It took the pleasant, smiling, 29 year-old, six months pregnant with her second child, two months to die. Dorothy Dixon was shot over and over with BB guns, burned with red-hot glue from a glue gun, and bathed in scalding water. She and her 1 year-old son, who weighed only fifteen pounds when Alton, Illinois police were called to the horrific scene, were also systematically starved. What was the motive? This poor, pathetic creature's Social Security check, which she was eligible for due to the mental retardation she suffered from. And who were the guilty parties? Two middle-aged women, Judy Woods, 43 and Michelle Riley, 35. Riley was, unbelievably, Dorothy Dixon's caseworker at the West Central Illinois Center for Independent Living. These two harpies were assisted by two of Riley's children, LeShelle McBride, 15, and an unnamed 12-year old, and two neighborhood youngsters, Michael Elliot, 18 and Benny Lee Wilson, 14.

Each of them, except for the 12-year-old, who will face charges in juvenile court, will be charged with first-degree murder; intentional murder of an unborn child; aggravated battery; and unlawful restraint. McBride and Wilson, who are juveniles, are being charged as adults. All will be held on a $1 million dollar bond.

Riley, who by all accounts was the ringleader, had a history of drug abuse and mental illness, which led to two drug convictions in 2002 and 2004 and a conviction for fighting in 2003, authorities say.  Both the landlord, Steve Atkins, the next-door neighbors, Chad Hudson and Terri Brandt, and Riley's own sister Tynisa Nebe, claim that Michele Riley was "manipulative and evil"; a "drill sergeant" and "not a stable person".

When Atkins came to clean up the house after the occupants fled after the murder, he found that Dixon had been kept in a room in the basement with the door nailed shut. He found a waste can filled with human excrement and pockmarks all over the walls from BB guns. Atkins had to clean blood off the walls, the washer and dryer, and a basement shower near Dixon's prison.

"It's a total disgrace what happened," Atkins said. "What does a person have to do to deserve to die like that?" 

Of course, one might assume that this grotesque torture murder, carried out by teenagers at the behest of a crazy, evil middle-aged woman, stands alone in the annals of crime. But that would be a miscalculation.

Sylvia Marie Likens was a pretty, freckled 16-year-old. She liked roller skating and dancing and made average grades at school. Although she came from a poor and unstable background (the family moved fourteen times in sixteen years) who could have expected that she would wind up a prisoner in an Indianapolis basement, slowly tortured and starved, until she finally died.

In July of 1965 Sylvia and her younger sister Jenny, who had been crippled by a bout with polio and wore a brace on one leg, were left in the care of a woman named Gertrude Baniszewski, an individual who epitomized the term, "white trash". Her parents, who, if they had troubled to look about the premises where their young daughters would be staying, might have noticed that the house was filthy, that it had no stove, or enough beds for everyone, and that there were only three spoons in the house, paid her twenty dollars a week. The parents went off to work with a carnival.

Unfortunately, life swiftly became anything but a carnival for poor Sylvia. She was accused of being dirty, of stealing, and of being sexually promiscuous by Baniszewski, who had been pregnant no less than thirteen times by the age of forty. She had given birth to six live children and had seven miscarriages. There were three different fathers and the last child was illegitimate. Her eldest daughter, Paula, was also pregnant by an older, married man. It is thought that these events led to Baniszewski's perverted and hypocritical behavior towards Sylvia; in fact the Likens murder has been called "a sexless sex crime" by forensic psychiatrists.

Sylvia's life went from being unfairly punished on occasion in July, to getting physically hurt in various ways in August and September, to being tortured in the most bestial ways imaginable in October until her death. In early October, she was removed from school by Baniszewski because she did not own a gym suit and Baniszewski did not want to pay for one. Sylvia did not want to leave school, however, and stole a suit. This was the beginning of the end for Sylvia Likens. She was beaten and whipped with a belt by Baniszewski, who then kicked her violently in the crotch over and over. Not satisfied, Baniszewski then burned Sylvia's fingers with a lighted match.

Coy Hubbard, the boyfriend of Stephanie Baniszewski, Gertrude Baniszewski's second oldest daughter, began "practicing judo" on Sylvia, flipping her around and flinging her against walls. Heat was also a major component of Sylvia's torture. Everyone in the house began burning her with matches and lighted cigarettes. Paula Baniszewski broke her hand beating Sylvia and then beat her with the cast. She was kicked over and over in the crotch until she lost control of her bladder, at which point she was kept in the basement and barred from using the toilet. At this point Sylvia was kept in the nude for days on end. A regimen of forced bathing began where Sylvia was forced over and over again to bathe in scalding hot water by Gertrude and Paula, assisted by a fourteen-year old neighborhood youngster, Ricky Hobbs.

A public health nurse came to the Baniszewski's on October 15, saying that there had been an anonymous phone call claiming that there was a young girl at the residence with open, running sores. She was told by Gertrude that it must be Sylvia, who wouldn't keep herself clean, was a prostitute, and had run away. While she was having this conversation with the nurse, Sylvia, who at this point was being forced to eat her own feces and drink her own urine, was bound and locked in the cellar under their feet.

The nurse accepted Gertrude's statement and the case was pronounced closed.

The next horrible torture for Sylvia, who, unbelievably as it seems, was now being forced to perform crude stripteases for audiences of neighborhood children, at the end of which she was made to insert a Coke bottle in her vagina, was to be tattooed. Every one of the perpetrators had a turn, at Gertrude's suggestion. First, the words " I'm a prostitute" were burned onto her belly by Gertrude and Ricky. Then, a giant letter "S", for "slave" was burned onto her chest by the other children. After this, Coy Hubbard practiced his "judo" on Sylvia again, flipping her against walls.

But even this was not the end. Gertrude and Paula made Sylvia write a note announcing her imminent demise to her parents, saying that it was all her own fault as she had run away and been a prostitute, and that her pimp had tattooed and beaten her. After this Gertrude made plans to have Sylvia dumped in a vacant lot. However, Sylvia used this opportunity to try and run away. But,  unfortunately, at this point she was too weak and was recaptured immediately by her tormenters. After she was beaten again, this time with a curtain rod, twelve-year old John Baniszewski put Sylvia back in the basement.

The next day, she was beaten with a chair until it broke and then a paddle, by Gertrude and John. 

The day after, October 26, 1965, during another "bath" administered by Stephanie and Ricky, Sylvia died.

Gertrude told Ricky to call the police, which he did from a pay phone at a Shell station down the street. The Baniszewski residence lacked, among other niceties, a telephone. When they arrived, Gertrude handed them the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Likens that she had forced Sylvia to write. However, before he had a chance to read it, a hand plucked at the sleeve of his uniform. "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything!" whispered Jenny Likens, Sylvia's crippled little sister.

Gertrude, Paula, Stephanie, and John Baniszewski were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, as were Ricky Hobbs and Coy Hubbard.

          Next Week: The Trial, And Further Developments In The Dixon Case

There are strange and mysterious portents about in the world. Whole hives of bees, necessary for the cross-pollination of crops, have died mysteriously. In the Pacific Northwest, schools of wild salmon have completely disappeared, to the point where fishing fleets no longer bother to leave the harbors. And, in New York City, the hopeless moron who inhabits the White House appeared on Wall Street on Friday to give a speech to the Economic Club of New York.

Even by the standards of George W Bush- I guess I must have misunderestimated him again- it was absolutely jaw-dropping. The speech itself was total gibberish, a selection of garbled sound-bites about eliminating earmarks in Congress. Yo, George- every earmark Congress ever passed doesn't amount to a pile of ant shit compared to the meltdown of totally worthless mortgage-backed securities like the ones which took down Bear Stearns last weekend. When I heard what The Bear finally was sold for- two dollars a share including a building in Manhattan worth millions- I was upset I didn't get a chance to put my bid in. We then had to hear again about the magic of tax cuts. Cut taxes when the economy is growing and then cut them when the economy is shrinking. I honestly think that's the only thing he has ever been told about economics, that you must cut taxes. He just repeats it over and over, like a mantra. His entire affect was also totally inappropriate, careening about the stage and cutting people off who were trying to ask him questions about what he would do about the shrinking dollar and the growing energy bills. (Stop telling me that this wetbrain is on the wagon. Sure. And there's this really nice bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell you.) All I could think was that the moment was swiftly approaching when this fiasco would be exposed as a clever joke, with a comedian pretending that an oaf like Clem Kaddidlehopper, favorite comic creation of the peerless Red Skelton, was by some cosmic accident the President of the United States.,

Unfortunately, that moment never came. The President of this country really is Clem Kaddidlehopper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls- we're screwed. 

Of course, the more I thought about it- and every time this cretin opened his cakehole the market went down another ten points- the more I thought that this recession and frankly, bankruptcy, might be a good thing for America. In the first place it would take down this ass-kissing Congress and might even start a movement, dare I call it a revolution, to get rid of this gang of fools permanently. We don't need them. We are the people- remember that WE THE PEOPLE stuff? And we can run our own affairs better than this group of bought-and paid for wardheelers. The same goes double for that other collection of bloviators known as the Senate.

And don't stop there. Of course our bankruptcy would make it impossible to start any more little foreign adventures. In point of fact we'd have to bring the troops home- and I'm not just talking about the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm talking about ALL the troops, all 572,000 of them. Do you know this would save about a trillion dollars a year? (give or take a few billion) 

Once we had our military back in our own country, defending us, instead of futilely attempting to police the world and accomplishing nothing except for alienating local populations and serving as animated recruitment posters for al-Qaeda, no terrorists would dare to attack us. Not only that, but we could reopen all the closed military bases in this country, which would do a lot more than the monopoly money that Clem Kaddidlehopper intends to send out to stimulate the economy. Our military people would be spending their paychecks here, instead of blowing their pay (and our tax dollars) in some dive on Okinawa.

So, as you can see, even the darkest cloud has a silver lining. We can't go on forever, printing money in an attempt to have some wierd kind of empire while our own people suffer and our infrastructure crumbles. This insanity has to stop someday- how about right now?

As I write this, Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York State since 2007 and by all accounts a relatively decent public servant, although I recognize that that concept is basically a paradox, is being thrown into the meat-grinder for having sex with a professional prostitute in a Washington, D.C. hotel room. He will probably be forced to resign, and criminal charges are being considered. Eliot Spitzer is being called a hypocrite because as Attorney General of New York City he cracked down on white collar crime, securities fraud, internet fraud, and, yes, prostitution rings.

Although I dislike hypocrisy as much as the next person, isn't it absolutely amazing that in the political climate we are dealing with here, where millions in the Middle East lie dead, where the dollar and the economy are melting down before our eyes, where a great American city was destroyed by a hurricane and then never rebuilt, where the constitution and people's privacy is under constant attack, that a politician should be thrown out of his office for making love.

Obviously, it is completely acceptable for George W Bush to destroy Iraq and murder over a million people because his Daddy made him feel bad about himself and he's a wetbrain anyway. And wow, it made him feel fantastic when he he strutted around on TV in that flightsuit with the padded crotch. Mission Accomplished! I have had arguments with people who seem to think that the problem with that whole sickening scenario was the fact that the mission was not really accomplished. Ah, but to George W Bush, you see, it was. The whole thing was all about him. The 725 American troops who have had limbs amputated from wounds received in Iran and Afghanistan (sorry, but fingers and toes don't count) and the 62% of patients at the Walter Reed Hospital with serious brain injuries just aren't on the man's radar screen. I hear his popularity has fallen beneath 15% in some polls. Who does that leave him with as supporters, the Down's Syndrome Community? Yet no one is calling for his resignation. No one caught him having sex. As long as you don't have sex, I guess you can indulge in atrocities that would make the Emperor Caligula blush.

Let's discuss hypocrisy here. Let's discuss mendacity. Let's go all the way and discuss absolute bullshit. In January the Center For Public Integrity released the results of a two-year study documenting with loving detail the lies of the Bush Administration in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq war between September 2001 and September 2003. It is documented that top Bush Administration officials told at least 935 lies on 532 separate occasions.The largest amount of lies at 260 came from Bush, followed by Colin Powell with 254, Donald Rumsfeld with 109, Paul Wolfowitz with 85, the inimitably sycophantic Condi Rice with 56 and Dick Cheney surprisingly bringing up the rear with 48. The lies were about two topics, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that Iraq was closely associated with Al-Qaeda.Each of these lines of discourse is shown in the report to have been pure propaganda, designed to frighten the American people into supporting a war against Iraq.

But of course all the above public servants are pure as the driven snow because none of them was ever caught in a D.C. hotel room with a prostitute.(of course, that doesn't mean none of them didn't ever do it, just that they were never caught) We had better start having a serious discussion in this country about what the real difference between right and wrong is. I don't give a tinkers' damn about Eliot Spitzers' sex life. It is none of my business. However, I do care about George W Bush's public life and the fact that he has ruined this country.

I recall once about twenty years ago I read an article, I do not remember where, basically making fun of several African dictators such as Idi Amin who had destroyed their countries and claiming that if the good ol' US of A ever had the bad luck to get an Idi Amin it wouldn't matter. Our stupendous greatness, strength and exceptionalism would see us through an Idi with no problem whatsoever. All that shining city on the hill stuff. All I can say is that that author, whoever he or she was, was wrong. If Americans want to survive the challenges of the 21st century at all we are going to need a lot more Eliot Spitzers and no more George W Bushes.