YES, THE TRUTH ABOUT PROFILER PAT BROWN!
(photo by Shahar Azran)
::laughs::I bet all my detractors will rush over to read this before anyone else. I am not posting here to try to win them over, however; I doubt my words will change many of my hater's viewpoints of me and, in fact, I will probably see some of what I
say here distorted yet again on certain websites. However, I want truth-seeking people to have a place to get the actual facts so, I am going to clarify and correct the seven most oft-touted, incorrect, sometimes libelous claims about me that have traveled around the Internet.
Anyone who is over the age of seventy in the United States probably remembers the days when local screwballs showed up at every town meeting, sent letters in to the town newspaper, and sp0uted off at the local coffee shop. The letters got vetted and rarely printed, saner citizens at the town meetings corrected their misinformation, and if they got obnoxious at Milly's Diner, they were asked to leave. Their mental disorders were obvious and their rantings dismissed as evidence of a disordered mind. They usually weren't enough like-minded loonies in one town to with the ability to get together and form a group.
But, welcome to the year 2011 on the Internet! With a simple Google, Twitter, or Facebook search, the personality-disordered and extremist individuals have found a way to band together and spread propaganda, lies, and half-truths around Cyberspace; they have world-wide platform for their ravings and, worse yet, if a target of one of these groups becomes the target of another group, they come together to gleefully cheer on the other attackers. Let me be honest, though; not all folks who write negative things about me have psychiatric problems or are fabricators; they have heartfelt opinions about me and some are accurate about the facts. I will support their right to criticize me to their heart's content as this is what Freedom of Speech is all about.
Unfortunately, it is often hard to tell the difference between legitimate discussion - fair, if strongly felt criticism, of a person or their beliefs - and propaganda attacks. Who is standing up for truth and justice and who is just out to trash others to make themselves feel good, give themselves a sense of power, and to support their misguided agendas? How can you tell the difference? One, pay attention to the logic of the argument. Are they ignoring what the person is really saying and taking everything out of context? Two, are they making purely ad hominem attacks, veering off the topic to address various other negative suppositions about the person? Three, do they use angry and insulting language to describe the person they are denigrating when this person has not committed any kind of criminal or immoral act? Four, do your own research and go to the person's own websites, videos, Facebook, and Google, and learn what you can about that person from their own words.
When I became a criminal profiler fifteen years, I had no experience in being the victim of hate campaigns, propaganda, and stalkers. Before I embarked on my new career, I had been an full-time at-home mother, I homeschooled my children, and, when they got older, I worked part-time interpreting for the Deaf at area hospitals. My world was fairly small and I did not even have email. Then, when I rented a room to a new boyfriend of a female church friend, my life turned upside-down. Four weeks after moving into my home (and I had a background check done on him; he came back clean plus he didn't do drugs or drink), my girlfriend got creeped out by his behaviors and broke up with him. That evening, he left her home and walked down the bike path from her house to mine. The following day, a woman's body was found, naked and brutalized, in the stream next to the path.
My renter acted strangely the next morning and made the odd comment that he had indeed walked down the path but right before the location where the murdered jogger was found, he decided to wade across the stream, going out of his way, making a big U of a detour instead of continuing on, as he usually did, straight down the path to my house. He then made a disturbing comment to my friend on the phone in response to her question about possibly hurting himself over their break-up. He said, "You don't know what I have already done." The next day while he was at work, I found he had thrown away all the clothes he had worn the previous evening; his brand new jeans, his brand new tennis shoes, and his new shirt which had a number of rips in it, all wet from having been in water. He also had thrown away a perfectly nice martial arts style of knife and a clump of mud wrapped in plastic.
I turned this evidence over to the police and turned him out of my house. The detective on the case never interviewed this man in spite of his admission he was on the path at the time of the crime, in spite of the fact there was a precipitating incident occurring right before the crime, and in spite of the fact he had thrown perfectly good clothes away.
I was shocked by the lack of follow-through by this police agency. And the lack of publicity that this horrific sexual homicide of a beautiful 22-year old NASA intern received in the media. This was the start of my interest in criminal profiling, police investigations, and justice. We often hear we should not just whine about what is wrong with society, but do something about it, and I decided that this distressing failure of the criminal justice system was an area I might address as my children grew older and I had more spare time.
One thing I told myself going into this line of work was that I would always be open and honest and seek truth and justice regardless of whether it made me popular or not, upset those who didn't want to hear the truth or those that didn't want the reality of certain failures of the system exposed. It is this very pact I made with my conscience that has garnered me enemies and haters. I clearly have not played by the rules. Because of my outspoken manner, individuals and groups have risen up to discredit me - not just my viewpoint on a subject - but to attack me personally and take me down, so my opinions might be silenced or ignored. Here is where the Internet becomes open season for propaganda and disinformation, lies and half-truths that are spread without concern of any penalty, often spread by people whose names are never known. These untruths may be repeated over and remain on the Internet for decades.
It serves me little purpose to spar with each and every individual or group of like-minded people every time they post an untruth or blog a vicious attack on me. Anyone who is in the public eye is used to seeing all kinds of stuff about them spouted in various forums and one cannot engage in an ongoing battle with one's abusers. But, for the purposes of setting the record straight on some of the biggest claims made and spread about me, I will do so here this one time, so that people who want to know what is true and what is not true have a place to find out the facts. I will not name names or put links to the websites of the people who said certain things about me: they may have simply made an honest mistake or they may have said something in anger they cannot take back now that it is on the Internet or they may be aggressive individuals that don't need to get more publicity for their agenda.
Claim #1 Pat Brown is just a housewife who got her college degree from a paper mill. She is no more than a wannabe armchair detective who has never been in law enforcement and just read some books and hung out a shingle.
This a bunch of half-truths. When I decided to become a criminal profiler, I was too old to join the police or FBI; they have age discrimination. I wanted to study criminal profiling but there were no college programs. I DID rather hang out my own shingle but I was always very clear on my background. I studied hundreds of books on every connected subject which is far more than I ever read for my MA in Criminal Justice from Boston University (hardly a paper mill). I also worked in the emergency room, psych wards, holding cells, and rape examination rooms for ten years which greatly helped my understanding of forensic pathology, trauma wounds, psychology, psychopathy, rape, victimization, and criminal behavior. I also went to many seminars attended by law enforcement in the areas of crime investigation, forensics, and criminal behavior. And, finally, I did take an online course in profiling that was available at the time. I have worked fifteen years in the field and haven't been a housewife or armchair detective for a decade and a half. I have developed the first Certificate in Criminal Profiling in the United States for Excelsior College.
Claim #2 Pat Brown has never worked with law enforcement or solved a case.
I have worked with numerous law enforcement agencies over the years. I have "solved" cases in the sense that I strongly believe my profile of the case was accurate. Actually, criminal profilers don't really "solve" cases. As a deductive profiler I analyze cases, make determinations as to what most likely happened, why, and by whom, all of which I detail with the evidence that supports those determinations. It is the detectives' job to "solve" the case and the prosecutors job to take it to court. One of the most distressing things I was to learn in my many years of working cold cases is that cold cases without DNA almost never make it to court. Sadly, by the time a profiler comes in and finds a lead that went unnoticed or profiles the case in an entirely different (and possibly the correct) direction, it is almost always too late to get the evidence to pursue the case to any conclusion. Because of this problem, an outside profiler's work is usually then quietly filed away and the police agency will not discuss the fact that the profiler might have been right and that the investigation was wrongheaded for years. In my experience, a portion of cases that become cold do so because the investigative focus was incorrect early on. For this reason, I rarely work cold cases anymore. Instead, I am working to encourage the establishment of criminal profilers in police departments that will be part of the team when the case is fresh. I also am working to see that detectives get better training in profiling so that they can improve the analyses of their own cases. Detectives are often undertrained due to budget issues and overworked due to those same budget issues. Some are simply new on the job and lack skill and experience. Many detectives do a very good job on cases and these get solved. I want to see see the closure rate improve and that is the main goal of my career.
Claim #3 Other profilers - in the FBI and independent - don't respect Pat Brown.
This is a half-truth. Some profilers like me a lot. Some can't stand me. There is a lot of professional jealousy and egos in the field, partially because there are not enough profilers in the field, so the few that exist fight to be the most known. I would like to see the day when there are hundreds of profilers across the country so that we can all just do our jobs without grandstanding. As to the FBI profilers who might not speak kindly of me, their issues with me are two-fold: one, the FBI used to be the only source of profilers and the advent of independent criminal profilers is competition, and two, the FBI employs inductive profiling while I use deductive profiling and there is a rift in the field over which methodology is better.
Claim #4 Pat Brown stalks people.
This one started with my investigation of my renter, the person-of-interest in the sexual homicide and my second case as a profiler. Another profiler (whose well-written books I promote) was not happy with my rising visibility in criminal profiling field. He wrote on his website that I had stalked two men I suspected of sexual homicides. He claimed that there was no evidence in either crime indicating that my persons-of-interest had any involvement. This was blatantly untrue.
My renter (pse
udonym Walt Williams in my book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths), is and has been for the past fourteen years, the one and only suspect in the sexual homicide of the jogger. It took me six years to get the case reopened after the first detective had closed the case administratively, blaming the murder on an 18-year-old boy who committed suicide in the area a few days after the crime. There was no evidence linking that young man to the homicide. In 1996, the new detective on the case, reviewed the physical evidence I had found and the behavioral evidence I had uncovered and Walt Williams finally became a person-of-interest. He was brought in and polygraphed and had his DNA tested. He fail the poly but because so much time had passed and there was no DNA from the perpetrator from the scene of sufficient quantity to test, there was not a good enough case for arrest and prosecution. However, the detective agreed with me that the evidence pointed heavily in the direction of Walt Williams and that he believed he Williams was likely the perpetrator.The case remains open to this day.
The second case in which the other profiler claims I pursued an innocent man for no justifiable reason, was brought to me by the son of the murdered woman who was frustrated with the detectives on the case who kept saying her fiance killed her. After profiling the case, I came up with a match to my profile; Bobby Joe Leonard, a man who had been doing temporary work on the woman's property three weeks prior to the crime and had been allowed into the woman's bedroom to remove an old computer she was giving to him. The woman was found strangled and her body hidden in her bedroom closet. This man, Bobby Joe Leonard, the man the other profiler says I targeted unfairly, is serving a life sentence for the abduction, rape and attempted murder of a 13-year-old girl he strangled and hid in a closet. Prosecutors on that case agree with me that Bobby Joe Leonard likely murdered my client's mother, but the police department on the case still refuses to acknowledge Leonard's probable involvement and the case remains open to this day.
The third stalking claim is that I went after a true crime author to find out if his dead wife had been truly raped. This is a half-truth. I was part of the author's blog, one of the regulars who posted every month. One Thanksgiving, this man posted a faux slasher video as a humorous item for the readers' "holiday enjoyment." The video showed a teenage cheerleader jumping on a trampoline who then did the splits and came down on a sword pushed through the trampoline up through her vagina. The second video showed a dead women trussed up like a turkey and served for dinner. Sweet, eh? Well, a few of us female authors on the blog were upset with this misogynistic offering, especially because many readers of that blog were victims of crime or families of crime victims. The blog owner's response was that we were a bunch of old ninnies and there was nothing wrong with gore and slasher films and even victims of crime thought they were cool. He said certain well-known victim's organizations liked him a lot and had no issues with his support in the making and promotion of violent gore and slasher films.
So, I contacted these organizations who all soundly denied approving of this man's placement of the Thanksgiving faux slasher video on the site and I received statements from these organizations that they in no way approve of misogynistic slasher/gore films.
While in the midst of proving that victims of brutal crime do not think gore/slasher films are cool, I read that this true crime/blog owner's deceased wife supposedly was the victim of a brutal gang rape. I found that extremely bizarre; how could the husband of a woman who had suffered the horror and indignity of the worst kind of rape promote films which depict the rape and mutilation of women? So I sent an email to find out if this story about the deceased wife was true. It turned out it was. I am not sure if it would be better to believe someone had made up the story to have common ground with the victims of crime he interviews for the books he writes or to think he lacked empathy for women who have suffered the same sexual violence as his departed wife. I think I would have preferred the former as I have long been a strong voice against gore and slasher films; I think they encourage violent ideation in psychopathic individuals and are a sick form of amusement no society should be proud of or wish to see proliferate. Having said all of this, I will say that this particular author writes perfectly readable true crime books. My issue with him was over continued victimization of victims of violent crime and promotion of psychopathic criminal fantasy.
The fourth victim I supposedly stalked was the webmaster for the true crime author above. For the next four years, she posted derogatory things about me on many blogs and forums, on her MySpace page, on Twitter, on Facebook; she wrote whole pieces attacking me and even established a blog dedicated to proving me a fraud. She harassed me repeatedly on my own blogs and Facebook pages. I was able to preserves pages and pages of evidence in case there was every a point in taking action. Meanwhile, I never sent her an email or responded back except for one time on my own blog telling her to cease and desist. Yet, to this day she claims that I was the stalker, her stalker. Not only has she stalked me, but there is a long list of people she has harassed over the years causing them incredible stress and grief, especially to those not quite as high profile in the media as me, who are not used to ongoing attacks and abuse. Too bad she has taken this route because she actually is a very intelligent person and writes quite decently.
Claim #4 Pat Brown abuses victims.
This accusation was actually started by the stalker above. She claimed the wife of the true crime author was a victim of my stalking (which is an odd label to be given for asking one question) and then she became the next victim stalked (purportedly because she wrote an unpleasant post about me. She claims I know that she has been the victim of domestic abuse and other horrific abuses meted out by others that have caused her emotional suffering and I wanted to do her in because she spoke up against me). Working to promote me as an "abuser of victims," she (and others have jumped on board) claim that my work to educate women on the dangers of certain behaviors, behaviors that put one in harm's way, is somehow victimizing victims. When I warn women that drinking too much can make one unable to fend off a date rapist, they claim I am blaming the woman, not the rapist for the crime. When I warn women not to go running in isolated places, they claim I am blaming the jogger, not the serial killer for the crime. When I warn young women not to meet with their ex-boyfriend alone so he can "get closure," they claim I am blaming the young women for their psycho boyfriend killing them. What I have said and will say again is that our criminal justice system is too soft on predators, that they ought to be locked up and not let back out or at least get long sentences, but, since they are soft and the predators are out there, we must warn women and teach them how to stay out of their clutches.
Claim #5 Pat Brown excuses criminality and is a big leftist.
There is a new link to a blog making it way around the Internet which claims Pat Brown is soft on criminals and is some kind of pawn of the liberal media.
This claim always make me laugh. I have no issues with people being liberal or conservative, or even far to the right or left. I may have a rousing discussion with them but I can still like a person with diametrically opposing views. I, myself, am a conservative, a constitutionalist, pro-Second Amendment, pro-carry, and pro-death penalty. The concept that I am a big liberal/anti-gun/soft on crime started in two places. Both came from the far right over the issues of gun control and terrorism. Some pro-gun folk on a particular site got all bent out of shape over a television commentary I did on men who kill their girlfriends. I pointed out that if you are a woman and you note these three things in your fellow, you might want to run the other way: a very controlling personality, an obsession with violence, and a massive gun collection. These pro-gun folks only paid attention to the last part and saw red; Pat Brown is saying all men with a gun collection are violent psychopaths who kill their wives and girlfriends.
Of course, this is not true. I know many men with gun collections, but they don't have continual violent ideation nor are they control freaks who push their women around. What is funnier is that I own two weapons and my children own weapons, more than one weapon each. I am pro-carry. But, for years, it has been claimed I am a big liberal who wants to take everyone's guns away!
The other far right group that decided I was a big leftist went nuts after I labeled the Ft. Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, a mass murderer rather than a terrorist. One site claims that I refused to even clarify my position, that I have some nerve to not call him a terrorist, even though I detailed three times over in the video they posted of me on FOX news my exact definitions of a mass murderer and a terrorist and why I think Hasan is the former and not the latter. I will explain it here again so somewhere on the Internet it is clear what I really believe and why.
A terrorist is someone who works with a terrorist organization over a period of time, is bred to be a terrorist and instructed on what to do by the organization. Then, the terrorist carries out the terrorist attack on behalf of the terrorist organization and its ideology. Finally, the attack itself, although the terrorist might have psychopathological issues of his own, is committed in order to forward a political ideology and coerce a government or country into making concessions that benefit the group's agenda.
A mass murderer is psychopath who has issues in his own life and wants to do something that will show the world it should have paid more attention to him, that he is someone important, and now they will never forget him. They want to go out with a bang and make all the newspapers. They may create a political ideology to justify their big day but they have not been trained nor are they working in concert with a terrorist organization.
9/11 was a terrorist attack; this is clear. So are other terrorist attacks; for example, places that blow up in India and Egypt are terrorist attacks; Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi in India, and Sharm-el-Sheik and Luxor in Egypt. Most of the Indian attacks are over who should own Kashmir - Pakistan or India (or neither) - and are committed by members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (LET). Some of the attacks are over Bangladesh. Egypt has a variety of factions trying to force the government to act toward Israel or the US in the way that terrorist group wishes. They are all politically motivated and usually involve lengthy planning and groups of operatives. The 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon was a terrorist attack aimed at getting the United States to go home. It worked. The 2004 Madrid train bombings were carried out to influence the upcoming election and to get Spain to pull out of Iraq. It worked. Most of these terrorist attacks cited are radical Islamist groups, but not all terrorist attacks are committed by al-Qaeda or their cells or Islamic radicals. There are and have been terror groups in India (some are radical Hindus or Radical Christians), Sri Lanka, Africa, South America, Asia and elsewhere in the world where other political aims or religious aims are or were at play.
In the United States we have also been subject to terrorist attacks. Jose Padilla was convicted in 2005 of being an enemy combatant of Pakistan for trying to bring a "dirty bomb" into the country. The Virginia "Jihad" Network consisting of eleven men with ties to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba was brought down in 2003. And in 2010, Faisal Shahzad was charged with attempting to blow up a bomb in Times Square in New York City. He had ties to the Pakistan Taliban from whom it is believed he received training.
These are just some of the attacks targeting the United States that are true terrorist attacks. I call these perpetrators "terrorists" because they are truly working with a terrorist group.
Now, we have a new issue on the horizon, what we call "homegrown" terrorists. These are usually psychopaths who join up with a terrorist network because they want to feel important; similar to someone joining a cult. I don't call Hasan a homegrown terrorist because he did not actually join a group and work with them.
Mass murderers just want their day in the sun and to take revenge on society, the society that didn't give them respect. The Columbine Mass Murders were committed by two psychopathic teenage boys who wanted to mow down the more popular kids, especially the girls who they didn't think would date them, and the wanted get their name in the papers. Cho of Virgina Tech fame had similar "Wannabe a Rockstar/Killer" ideation.
But, Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, were older and had achieved "midlife crisis" (the two major mass murder groups are teens who feel adult life offers nothing to live for and those who have become frustrated that they have not reached the level of success they wanted as adults and give up); these two men felt society had ignored them long enough. They developed a political ideology of White Superiority that propelled them to their big day in the sun and made them heroes for a cause (if only in their own minds). While they may have reached out on occasion to certain groups, gone to their websites, and read their books, they were not working with any terrorist cell. This was their big day and that big day was really about nothing but themselves. They were losers who wanted to become antiheroes and they succeeded.
Nidal Hasan didn't even work as hard as McVeigh or Breivik on any intricately developed ideology. He had moments of getting all radical Islamic when he was feeling down, but, in the end, he wanted to kill his workmates and get back at the Army he had served for half his life, the organization he felt didn't appreciate him enough. Yes, he reached out right before the mass murder to radical Islamists to give himself a better justification for his killing his fellow servicemen and he yelled "Allah Akhbar" before he pulled the trigger, but this does not him a terrorist make. He had the traits and behaviors of a mass murderer and if al-Qaeda is cheering and claiming he committed a terrorist act in the name of Allah, so be it; sometimes mass murdering psychopaths help out the terrorists.
Why do I insist on the importance between this distinction of mass murderer and terrorist? Certainly not, as this website claims, because I want to "excuse criminality" or that I want play down any radical Muslim connection to terrorist attacks. I have often labeled certain attacks terrorist attacks and if they are conducted by groups who adhere to a radical Islamic philosophy, I state this as well, and, I am hardly excusing criminality because I recommend the death penalty for either a mass murderer or a terrorist. My purpose in laying out the differences between the mass murderer and the terrorist is so that we know what to watch for and what traits and behaviors to recognize, so we can intervene before the terrorist or mass murderer strikes. This is the kind of work I do in anti-terrorism training funded by Homeland Security and TSA and in my psychopathology training for law enforcement.
Psychopathy, mass murder, and terrorism are increasing in our world. If we cannot find a way to talk about these subjects rationally, we will not be able to address and prevent these mass homicides from occurring.
Claim #6 Pat Brown is always wrong.Okay, no one can claim they are always right, but I think I do a pretty fair job with my analyses and I do explain why I think what I do. The big "proofs" that I am incompetent at profiling concern the 2010 disappearance of David Hartley in which the wife, Tiffany, claimed her husband was shot (and his body hidden) by a Mexican drug cartel in boats as they jet-skied on a lake on the boarder of the US and Mexico, and the DC Snipers' case that terrified the Washington DC metro area for three weeks in 2002.
The claim about me on the Hartley case is plain silly. It has made the rounds through the Internet that I posted a blog about the case saying I found Hartley's story questionable and then pulled it off so no one could see what I said. Each new person who who writes that about "my missing blog post" links back to the site the original bogus claim; apparently, none of these people know how to do a Google search to check their facts. Put in "Tiffany Hartley Pat Brown" and lo, and behold, you will find the
blog post on Women in Crime Ink (click on the link to the left and save yourself the trouble of the Google search) where I moved it a couple days after posting it on The Daily Profiler because we were lacking a post that day on WCI and I moved blog post on Hartley over there.
The claim that I had the DC Sniper case completely wrong came from a bad reporting job (in a major media piece) in which it was inferred that I said the Snipers where White (actually, the author of that piece spoke about how profilers got the race wrong and then my name was included in the general group of profilers who gave commentary on television, so it looked like I guess the race wrong as well. Oddly, I agreed with a lot of the author's criticisms of criminal profiling, that too much is guess work occurs in profiling and not enough determinations are based on evidence). As to my profiling the Snipers' race wrong, actually, the opposite was true. I was on a program with another person who said that serial killers were all White and, therefore, the DC Snipers were as well. My mouth dropped because I thought that old myth had been put to rest. I certainly knew that this was foolish because my renter, my person-of-interest in the murder of the jogger, was African-American as happened to be Bobby Joe Leonard. I said, on air, that this was incorrect, that serial killers come in all races and nationalities, and because the DC Snipers were shooting at a distance and we had no witness or evidence pointing toward what race they were, we had no clue. Interestingly, one thing I did say, again on air, was that whoever was doing the shootings likely had a stack of Guns & Ammo magazines lying around. This was said a bit tongue and cheek as I was simply pointing out that the killer/killers seemed to really like their weapons. As it turned out, Malvo, the younger of the DC Snipers, left behind a fingerprint on a magazine at a store robbery which led to their downfall. The fingerprint was on a Guns & Ammo magazine.
I am not saying I am the "perfect profiler" anymore than a doctor might not on occasion botch a diagnosis or an attorney lose a case. I do my best and I work hard to explain my reasoning so you can decide for yourself (and this includes the detectives who I have profiled for) if my analysis makes sense. I always think second opinions are worth getting in any field.
And, finally, Claim #7 Pat Brown accuses innocent people of crimes for fame and money.Well, I have never been in this business for fame and money. I want to change profiling methodology. I want to see more killers put away for good. I want to see children not suffer at the hands of pedophiles and abusive parents. I have never cared much for a fancy lifestyle and anyone who knows me knows this is true. Staying home with babies and then homeschooling for a total of twenty years is not a great way to become rich! I have always done pro bono work for law enforcement (not because they won't pay me but because independent profilers have never been funded by police agencies to any degree) and I continue to do so. I do not object, however, to earning a living and what I do for a living is profiling, commentating, educating, and writing. If I don't accept money for any of my time spent working, I will be living under a bridge.
If I really wanted to get great publicity and make good money, I would have profiled the West Memphis Three (WM3) as innocent of the murder of three little boys and I would have profiled the Madeleine McCann case as nothing but an abduction. I would have sold a ton of those profiles and had a huge group to cheer on my analyses. Instead, looking at the evidence, my profiles question the innocence of the three convicted men in the WM3 case and the claim of abduction in the Madeleine McCann case. I have receive a massive amount of abuse for standing up for what I think the evidence points to instead of jumping on the bandwagon which would be the easy way out.
As I head
into a legal battle with my attorney, Anne Bremner (read my
Women in Crime Ink blog post on the issue) with Gerry and Kate McCann over having their solicitors, Carter-Ruck, threaten Amazon with a libel lawsuit (okay, it was a notice of defamation but if you get a letter from the biggest libel attorneys in the world saying a book is defamatory and the letter is a clear warning that there will be legal action if the book is not removed from sale, it certainly is a threat of a libel lawsuit) if they didn't pull my book,
Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, from the market (ebook still available at
B&N and
Smashwords), I am sure the attacks on me will increase. I have already received a label of publicity whore and scumbag who makes money off the blood of murdered and missing children; I'll live. But, there is something very important at stake here in my upcoming lawsuit against the McCanns; Freedom of Speech and Justice for Children.
First, Freedom of Speech. If we end up in a world where people connected to criminal cases can muzzle the detectives, profilers, the media, the public...anyone who disagrees with a particular line of thinking, anyone who might have a different theory of what happened, any citizen who might want to fight to see a case solved, see justice done and public safety upheld, then we will have a worsening situation for missing and murdered children. The McCanns insist that their daughter, Madeleine, was abducted and is not dead and they have a large following supporting their contentions and donating money to search for a living child. I have no issue with this.
If Madeleine McCann turns out to be alive, living with some crazy family or being held captive by some pedophile ring, I want that ring shut down and that crazy family put away. I am glad there are some looking at these options; if the theory I believe has the most evidence to support it about Madeleine not being alive proves not to be what happened to Madeleine and the theory that she is alive turns out to be the right one, I will be glad someone was checking it out.
On the other hand, if my theory that Madeleine is not alive
is correct, then shouldn't someone be looking for a local pedophile in Praia da Luz, Portugal, who has murdered the little girl and may be looking for the next child to torture and kill? Don't we want justice then for Madeleine and safety for other children? And, if it turns out that Madeleine died of an accident in the McCann's vacation apartment and there was a cover-up, shouldn't this be brought to light that the Portuguese Detective Amaral was correct in his analysis and the Fund is a scam rather than a resource to find Madeleine and bring her home?
I see nothing wrong with discussing a number of theories and arguing their merits; however the McCanns threaten lawsuits any time someone questions what happened to Madeleine that night that doesn't agree with their particular theory. The McCanns committed serious child neglect leaving three toddlers alone to fend for themselves in an unsafe situation (no adults to help them in case of accident or illness, strange apartment, locked doors some nights which could cause them to die in a fire, and unlocked doors other nights that could cause them to be kidnapped or wander off) night after night and, since there is no evidence of an abduction and there
is a possibility that an accident could have befallen one of the unattended children, the McCanns should not blame anyone for theorizing that maybe no one kidnapped Madeleine and that Madeleine is not alive.
If we look the other way when children are neglected and abused, if we excuse poor behaviors on the part of parents that threaten their children's health and welfare, if we ignore pedophiles and serial killers that may have killed a child just so we can pretend the child is alive, if we get mad every time someone points out reality and truth -especially if it means we sue them or remove their voice from being heard - we will not be able to improve our investigative methods or our criminal justice system, and we won't be able to focus on societal issues that need to be addressed and ameliorated. If we stop people from speaking up, we lose our freedom to challenge and defend, and our chance for each of us to make a difference in bettering this world.
I hope my post enlightens everyone as to "The Truth about Pat Brown." You may love me or you may hate me, support me or wish I would go away, but, if nothing else, you have heard it from the horse's mouth and not the donkey's. And I won't infringe on your Freedom of Speech if you don't infringe on mine.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
A lot of people believe that when a homicide occurs, that law enforcement and the judiciary system have a remit to pursue justice for of the victim, to do everything possible to avenge the loss of life on behalf of a person who cannot do so for himself as he is no longer on earth. I am not sure what fanciful words are used in the UK and Portugal, but when a crime occurs in the US, any effort made by police or prosecutor is done so in "the interest of the state." What exactly does that mean? Most believe that since the state represents the citizens, it must mean "in the interest of the citizens" - in the case of a homicide - for the victim, who was a citizen, for the family who are the living victims, and the community who has a dangerous perpetrator still in their midst who may well strike again.
