TRIALS and TRIBULATIONS

by Leigh Lundin

Hello to everyone at Bouchercon!

While I like mysteries designed with a solvable riddle, I appreciate realism in stories. Sometimes the realism blurs with the bizarre, the topic of today’s article. Two ghastly crimes have come up for trial, both stranger than fiction.

Collaring a Suspect

On 28 August 2003, career pizza delivery man Brian Wells entered a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania with two unusual pieces of hardware. One was a shotgun disguised as a cane, the other was a steel collar. Bank employees triggered a silent alarm and police waited for Wells when he exited.

Wells explained to police the collar was a live bomb. Finding that hard to believe, police didn’t notify the bomb squad for at least half an hour who then took more than a quarter of an hour to arrive— three minutes too late. The bomb exploded, killing Mr. Wells.

Police investigations uncovered a number of other deaths (including a boyfriend stuffed in a freezer) tied to Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the supposed mastermind, who spent recent years in treatment for bipolar disorder and is now considered ready for trial. The believed intent of the bank robbery was to fund a hit on her 91-year-old father to gain an inheritance. (The present prosecutor is not telling the jury she was the mastermind, arguing all he must do is prove Diehl-Armstrong was part of the plot.)

As bizarre as the bomb collar scenario was, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan asserted that Wells was to a degree complicit, albeit a man who didn’t know the ‘bomb was loaded’, based upon the word of one of the conspirators, which other people dispute. Holding him at gunpoint, the gang forced Wells to don the bomb-collar, gave him a list of tasks to accomplish within a limited time, and sent him on his way. Police determined it was not possible for Wells to complete the list before the bomb detonation.

Of the believed conspirators, one committed suicide from a drug overdose, one died of cancer, one was granted immunity to testify, one received a 45-year sentence, and Ms. Diehl-Armstrong was hospitalized, now judged competent to be tried.

This was not the only time a collar bomb has been deployed. A highly-regarded but troubled Memphis medical examiner, Dr. O.C. Smith, is thought to have fashioned a bomb for himself.

Give a Flying F…

Some murders are terrifying, horrifying, involving burning, drowning, or… as we learned from Els van Doren, falling from the sky. Her nemesis and romantic rival, schoolteacher Els Clottemans, apparently cut the lines of van Doren’s parachute, causing her to plummet nearly three miles to her death. According to my calculus, that’s 90 seconds, a minute and a half, of terrifying helplessness and disbelief.

The victim’s helmet camera recorded her fall while her alleged killer also made the jump and watched the flailing victim plunge to the earth at 200 kilometers per hour.

van Doren	Somers	Clottemans

Women’s web site Lemondrop says

"We don’t have our bucket list written just yet, but two things we’re pretty sure are not going to be on it are 1) jump out of a plane, and 2) be involved in a love triangle that ends in murder. Thank you, Els Clottemans, for really (allegedly) cementing our position on that."

Judge: Bully for Bullies

Not only does the USA imprison a considerably greater percentage of its citizens than most other countries, we hand out much longer prison terms, a phenomenon called "over-sentencing". I’m not a fan of over-sentencing and some nations are presently reviewing their jail time guidelines, but a case in the UK leaves one to wonder what the hell they’re thinking. There, a judge sentenced three "bored" brutes who spent three days torturing a 17-year-old autistic boy with Asperger’s syndrome and ADD to curfews and community service.

The Daily Mirror describes the three perpetrators as "thugs" and "savages", which gives savages a bad name, but perhaps the Mirror’s column width doesn’t allow for ‘hellish sociopaths’.

Griffin	Bolton	Marshall

What had they done? Andrew Griffin, Nathan Marshall, and Jack Bolton video-recorded themselves as they tortured the lad and:

• kicked him in the head,
• punched his torso,
• booted him in the face so hard to leave an imprint of the shoe,
• clubbed him with a tennis racket,
• abraded his skin with sandpaper,
• hurled him down a steep hill,
• duct taped his genitals and ripped off the tape,
• pelted him with dog feces,
• staged a sex act upon his dog and him,
• threatened to break his jaw if he talked,
• force-fed him alcohol until he passed out.

The boy begged for mercy, of which they gave none.

While North America and other parts of the world are grappling with short- and long-term effects of bullying, apparently Judge Jonathan Geake has a tender spot toward the long-established institution of bullying. He claims he took into account the trio’s age, remorse, guilty pleas, and the fact they came from decent homes. "I conclude this was a departure from your normal, sensible selves," he stated.

Decent homes? Decent people don’t torture and torment. In fact, the bullying had been ongoing for weeks, possibly months, and the three days of torture took place in the ‘decent home’ of one of the perpetrators, Andrew Griffin, the one on the left in our photo line-up.

The emotionally and physically damaged boy dropped out of school. He and his aunt since fled the area. She said, "My lad was so scared of these boys he’d lie about his bruises. I realised how serious it was when he came home with a trainer print on his face. The judge’s sentence is a joke and I can’t tell my nephew what the sentence was or he’ll feel totally let down. This bullying scum have got away with it."

I agree. The boy was victimized once by the bullies and again by the court. Join me in wishing all of them justice, each in their own way.