True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek

Category: Uncategorized (Page 3 of 64)

Letecia Stauch: Any Substance to the Softball Bat Connection?

The obvious bludgeoning intrument is a baseball or softball bat. But is it the murder weapon? The crime scene forensics supports it, and the same murder weapon was used in the Frazee case, and arguably in the JonBenet Ramsey case as well. But is there any real evidence to support a bat of some kind used in the Stauch case?

Looking at the images we’ve seen so far of Gannon, there are none of him playing softball, nor of anyone else. There is no mention in the affidavit of Gannon being interested in sports, although hockey does come up.

In her interview with CrimeOnline Letecia said she went to buy Gannon hockey equipment because it was the only sport he took an interest in. The crucial part here is that she went to a sporting goods store that accepts second hand sporting goods…

 

Read the rest here.

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Detective Baumhover Breaks His Silence on the Watts Case

So it appears what the Watts case did was cut to the bone of the lead detective – it made him question his own beliefs. How could a God exist if such evil was allowed to take root in the world…?

What happened to the detective is unfortunate, and we extend to him our sympathy and compassion. The visuals of what he saw during the recovery from the CERVI319 tanks left an indelible scar, a trauma. This grief is a great redemption. It shows a man…

Read the rest on Patreon.

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Letecia Stauch Faked a Polygraph Test – Leaked Affidavit

Law enforcement have evidence that Letecia Stauch used Fakepolygraph.com to try to con people into believing she’d taken and passed a polygraph test when she hadn’t. Letecia supplied both the questions and answers to the faked test. Two of the questions included:

– Did you participate in any way in causing harm to your stepson?NO

-Did you participate in any way in causing the death of your stepson? NO.

The affidavit explicitly  concludes:

“In 71% of false reporting of a homicide, the reporting party is responsible for the murder. Based on Letecia’s internet history, it is reasonable to assume she was unhappily married to Mr. Stauch, and had some degree of resentment towards the family as a stepparent….two days before the murder, Letecia appeared to be researching a move to another state, [and] to a two-bedroom apartment.”

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Read the full 32-page affidavit here.

“Am I supposed to work in a fictionalized Soviet-era disaster zone and fashion my own face mask out of cloth?”

CDC recommending hospital staff use bandanas when masks run out. Hospitals are asking the public to sew masks. Here is physician Joshua Lerner’s response, on

Please don’t tell me that in the richest country in the world in the 21st century, I’m supposed to work in a fictionalized Soviet-era disaster zone and fashion my own face mask out of cloth because other Americans hoard supplies for personal use and so-called leaders sit around in meetings hearing themselves talk. I ran to a bedside the other day to intubate a crashing, likely COVID, patient. Two respiratory therapists and two nurses were already at the bedside. That’s 5 N95s masks, 5 gowns, 5 face shields and 10 gloves for one patient at one time. I saw probably 15-20 patients that shift, if we are going to start rationing supplies, what percentage should I wear precautions for?

TCRS Note: Doctors and health care workers who aren’t protected can themselves become carriers and transmitters of the disease.

Make no mistake, the CDC is loosening these guidelines because our country is not prepared. Loosening guidelines increases healthcare workers’ risk but the decision is done to allow us to keep working, not to keep us safe. It is done for the public benefit – so I can continue to work no matter the personal cost to me or my family (and my healthcare family). Sending healthcare workers to the front line asking them to cover their face with a bandana is akin to sending a soldier to the front line in a t-shirt and flip flops.

I don’t want talk. I don’t want assurances. I want action. I want boxes of N95s piling up, donated from the people who hoarded them. I want non-clinical administrators in the hospital lining up in the ER asking if they can stock shelves to make sure that when I need to rush into a room, the drawer of PPE equipment I open isn’t empty. I want them showing up in the ER asking “how can I help” instead of offering shallow “plans” conceived by someone who has spent far too long in an ivory tower and not long enough in the trenches. Maybe they should actually step foot in the trenches.

I want billion-dollar companies like 3M halting all production of any product that isn’t PPE to focus on PPE manufacturing. I want a company like Amazon, with its logistics mastery (it can drop a package to your door less than 24 hours after ordering it), halting its 2-day delivery of 12 reams of toilet paper to whoever is willing to pay the most in order to help get the available PPE supply distributed fast and efficiently in a manner that gets the necessary materials to my brothers and sisters in arms who need them.

I want Proctor and Gamble, and the makers of other soaps and detergents, stepping up too. We need detergent to clean scrubs, hospital linens and gowns. We need disinfecting wipes to clean desk and computer surfaces. What about plastics manufacturers? Plastic gowns aren’t some high-tech device, they are long shirts/smocks…made out of plastic. Get on it. Face shields are just clear plastic. Nitrile gloves? Yeah, they are pretty much just gloves…made from something that isn’t apparently Latex. Let’s go. Money talks in this country. Executive millionaires, why don’t you spend a few bucks to buy back some of these masks from the hoarders, and drop them off at the nearest hospital.

I love biotechnology and research but we need to divert viral culture media for COVID testing and research. We need biotechnology manufacturing ready and able to ramp up if and when treatments or vaccines are developed. Our Botox supply isn’t critical, but our antibiotic supply is. We need to be able to make more plastic ET tubes, not more silicon breast implants.

Let’s see all that. Then we can all talk about how we played our part in this fight. Netflix and chill is not enough while my family, friends and colleagues are out there fighting. Our country won two world wars because the entire country mobilized. We out-produced and we out-manufactured while our soldiers out-fought the enemy. We need to do that again because make no mistake, we are at war, healthcare workers are your soldiers, and the war has just begun.

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Source: Scientific American

CORONAVIRUS CONSPIRACIES: THIS TIME MISCHIEF AND MISINFORMATION COULD KILL YOU

It’s the same thing we see in true crime only on a worldwide scale. How do we tell the difference between the science and the science fiction? Part of how we navigate through the mindfield of nonsense is understanding why it’s happening, and why weak minds are more susceptible to conspiracies.

Conspiracies at a time of an international emergency are very, very dangerous. Those most susceptible to conspiracies are those lacking discernment [the weak-minded], as Obi-Wan confirms:

Want more content? Support this blog by visiting the TCRS Patreon Page.

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Right now, having achieved my goal of 10 000 subs on YouTube, I’m focused on updating theTrue Crime Rocket Science Patreon channel multiple times a day, covering everything from the Kessinger Tapes, to audiobooks [Scott Peterson right now] to insightful graphs, projections and analysis on the CoronaVirus Pandemic.

The Patreon channel currently has over 180 patrons and I want to get that number up to 500, so I’m working really hard putting up audiobooks, current analysis and ongoing series every day. I do a My CoronaVirus Diary – updated daily with a peek into what’s going on in my locked down neck of the woods – and I also do two LIVES a month on Patreon, typically on Sundays.

I don’t mind keeping CrimeRocket going, but I’ll no longer being doing it for free. If you’d like more CrimeRocket content on CrimeRocket, consider making a $5 donation on Patreon. If I receive $50 or more I’ll resume 1xweekly posts/updates here for one month. $100 or more = 2xweekly posts/updates and so on. If you do donate with a view to reviving CrimeRocket.com be sure to leave a message saying that.

Bear in mind there is a lot of quality content on the Patreon channel that’s even better than what you’ve enjoyed here including:

Chris Watts: 113 posts

Audiobooks: 59 posts [Includes 3 books on Chris Watts].

JonBenet Ramsey: 56 posts

Gannon Stauch: 26 posts

Scott Peterson: 20 posts [Includes 1 book].

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Nichol Kessinger: 15

Pyschology: 15

CoronaVirus: 30 [Includes the popular My CoronaVirus Diary]

Gannon Stauch Remains Found! – In Florida [MAP]

On the TCRS Patreon channel I was repeatedly asked where I thought Gannon’s remains were, especially as each search came up with nothing. I said I thought he was in water, perhaps under a bridge. Letecia Stauch recently spoke to someone and made a cryptic remark about not wanting to search ponds and ditches. The random specificity of this remark also sent up red flags. It turns out Gannon was found by a Florida Road crew working on the Escambia River Bridge, near the small town of Pace, in Florida. This is about 1400 miles from Colorado Springs, and 700 miles from Myrtle Beach where Gannon’s stepmother Letecia Stauch was ultimately arrested.

According to the Denver Post:

The remains were found Tuesday by a Florida Department of Transportation road crew doing work in the area around U.S. 90 and the Escambia River Bridge in Pace, Fla., said Sgt. Rich Aloy of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. The construction crew called the sheriff’s office to report the found body.

The Santa Rosa sheriff’s office continues investigating how the body got to Florida, who brought it there and how long it had been there, Alloy said.

CoronaVirus: Toiletpaper Fetishists Unite or A Time for the World to Spend Some Time Alone

There’s a scene in the movie Jerry Maguire – who’s about to get married – where a slew of Jerry’s ex-girlfriends are on tape all saying the same thing: “He cannot be alone…”

Our world feels a lot like that too. Alone? Turn to your smart phone or go online. Go to a sports game, or a bar, barbeque or party. CoronaVirus has changed all that. It’s also challenging us to see the world beyond the superficial, beyond the surface stuff.

If proper true crime reminds us of one thing it’s that the most important things are hidden, that they exist below the surface and are invisible. The CoronaVirus is a reminder how dynamics and relationships, and behavior patterns can be linked in a myriad of ways. It’s a reminder how incidental actions like touching one’s nose or face can have lifechanging consequences.

For the first time in living memory our common enemy isn’t human, or any particular group of humans. Most of us know The Infected aren’t our enemy either, even if – God forbid – one us forms part of that select [and growing] group. Because once we do, what we will want is to be treated with care and compassion.

Earlier today the author on religious matters, Karen Armstrong, spoke about coping with loneliness during CoronaVirus. She said something that resonated with me:

“I’m used to being alone. I’m a writer.”

I know the feeling too, especially after six years writing over 90 books – that’s almost constant writing, which means a fairly isolated lifestyle compared to most people. When CoronaVirus started manifesting in a big way and there was talk of isolating oneself and social distancing I found this ironic since effectively that has been my lifestyle for the past 6 years. 2020 had been my Year of Transition out of the strictly writing vocation, and certainly at the start of the year I was flirting with the idea of visiting the USA, and perhaps the Himalayas on the way back. When I heard about the CoronaVirus I thought Tahiti – in the middle of the Pacific in French Polynesia – might have to do. But alas, no one is really going anywhere except perhaps the Olympians, and even that seems a stretch at this point.

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I do want to echo what Armstrong said, that it is important that we develop the resilience and wherewithal to be alone. We don’t need to be alone for years [as I have], or as some authors tend to be, but we do need to develop the capacity to be alone with ourselves. After all, when we die, we do so – essentially – alone. We go into death, whether because of CoronaVirus or something else, we go on that journey alone. Being alone is a part of life too.

Armstrong makes another good point in her interview with Amanpour about living in terror. Many of us, including in the true crime community, tend to think of fear as an intellectual concept. We know what it is. Of course there’s a world of difference when someone else is afraid [afraid of getting divorced, afraid of social death, afraid of losing their job, their lover or their idea of everything they’ve accumulated] and when it’s you. We see the manifestation of this fear we ourselves feel when others feel the same fear at the same time.

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It’s no accident that there have been contests, bickering and fisticuffs over toilet paper. Death is shit, and we are reluctant to come into direct contact with either. We’re looking for some sort of barrier to protect ourselves – even if it’s paper thin it’ll do.

The experts provide some contemporary insight into why this happens:

“Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.”

This is an example of “zero risk bias,” in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount.

Hoarding also makes people feel secure.

True Crime Rocket Science has a simpler assessment. Buying toilet paper is a symptom of our fetishized society, and as such, a fetishized response. What is a fetish? It’s a very narrow area in which we seize control over something. As the assessment above notes, this is to allay anxiety. Compare it to an introvert who has very little experience with the opposite sex. Instead of aiming for the vagina, because of his fear, he engages instead with women’s shoes. These are safe, can be controlled, and can be interacted with in a secure environment. Of course, the fetishist is really just kidding himself, and this behavior tends to be that of a coward who is running away from the world at the same time he thinks he is engaging deliberately and purposefully with it.

Guns and ammunition is another version of this, and we’ve seen panic buying by preppers in the same way as folks buying toilet paper. Bullets are also not the ideal weapons to treat CoronaVirus. In our sexual example it’s like buying viagra and condoms in a leper colony. What you really want to do is stay home and concentrate on eating right, sleeping right and taking care of those around you. Buying a gun may make you feel secure but if we’re honest, everyone buying guns [or toilet paper] achieves almost nothing in terms of immunity against a sweeping virus.

We’re not used to fear or dealing with it. We don’t have much practice in our sanitized society dealing with very serious things – like World War. The last time the world ground to a halt during a major war was over 70 years ago. This pandemic will start to look and feel a lot like a war footing. There will be a time to hunker down, to stockpile, to batten down the hatches and – hopefully – to come out of our respective shelters into the “New Reality” that awaits us.

CoronaVirus reminds us – influencers and nobodies alike – that we are both gods and worms. Something invisible reduces all of us to the same trembling card houses. The reality is that anxiety is a function of resilience, and resilience is a function of preparation, ego and self-esteem. All of these depend to what extent we are not dependent on something. Can we stand alone for a time? How well can we stand alone?

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Karen Armstrong relates this widespread fear that we’re not used to being commonplace among the poor, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. Possibly the first wave of the pandemic will sweep lightly over Europe and America, and by lightly I mean with fairly predictable results. The real terror awaits those swarms of people who don’t have houses but shacks, who cannot afford to stockpile anything, and live and move cheek by jowl. These people don’t have the option of sequestrating themselves. The true heroes are those who will enter these death zones trying to save lives.

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Although we are entering a period of unprecedented darkness and wrenching change, 2020 was also the year in which many in the world realized the climate was seriously out of whack, but none of us really resolved to do anything about it.

Nature, instead, has interceded on our behalf. Had world governments decided on the most austere methods to mitigate climate change they couldn’t have come close, not even half as close as the measures in effect right now. In a very weird way we’re participating in an ominous experiment without really knowing it. Want to know what that experiment is?

Over the next few months we will find out whether stopping the world’s economy – almost to do a dead stop – will have an appreciable effect on cooling down the fever of the world’s climate. Let’s hope it does.

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If it does we will have some idea about a) what’s possible when necessity exceeds political will or civil practicalities and b) how much it’s going to take to turn back the climate to where it needs to go. Until now we’ve had virtually no data on whether strong mitigation will work, and how effective it might be. Hold your breath. We’re about to find out.

Watch the interview with Karen Armstrong by Christiaan Amanpour on CNN here.

Read My CoronaVirus Diary updated daily only on Patreon.

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Detective Baumhover Disables Commenting After His Second Post

It’s good to see the former lead detective bringing some sense and sanity to the ongoing chatter around the Watts case. In his second blog post, the detective issued this stern rebuke to the legions of brain-addled conspiracy nuts still obsessing over the Accessory Theory:

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CrimeRocket has struggled with the same issue which is why the comment approval setting is still in place on this site as well. TCRS has been criticized in the past for “not allowing” posts that “disagree” with the TCRS position. It’s not as simple as that. This site, like Baumhover’s, is about a particular topic and maintaining both a scientific and neutral approach to the evidence and facts of the case. TCRS doesn’t take sides, unless the truth can be considered a side. So it’s not about your take on that particular topic, and even less whose side you are on, especially when that involves spreading unfounded conspiracies, rumors or gossip, none of which are helpful in true crime, and true crime is infested with it. And as Baumhover writes, some people simply can’t respect that. Those that can’t shouldn’t be allowed to influence the conversation.

There is always a special place for the loonies, and they should stick to those places.

As all creators know, the amount of filthy, mindrotting commentary that comes through on a daily basis by obsessive, addicted followers of the Watts case is staggering. It’s even harder when one has multiple channels [for TCRS it’s this site, the growing YouTube channel, Patreon, social media and book reviews]. Of course each commenter thinks they are the only one, and that their questions are either completely original or deserving of First Amendments Rights. Each voice does matter, but at the same time, when there is a dull roar endlessly recycling the same conspiracy nonsense, it’s just easier to filter that stuff out.

TCRS welcomes the detective’s commentary online. Writing can be cathartic and Baumhover’s approach is likely to do just that. It will also bring some much needed mythbusting to this case, and hopefully by shining a light into the darker side of criminal investigations – the emotional and psychological toll investigators suffer – do some good along the way.

Visit Detective Baumhover’s blog at https://www.mental-armor.org/

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