Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Zodiac is Back! (not)

Amateurs really should not attempt to be clever because it is usually their downfall. Such is the case of the murdered seven month pregnant marine, Army Spc. Megan Lynn Touma. This poor woman, excited about her wonderful future life - engaged, pregnant,and a fine career as a dentist technician in the military - transfers to the base of her fiance and ends up day the next day.

She had not reported for duty but it took a couple of more days for the motel personnel to find her corpse in a bathtub in the motel room, a "Do Not Disturb" sign (I'll bet) hanging on the door.

Now, the story takes a turn toward the bizarre. The police receive a letter from someone claiming to be the woman's killer. He confesses to the crime and then goes on to say he is taking on the persona of Zodiac, the infamous serial killer of the 1960s who was never identified.

Yes, he is the next Zodiac, is using his trademark, and left that very same symbol in the room of the murdered marine.

All right, bub. The police are not impressed and neither am I. No serial killer did in Ms. Touma. First of all, serial killers don't go for big, obviously pregnant females. Secondly, where were you, Mr. Fiance, while all this was going down? Let me back up.

Ms. Touma arrives in Fort Bragg and doesn't let you know she is coming. She stays in a motel room near the base and you don't go and see her. She disappears and you don't notice. I find this a bit odd, don't you?

So, while you are oblivious to your fiance's arrival in town, Mr. Serial killer is writing a rather peculiar letter to the police. He can't spell and has atrocious grammar - as all uneducated serial killer losers do - yet, there are in this letter, two odd phrases which seem to be rather unusual for this dolt. The letter writer says, "The following is to inform...," language common to legal, police, or military statements to the public. Secondly, the letter writer gives the date as 17 June as opposed to June 17, indicative of someone who has spent time abroad, is from another country, or in the military.

My guess is Ms. Touma's fiance did go to the motel the night she arrived and he took care of a problem he found a bit annoying; a woman and a life long commitment to a child (or at least achild support payment).

Then, realizing that he was probably going to be the one and only suspect, he returned a day later to the motel room (ignored that Do NOT DISTURB sign) and scrawled the Zodiac signature in the room and then sent the letter to the police.

Law enforcement is now searching another marine's house. Is it the fiance's house? We still are not getting an answer on this.

But, I guess they think Zodiac hasn't come back.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: So My Wife Died Today, What's your Point?

One of the most amusing and condemning traits of the psychopath is having such shallow emotions that he has no clue what normal people act like under tragic circumstances(read: my wife just died).

Take the case of Gabe Watson, whose wife drowned while they were scuba diving on their honeymoon in Australia. He made the comment, "This sucks," while he was playing cards with his friends later that same day. It is unclear whether he was talking about his wife dying or the poker hand he had just been dealt.

Apparently, he didn't do so well either with the story as to how his wife had this bad scuba accident. An experienced rescue diver, he is last seen giving his wife a bear hug 15 meters under the water after which she is seen sinking straight towards the bottom of the ocean while he swims off in another direction.

"Ah, she weighed too much so I couldn't hold on to her," (in the weightlessness of water?), "My eardrum ruptured," (suffer the pain or let the wife die....easy choice...of course, his eardrum repaired itself within seconds of surfacing), and "My wife knocked my mask off and I had to get away from her because she might get me drowned."


If these three stories weren't enough, Watdon had thirteen MORE versions! For a likely premeditated crime, Watson sure didn't settle on one good explanation. Or, maybe he did, but when he gave the first one, everyone looked at him funny and he realized he hadn't picked the best scenario. So he tried again, and again, and again. Psychopaths don't seem to recognize that people actually remember what you said five minutes ago and changing your story doesn't erase the lie you just told.

At any rate, his sixteen stories and card playing grieving wasn't enough evidence to get the Queensland coroner to label the manner of death a homicide. It took five long years for the light bulb to finally come on and Gabe Watson is just now being charged with his wife Tina's murder. From the comfort of his armchair in good ol' Alabama, with his newer and still alive wife by his side, he got the long belated news.

I wonder what stories he is going to tell Wife Number Two. I am sure he will at least say, "This sucks," only he might simply be talking about his beer which had gotten warm while he was distracted by arrival of the coroner's decision.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Judge Colleen McCullough Gives Swindler His Freedom

Hey, Judge McCullough,

Let me see if I can understand your logic: Samuel Israel III, who scammed god knows how many people out of millions and millions of dollars is found guilty, receives twenty years in prison (which at his age of 48 pretty much means life)- this is someone you didn't consider a flight risk so you gave him a "stay out of jail" card for sixty days so he could wrap up business (read: plan his escape from the country, get forged documents ready, be sure the money he has in offshore accounts and hidden locations is available to him)?

Let me restate this: You believed, Judge, that a man who stole 400 million dollars over years and years, lying and lying to investors, was an honest man who, when he said he was willing to pay for his "mistakes," you actually thought was remorseful and would willingly show up to be incarcerated?

Now, the man has gone missing, after staging a suicide by leaving his car on a NY bridge with the words "Suicide is Painless" scrawled in the dust on the hood. His body, of couse, never turned up in the river. My guess is we will hear he is having a whale of a time in some foreign country living it up with his new well-paid hosts.

I am not sure why this man who screwed so many people over should be show kindness by the court. If the man were a petty thief, he would have gone directly to jail without passing go. Why does this white collar thief get the royal treatment?

Please explain to me, Judge, why he is missing from the criminal justice system and you are still in it.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Wanna be my Next Husband?

What do Scott Peterson,Mark Hacking, and Neil Entwistle have in common? They got caught on Wife Murder Number One. On the other hand, 76-year-old Betty Neumar had five dead husbands before the law caught up with her. Now, I am not saying she did in all five men as I have no proof yet that she even killed one. But, I am just a little more than curious how three of those husbands ended up shot to death and the other two died under suspicious circumstances!

Black Widows, as these serial killer women are called, get away with the murder of their spouses at a higher rate than men. One reason no doubt is that they don't mess with the bodies or run off and pretend they suddenly have psychiatric problems. No, they stand right in front of the police and shed tears and an awful lot of law enforcement agencies apparently fall for this act.

One of the reasons these women succeed in repeat homicides is they move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Because there is no national suspect bank into which their names could go causing a red flag pop up if they are linked with another suspicious death, they slither under the radar. Each case is handled as a one-time event and the police in each jurisdiction are unaware of the widow's bad luck with husbands.

Betty will finally get her day in court but, at her age, all I can say is she sure had a good run of it.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

There is a whole lot of sympathy going around for Tatum O'Neal which I suppose shows that Americans can be very forgiving people and this is nice. What is not so nice is Ms. O'Neal playing us for suckers with her acting the role of the poor little very rich girl who fell apart after her dog died and is so thankful the police stopped her from falling off her very unstable wagon. From what I can see, the woman is a classic narcissist and drug abuser who story changes (read: lies) each time she is caught telling a less-than-true version of events.

One of the reason folks feel so sorry for her is they are familiar with her history from O'Neal's book, A Paper Life, in which she laments of her horrifying childhood of abuse from her drug-using parents and her terrible marriage to the vicious John McEnroe. They feel sorry for her because they believe her. I feel sorry for everyone who has had to come in contact with this woman because they are all to blame, pretty much each and every one of them, for her miserable life and decent into drugs.

The way to tell if someone is a liar is to see if they have lied. Simple, but effective. If they lie over here, they will lie over there. Tatum O'Neil lied to the police that she was researching an acting part by buying drugs (the stupidest lie I have ever heard) and when they found the drugs and crack pipe in her pocket, she claimed she had been clean up until that very moment, and since they just saved her and she was really thankful, could she just go home? Well, if she lied more than once here, my guess is her book is full of whoppers as well.

In the end, O'Neil is does not blame herself for anything and if she says she does at a press conference or when there is a microphone in her face, no doubt her manager or publicist has told her to "confess." She is lucky she is actually an actress or we might think she is just reading a script.

Tatum, let me give you some advice. Stop blaming everyone else for your mistakes. You are a drug addict because you choose to do drugs. It is that simple.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown