said: “We can’t issue any edict about operation of the court system. We only fund it.” But don’t you think the Houks already knew this before they went to the meeting? Yet it was as good a publicity stunt as all their others.

Of course, if the newspaper story I have just read is a full description of the proceedings (http://www.vindy.com/news/2010/jun/26/family-questions-privileges/), no one stated the obvious: that Jordan is presumed innocent unless proved guilty. Before a trial the state can only detain Jordan, not punish him—though I’d guess Jordan believes he is presently being punished for something he didn’t do.

Nor did anyone say that in the case of juveniles, the state has a responsibility to treat them as children and not small adults. Children and adults do not think and behave the same. Only ignorant and cruel people do not accept this reality. Decent people all over the world are dismayed by this story and what it says about the human condition and American justice.

And nobody, of course, stated that Jordan is being held on the thinnest of evidence gathered through a laughably incompetent and dishonest police investigation, and interpreted by a former prosecutor with political considerations in mind. The police have forensic evidence of a handgun shot to Kenzie’s head and yet make the misleading claim that it is a shotgun wound. The police didn’t even process the crime scene for fingerprints. They probably coerced Jordan’s younger sister into making a false statement incriminating Jordan and colluded with or manipulated the victim’s family to see that Jordan was convicted in the media before his case ever went to trial.

And nobody but nobody dared ask what kind of people these are upon whose vicious accusations and assertions the police and prosecution are relying.

Here is a curious and significant thing I have observed over many months. On Jordan’s website at www.SaveJordanBrown.com and in this Diary, it has been disclosed that Kenzie had been engaged in a bitter child support and paternity battle with a former boyfriend who is the more likely killer or had one of his unsavory friends do it. At one time Kenzie apparently felt threatened enough to take out protection orders against him—maybe after one of his several death threats.

After paying Kenzie for the support of a child he was told was his, the boyfriend ultimately learned through DNA testing that the child was not his after all. Put yourself in his shoes. Don’t you think you’d be a little ticked off, especially if your former girlfriend had already taken up with and was engaged to another man?

Yet about all this, the silence from Lawrence County has been deafening.

No one is talking about it, and for the Houks thankfully so, because no one but me is openly asking the obvious question: What kind of upbringing did this young woman have that she would not know the paternity of her own child, or if she did know, that she would scapegoat and saddle an “innocent” man with the responsibility?

Is the same thing happening now, but this time being choreographed by Mother Deb, a past master of the art and all dressed up in her Sunday best? It is more plausible, really, than the “Addams Family Kid” theory of the crime which has been sold to the credulous media.

I’ll bet if someone went digging into this family’s background, it would be found that they’re not all they crack themselves up to be.

Then maybe it would not be so quiet in Pennsylvania.

On a lighter note…

Please don’t send me angry messages if you don’t approve. I figured it was either him or me, and the ugliness and stench of Otto’s snakebite wound is still fresh in my memory.

I went out to the coop yesterday to feed and water the roosters. We have an old concrete block propped against the gate to keep it closed. I lifted it and, to my great alarm and astonishment, beheld a three-foot-long rattlesnake coiled where the concrete block had been.

Rattlesnakes are welcome anywhere on the property except near our animals or the house, and this guy had broken the rules. He raised his head as if to strike. I had the perfect weapon—the concrete block—in my hands, took aim, and threw it. The snake was not killed, but wounded and immobilized under the weight.

I returned to the house to fetch a long trenching spade, with which I beheaded the snake and put him out of his misery. I cut off the tail to send to Benny, and left the snake’s writhing body for the roosters to eat.

Now we’ll see if it is true that roosters and chickens will eat anything.

(postscript)

They won’t.

duh!?

Oh man, I shoulda seen it coming, but I didn’t.

I learned yesterday that Kenzie Houk’s mother has launched a website with the purpose of discrediting the Jordan Brown Trust website and denouncing us as liars.

(I use “us” in a not-so-casual sense, because her website mentions me by name. That makes me an alleged liar, too!)

I regret this development, not because I’m afraid of their public attacks, but because I’ve been refraining from writing about “the victim’s grief-stricken family” to give reconciliation a chance.

No such luck. These people don’t do anything without cameras and loudspeakers.

I wonder if they know what they’re bringing down upon themselves? They will be caricatured and forever remembered as agents of ignorance and blind vengeance. Most of the damage to their reputations will be inflicted at their own hands.

I’m sorry they have brought me into this personally because I don’t have much sympathy for these people, and I don’t mind what I might say about them if provoked. I have compassion for the loss they’ve suffered, but they have overdone the public displays of grief and have crossed a line of good taste. Most distasteful, however, is the relentless hatred they project towards a 12-year-old boy which would be despicable enough were it even deserved.

What blows me away about this family is that they should know by now the cops and former prosecutor played them as pawns to prop up a flawed investigation. Their mourning-and-retribution sideshow is just what the prosecutor needed to keep people from asking some pretty basic questions like:

“If a shotgun were the murder weapon, where is there a shotgun wound on the victim? Where are the large entry wound and the massive facial damage which would have resulted from a shotgun blast?” (I have seen firsthand the damage a shotgun does to a person’s head, and it is not subtle.) The entry wound was so small, the police didn’t even realize Kenzie had been shot until they moved her body onto the gurney.

“If the shotgun shell casing police retrieved from the snow by the driveway were in any way connected to the murders, where did all the missing pellets go?” They weren’t in Kenzie’s head wound, nor in the pillow, bedding, walls, etc. We’re not speaking of a small number of missing pellets. More than 85% of the expected number of pellets is missing! The cops missed by a mile.

From the family’s early quotes to the media, it is evident that they fell hard for the authorities’ blue blanket story, and right away began parroting the prosecution’s theory that wrapping the shotgun in the blanket showed premeditation. They evidently didn’t ask why blue fibers weren’t in Kenzie’s wound or why there wouldn’t have been blowback from a gunshot blast that should have covered Jordan and the blanket in blood, brains, and gunshot residue. This didn’t happen because the shotgun wasn’t used,  it wasn’t wrapped in the blanket, and Jordan didn’t do it.

Shouldn’t Kenzie’s family know by now the blanket came back from the crime lab clean, that the “gunshot hole” in it is an old cigarette burn, and that so infinitesimally little residue was found on Jordan’s clothing that he should have been immediately cleared of any suspicion?

Jordan’s shotgun wasn’t the murder weapon, even though it had been shot the previous day and still smelled of it. Someone else shot Kenzie and used a handgun.

Kenzie’s family knows the likely killer. Yet their website continues to use their personal loss and the brutality of the murders to justify the state’s brutal treatment of Jordan, to inflame people’s passions, obscure the facts, and try to influence a rigged outcome.

And, if this family expects to be seen as so damned credible, why was Kenzie’s former boyfriend sitting with them at Jordan’s March 12^th hearing—the same individual who had been engaged with Kenzie in a bitter paternity and child support battle; who had delivered numerous death threats; against whom Kenzie had protection orders; who had been paying through the nose to support a daughter he eventually learned was not his child; and who is reported to have told his friends he killed his old girlfriend?

What on earth did he do to earn his seat with “the other victims?” How can this sordid case become any more weird?

dem eyes

I was watching the ABC story on the Internet for the first time on the day the story broke. This was the first time in over a year that Chris is speaking out publicly about Jordan’s innocence, and I was eager to see how he’d done.

The story had just been set up with a few establishing sequences of Kenzie, Jordan, the house, and the prosecutor, when from behind my shoulder Paul bursts, “Stop! Stop it and go back! Look at his eyes! He looked down-and-to-the-left. That prosecutor just lied!”

“Yeah, thanks man, but this is the first time I’m seeing this. Can we see it again at the end?”

“Sure.”

At the end of the story—and I thought Chris did great—we replayed it again.

(Now former) Lawrence County Prosecutor John Bongivengo says, “You wouldn’t even think in your worse nightmare that you’d have to charge an eleven-year-old with homicide,” he turns his head from the camera, looks down and to the left, and moves backwards. Big deal.

“It is a big deal,” Paul protests. “Interrogators who watch the eyes can know when a witness is lying by the eye movements and body language,” he said. “That guy’s moves said that he just lied.”

Well, I haven’t read the same books as Paul and can’t say for sure from a several-second clip whether Bongivengo lied and the idea of prosecuting this case with no credible evidence and destroying innocent people’s lives did, in fact, come to him in a nightmare.

However his plan came to him, it is now beginning to emerge that Bongivengo may have had a larger part to play in the breach between the Houk and Brown families than may generally be appreciated.

Last week one of the local newspapers quoted someone in the Houk family as saying that Chris had never once reached out to them in the year since Kenzie’s murder. This is simply not true. More than a dozen times Chris had reached out through approved channels defined by the prosecution and the defense attorneys (which in this case was Bongivengo himself). Chris pleaded to be allowed to see the girls and their family, and Bongivengo always denied his requests.

More significantly, Bongivengo never informed the Houk family of Chris’ intentions and efforts, much less their relentless frequency. I confirmed yesterday with a close Houk family friend that they had no knowledge of this until my phone call. Apparently it better served the prosecutor’s purposes to keep a highly visible and destructive conflagration going between two families.

“Yeah, that’s the ticket,” you can almost imagine him saying. “Hatfields and McCoys. That’ll raise the temperature.” (Remember, he was trying to get re-elected.)

This is consistent, as well, with what now appears to have been Bongivengo’s prosecution strategy: to win over a jury with emotionally prejudicial stunts and tricks.

All his evidence says the kid didn’t do it; the only way to win this one is to keep stirring the coals and inflaming people’s passions. Nice job, John. Proud of yourself?

Chris read this quote about his “not reaching out” and asked a victim’s rights advocate if the Houks knew how steadfastly he’d tried to be with them. “No way, Chris,” he was told. “They don’t know.”

Chris called me yesterday and told me he’d been thinking about everything again, and trying to imagine what it would have been like for the Houks, over all this time, to think that he didn’t care enough about them to have reached out. All this time, he told me, Chris thought the Houks knew he was trying to contact them, and that he was being rebuffed.

He said he wanted to do something conciliatory.

Debbie Houk had objected to our use of Kenzie’s and the girls’ images on Jordan’s website and had even found a lawyer to send us a threatening letter. I had always maintained that because Jordan and Chris are blameless in Kenzie’s murder, it is therefore consistent that we acknowledge the family relationship which had been enjoyed by the five members of Kenzie’s and Chris’ household. Their family was a sacred thing that was destroyed by an as-yet-uncharged killer.

Anyway, I argued, those pictures are splashed all over the Internet. It’s fine to use Kenzie’s image to seek vengeance against a child whom Kenzie knows is innocent, and not okay to use her image as she would wish us to do? I’m sorry, it doesn’t compute.

Chris agreed with me—until now.

“Deb really has a big heart,” Chris said. If the pictures were adding to her heartbreak, he wanted them taken down.

Because I’d already had replacement pages prepared for this possibility, the change was made within an hour.

I’m happy that we are making this conciliatory move, but disappointed that visitors no longer have an opportunity to look into Kenzie’s eyes. Visitors are now prevented from making a connection with her.

If you think I am making too much of this, you may understand my perspective a little better when I tell you that for more than a decade after my wife Holly’s death I distributed thousands of new children’s books each year to schools and libraries free of charge. Oh yes, I did it for kids and reading and apple pie; but the real reason, the reason I sacrificed to do this, was to proliferate Holly’s picture, her identity, into the world and thus help ensure her immortality. A bookplate with her name, picture, and dates of birth and death was affixed to every book. Each bookplate has this marvelous portrait of Holly with her striking eyes providing a window to her soul. That’s why I did it. So she will be known and remembered.

I hope that people do not misconstrue the removal of Kenzie’s image from Jordan’s website as an attempt to sweep Kenzie’s memory or her love for Chris and her whole family (including Jordan) under the rug. I hope a day of reconciliation will come when we will put Kenzie’s picture back up on the website.

When that day does arrive, this is the picture I would put up (I found it on a Spanish-language website). I think the blue background in the picture everyone uses is kind of a downer. It doesn’t summon up the best in us. It keeps us down.

This one, I think, is more uplifting. She looks lovely, doesn’t she?

There’s hope ‘in dem eyes.’

good cops, bad cops

After last Friday’s hearing, Jordan Brown’s attorneys Dennis Elisco and David Acker told reporters that Kenzie Houk’s ex-boyfriend was overheard tearfully admitting to someone at a friend’s party that he had killed his ex-girlfriend.

The attorneys said this information had been turned over to state police, though Trooper Jeffrey Martin, who is leading the investigation, claimed he was unaware of it, according to media reports.

Uh-huh.

This lead was given to him months ago (on August 26, 2009) and was never followed up on, despite the defense’s having afterwards asked Trooper Martin if he had learned anything more about the lead they’d given him.

Maybe Trooper Martin is experiencing some memory problems; if so, it seems to me he should be relieved of duty on medical grounds. Or maybe Trooper Martin is not telling the truth, in which case he should be relieved of duty on ethical grounds.

When the facts of this case are known—the full and truthful facts, not the prosecution’s fantastic connect-the-dots “spin” on fragments of innocuous “evidence” which simply does not add up—there will be no other reasonable conclusion but that the hateful and tragic outcomes of Kenzie’s and the baby’s murders can be traced back to abysmal police work and a betrayal of the trust we place in the police.

Good cops deserve our admiration and respect. Bad cops, on the other hand, so often turn out to be criminals with badges. What has been happening in Western Pennsylvania for the last year is, by my reckoning, criminal official behavior.

It seems significant to me that at least a couple key players in the investigation and prosecution of this case are the same individuals who were involved in another Lawrence County PA murder case which is now so notorious: the attempted railroading of Thomas “Hank” Hughes Kimbell, Jr. who was sentenced to death for the 1994 murders of his neighbor, Bonnie Lou Dryfuse, her daughters Jacqueline Mae and Heather Sue, and their cousin, Stephanie Herko. After serving several years on death row, Kimbell’s conviction was overturned in 2000 and he was acquitted of the murders in 2002.

The official reason that Kimbell’s conviction was overturned was a technicality: limitations placed on his defense in questioning the testimony of a key witness. However, if the information I have learned about this case is true, there is more to the Kimbell story than is publicly known.

The charges against Jordan were based to a great extent on a tainted statement improperly elicited from Jordan’s younger step-sister by Janice Wilson (recently retired), one of the same Pennsylvania State Police troopers who had, fifteen years earlier, disclosed to Kimbell information “known only to the killer”—or so the story is currently being told in the courthouse halls in Lawrence County.

In one of Kimbell’s interrogations, Trooper Wilson and one other investigator allegedly shared details of the case which were not public, including that the mother was killed first, the children’s bodies were stacked up in the bathroom, and that the back door did not open. Then, when Kimbell repeated these “inside facts” to others, the police had entrapped him through the creation of witnesses for the prosecution.

The police covered themselves by claiming that Kimbell said he learned details of the slayings by listening to a police scanner (and the prosecution claimed he knew details that hadn’t been broadcast). Kimbell was thus portrayed in his first trial as a murderer and a liar.

This case is profiled in Bill Kurtis’ book, Death Penalty on Trial. As with Kenzie’s murder, the real murderer of Mrs. Dryfuse and her children and niece is still living free.

Two dots connected does not a pattern make. Yet I cannot help but wonder if, were other “dots” from Trooper Wilson’s career investigated, would we see a disturbing pattern?

colliding universes

The last couple days have been 14-hour killers. I haven’t stopped to eat until nighttime, and last night that didn’t even happen. It’s been exhausting.

With all the media coverage about the case of 12-year-old Jordan Brown, the phone has been ringing from morning to night. Keeping up with all the e-mails has reminded me of the lyrics of an old song: “We paddle for one mile and drift back for two.”

I hope to kick back at least one day this weekend, but that remains to be seen.

Even if the phone doesn’t ring, I will be thinking about some flak I’ve been receiving from a few people through comments to the Diary and the Jordan Brown Trust Fund website. Not particularly relaxing.

Thankfully the vast majority of e-mails and messages are positive and encouraging. For example, out of more than 4,500 website visitors on the first day of the “Save Jordan Brown” campaign, we received only four negative messages. The same ratio seems to be the case with visitor comments to this Diary.

However few, I do take these negative and challenging comments seriously. You’ve first got to listen before a real conversation can begin.

Yesterday I was asked by a talk radio host in Pittsburgh to answer some simple questions about the Trust and whether Jordan should be tried as an adult or a child. What he did not tell me until we’d already begun the interview was that he wanted to ask me about the Trust’s use of images of Kenzie and her daughters on the website. Kenzie’s mother Debbie Houk had objected to our use of the images and threatened legal action in a newspaper article which had appeared in the morning.  Until I was blindsided by this host’s question, I thought we had been discussing her concerns privately.

“What right do you have to use these pictures to defend the alleged murderer?” he demanded.

“Let’s focus on the word ‘alleged’,” I replied.

“No, I don’t want to focus on ‘alleged’,” he fired back. “Answer my question!”

I explained that this was a family in the truest sense of the word, even if Chris and Kenzie were engaged and not yet married. All three kids called Kenzie and Chris “Mom” and “Dad.” They were all living together in Chris’ house and were supported by him. They were about to have a baby. Our use of the photos, I said, acknowledges and honors these family relationships which should not just be swept under the rug because of mistakes by police and officials.

He demanded I give Deb Houk an answer on the air about whether we would take down the photos and I refused. I answered that too much of this whole sad affair has been aired in public with microphones and in the glare of lights. “People on both sides need a chance to work this through out of the public eye,” I said. “All I will say on the air is that I have already sent her an answer through private channels.”

With that, the host hung up on me. He was not interested in hearing about people working through their issues and finding some level of reconciliation. He wanted fireworks.

Some negative comments here—those intended to be all about fireworks—I’ve blocked from publication. Their posting would only add more disinformation to the mix. However, I’m following up on these comments through private e-mail in an attempt to establish an honest dialog that might result in some degree of healing for everyone concerned. I’ve even offered to retract anything I’ve reported if they can show me I’ve been wrong.

This will not be an easy road. So far, I am not seeing much desire for honest dialog in Western Pennsylvania. Last night I talked to one of Jordan’s local supporters who told me her statements in support of Jordan are being shouted down with the accusation, “Lies!”, and then countered, ironically enough, with lies.

After yesterday’s hearing, Deputy State Attorney General Krastek said that in continuing to maintain Jordan’s innocence, we are undermining Jordan’s chances of being decertified and tried as a juvenile. Another lie.

It seems more and more like people on both sides are defending two radically different views of reality. It’s like two parallel universes are colliding in this case.

In continuing to assert Jordan’s innocence, it appears we are threatening some people’s comforting foundational beliefs. Jordan’s innocence is so potentially, profoundly, and deeply disruptive to everything they believe, they will do anything to avoid even hearing it.

It reminds me of a story I heard about two Jewish men standing in line to enter a railroad boxcar. “The authorities are taking us away to be killed,” said one. “You lie,” said the other.

Some people only learn the truth too late.

“I worked in the court system for over 17 years,” wrote a visitor to Jordan’s website yesterday.  “A good portion of those years were in the juvenile system.  Whoever believes that if the ‘defendant’ was arrested he must be guilty, that person is a complete moron. There are so many innocent people spending time in our prisons because the State drummed up some information to convince a jury or judge that the ‘defendant’ is guilty.”

Another supporter wrote this morning: “The judicial system in our country really stinks. I know this because I have a daughter who was 13 years old and was murdered and the killer is still walking free 9 years later. I am on the other end of the spectrum but I am telling you that there is no way this little boy did what he is accused of.” 

When Jordan’s case goes to trial, you are going to hear some pretty unbelievable “magic bullet” theories to explain why the state feels it is justified in pursuing its groundless prosecution of a little boy without any evidence whatsoever.

Krastic will be depending heavily on the tendency of frightened people whose reality is threatened to insert their fingers in their ears and say “La-la-la-la-la.”