It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of this site that I enjoy forensic psychology and what is called "True Crime". During the saga of the McCanns (whom I feel we definitely haven't heard the last of yet) I would get a lot of people- British, mostly telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about and other offensive statements. My favorite was, "You are a witch and you are going straight to hell".  Ah, but I do know what I am talking about. When I was between the ages of two and four my mother stinted me of food and poisoned me with various drugs- some prescribed by doctors, some not. She did this to get attention and to try to save her failing marriage. It is a mental illness called Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy. (called from now on MSBP, for brevity's sake) There isn't much I don't know about child abuse or murderesses or attempted murderesses. I feel before I go any further I should state that my entire family is dead, and I am not hurting anyone by telling the truth. I am trying to help people. If one child abuser is caught because of this article, I will feel that my life has been worth something.

My mother came from a horrendous background that included illegitimacy, incest, abuse and poverty. She had several major mental illnesses- Borderline Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder were the major ones. People with problems like these are heavily into antisocial behavior (stuff like kleptomania and lying and cheating, for example) and have no feelings or empathy towards other people (although they may pretend to). They divide people into two groups- "This person is useful to me" and "This person is not useful to me".

After I was born, my mother got into the habit, when my father was traveling for his job, (so many MSBP husbands travel for their jobs that it has become a part of the warning signs, which we will get into later) of going down to the local truck stop with a girlfriend and prostituting themselves with truck drivers. Of course my mother did not need the money as my father supported her; it was just a cheap thrill and shows how ill she must have been. My father eventually found out through anonymous letters what had been going on. The girlfriend's husband received anonymous letters too and divorced his wife, but my parents decided to stay together. Of course they had to relocate; they couldn't possibly continue to live in a small subdivision where it was generally known my mother was a whore and my father a cuckold. They decided to move near my father's family. At some point during the course of this move from New York State to Boston, I became genuinely ill with tonsilitis. I had to go the hospital and get oxygen. This opened up a wonderful new world for my mother- being the mother of an invalid. She felt wonderful. The situation with my father got much better too as he was so upset and concerned and all of a sudden there was something to talk about other than my mother's infidelity. Of course, I couldn't possibly be allowed to ever get better. This new situation was too useful.

The best description of MSBP and how it works was given by Dr Linda Norton, an expert in this field who has testified at dozens of child abuse cases. "People always say about MSBP, how could any mother do this to her child? (for whatever reason ONLY mothers have MSBP) I always say to them, it is NOT about the child. It is all about the parent. The MSBP parent could not care less about her child. The parents of dying children occupy a position of high esteem in our society. There are little stories about them in the newspapers and on CNN. People bring casseroles over to their houses. They are martyrs and heroines. Mothers with MSBP see this and they want to occupy this special situation in society that these parents of dying children hold- and they'll do anything to get there".

What my mother was doing to "get there" was pretty clever. She would wait until I had one of the childhood illnesses- a cold, for example. She would then take a thermometer- and we only had oral or rectal mercury thermometers in those days- and hot it up until it read 107 or 108 degrees. Of course the doctor would retake my temperature later and get a reading of 98.6. She would wait until he left the room (mothers with MSBP love to be involved in their childrens' care) and fool with the thermometer again until it read 107. She would claim to the doctors that this wild swing in temperatures happened constantly and unfortunately for me, they would believe her and prescribe massive doses of penicillin and then of course children with such high fevers can't be allowed to eat solid food. Then a few weeks would go by and the histrionics would repeat themselves. More antibiotics, more starvation. She was the mother, right? She must know. The ignorance of MD's even in the present day about MSBP is unbelievable and disgraceful. Back then it was endemic.

This nonsense,  this "strange and mysterious syndrome" (according to my mother) which I only survived because I am tenuous of life, went on for almost two years. A sharp-eyed nurse noticed my mother hotting up a thermometer in the exam room. She managed to grab the thermometer and cigarette lighter from my mother's hand and the game was up at that moment. I was placed in the hospital for three days, which is known as a separation test. The doctors and nurses will observe the suspected victim of MSBP child abuse, basically to see if they seem ill or if any of the symptoms that the mother claims the child is presenting with can be shown to be real. I was released from the hospital with, of course, a clean bill of health. My mother told my father that I had been put in the hospital for tests and that the doctors could not find anything wrong with me. This meant that I would die quite soon, as the "strange and mysterious" syndrome remained and I was "in a downward spiral". This shows how mothers with MSBP will continue to try to manipulate, to the bitter end. Of course my father had already been told the whole story- that the thermometers had been manipulated and that I was not dying or even ill, just slightly small for my age through not being fed.

At that time, the early sixties, there was colloquial knowledge about MSBP passed from one doctor or nurse to another. Generally the mothers were called "Sympathy Junkies" as I believe they still are today. The psychology was not understood at all. I know in my mother's case there was a genuine belief that she was obsessed and upset that I would die and did these strange things just to get in to see an MD. Of course the real truth is my mother was enjoying herself immensely and probably would have been quite excited if I had died. Think of the attention she would have got then. 

In my case, my father and grandmother staged what would now have been called "An Intervention".My mother was confronted with the pertinent facts and given a choice; go to an institution or pack a suitcase and hit the street. Of course nowadays she would have been arrested and gone to prison for child abuse. She chose the institution and when she returned home the abuse did stop.

Unfortunately sad stories like the above one are still happening all over the United States. Doctors and nurses, believe it or not, are still not trained to recognize the symptoms of MSBP. I may have an axe to grind because of my own personal suffering but I feel this is the very first thing they should learn at medical school. All doctors, nurses, priests (MSBP moms LOVE priests) and social workers should memorize the list below. 

1. The child doesn't look sick (Of course there are some exceptions: food can be stinted and heads shaved)

2. No one ever sees the symptoms but the mother

3. The father travels for his job

4. There was another child in the family who died

5. If there is another child in the family who is still alive symptoms jump between them and the "sick" child

6. Tests keep being done on the "sick" child but the "doctors cannot find out what is wrong". Start using your logical mind on this one. In this day and age would doctors really be incapable of finding out what is wrong with a sick child? It's possible but it's improbable. It would be much more likely that doctors knew what was wrong with a child but could do little for them, or that the child would not respond to treatment- but then these would be genuinely ill children, not MSBP cases.

7. MSBP moms are in love with certain diagnoses, like "the strange and mysterious syndrome" or "a genetic problem". "Sleep Apnea" is also very popular.

8. The MSBP mom will fight to keep from being separated from her child in the hospital but will in reality spend little or no time in the child's room. (My own mom did this)

9.The mother is exposed over and over as a congenital liar; for example one very common lie is to say that the child's father died in an accident when he is very much alive.

10. The "attacks" or "fits" happen according to a certain schedule- for example if the father works double shifts every other Thursday this will be when the faked illness happens. Real diseases don't have schedules or time frames. In my case my mother claimed the faked fevers happened every six weeks which coincided nicely with my father's business trips.

If we could just get MSBP out of the shadows and have doctors, nurses, priests and social workers ALWAYS consider it as a potential diagnosis when things just don't seem right think of the children's lives we could save or the suffering we could ameliorate. Please, please, if you are a doctor or connected to childcare in some way memorize the above list and act on it. Save a child's life.

On Christmas Eve 2007, Michele Anderson, 29 and unemployed, and her lover, Joseph McEnroe, also 29 and a clerk at Wal- Mart, decided to murder Michele's parents, Judi, 61, a mail carrier and Wayne, 60, a Boeing employee. They came to this conclusion because they were not being "treated with respect". It seems that Judi and Wayne, the parents (why do I feel I should prefix the word "parent" with the adjective "long- suffering?") had come to the conclusion that Michele and Joseph should pay rent on the trailer they were living in on the parents' heavily wooded rural property in the town of Carnation, Washington. Michele gave her parents a deadline of December 24th to start "treating her with respect". This, according to whatever worldview this girl, who sat in the trailer all day burning candles, possessed, did not occur, so her lover shot both her parents. After they made rudimentary attempts to hide the bodies, her brother Scott, his wife Erica, and their two children Olivia, 5 and Nathan, 3, showed up at the parents' house for a holiday celebration. They, too were all viciously gunned down. Supposedly Joseph McEnroe apologized to the two youngsters before killing them.

After this bloodbath the two lovebirds took off "for Canada". They returned on the following day, back to the murder scene. It is not known why they returned, but then again it is not known why they bothered to leave either. The place was crawling with police and they were of course arrested immediately after the police listened to their garbled stories.

Police say that the slayings apparently stemmed in part from a dispute Michele Anderson was having with her brother over money. According to court documents, Michele Anderson told police she was tired "of everybody stepping on her" Both Michele Kristen Anderson and Joseph McEnroe have pleaded not guilty to six counts of murder. The crime is either punishable by death or by life in prison without the possibility of parole. My interest in this crime, besides its utter sordidness and proof once again that in the United States mental illness is neither understood nor properly treated, is the fact that Washington State is the last state in the Union that hangs people. We might be treated to the spectacle of a woman on the gallows. They also offer lethal injection, but my understanding is that being hanged on the long drop is about the swiftest and least painful way out, so if she is clever she'll pick that. (the condemned has the final say on how they are to make their final exit) The authorities have given themselves three months to decide if Michele Anderson is sane enough to be executed. Unfortunately the bar for such things in the United States is pretty low. If she doesn't drool or gibber during her court appearances, well, she's probably in. Of course my theory is that she and her paramour should be removed immediately to the State Hospital, thereby saving the taxpayers the expense of a trial, especially a capital trial. They are both obviously nuttier than a pair of shithouse rats. What good is to be gained by trying and executing them is beyond me. It would be an interesting footnote in the history books, though: "Michele Anderson, last woman executed by hanging in the United States"

The last woman to be hanged in England was a platinum - blonde prostitute named Ruth Ellis, who had a checkered past, an unpleasant present, and an uncertain future. I am of the group which considers the execution of Ruth Ellis to have been sheer judicial murder. I understand that the execution of Mrs. Ellis so disgusted various persons, including some Personages, that it was the main impetus for the banning of capital punishment in England.

Ruth Ellis was a high- class prostitute and manageress of a drinking club in London. She had also done modeling work and had appeared in the film, "Lady Godiva Rides Again" starring Diana Dors, with whom she became fast friends. Considering the dreadful background she had come from, with its concomitant abuse and degradation, she was doing quite well. She had smart clothes, a good clientele, and a good place for her son, Andy, to live over the club. Ruth Ellis' downfall came, as it comes for so many, when she fell in love with one of her clients, David Blakely, a wanna-be race car driver and known pederast. He became her coeur d'amant, or in English, The One Who Does Not Pay, and moved into her flat. They were one of those couples who cannot live happily either together or apart. The number of jealous scenes and drunken rages rose to a crescendo, and Ruth Ellis' life and client list fell apart. She lost her job at the club and in consequence was evicted from her apartment. On top of all this, she became pregnant. When she informed Blakely of this, he at first acted happy about it, but then flew into a rage, kicking her in the stomach and forcing her to miscarry the baby. The quarreling continued after she got out of the hospital. They had planned to spend the Easter weekend together, but David went out for a drink on Friday evening with his friends, the Findlaters, and never returned. Even though his car was parked openly in front of the Findlaters' house they either denied he was there when Ruth phoned or hung up the phone. Ruth became more and more frantic, and by Sunday evening she had developed "a peculiar idea that I would kill him"

That evening, April 10,1955 Ruth Ellis shot David Blakely six times with a .38 caliber handgun in front of a public house in Hampstead. He was removed to the local hospital and pronounced dead. She later made the remark, "It is quite clear to me that I was not the person who shot him. When I saw myself with the revolver I knew I was another person" This would probably be enough nowadays, on top of the murder of her baby, to get either a greatly reduced charge, like third-degree manslaughter or even an acquittal on the grounds of diminished capacity.

Ruth Ellis' joke of a trial opened on June 20, 1955 at the Old Bailey. She was asked by the proscutor, "Mrs. Ellis, when you fired that revolver at close range into the body of David Blakely what did you intend to do?" She replied, "It was obvious that I intended to kill him". To all intents and purposes the trial was basically stopped at this point. Neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney gave closing statements, and the judge instructed the jury to bring in a verdict of first-degree murder, which they did in twenty-three minutes. She was then sentenced immediately to death.

I have read accounts of the Ellis case which say that after David Blakely's death Ruth Ellis wished to commit judicial suicide, with the public hangman providing the way out. I believe that these people are quite correct, but to them I say:This is not what the courts are for. They are there to dispense, or at least to try to dispense, Justice. People who wish to commit suicide have to do it on their own. Ruth Ellis was not guilty of first-degree murder. She was not in her right mind when the murder happened - in point of fact in America at the present day it would have been impossible for Ruth Ellis to shoot David Blakely as he would be sitting in a cell under indictment for first-degree murder himself, for Murder Of A Child Under The Age Of Thirteen for killing her unborn child.

I cannot think of any condemned person who showed greater physical courage than Ruth Ellis. She said to a visiting girlfriend that she was not afraid of the gallows, that a life called out for a life and that they gave you a glass of brandy and it was like having a tooth out. She tabled several attempts to save her life or appeal her case, and at one of them it was said that that was the only time the wardresses had ever seen her cry while in prison.

On the morning of July 13, 1955, Ruth wrote a letter to David Blakely's mother, apologizing to her. The executioner entered her cell at 9:01 AM and pinioned her hands behind her back. She had already been given a large brandy by the prison doctor. She was led the 15 feet to the gallows. She said nothing and offered no resistance or hesitation. A hood was placed over her head and the noose round her neck. Her legs were strapped together and the trap door opened, through which she fell to her death, which was instantaneous, as it generally is in long-drop hangings.

And now we have the case of Michele Kristen Anderson. Does she deserve to die, for murdering her parents for no apparent reason? At least Ruth Ellis had some sort of motive. It seems, that like so many other things nowadays, that they don't make murderesses the way they used to.

http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hanging2.html

Read Ruth Ellis' Autopsy report

I just finished watching the Roger Clemens hearing before Congress. It had some interesting points, such as trying to figure out who was the bigger liar, Brian McNamee or Clemens. The body language was incredibly interesting. Finally, I came down on the side of Clemens. I have watched literally dozens of trials, which is what this basically was, and when people are lying on the witness stand they generally do something. It varies from person to person; sometimes they stare at the ceiling, sometimes their ears turn red, but it is always the same thing. In Roger Clemens' case he blinked furiously while lying. McNamee blinked slowly whenever he told a lie. I noticed more furious blinking than slow blinking. Finally, I decided to completely ignore what both of them were saying. The truth of this matter rests with the evidence of Andy Pettitte, and Andy Pettitte backs up McNamee. Case closed. Roger juiced.

Of course this case was closed a long time ago. I spent the last hour studying the major league record of Roger Clemens, and the whole thing is as plain as paint when you look at it in black and white. Around 1993 the rot started to set in, as it often does with power pitchers who have no finesse and are getting older. They don't know how to fool the batters, how to intimidate them or beat them with psychology, because they always relied on the fastball. The years roll by and a few miles per hour get trimmed off that fastball, and they start to get shelled. Also, as a Bostonian and a Red Sox fan, I would say my knowledge of Roger Clemens in those days was pretty complete. All this guff about him being "hard working", for example. In those years, between 1993 and 1996, he was fat, flabby and well-known for reporting to Spring Training every year late and out of shape. I would say by 1996 the whole town was disgusted by him. Every thing was somebody else's fault; if he lost a game it was because he had got no "run support". "I thought I pitched real well" I would hear him say in dozens of post-game interviews after he had stunk up the field.

In 1997 he left Boston, much to my personal relief, "because he wanted to pitch closer to Texas" I guess he must have got lost on the way home, because he wound up pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays. Can somebody buy this guy a map? Obviously, though, on the Blue Jays there was a different "atmosphere" in the clubhouse because all of a sudden his numbers shot back up again. At the age of 34 our boy had discovered performance-enhancing drugs. His numbers went from 10 -13 in 1996 to 21 - 7 in 1997. The New Roger Clemens was born.

The congressional hearing was pathetic in a way, but then so is Clemens' attempt to prove he never took performance enhancing drugs. One interesting point brought out was that so much of this stuff was laying about the Clemens household his wife started to take it, for slimming. Of course there was the inevitable lie that she only took it once, etc. Also incredible amounts of time and effort were wasted by Clemens' lawyers trying to prove that Clemens did NOT attend a pool party at Jose Canseco's house, as though somehow the fact that he wasn't at Jose's proves he never was jacked. Expect to hear something interesting about this pool party in the weeks ahead. My theory is that either he or McNamee bought steroids there, and that there are witnesses. In the end, it was proved that the Texas Con Man was lying about the pool party as well, as his children's nanny saw him there. There was also a very curious sidelight thrown on this, as Clemens and his legal team talked to the nanny after they were told not to by Congress, trying to convince her that he was not at the party as he was playing golf, "Oh, don't you remember I was at the golf course?". Witness coercion, I believe they call it.

It was also fascinating to me as an amateur bodybuilder to hear about Clemens' stack. He was taking HGH four times a week, as well as Winstrol, testosterone, and a drug new to me, Parabolin. Let me tell you, with a stack like that you would not have to work "hard". You could lie in a hammock all day and your body would grow. A great source of amusement to me lately has been seeing these clips of Fraudger working out with McNamee that have been shown on television lately. He looks like he has the same amount of weight on the bar that I do. As far as all that stretching stuff goes they show him doing, that's pussy stuff. And McNamee is spotting him! I can do all that stuff without spotting and I'm a girl for God's sake. Look, when we bodybuilders work out we all work "hard". When I work out I work out hard, too, without some ex-New York cop spotting me and filling my backside with elaborate stacks of performance enhancing drugs.

Unfortunately for those of us who loathe Roger Clemens, I am not sure if I saw a real "gotcha" moment during the congressional hearing. Both he and McNamee were such white trash and had such a lack of creditability that they complimented each other perfectly. Unless more shocking information comes out in the depositions of Chuck Knoblauch and Andy Pettitte I think Congress will just wind up washing their hands of the whole disgusting mess, instead of indicting Clemens for perjury, as they should. If Barry Bonds and Marion Jones got indicted, so should Clemens.

Of course, this is still the end for Clemens. No Hall of Fame, no more endorsements, no more public acclaim. Congress and the Mitchell Report lifted up the rock, and there was something pretty disgusting crawling around underneath.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/clemero02.shtml

Read Roger Clemens' MLB statistics

Did you know that for at least the last sixteen years big businesses and banks have been taking out huge life insurance policies on rank - and file workers, without their knowledge or consent, and that the beneficiaries of these life insurance policies are not the workers' families but the banks and businesses themselves? These policies are insultingly known as "dead peasant" or "dead janitor" policies. Leave the company to find a better job? Not to worry. The company will continue to pay the premiums and track your death through the Social Security system, so that they can collect on the policy..

I was myself totally unaware of this insulting, disgusting and dangerous policy until a few days ago. The Congress, that revolting collection of bloviators and wardheelers totally in the pay of Big Business, has known about it for sixteen years. If there was ever a country that needed a revolution, by God, this is it.

You may ask yourself why I call it a dangerous policy. Well, if a company knows that it's going to get between $250,000 and $500,000 if you die, and knows they're going have to keep paying you a salary if you stay alive, or maybe even a pension, if you live long enough, they don't have very much of a stake in your personal safety, do they? Their interest would be in your immediate and total annihilation, wouldn't it? 

This was one reason I was so amazed to learn about these "dead peasant" policies. English Common Law has long recognized that the ability to insure another person's life without their knowledge or consent is simply an open invitation to murder. This recognition was achieved at the expense of several dreadful murders. Since most American laws are based on English Common Law I assumed that American citizens were protected from having a stranger benefit from their demise by means of a secret life insurance policy. Well, that shows how wrong you can be, and also how far the United States has sunk into a morass of corporate greed and fraud.

The individual who did the most towards changing English Common Law so that a person could only have their life insured with their approval and consent was a very colorful character named Dr. William Palmer, of Rugeley, Staffordshire. Instead of actually practicing medicine he was "on the turf", which back in the Victorian Age meant that he owned racehorses and bet on them. He paid for The Sport of Kings by insuring people (most of them his own relatives or bastard children) and then dispatching them quickly by means of poison. His victims are thought to number about fifteen. After poisoning his wife a few months after taking out a $65,000 insurance policy on her life he then insured his brother Walter, but when Walter died very shortly after, the insurance company refused to pay out on the policy. By this time, Palmer was very heavily in debt from plunging on racing bets and was also being blackmailed by one of his former lovers, the daughter of a Staffordshire policeman.(Apart from horse-racing and murder, Palmer's favorite occupation seems to have been siring bastards; he had about fourteen)

Of course as it always does in these cases the pitcher went back to the well once too often, and when one of Palmer's turf acquaintances, John Parsons Cook, died in agony after eating supper with Palmer after Cook had won a large sum of money gambling, Palmer began to be suspected of foul play. These suspicions were increased when Palmer tried to bribe the boy driving the cart which contained jars holding Cook's viscera into having "an accident" and breaking the jars on his way to the local hospital. It was also proven that Palmer had purchased strychnine.

Palmer was arrested and tried at the Old Bailey in London, as it was thought that he would not be able to get a fair trial in Staffordshire. Several of the bodies of his other victims were exhumed and an attempt made to find poison in them. The attempt failed, but it can be said that this trial was the beginning of modern forensic science, as never before had a poisoning trial attempted to actually find poisons in the victims' bodies. In the end, he was convicted on circumstantial evidence as the prosecution described the effects of strychnine poisoning and called witnesses who testified that poor Cook had suffered the same agonies.

Palmer was found guilty and executed publicly before a jeering crowd of 30,000 spectators at Stafford Prison on June 14, 1856. Now, in America we ought to start doing Congressmen and a few Wal-Mart executives the same way. Of course, you know without being told that Wal-Mart is the leading perpetrator of the "dead peasant" life insurance policy. They would be. This is what America has come to, that we take a leaf from the book of a sociopathic poisoner like Dr. William Palmer. Soon these executives will be copying another homicidal doctor, Dr. Harold Shipman, and forging their employees' wills in their companies' favor. People in America need to wake up and realize that we do not need these corrupt politicians to run our affairs for us. In the age of the Internet we can handle them much better ourselves, thank you. We do not need "representatives" who do not represent us any more.They represent Wal-Mart.

One thing I do like about the Dr.Palmer story, though, is that his misadventures were the genesis of the phrase, asked at a cocktail party or bar, "What's your poison?"