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More long-haul trucker stories plz. 
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Apr 27, 2016 16:32
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fyodor posted:More long-haul trucker stories plz. Okay. So I've done a little whip around and this is what I've gotten so far. The Port Wakefield Ghost is one that came up. A bloke I work with has seen him on the side of Port Wakefield Road in South Australia. As the story goes, he's a RAF (airforce) pilot who crashed his plane at Mallala during training exercises in WW2. The usual ghost passenger rules apply... they see a soldier on the side of the road, and when they pull up to offer him a lift, he vanishes. Also, there might be some truth to the "freight stealing aboriginals" tale. A bloke pulls up at a truck stop in rural NSW, sleeps the night. He's carrying steel on a flat bed trailer, strapped down. When he wakes up in the morning all of the straps are undone and laying around the trailer. There is no-one out there. There's tales that might have already gone around about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(ghost) Black Dogs, which are known to run alongside trucks. Usually it's known as a sign you need to pull the gently caress up and sleep. To reply to something mentioned in the thread previously, Snowtown is quite a small country town. Everyone thinks the bank vault where the murders were (mostly) committed would be a little ways out, or otherwise away from people who could hear. Nope. I've been there and seen it for myself. That loving thing is sitting in the middle of town. People were getting murdered and tortured literally tens of metres away from homes, pubs, shops... I guess that's some good soundproofing.
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Apr 27, 2016 17:03
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This kind of thing makes me think of the movie Wake in Fright. Any of you Aussie goons seen it? Relate to it? LIVE IT?!
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Apr 27, 2016 17:29
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These trucker tales remind me I need to catch up to "Alice Isn't Dead" podcast. Also to mourn the poor ghost story thread that gave up the ghost 
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Apr 27, 2016 20:03
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Malignant Hyperthermia posted:There is mounting evidence that some individuals with malignant hyperthermia susceptibility may develop MH with exercise and/or on exposure to hot environments. Yeah, so The Endbringer posted:PYF unnerving article or story: Get the hell out of the desert
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Apr 27, 2016 21:36
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Zopotantor posted:Yeah, so What about Florida? 
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Apr 27, 2016 21:40
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dasbrooner posted:To reply to something mentioned in the thread previously, Snowtown is quite a small country town. Everyone thinks the bank vault where the murders were (mostly) committed would be a little ways out, or otherwise away from people who could hear. Nope. I've been there and seen it for myself. That loving thing is sitting in the middle of town. People were getting murdered and tortured literally tens of metres away from homes, pubs, shops... I guess that's some good soundproofing.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:00
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dasbrooner posted:To reply to something mentioned in the thread previously, Snowtown is quite a small country town. Everyone thinks the bank vault where the murders were (mostly) committed would be a little ways out, or otherwise away from people who could hear. Nope. I've been there and seen it for myself. That loving thing is sitting in the middle of town. People were getting murdered and tortured literally tens of metres away from homes, pubs, shops... I guess that's some good soundproofing. That's not what happened at all. The Snowtown bank was the final storage place for the stinking barrels full of mutilated body parts. Only one of the 12 victims was killed at the bank and he was beaten and strangled; that probably didn't make much noise once they knocked the wind out of him. The bank itself is an unassuming little shopfront with an attached residence for the bank manager to live in but by the time the barrels were moved in, the bank had been closed for some time. Some of the barrels had previously been stored in the back of cars, one of which was left in someone's yard. The barrels were moved to Snowtown to try to evade police investigation and I believe also the people who owned the yard were sick of the smell. The story they'd been told was that the vehicle had hit a roo or ran over a roadkill or similar and that was the cause of the horrible smell. But they'd put up with it for months, too afraid of John Bunting to pressure him to get the car moved. Not all the victims ended up in barrels either, one guy was hung from a tree and two of the victims were buried in the ringleader (Bunting)'s back yard in Salisbury North. Another one was buried in a paddock. All of the victims knew their killers and some of them had been involved in earlier killings only to become targets themselves. None of the victims or killers were local to Snowtown, they were mostly from Salisbury North but since the most gruesome stuff was found in Snowtown that's the name now associated with the murders. For a time there was some consideration into changing the towns name, I think to Rosetown, but it didn't stick. FYI snow is pretty unlikely in Snowtown. So the torturing, beating and strangling mostly happened in people's houses on regular suburban streets. Apparently Bunting liked to play the album Throwing Copper by Live during the murdering so perhaps that disguised the noise? My sister loaned me an excellent book on the murders but honestly I wish I hadn't read it; it'd be nicer not knowing the details in the same way I'd rather I knew less about the Toybox killer. Here's an article on Snowtown in lurid tabloid style if you don't know the story already.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:39
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fyodor posted:This kind of thing makes me think of the movie Wake in Fright. Any of you Aussie goons seen it? Relate to it? LIVE IT?! I was going to mention Wake in Fright. I've read the book but not seen the film but I'll have to rectify that. Apparently it's good. It was never released on VHS but has been restored and re-released on DVD if anyone wants to track it down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_in_Fright I'd like to draw your attention to this bit, about the roo hunting scene: quote:The hunt lasted several hours, and gradually wore down the filmmakers. According to cinematographer Brian West, "the hunters were getting really drunk and they started to miss, ... It was becoming this orgy of killing and we [the crew] were getting sick of it." Kangaroos hopped about helplessly with gun wounds and trailing intestines. Producer George Willoughby reportedly fainted after seeing a kangaroo "splattered in a particularly spectacular fashion". The crew orchestrated a power failure in order to end the hunt. Knowing how some people go hunting for roos here, and knowing outback towns, it does not surprise me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbS4Yt4aBHU Australia is a great country, it's not all bodies in barrels and roo hunts and people who live in caves and collect women's underwear. Most Aussies are salt of the earth, decent, peaceful people. There's some great things about living outback and the people who live there too, but god drat the dark parts of our culture are dark.
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Apr 27, 2016 23:54
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Let’s talk about wild fires and the men and women who fight them each fire season. Specifically, let's talk about an incident which rocked the firefighting world in 1990, and is perfect for this thread. Here's an article which explains everything, complete with pics (nothing NWS). http://www.azcentral.com/story/behind-the-lens/2015/06/26/dude-fire/28981819/. Below, I've done my own brief explanation of the sequence of events. I'm no expert, but I've tried to be as accurate as possible. Statistically, wildland firefighting is rarely a deadly job. Most fires are slow enough that the average person with some hiking experience can easily outpace them with little difficulty. But sometimes wildland fires can unexpectedly roar into life, creating their own convection winds and blasting up and around mountains or down through canyons faster than any living creature can move. This happened in 1990 on the Dude Fire near the Mogollon Rim of Arizona. A fire had sparked into life, drawing in several professional firefighting teams (known as Type 1 “Hotshots”) as well as less-experienced civilian crews (Type 2). One such Type 2 group was the 17-person Perryville convict crew. You see, Arizona has worked out contracts with the local government entities to allow convicts the opportunity to work as wildland firefighters for next-to-no pay. It’s a prestigious position to be on the crew, and much coveted by inmates. The Perryville crew was, at this point, well-known and respected among firefighters in the region for their sheer determination and hard work. The crew was working down in Walk Moore Canyon a mile or so away from the slow approaching flames, digging a wide line of bare ground parallel to the flame front in an attempt to starve it out once it got to them. Alongside them were several other crews: the Navajo Scouts, the Zigzag Hotshots, and the Granite Mountain Hotshots out of Prescott, Arizona, among others. Crews generally assign a single man to stand near the top of the topographical area in which they work as a guide and lookout. Around 2pm a member from the Granite Mountain Hotshots was performing this duty when he noticed the fire spring to life from his vantage. It swelled and swirled, creating its own convection winds which began tearing down through the narrow funnel of the canyon walls. Knowing the dozens of men below him had no view of this, he sent the radio call out for everyone to pull out; that things were just too dangerous. This message was then relayed down the canyon from team to team, finally reaching the less experienced Perryville and Navajo crews closest to the flame front. The investigation into the fire would later determine most of the men in the canyon would have been overtaken and burned alive if not for this call from the Granite Mountain team at this critical point. Keep that in mind for later. Whether they were unaware of the true nature of the threat, or whether they were too overburdened by their heavy equipment (survivors would later claim they held onto their tools for fear of the state charging them for anything left behind), they suddenly found themselves in a foot race for their lives. Someone from the Navajo crew began screaming over the radio for everyone to get out, but jumbled, panicked voices drowned out any possibility of clear communication. In the scramble, the entire Navajo crew made it up and over the canyon lip along with a number of the seventeen Perryville inmates. Terrified, hands shaking and with no hope of outrunning the fire now, at least six of the Perryville crew were forced to deploy their emergency fire shelters in desperation. Now, a fire shelter is nowhere near as impressive as it sounds. It basically consists of a silver aluminum “space blanket” with tie-down straps for a person to hold onto. The idea is that a firefighter can clear an area of ground and lie down with the shelter covering him, straps holding it down against the powerful convection winds. The aluminum covering deflects most of the radiant heat, in theory sparing the life of the person underneath. Men who have survived a “burnover” as it’s called, describe it as akin to having a flaming freight train smash into you. This was the Perryville crew’s situation on the Dude Fire. They deployed their shelters and awaited the flames, which came in successive waves, washing over them. A survivor would later describe his sheer terror as he heard someone nearby cry out he was dying and make a break for it. He crumpled after only a few feet. The flames were so hot in some places they actually melted some fire shelters, the structures disintegrating around the men they were supposed to protect. In the end, six would never leave the canyon alive. One man stumbled out of the burned, dessicated moonscape only to utter the words “I’m dead,” before collapsing onto a fallen log and dying on the spot. The toll was high, but it could have been so much worse without the timely warning from the Granite Mountain spotter. As this is the unnerving thread, that’s not quite where the story ends. Yes, it gets creepier somehow. 23 years later, in June 2013, another Arizona fire - this one in Yarnell - would overtake a group of firefighters, killing nineteen of the twenty crew members in a single horrific burnover event. The lone survivor, a 21-year old who had been assigned as spotter/lookout was forced to watch and listen as nineteen of his friends burned to death. They were the Granite Mountain Hotshots. A link to an amazing write-up done recently about the Dude Fire, with a special focus on the aftermath and terrible government bureaucracy the victims' families experienced. http://www.thebigroundtable.com/stories/burn/ Another great source for wildland firefighting stories is Sebastian Junger's book "Fire." I could probably scrounge up his write-up of another famous burnover event if anyone finds this topic interesting. It's an amazingly well-researched and dramatic description of events. bootsy has a new favorite as of 06:06 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 28, 2016 05:31
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fyodor posted:More long-haul trucker stories plz. Not a longhaul trucker story, but you may like this. My mother and I drove from California to visit my sister in Texas. My Dad insisted we leave at 5 AM to get an early start. He did this on every single vacation. We left at 5, as we were dutiful people, and started out. At the time the area between our neighborhood and Riverside-La Sierra was open ranchland, with rolling hills that slumped all the way down to the Santa Ana River. On the right the hills were steep, with a cemetery and nothing else. There were no streetlights yet, and this was before cellphones. As we drove up the hill, we saw a movement on the left. A woman in a long white nightgown burst from the bushes, crossed the road, and lay down right in our path. She had long dark hair, and huge dark eyes she had opened wide. She simply lay there, staring at our car. My mother was certain that there were thieves or worse off the road, waiting for someone to get out and check on the woman. There was not much of a shoulder, so we couldn't turn around. I thought we could back up a ways then turn, but she didn't want to try that, either. We were still trying to decide what to do when a pickup came the other way. As soon as the truck stopped for the woman, my mother gunned the engine and drove up the narrow shoulder. The last I saw of the woman was a form in the truck's headlights. We drove until we found a payphone, then called my Dad. He thought we were joking around because we didn't want to leave early. It was after that we realized she was across from the cemetery. We never left early for anything again.
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Apr 28, 2016 07:25
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Khazar-khum posted:Not a longhaul trucker story, but you may like this. and that ghosts name? Albert Einstein.
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Apr 28, 2016 09:12
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Khazar-khum posted:Not a longhaul trucker story, but you may like this. Maybe the ghost... was YOU!
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Apr 28, 2016 10:07
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nockturne posted:What I remember most though is the stars. Inky black land, straight cut as a ruler, and then just an explosion of stars. Kind of disorienting, felt like you were floating in space with no reference points nearer than the horizon. You haven't really seen stars until you have been in the desert. the thing I remember most from my trip to the desert is my all-night run from Tonopah to Las Vegas, in a car with an unknown and noisy problem, and with the Perseids peaking at around 4:00 AM. I had to concentrate to keep the car out of boost (it turned out to be an exhaust leak from the manifold, and if I pushed the accelerator too hard it would make a tremendous machine-gun noise), and with the road perfectly straight ahead of me and meteors streaking down in every direction, it was pretty goddamn spectacular
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Apr 28, 2016 10:50
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Khazar-khum posted:Not a longhaul trucker story, but you may like this. wow looks like someone should call... ghostbusters!! haha
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Apr 28, 2016 11:14
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Thanks to those who suggested "Wake in Fright," I was able to watch it last night as the whole thing is up on YouTube. While I wouldn't really call it a horror and the kangaroo hunt wasn't as shocking as reviews were making it out to be, the film itself was certainly strange and a good watch. Well worth checking out. It will now go hand in hand with deadly fauna when I think of Australia. 
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Apr 28, 2016 16:00
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bootsy posted:FIRE.
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Apr 28, 2016 16:02
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Stoca Zola posted:That's not what happened at all. Ah. Yeah, you're right. That'll teach me to phone post without checking my facts. Content! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap The Pine Gap facility in the North of Australia has been keeping track of US satellites since 1970. Now, with the Snowden leaks, it's alleged that the site also acts as a site for the NSA's PRISM operation. From a personal liberties of foreign nationals standpoint, that's a little unsettling. Also a trucker yarn: One of the ex army guys I work with says there is another facility up North that doesn't appear on any maps, and even regular army grunts (in this case driving ammo trucks- another "don't loving stop" job) get told "turn around now, sunshine" if they cross over into it.
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Apr 28, 2016 16:25
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ranbo das posted:I've heard a similar story being from the Northeast US. There are quite a few large stretches of road where it's just you and trees. According to the tales, either they would lay in the road our put a tree across it, then jump people when they got out of their cars. It's probably just stdh, but it doesn't help that people will just disappear into the woods never to be seen again, and of course when it's 10pm and you're in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and you find a tree blocking your path, it sure feels a lot more real. as someone from CNY who learned to drive on back roads in the boonies, my suggestion is never drive in the northeast in winter, because it loving sucks
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Apr 28, 2016 18:00
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Ever heard of Jane Doe 59?. I hadn't but apparently she was some women who was stabbed 150 times in the 60's. Anyway, she has finally been identified as 19 year girl from Canada, and there is the possibility that her death is linked to Charles Manson. Kind of blows my mind that a crime that took place so long ago and there are still people looking to identify the victims and solve the crime. You hear a lot about murders and such that go unsolved, but who knows, maybe they will be solved decades down the line.
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Apr 28, 2016 18:05
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Madkal posted:Ever heard of Jane Doe 59?. I hadn't but apparently she was some women who was stabbed 150 times in the 60's. Anyway, she has finally been identified as 19 year girl from Canada, and there is the possibility that her death is linked to Charles Manson. People forget there is no statute of limitations on murder.
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Apr 28, 2016 22:35
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whiteyfats posted:People forget there is no statute of limitations on murder. Unless, as we learned from this thread, you're in Korea!
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Apr 28, 2016 22:36
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AnonSpore posted:Unless, as we learned from this thread, you're in Korea!
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Apr 28, 2016 22:37
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The Worst Bear posted:Thanks to those who suggested "Wake in Fright," I was able to watch it last night as the whole thing is up on YouTube. While I wouldn't really call it a horror and the kangaroo hunt wasn't as shocking as reviews were making it out to be, the film itself was certainly strange and a good watch. Well worth checking out. It will now go hand in hand with deadly fauna when I think of Australia. If you liked Wake in Fright you'd probably also like Picnic at Hanging Rock, also up on youtube, which is another Australian New Wave film. Bunch of girls disappear at the spooky Hanging Rock in Victoria. I've been there, it is indeed spooky, but the story is fictional. Still a good spooky movie, captures the eerie atmosphere of that area very well, the huge weight of time that hangs over parts of the landscape here. 6.25 million years of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Rock,_Victoria
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Apr 28, 2016 23:51
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nockturne posted:If you liked Wake in Fright you'd probably also like Picnic at Hanging Rock, also up on youtube, which is another Australian New Wave film. Bunch of girls disappear at the spooky Hanging Rock in Victoria. I've been there, it is indeed spooky, but the story is fictional. Still a good spooky movie, captures the eerie atmosphere of that area very well, the huge weight of time that hangs over parts of the landscape here. 6.25 million years of it. This is one of my favourite movies ever, and I highly recommend it. The eerie sense of dread permeating the entire film is something I've rarely seen done so well. cptn_dr has a new favorite as of 01:26 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 01:20
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If we're doing weird Australian military sites you can't go past Maralinga. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga quote:British Nuclear tests at Maralinga occurred between 1956 and 1963 at the Maralinga site, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia and about 800 kilometres north-west of Adelaide. A total of seven nuclear tests were performed, with approximate yields ranging from 1 to 27 kilotonnes of TNT (4.2 to 113.0 TJ). Two major test series were conducted at the Maralinga site: Operation Buffalo and Operation Antler. The site was also used for hundreds of minor trials, many of which were intended to investigate the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. quote:Prior to selection, the Maralinga site was inhabited by the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal people, for whom it had a "great spiritual significance". Many were relocated to a new settlement at Yulata, and attempts were made to curtail access to the Maralinga site. These were often unsuccessful.[10] quote:In 2001, Dr Sue Rabbit Roff, a researcher from the University of Dundee, uncovered documentary evidence that troops had been ordered to run, walk and crawl across areas contaminated by the Buffalo tests in the days immediately following the detonations;[16] a fact that the British government later admitted.[17] Dr Roff stated that "it puts the lie to the British government's claim that they never used humans for guinea pig-type experiments in nuclear weapons trials in Australia."[18] quote:In the 1950s, Hedley Marston's research into nuclear fallout from the Maralinga nuclear tests brought Marston into bitter conflict with the Australian government appointed Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee. He was vindicated posthumously by the McClelland Royal Commission, which found that significant radiation hazards existed at many of the Maralinga test sites long after the tests. His project tracked fallout across the continent by examining the thyroids of sheep and cattle as well as devices that filtered radioactive elements from air. Later the results, which showed dramatic increases of certain radioactive elements after British Nuclear Tests, caused a further, controversial study where the bones of deceased people (especially children) were burnt to ash and then measured for strontium-90. These tests showed that the tests had increased the concentration of strontium-90 dramatically. As well as finding this after British tests a notable 50% increase was noticed one year when there were no tests and it was cited as evidence that the previous year's hydrogen bomb tests had contaminated the majority of the world.[33] quote:In the worst-contaminated areas, 350,000 cubic metres of soil and debris were removed from an area of more than 2 square kilometres, and buried in trenches. Eleven debris pits were also treated with in-situ vitrification. Most of the site (approximately 3,200 square kilometres) is now safe for unrestricted access and approximately 120 square kilometres is considered safe for access but not permanent occupancy.[26] Alan Parkinson has observed that "an Aboriginal living a semi-traditional lifestyle would receive an effective dose of 5 mSv/a (five times that allowed for a member of the public). Within the 120 km², the effective dose would be up to 13 times greater."[35] quote:Australian servicemen were ordered to: repeatedly fly through the mushroom clouds from atomic explosions, without protection; and to march into ground zero immediately after bomb detonation. Airborne drifts of radioactive material resulted in "radioactive rain" being dropped on Brisbane and Queensland country areas. A 1999 study for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association found that 30 per cent of involved veterans had died, mostly in their fifties, from cancers.[37] quote:One author suggests that the resettlement and denial of aboriginal access to their homelands "contributed significantly to the social disintegration which characterises the community to this day. Petrol sniffing, juvenile crime, alcoholism and chronic friction between residents and the South Australian police have become facts of life."[10] In 1994, the Australian Government reached a compensation settlement with Maralinga Tjarutja, which resulted in the payment of $13.5 million in settlement of all claims in relation to the nuclear testing.[26] quote:"What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land."
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Apr 29, 2016 01:24
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Madkal posted:Ever heard of Jane Doe 59?. I hadn't but apparently she was some women who was stabbed 150 times in the 60's. Anyway, she has finally been identified as 19 year girl from Canada, and there is the possibility that her death is linked to Charles Manson. In one of the previous threads, someone brought up a Jane Doe that was so badly beaten that when they put out the missing person photo/recreation, they had the hands covering the face showing off the rings she was wearing when they found her. It always creeped me out but I could never find anything about it.
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Apr 29, 2016 01:44
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Hey Droogie, just another thanks for writing about the West Mesa case. Eagerly awaiting the final chapter. Your photo/words about the Albuquerque skyline at night inspired me to write a short drone piece in an attempt to convey that sense of menacing stillness. Can only imagine how it must feel to stand on that site.
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Apr 29, 2016 02:34
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nockturne posted:If you liked Wake in Fright you'd probably also like Picnic at Hanging Rock, also up on youtube, which is another Australian New Wave film. Bunch of girls disappear at the spooky Hanging Rock in Victoria. I've been there, it is indeed spooky, but the story is fictional. Still a good spooky movie, captures the eerie atmosphere of that area very well, the huge weight of time that hangs over parts of the landscape here. 6.25 million years of it. Looks great, thank you. Can't wait to watch when I settle in tonight.
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Apr 29, 2016 03:00
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KIT HAGS posted:In one of the previous threads, someone brought up a Jane Doe that was so badly beaten that when they put out the missing person photo/recreation, they had the hands covering the face showing off the rings she was wearing when they found her. It always creeped me out but I could never find anything about it. Can't find the link but I think I remember hearing she was identified 
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Apr 29, 2016 04:04
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Sex Hobbit posted:Can't find the link but I think I remember hearing she was identified Very distinctive hands.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:07
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Solice Kirsk posted:Very distinctive hands. Combinations of rings can be distinctive too. Like tattoos and piercings, but more ephemeral.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:27
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Sex Hobbit posted:Can't find the link but I think I remember hearing she was identified You're probably thinking of a case from http://www.charleyproject.org  Don't recall which one though.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:34
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The Amen Break posted:Hey Droogie, just another thanks for writing about the West Mesa case. Eagerly awaiting the final chapter. I can't listen right now (I'm in a hotel room with family on my way to a funeral, and forgot headphones) but you're cool and this is cool. I like seeing people's creativity feeding off each other.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:38
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Erghh posted:You're probably thinking of a case from http://www.charleyproject.org It was on Doe Network but they've redone their site and I can't find the old page for Hand Lady.
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Apr 29, 2016 04:40
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The Amen Break posted:Hey Droogie, just another thanks for writing about the West Mesa case. Eagerly awaiting the final chapter. This is really superb, thank you. I'm getting a very conelrad-esque vibe from it (though he's less 'desert ambient' and more 'Cold War ambient'. He's also a goon!).
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Apr 29, 2016 05:48
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The Amen Break posted:Hey Droogie, just another thanks for writing about the West Mesa case. Eagerly awaiting the final chapter. Dude! this is amazing, and I'm listening to it instead of writing! You captured the essence of standing on that spot really drat well. I feel incredibly honored. In other news, I'm somewhere near the halfway point of this last one. I'm having to take frequent breaks because the last couple of players in this case are loving reprehensible monsters, and I've been digging into court records as well. The Amen Break, I was going to PM you to say thank you personally, but you have that feature turned off, so now everyone can see, but seriously, that's a huge compliment, and I really appreciate it. Droogie has a new favorite as of 07:29 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 06:15
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Thanks for the kind words/Conelrad recommendation. Can't wait for the update 
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Apr 29, 2016 06:55
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Hope you're ready for this. It's long and scary and there was a weird noise in the distance when I finished it, and now I'm all weirded out because it's 3am and I'm alone. The West Mesa Murders Part 1 Part 2: The Missing Part 3: “The crime scene, which police called one of the largest in American history,” Part 4: Getting Our Bearings Part 5: The hosed Up Mysteries of the Desert Part 6: Investigation, First Suspects: Missouri Loves Company Part 7: Real Life Monsters and an End  WARNING Disturbing content. Murder and extreme sexual violence ahead.The date is December 17 2006, and it is approximately 3 in the morning in a trailer home off of Blake SW. The trailer is home to Lorenzo Montoya, and some time in the last hour, Montoya has bound a woman in duct tape, raped her, and strangled her to death. Her name was Shericka Hill, and she was 19 years old. Lorenzo Montoya  Lorenzo Montoya was 39 years old in 2006, and police would refer to the murder of Shericka Hill as brutal, orchestrated, and very violent. This would not come as a surprise to Albuquerque Police, though. Lorenzo Montoya already had a known history with mixing prostitutes and violence, and in the middle of December, APD and BCSO were already piecing together a theory that Montoya was connected to the disappearances of several known prostitutes since 2001. Lorenzo Montoya was already a suspect in the deaths of 11 women before police knew they were dead and buried, at most a little over a mile from where they were processing a violent crime scene. Perhaps Police didn’t suspect the 11 found specifically, but they knew that they had Montoya on their radar for several missing women since 2001, and there was a drat good handful of reasons for this, as well. There are several pieces written about Lorenzo Montoya that go over one, maybe two events in varying degrees of detail, but Montoya was unmistakably an extremely violent individual. I looked back at court records, but I could only come away with three records that I could reasonably believe were the same Lorenzo Montoya- same middle initial and or same birth year. There are several Lorenzo Montoyas in the system, and I didn’t want to go wildly guessing at old half-complete court records. What I did find was an entry for aggravated battery on January 31 1986. The outcome was entered as nolle prosequi, a formal abandonment of charges by the plaintiff. I found an entry for domestic violence against a household member with a child involved from May 4, 1994. Montoya pleaded guilty to a deferred sentence and saw no jail time. One article mentions domestic violence, but didn’t add details about the date or circumstance. What it does add is that the victim, his then girlfriend, reported that Montoya repeatedly beat her, threatened to kill her and bury her in lime, and that Montoya had “Done gross things” to her, but no further details were publically available. In 1998, Montoya was arrested as a John in a prostitution sting. Montoya picked up a prostitute and was directed to a run down motel near Washington and Central, right at the imagined western boundary of the East Central Corridor. Montoya offered $40 to the prostitute. Unfortunately the prostitute was an undercover police officer. Undeterred, Montoya picked up a prostitute on November 3, 1999. Montoya did not know that APD’s vice squad was watching known prostitutes at the time. Montoya drove the woman to an area southwest of Albuquerque’s airport, a maze of dead-end roads and industrial buildings. I recently went out to the area before I started thinking about researching the murders. I was responding to a call of a pair of loose dogs off of Transport Road, the same road Montoya took the prostitute to, and it was almost one in the morning when I arrived. Streetlights are few and far between, and roads meander into abrupt endings, some just dissolve into sloping dirt hills. There were no other cars, and the only signs of life were the outer lights of monolithic buildings, maybe a stray car in their fenced off parking lots. It’s eerie. I didn’t see the dogs. I left as fast as I could. That night in 1999, Montoya parked his truck, forcefully made the woman perform oral sex, and threatened her with violence if she did not comply. She did not have a choice in the matter, regardless. Montoya then forcefully removed her underwear, forced himself upon the woman and began choking her. The woman would later state that it appeared that Montoya was enjoying himself during the process. Police found the vehicle at this time, and Montoya was arrested for sexual penetration, criminal sexual penetration, and kidnapping. Unfortunately for prosecutors, the woman would later become uncooperative, likely due to her lifestyle. At the time of Montoya’s arrest, it was clear that he had never intended to pay the woman if, in fact, he intended to let her live. In his possession was only $2 in cash. All charges were later dropped. Han shot first Back to the night, or rather the early morning of December 17 2006. There are a lot of conflicting and fuzzy details about this, and we’ll look at the major changes in story, but articles will refer to the victim, Shericka Hill as either a dancer or a prostitute, and they will either refer to the man that took her to Montoya’s, Fredrick Williams, age 18, as her boyfriend or pimp. In the interest of fairness, we will say dancer and boyfriend. Lorenzo Montoya met Shericka Hill online and arranged for a private performance at his trailer home in the south valley. Hill picked up her boyfriend on the way, and the two of them parked down the street from Montoya’s home. Hill continued by herself on foot while Williams waited. After approximately an hour, Williams approached Montoya’s home after growing concerned over the length of time he had spent waiting. This is the last detail that every report, even ones published by the same entity, have in common. What happened next is anyone’s guess, but they are all here for you to judge. Initially it was reported that Williams entered Montoya’s residence and found Hill, bound, gagged, and deceased. Williams then produced a firearm, fired a single round, and killed Lorenzo Montoya. Another report says that Upon approach, Williams found Montoya outside “brandishing a gun.” Williams shot Montoya as he felt threatened, then went inside to find Hill, deceased. It was later written that Williams approached the residence and found Montoya dragging the deceased and bound corpse of Hill to his truck. Williams believed he saw Montoya produce a weapon, and fearing for his life, Williams shot and killed Montoya. Montoya was holding a flashlight. A fourth version has Williams approaching the residence and seeing Montoya In the act of trying to load the corpse of Hill into his truck. Upon seeing Williams approach, Lorenzo Montoya produced a firearm, and Williams did so faster, shooting and killing Montoya in self defense, with police later investigating if Montoya fired a round first. So what the hell happened? Only investigators know for sure. And what investigators also know is that when they came to the scene, Lorenzo Montoya was dead of a gunshot wound, and the body of Shericka Hill was “Bound by the ankles, knees and wrists, with duct tape and cord,” according to one investigator. Police believed that the details of this crime indicate that it was not Montoya’s first kill. Did APD pull a George Lucas Greedo/Han edit on this case? It almost seems too likely that they did, as Montoya had been a thorn in APD’s side for years, always seeming to escape any true consequences for his actions. It’s not difficult to believe that Williams, who escaped prosecution, had been coached into telling a more easily defended story about the night’s events. The last victim to disappear that has been discovered went missing around September of 2004. The last in the series of women from this time to disappear was in May of 2006. Lorenzo Montoya, a main suspect in the west mesa murders, died on December 17, 2006. How soon was Montoya suspected of the murders? No later than February 12, 2009, after the third set of remains was found. How radically did the story of Lorenzo Montoya’s death shift since 2006? I’ll let The Albuquerque Journal, where most of the accounts above came from, explain it to you. On February 12, 2009, they published this as part of the west mesa coverage: ”Albuquerque Journal” posted:Walsh said it's too early to identify any suspects — mainly because no manner of death has been determined yet. He did say that detectives are looking at more than 20 cases that are already on APD's radar screen for leads.  A map showing the burial site and the general addresses of the two main suspects. Joseph Blea  On february 9, 2009, April Gillen picked up her telephone and contacted Albuquerque police. She said that she was the ex-wife of a man named Joseph Blea, and she thought that police needed to investigate Blea in connection with the at that point two, possibly three sets of remains unearthed from 118th Street. This man was once only known to some as the Mckinley Middle School Rapist. Joseph Blea was more well known to APD than even the likes of Lorenzo Montoya. Blea’s criminal history began at age 19 in the late 1970’s. Blea was arrested and charged with 3 counts of domestic burglary in which he had stolen women’s clothing. Blea was sentenced to 5 years probation and ordered to have a mental diagnostic checkup. Just months later Blea was arrested for indecent exposure and ordered to a behavioral health institute where doctors determined that Blea was an intelligent man, but that he was “disturbed” and required immediate psychological treatment. Blea likely never received treatment, and just a couple months later was picked up for a second indecent exposure charge. For probation violations, Blea spent two years in prison. Showing escalation, Blea was charged with third degree criminal sexual penetration in 1981, but was able to plead guilty to aggravated assault and spent another two and a half years in prison. The past of a living monster  Jennifer Lynn Shirm, 22, was found on the morning of May 29, 1985. She had been brutally beaten to death and left by the side of the road underneath a bush. Shirm was found off of the street Monte Largo on the far east end of the east Central corridor. The case was investigated, police had several suspects, and an arrest was made. In 2006 the charges were dropped from the man arrested because DNA evidence did not link the man to Shirm’s body. The DNA collected from Shirm was a match to Joseph Blea. Shirm was once convicted of prostitution and no formal charges have been made against Blea in her death to my knowledge. Beginning shortly after the murder of Jennifer Lynn Shirm, Joseph Blea stalked women and girls. A string of violent rapes shocked citizens, the worst part being that a man was stalking middle school-aged girls around McKinley Middle School in the northeast heights of Albuquerque. On one occasion, Blea broke into the home of an 8th grade girl clad in a balaclava and armed with a knife. He knew the home was empty, and he knew the girl would be returning home from school. Hiding behind a bookcase he took the girl by surprise, held her at knifepoint, and raped her in her own living room. He then threw the traumatized girl into her own bathroom, securing the door closed with a telephone line to prevent her from escaping. She would be found by her mother upon return from work. This was not the only girl he would rape, the youngest among them was only 13 years old. A college student would later attest that she was also raped by Blea, also at knifepoint. Details are mercifully in short supply about one instance in which he raped a 14 year old and also allegedly used a screwdriver to penetrate the girl as well. It is likely one of the charges I found that follows. According to the metropolitan court records, Blea was charged with battery on January 29 1997, to which he pleaded guilty for a deferred sentence. On August 31 2008, Blea was charged with Aggravated assault and Inflicting great bodily harm on a household member with a deadly weapon. The case was converted to nolle prosequi. On February 13, 2009 Blea was charged with first degree kidnapping, aggravated battery on a household member with a deadly weapon with intent to cause great bodily harm, and possession of paraphernalia. These charges were dismissed. On August 24 2010, Blea was charged with criminal sexual penetration with intent to cause great bodily harm/great mental anguish and kidnapping with intent to cause great bodily harm. These, as I understand it, were dismissed to be rolled into the next case. In fact between 1990 and 2009, APD would come across Blea in person or in name well in excess of 100 times. On one such occasion Blea had exposed himself to a prostitute and been picked up by police, a roll of electrical tape and a length of rope on the passenger seat of his vehicle. April Gillen had a great number of disturbing details to divulge to investigators of the newly discovered human remains. Gillen stated that Blea, who had for a time been working as a landscaper, would frequently take late night trips out to the west mesa to illegally dump landscaping materials and trash rather than pay the roughly 3 or 4 dollars to take it to a dump. I had said that landscaping trash would become important. It becomes more so in a little bit. In the weeks following the opening of the 118th Street investigation, a repeat offender unit of the police started covertly observing Blea’s movements. On more than one occasion Blea would cruise the east Central corridor, slowly circling blocks, carefully observing prostitutes, stalking them. When the 118th Street Taskforce started conducting interviews, a prostitute that knew who Blea was had relayed that Blea had wanted to tie her up during a sexual encounter, but she put a stop to that immediately. Around October of 2009, Police raided Blea’s home and confiscated jewelry that did not belong to his current wife or daughter, along with women’s underwear. His wife at the time of the raid, Cheryl Blea, relayed that she had found stashed mysterious jewelry, and that she and her daughter had found women’s underwear in various places including the shed. His wife did say that Blea wanted to wear women’s underwear during sex. Investigators have not commented on DNA testing done on both the jewelry and garments. The father of the 8th missing Victim, Virginia Cloven had stated in an interview that several families noticed that jewelry was missing, but I have not found elaboration on that. I take it that several of the women wore distinctive pieces of jewelry that were not found with the remains, but that’s my interpretation. Blea’s Pleas On June 8 2015 Joseph Blea was convicted of two rapes he committed; one in 1988 and the other in 1990. Reports of the trial noted it as unusual, and that both prosecution and defense had agreed upon ahead of time the details of the conviction, and that both sides knew that a conviction was likely. No witnesses were called and a jury reached a verdict within 15 minutes of being sequestered. The judge handed down 18 years for each charge, to be served consecutively. Blea would be behind bars for 36 years. On July 30 2015, Blea suddenly came forward and pleaded no contest to six additional counts- 5 counts of first degree rape and one count of kidnapping. While each count could have carried 18 years each, the sentence was capped at 54 years, also consecutive to his two previous convictions. Blea, then 58, would now be behind bars for 90 years. Blea will likely die in jail. Blea’s connections So what of the dead women of the west mesa? During the sifting of ton after ton of dirt, a small piece of plastic was found with the remains of a woman, discarded at the same time. The plastic was the SKU/identification tag for a tree. The tag was tracked to a wholesaler of landscaping plants in California, traced back to a local shop that Blea frequented, and Blea’s own seized business records indicate that he regularly made purchases from the nursery that the plant came from. While in custody, Blea has shown a particular interest in the west mesa case. Speaking to a former cellmate, Blea has stated that he knew several of the victims. Blea has called the victims trashy, and Blea stated that he had paid several of the deceased women for sex acts, and had even struck one of them. When Blea has been questioned, he and his lawyer have repeatedly denied any involvement with the murder of the 11 known women. Blea adamantly maintains his innocence in connection the west mesa murders to this day. New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009, six years before Blea would receive effectively a life sentence. Why would a boastful man, a person that has taken such pride in his depravity worry then, about admitting involvement in the west mesa case? The answer is that part of Blea’s compliance with sentencing in his cases is due to the ability to appeal, a condition his lawyers fought for as part of the arrangement. At the edge of the city, the end of the road So where do we stand now? Months after the investigation started, the suspect list was reported by APD to by 5 people long. At the end of 2015 and going into the 7th anniversary of the discovery of the mass grave, the suspect list is now reported to be at least 20 people long. The 118th Street Taskforce, once a small army of investigators, is now a single person, Detective Mark Manary. Detective Manary works full-time on the case, which grows colder by each passing day. APD reports that in 2015, over 40 calls came in to the tipline about the case, and each call gets investigated. We went over 5 suspects, one of which was cleared. Who are the other 15 or so right now? The answer is we don’t know. Those details have not been released to the public because the case of the west mesa murders is still an active investigation to this very day, to this minute I type this, to the minute you read this sentence. The way it stands at this very moment, the person or persons responsible for the deaths of 11 women, one of whom was pregnant, could either be dead, imprisoned; or the person that some have come to know as The West Mesa Bone Collector could have another stash of women in shallow graves on the vast expanse of the west mesa. The West Mesa Bone Collector could be standing outside at night, looking over this very city, the moon rising above the Sandia Mountains to illuminate the lonely desert below. Droogie has a new favorite as of 15:20 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 09:53
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Thus concludes, for now, the case of the West Mesa Murders. Apologies in advance of the double-post, but I wanted to quickly follow up in a separate section a couple of bizarre and possibly true facts that didn’t fit into the narrative and also I promised some references. The phone calls There are a couple similar events that take place in the story that are bizarre and unsettling, and were mentioned once or twice in news reports, but never with enough facts to back up their appearance. I could never find anything to substantiate how true they are, and at the end of it, they could just be hosed up pranks. If they’re not, it’s even worse than that. In 2010, a private investigator named George Walker got involved in the case and took out ads also asking for information related to the case and/or victims. During the same year he received at least three phone calls from someone either claiming to have information about the case or claiming to be the person that perpetrated the killings. There are also reports that there were similar emails sent to Walker. Nothing ever came of the communications, and they stopped as abruptly as they started. Before the bodies were discovered and during the time it was just seperate missing persons cases, at least two families reportedly received abrupt telephone calls. One family was simply told that the woman was dead and buried, the other family receiving a call that told them that their daughter had been stabbed to death. There were no other similar communications that I’m aware of. References, etc. For those interested in seeing the big picture, here is a partial list of references, several of them branch off into further reading. The narrative I’ve been reading is presented as factually as I can, and it’s been pieced together from timelines, articles, and knowledge of a local to the city. Every effort has been taken to use reputable sources, or at least sources that are well-sourced themselves (for instance the Vice article is full of great details, but several details of the city’s geography is way wrong. Vice, am I right?  ) I really tried to stay away from details gathered from places like websleuths et al. unless it was something corroborated elsewhere, but I just made an effort to stay away from that altogether. http://www.abqjournal.com/community-data/west-mesa-murders http://krqe.com/2014/01/31/does-apd-have-a-suspect-in-the-west-mesa-murders/ http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/loc...72afe36127.html http://www.vice.com/read/who-is-the-west-mesa-bone-collector-0000439-v21n9 https://www.cabq.gov/police/contact-the-police/west-mesa-homicide-investigation http://www.abqjournal.com/715705/news/west-mesa-murders-seven-years-later.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Mesa_murders http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24prostitute.html http://www.abqjournal.com/news/metro/522336metro12-19-06.htm http://www.abqjournal.com/596139/news/headline-348.html http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3866295.shtml#.VyL5XNUrLnD https://caselookup.nmcourts.gov/caselookup/app http://www.nmsoh.org/shirm_jennifer_lynn_us.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_New_Mexico Who am I to go through all this effort? At the risk of exposing myself to goons, I’m a 30 year old Albuquerque native and Native American. I consider myself an artist, and I work with animals as I’ve laid out in a few posts. Like many of you I share a morbid fascination in mysteries and true crime. Both me and my wife suffer from the “I know who this show is referring to before they reveal who the killer is” syndrome that someone mentioned a few pages back. I am willing to answer any questions about the case that may arise either here or in PM to the best of my ability. This thread has been one of my favorites on the forums, and I just wanted to honor all of the posters that have kept me captivated over hundreds of pages with something I could contribute that I hadn’t seen here, and I’ve been working the graveyard (ha) shift for the last six months, so I’ve had lots of time to think about this particular narrative and how to present it, along with unique opportunities to add some original content in the form of photographs. If any locals or anyone passing through the Duke City ever wants to grab a beer and talk weird weird desert stuff, PM me and we’ll see. Thank you all for coming on this hosed up, unsolved journey with me. If any updates become available to any aspect of this case, I will post about it in the future here or in whatever the next incarnation of the thread may be. And on a final note, please read Dead Mountain before any of you decide to post about the Dyatlov Pass incident again. It’s got fantastic theories grounded in reality.
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Apr 29, 2016 10:27
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