True Crime Stories

When the channel Investigative Discovery first came out it was, and remains my favorite station to watch.  Over the years I have changed cable companies and as it often happens it always seems that the next level of packages that they offer seem to only have a channel or two that you would care to watch and does not seem worth the many extra dollars that it costs so currently I do not have it. However, a few months ago I was given a free month and I am surprised that my DVR did not burn up with the literally hundreds of hours that I taped from that channel alone.  I spent that month, and the next trying to catch up and watch everything and when I found one with an interesting story I made a note of it so that I could research it more and possibly blog about it here.  This was one such story. It is not uncommon that I watch a television show based on a true crime and find that so much of the story was left out or sometimes it seems even fictionalized.  While admitte...

I was turned onto this case a few months ago by a friend who is also, like me, very much into true crimes and justice in and of itself. Neither of us had heard of this case and the more we looked into it, including watching a documentary on it, the more we were a little bit puzzled. Yesterday I did a blog on the JonBonet Ramsey case in which I stated that it is my belief due to the mistakes made in the investigation from the beginning that case will never be solved. This is another case in which appeared to be the same.  However, while the case is still considered open today due to the fact that according to the state there is at least one perpetrator that has not been linked through DNA on the loose, there are two people serving life sentences for this case.  Are they the right people?  I will leave that for you to decide. It is only on the rare occasion in my blogs where you will hear me speak of the race of the victims or the perpetrators.  For the most part tha...

I had to do a search to see if I had done this case already and part of me was surprised that I had not.  For a long time I read everything I could find on this case as it aggravated and intrigued me.  The other part of me was not so surprised that I had not blogged about it because I have feelings about this case that tend to be different than other cases that I research or hear about.  I have mentioned before about what I call my "icky" feeling and this is surely a case that gives it to me.  There is little doubt from anyone, no matter what you think of the case, that this case was sabotaged from the beginning.  I do not mean to say that in the sense that it was necessarily purposely sabotaged, although I cannot say for certain that it was not.  What I can say with almost complete certainty is that, beyond a legitimate confession, this case will never be solved.   I think what I struggle with most in this case is that in general, the evid...

I recently finished reading a book called "Criminal Minds" that intertwined the stories told on the television show with true crime stories or simply told the stories of the real criminal mentioned on the show.  If you are into the show it is a very good read.  Many of the stories, such as those about Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and others I already knew but there were some I had not heard about. This is one of them.   On August 28, 2003, around 2:30 pm,  Brian Wells entered a bank in Erie Pennsylvania.  He had a bomb around his neck and was using something that looked like a cane but turned out to be an altered shotgun.  He handed the teller a few notes, one demanding $250,000 (this is the amount I found most often in my research).  He only obtained just under $9,000. He was apprehended in a nearby parking lot by the police.  He had a note on him that gave him several tasks to do, including the robbery, before the bomb would be detonated.  B...