In another life, I was a pilot, one of those superhumans who has the ability to leave the ground and fly around the sky, then return to earth to fly again. One of the airplanes I flew in my flying career was the Cessna 560 Citation V. In fact, my employer at the time was one of the first to operate the zippy little jets. I flew them for two or three years then transferred to another location and flew another version of Cessna’s famous 500 series Citation, the CE 550 Citation II. Before I went into the V, I flew its predecessor, the CE 550/SII, the Citation SII. Later on in my flying career, I moved into the British-designed Hawker 700 and 800 and 800XP. For some eighteen months, I worked as a simulator/ground instructor on Hawkers at the Flight Safety Houston Center in Houston. After leaving Flight Safety, I flew contract, including Citation Vs. Consequently, I have more than a passing interest in yesterday’s mysterious crash of a Citation V in the Virginia mountains (not far from where I lived in Virginia when I was working for a charter operator in Lynchburg.)
Based on media accounts, the Citation, which was owned by a large Donald Trump and Republican donor who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee for a flight to MacArthur Airport on Long Island. The last communication with the pilot was a few minutes after takeoff when the airplane was passing through flight level 310, or 31,000 feet above measured sea level on a standard day. The airplane continued to climb and leveled off at an altitude of FL 340 and flew a route to MacArthur, then turned around and took up a course directly to Elizabethton, a town in the Smoky Mountains in northeast Tennessee near the North Carolina state line. Although I grew up in Tennessee, all I know about Elizabethton is that I had a female pen pal who lived there when I was a young teenager. According to the airplane owner, his daughter, one of the three passengers on board the ill-fated jet, had been visiting the family’s North Carolina vacation home.
According to the owner and media reports, there was only one pilot on the airplane. This is a departure from standard procedure. The Citation V was certified as a two-pilot airplane and the type certificate requires two pilots. However, it appears that the FAA has authorized an exemption to certain pilots to operate the Citation V single-pilot. Most, if not all, airplanes can be operated by a single pilot, depending on cockpit layout. This includes heavy airline-type airplanes. The addition of a second pilot to flight crews came about as a desire to increase safety by having a second pilot on board to take over the airplane in the event of pilot incapacitation. However, a second pilot increases pilot salaries. Eliminating the second pilot may save (some) money, but it also decreases safety. Just how much money it saves is questionable since insurance rates for single-pilot operations are higher.
Speculation by “aviation experts” (who probably never flew a Citation V) is that the accident was caused by hypoxia due to a loss of cabin pressure. Comparisons are being made to the crash of a Learjet carrying professional golfer Payne Stewart, but the problem in that case was that the oxygen system may have been turned off or depleted, not loss of cabin pressure per se. Some speculate that there was a rapid decompression, but the airplane was not high enough for a rapid decompression to cut the time of useful consciousness, the time a person is able to accomplish meaningful actions due to loss of oxygen. Even at 35,000 feet, a pilot would have around 30 seconds of useful consciousness, time to don their oxygen mask and start a descent. At higher altitudes, the TUC drops to mere seconds, but the Citation never got that high. According to Flight Aware, the pilot had filed for FL 390 but the airplane leveled at FL 340.
I doubt that cabin pressure was an issue because the Citation V is equipped with a red light on the annunciator panel that will illuminate to alert the pilot when cabin pressure reaches 10,000 feet. The light will trigger the master warning light, a flashing red light that will get the pilot’s attention. Cabin altitude in excess of 10,000 feet MSL will also automatically drop the cabin oxygen masks. The pilot checklist establishes strict emergency procedures for this eventuality – the pilots immediately don oxygen masks and execute an emergency descent to a lower altitude. I had a pressurization problem once on either a V or an S/II. I was PIC but was in the right seat. (The diaphragm in the outflow valve had ruptured.) I happened to look down and noticed that the cabin was climbing rapidly. I called ATC and declared emergency and advised that we were starting down. We were at flight level 270 (27,000 feet). The cabin never reached 10,000 feet and the other pilot and I never donned oxygen masks.
I suspect the problem was pilot incapacitation of another kind, of the physical variety. The pilot, one Jeff Hefner, was reported to have been a retired airline pilot who flew for Southwest Airlines for 25 years and had over 25,000 hours in the air. Although his age has not been reported, he was probably well into his sixties and possibly older. (He was actually 69. He was also an owner of a flight operation and was apparently providing pilot services to the airplane owner.) Federal regulations dictate that airline pilots must not be older than 65 years of age, a change from age 60 which stood for most of the history of the airline industry. Unfortunately, older men (and women) are in declining health and sudden death is not remote. I knew a pilot who flew a Citation single-pilot for a company here in Houston. He was single and lived alone. He failed to show up for a flight one day and when someone went to his house to check on him, they found him dead. Another pilot I knew went to sleep on his sofa and never woke up. Both of these pilots were in their fifties. Heart attacks are not the only problems facing us. One of my coworkers at Flight Safety suddenly fell out in the simulator and had a seizure, One of my friends, not a pilot, recently started having seizures. He turned out to have a brain tumor. I suspect that Hefner suffered a heart attack or some other physical ailment as the airplane was climbing and slumped forward in his shoulder harness. He had no copilot to help him, and the airplane was on its own.
Citation Vs might be “little jets” but they are surprisingly sophisticated. They are equipped with flight management systems that, when the autopilot is engaged, will fly the airplane without input from the pilot. FMSs utilize GPS and ground-based radio navigation systems to fly along a preprogrammed course from takeoff to destination. Pilot operations are only required for takeoff and landing. When I was flying Citation Vs, we routinely engaged the autopilot right after takeoff and didn’t disengage it until just prior to landing. All the pilot has to do is set the altitude in the altitude prompter on the instrument panel and the engaged autopilot will level the airplane and hold the altitude until the pilot resets the prompter. Apparently, the Citation V flew the planned route to MacArthur then, after the pilot made no input, the system picked up a direct course back to the takeoff point at Elizabethton. It probably flew to the point of fuel exhaustion then when the engines lost power, went into an out-of-control spin into the ground.
In regard to aircraft pressurization and oxygen, airplanes are pressurized by air taken from the engines. It passes through an air cycle machine and is pumped into the cabin as conditioned air. Cabin pressure is controlled by outflow valves mounted at the rear of the pressurized vessel. Diaphragms in the outflow valves are controlled by the pressure controller, which allows the valves to open enough to allow enough air to flow out to keep the cabin at the preset altitude. Oxygen is NOT pumped into the cabin. Oxygen in the cabin is relative to the cabin pressure altitude, which is set to an altitude up to 10,000 feet, the maximum altitude at which most people can function without becoming hypoxic. Normal procedure is to set the planned cruise altitude in the pressurization system then the system will maintain the maximum pressure differential for that altitude. (A recommended procedure is to set the system to 500 feet above the planned altitude to allow a cushion for bumps.) Citation Vs have an oxygen system with masks for the pilot and drop-down masks for the passengers, but it is only used to provide oxygen in the event of loss of cabin pressurization. (Some pilots breathe oxygen at night prior to landing as it sharpens the wits.) There is no on-off function of the oxygen controls, which can be set for crew only, for crew and passengers or dump masks in the event the masks don’t drop automatically. Citation Vs are equipped with quick-don oxygen masks for the pilots. All the pilot has to do to put it on is pick it up and sweep it over his/her face. Oxygen flow is then automatic.
Much has been made over the airplane “flying through restricted airspace.” It didn’t. The restricted airspace over Washington, DC only extends up to flight level 180 (18,000 feet MSL) and the Citation was well above it. The reason NORAD sent fighters aloft was because air traffic control had lost contact with the airplane, and it had taken up a course other than its flight plan route. This is a common practice. The fighters would have been sent up even if the airplane hadn’t been headed for D.C. They were launched because the airplane wasn’t flying its planned route. Authorities were alerted when it failed to land at MacArthur and turned back toward Elizabethton. It’s probable that FAA air traffic controllers thought the airplane was “no radio” after they lost contact with the pilot. Procedures for loss of communications are to continue the flight as cleared and land at the destination. It wouldn’t have been until the pilot failed to begin a descent to land at MacArthur that ATC would have realized there was a problem other than loss of communications.
My last flight was in 2010, thirteen years ago, and there are many things I’ve forgotten about the various airplane systems. I flew airplanes with Global, Sperry and Honeywell flight management systems. It seems to me that the three systems were programmed to return to point of origin in the event of an unexpected action, such as failing to land. In this instance, the airplane not only didn’t land, it never left FL 340. Considering that the track was on a beeline for Elizabethton, it’s pretty obvious that the FMS was locked on to it. The route to MacArthur was apparently along a Jetway and a published arrival east of the DC area but after it made the turn, it was headed direct to Elizabethton.
The main thing I get out of this is to question the wisdom of granting single-pilot exemptions for jets. The original exemptions were for light jets, meaning jets weighing less than 12,500 pounds. Except for jets, airplanes weighing less than 12,500 pounds do not require pilots to be type-rated and do not require a second pilot. The Citation V grosses out at 16,500 pounds. When the V was certified, the medium category was 12,500-300,000 pounds, it has since been changed to 16,500-300,000 pounds. Jet airplanes are fast and things happen quickly. Even though an airplane is classified as light, many are quite sophisticated, as much as any airline-type transport. In order to be type-rated for an airplane, all the pilot has to do is pass an evaluation which mainly involves flying instrument approaches and maintaining specified parameters while doing certain manuevers. One approach has to be flown with an engine out. Passing the flight check only means the pilot is competent, not that they are exceptional in any way. Obtaining a single-pilot exemption involves passing the same flight check without a copilot. I was a simulator evaluator, all that was required for the flight check was minimal competency. A barely competent pilot can be granted a single-pilot exemption.
I did not know Mr. Hefner and know nothing about him other than that he was a retired airline pilot. I doubt that his competency, or lack of it, had anything to do with the accident. On the other hand, his age and physical health might have. There is a reason the FAA mandates a retirement age for airline pilots of 65 (and 60 for decades before that.) It is because our bodies start slowing down and become susceptible to disease and mental acuity decreases – and we don’t realize it. During the year and a half when I worked for Flight Safety, I trained pilots of all ages. I saw some older pilots who really shouldn’t have been flying. I don’t know if they had lost competency due to aging or had been bad pilots all along. In one instance I had a foreign client and because he was there by himself, the center put one of the instructors in the right seat, the Hawker assistant course manager. John was around 70 and active in the local warbird community. Because the client was Swiss, I was training him in mountains. I had them takeoff from Denver and fly across the Rockies to Aspen. When we were right over the Rockies, I gave them a rear bay overheat light. Now, the first item on the emergency checklist for that problem is to turn off the air valves one at a time and see if the light goes out. If it doesn’t go out, then the pilot is to turn both valves off and initiate an emergency descent. I had them on this route for a reason, I wanted the Swiss pilot to think. As soon as the light came on, John called for an emergency descent – from FL 180 over mountains over 14,000 feet! The Swiss pilot didn’t think – he did what John told him to do. If they had been in an airplane over the mountains, they’d have been dead. I don’t know why John reacted the way he did, whether it was age or something else. He was a flight examiner and should have known the procedure. I remember one retired airline pilot who came through the initial course to get a Hawker type rating. The man shouldn’t have been flying! He could barely hold a heading or altitude. Another older pilot came through who had worked for my previous employer before I went to work for them. The guy was bad! I don’t know if he had always been bad or if he was slipping because of age. Not all older pilots are bad. I had one client from my former employer. Jerry was 65, he did everything perfectly. Speaking of my former employer, after I accepted an early retirement offer and retired at age 55, one of their pilots laid down on his sofa to take a nap and never woke up. He and I were about the same age.
Although pilots are subject to regular medical examinations – every two years for private pilots, once a year for commercial pilots and every six months for airline transport-rated pilots including an EKG – some medical conditions can be waivered. Some conditions such as low blood sugar not controllable by medication cannot be waivered but most can. (Part of the flight physical is a questionnaire regarding particular medical conditions. Pilots are not always honest.) I failed a flight physical due to high blood sugar, but my FAA medical examiner applied for a waiver and the FAA granted it on the basis that my diabetes was controlled by medication. I continued to fly for almost a decade with a waiver (exemption) as long as I could otherwise meet the requirements of the FAA physical.
Another factor with all of this is the quality of the instructors at Flight Safety and the other flight training companies responsible for training pilots. Many of them are simply lacking in experience. I was the only instructor out of about six or eight Hawker instructors who had ever flown the airplane operationally. Flight Safety would – and probably still does – hire a new instructor then send them through the initial type rating course for whatever airplane they would be working with then send them through a refresher course to see how the course was taught. Another instructor would observe them until they were ready to be assigned to instruct students. NONE of them knew how to operate the flight management system, even though Flight Safety and the FAA required instructors to have their clients use everything in the simulator just like they would in the airplane. The simulator had a Universal FMS while I was used to the Global (GNS) system. I could figure it out and had my clients use it. I worked for Flight Safety through a massive layoff due to fallout from 9/11. The day I was finally let go I was in the pilot’s computer room cleaning out my files when I heard two instructors in another program talking about how they knew nothing about the GPS approaches the FAA had developed and which they were supposed to be teaching their new clients. We had one senior instructor/examiner in the Houston center who had NEVER flown any jet airplane operationally. He had started out as a flight instructor in Flight Safety’s academy in Florida then had been type-rated in a jet – all in the simulator. In short, just because a pilot has completed a course at one of the flight simulator companies doesn’t mean they received quality instruction. Pilots are trained to minimums, and their performance may be sketchy.
A question that would undoubtedly be raised if the pilot had suffered a medical issue as I suspect is – what about the passengers? In the Citation V, the passengers are usually in the back of the airplane and there is a partition between them and the pilot. Although there is an opening to allow access to the cockpit, the pilots are not clearly visible to the passengers unless they go up front. They can possibly see the pilot’s shoulders and that is about it. Pilots usually wear headsets and passengers don’t hear the radios. My experience is that passengers will often fall asleep. The Citation passengers may have very well slept through the whole thing. Or, they may have been awake and knew things were bad. We’ll never know.
The NTSB will issue a preliminary report in a few days, usually around 10 days after the incident. The actual report will take a year to complete. Until then, all we can do is speculate but I won’t be surprised if the final report is pilot incapacitation due to a medical condition.
The above link is to a story from back in July about documents President Trump declassified and ordered the FBI and DOJ to release to the public, but they refused to release them. The documents pertain to the conduct of US intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, toward candidate, then President Donald Trump during his campaign and later presidency and the investigation of alleged connections to Russia. President Trump ordered the DOJ to release the documents during the final days of his presidency and the agency flat-out refused. It is my educated guess that these are the documents the FBI were after when they raided the president’s Florida home. The Washington Post ran an article in which the author claimed the documents are related to nuclear weapons but I suspect this is a smokescreen to divert attention from the real documents.
Now, it so happens I know a little bit about classified information and a tad about nuclear weapons. As a non-commissioned officer in the US Air Force, I held a Secret then a Top Secret security clearance. My security clearance was downgraded to Secret after I transferred to a unit where there was no need for me to have access to Top Secret information any longer. Most people are probably not aware of it, but most Air Force jobs require at least a Secret security clearance even though most probably never have access to any classified information at all. I can only think of a few occasions when I had access to Secret documents, or even Confidential for that matter. When I enlisted in the Air Force, I had to fill out a document authorizing the Air Force to conduct a background investigation on me. While in basic training, I was selected for training as a jet aircraft mechanic, a skill that required a Secret clearance, not because airplanes themselves are classified but because some missions are. I was trained on B-47s, nuclear bombers that were being phased out and replaced by B-52s. I could be assigned to any airplane with more than two engines. Some flew classified missions.
The US government has been hiding information from the public since George Washington was president. Not all secret information pertains to the military either. Some of it – much of it perhaps – is political. Some is to keep foreign governments from learning information that might be beneficial to them in negotiations but much of it is to keep government actions secret from the American public. Some information is hidden from Congress, which American presidents starting with George Washington came to see as opponents who keep them from carrying out their plans. Just when the United States government specified the three levels of classification is unclear, but it was probably during World War II when the government was secretly working on the atomic bomb (a secret the Soviets were well aware of because someone in the program was feeding them information.) Although documents are classified as Confidential, Secret and Top Secret, some documents were also designated as “Restricted” and some as “NoForn,” meaning no foreigners were allowed to see them, even though they hadn’t been given a security classification. Some were also designated as “For Official Use Only,” meaning they weren’t to be made available to the media or anyone other than those who needed access to them. It’s been a long time, but my recollection is that aircraft operating manuals and other manuals I was issued contained a “For Official Use Only” statement on the cover page.
I was awarded a Secret security clearance either while I was in basic or after I started aircraft mechanic training at Amarillo, Texas. A military member’s security clearance level was posted on transfer and some other orders. A security clearance was required for aircraft maintenance, as well as most other Air Force career fields. Only a few did not require a clearance, one of which was cooks and bakers. I know this because I once encountered a young airman who had been cleared at the highest level but lost his clearance. He was formerly a security technician, meaning he was assigned to the Air Force Security Service, an agency responsible for collecting information by eavesdropping on foreign communications. (They also eavesdrop on US military and government communications.) A call went out Air Force-wide for airmen to cross-train into the aircraft loadmaster career field. It was a popular field because it involved flying and relatively few Air Force enlisted personnel are on aircrew duty. The loadmaster field required a Secret clearance. He was already cleared at the highest level but for some reason a new background check was run on him. It turned out he had gotten married and his new wife had family in the Soviet Union, which made him a security risk. He lost his security clearance and could no longer be a loadmaster nor could he go back to his previous field, so he went to the chow hall as an apprentice cook.
The young cook had previously held what was known in the Air Force as a “Crypto” clearance. Although the government only identifies three levels of security clearance – Confidential, Secret and Top Secret – there are higher levels of classification within the Top Secret level. The Crypto clearance the cook had held was awarded to men and women involved in coding and decoding of classified messages. There was also another aspect of the field, the decoding of intercepted communications of foreign nations. At the time, the Air Force Security Service was an Air Force major command but it had a relationship with the National Security Agency, a super-secret government agency that wags referred to as “No Such Agency.” The Army and Navy had their own commands that reported information its personnel gathered to NSA. AFSS operated classified collection sites at various locations around the world. The command also maintained squadrons operating airplanes equipped with special electronic intercept equipment, including two squadrons with C-130s, one in Japan and the other in Germany. The modified C-130s featured a capsule in the cargo compartment with stations for intercept operators and translators. Their mission was intercepting Soviet, Chinese, North Korean and North Vietnamese radio communications, particularly to determine their air defense methods. The Navy has an identical mission to determine antisubmarine methods using modified P-3s. A number of US airplanes have been shot down in or near hostile territory while on such “sneaky Pete” missions. The AFSS, the Army Security Service and NSA also had a mission of monitoring telephones and other communications of US military and government personnel to prevent the revelation of classified information. In one of my assignments, there were signs above the telephones warning users to be careful what we said, that the phones were monitored. I once worked with an Army veteran who was in the Army’s equivalent to the AFSS. He told me he was once assigned to monitor communications of an Army general in Europe and picked up conversations of the officer with his mistress.
I spent twelve years in the Air Force in the sixties and seventies. I was on flying status as an aircrew member on transport airplanes for almost eleven of those years. Three of my assignments were in squadrons with a mission transporting nuclear weapons in addition to other, more routine, missions. Two were overseas where our nuke mission was for nuclear war. Although the mission itself was Secret, it was Top Secret because of where we would go if the unthinkable happened and we were launched. It was because of that mission that I was awarded a Top Secret clearance. We spent a week on alert in a restricted area on an established airbase. By restricted, I mean the area was fenced in and guarded. Our C-130 was parked alongside two tactical fighters loaded with nuclear weapons. We were loaded with nuclear weapons that we would fly to a Top Secret base where the two fighters would return to be loaded for a second mission after dropping their bombs on a hostile target. Although all of us held Top Secret clearances, I was told that the only thing actually classified Top Secret was a sealed envelope in the mission folder our navigator had been given. The navigator was designated as the classifieds officer on the crew. We spent a week on ten-minute alert, meaning we had ten minutes from the time the alert sounded to get to the restricted area, get to our airplane, start the engines and be ready to taxi. It was a stressful week because we were tied to the alert sirens and flashing red lights around the base and because we knew that if we were actually ordered to taxi out and take off, the world would never be the same again. I was on the same mission three years later at the same location when I was assigned to another C-130 wing at another base. Our wing sent crews to the location to support the same mission I had been involved in previously.
Between my two overseas assignments with the Top Secret mission, I was assigned to a C-141 squadron in the United States. Our squadron was unique because we were designated as a special missions squadron, meaning we were responsible for moving nuclear weapons and nuclear components around the world. However, we didn’t have a wartime mission as the squadrons I was in overseas had – our mission was logistical. Although I held a Top Secret clearance, I don’t think I was ever assigned to a mission that was classified Top Secret. Rather, they were classified Secret. One mission involved moving small nuclear warheads from an overseas location to a base in the United States with a restricted area where nuclear warheads were stored. We loaded the 75-pound “birdcages” using a classified manual, probably Secret, that was part of our mission kit. When we finished, we put the manual back in the mission kit then locked the airplane and it was put under guard until we departed the following day.
After my second overseas assignment, I was assigned to a squadron with a brand new transport type and we didn’t have a nuclear mission. A year or so after I joined the squadron, the Air Force decided there were too many people with Top Secret clearances. Consequently, many clearances were downgraded to Secret, including mine. I can count on my hands the number of times I attended a classified briefing during my 12 years of military service and most of those were the daily intelligence briefings during my time on alert. I attended a classified briefing in my first squadron in the States when we briefed on a brand new mission the squadron had been selected to train for. The second was when I attended an orientation briefing in my new unit at my first overseas assignment. Orientation briefings acquaint new personnel with their new unit. This one was classified. Whenever I attended a classified briefing, I was required to present my military ID card and sign a roster.
I say all this to provide some background. I’m prompted to write this because the Washington Post recently claimed that the raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-Lago resort and home was due to him having nuclear-related documents. I seriously doubt that this is true. The only possible documents he might possibly have had access to would have been those designating the targets for US nuclear weapons in the event of war. If any such documents were in the White House, they would have been in the briefcase carried by the officer assigned to the president to carry the “Football.”
Since the 1960s when the nuclear mission started including missile-firing submarines, the US nuclear mission has been a “triad” of air, land and sea launching platforms – bombers, fighter-bombers, missile silos, submarines and some ships. Each component has its own targets. While a president probably approves the targets, I doubt that they would be involved in selecting them and I doubt that a list of targets would have been kept in the White House. If they were, they would not have been where they could have been packed up when Donald Trump was moving out of the White House, they would have been kept in a secure location accessible only by those “with a need to know.” Contrary to popular belief, nuclear weapons are not Top Secret, they’re Secret. Nuclear weapons have been part of the US military arsenal since 1945. It’s their locations (some of them) and targets that are Top Secret. In spite of what the Washington Post claimed, I seriously doubt that there were any nuclear-related documents at Mar-a-Lago. For that matter, I doubt that there were any classified documents there at all. On the other hand, there could have been declassified documents related to Donald Trump’s presidency.
When I decided to write a book about the C-130 tactical airlift mission, I contacted the Air Force to gain access to the historical records. Air Force historical records are routinely classified for thirty years, or they were at that time. I was informed that such records are classified for that period in order to (1) protect military secrets, (2) protect classified military equipment that might still be in use, (3) protect relationships with foreign countries and (4) to protect reputations. Some records, such as records related to the use of the atomic bomb, were classified for fifty years as were other records that might possibly be embarrassing to officials from that time, namely President Harry Truman. The report of interviews of the Japanese generals who would have commanded the Japanese forces opposing an Allied invasion of Kyushu were classified for fifty years. Here is the report if anyone is interested – JapaneseGenerals.pdf (sammcgowan.com).
I strongly suspect that the Mar-a-Logo raid was conducted because of the information referred to in the link preceding this article – to protect the reputation of the FBI and certain political figures, including Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. During the final year of his presidency, right down to the final day, President Trump declassified numerous documents related to FBI and NSA actions taken against him, particularly those related to Operation CROSSFIRE HURRICANE, an FBI operation attempting to somehow link him to Russia. The FBI planted an informant inside the Trump campaign and attempted to persuade others to inform for them. The DOJ inspector general later determined that the DOJ, particularly the FBI, had acted improperly in obtaining warrants to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, a former Naval officer who had spent time in Russia (and provided intelligence to the CIA) and had become a petroleum consultant. The FBI also took questionable actions involving George Papadopoulos. Although he insists he did nothing wrong, the FBI coerced him into pleading guilty to “lying to the FBI,” a catch-all regulation the FBI put forth as a means of obtaining a conviction of some kind when they lack evidence of anything else. They routinely use it after bankrupting individuals they have under investigation. Another example is Lt. General Mike Flynn, who got crosswise with the Obama administration, who then sought to discredit him after Donald Trump named him to his cabinet. After Donald Trump was elected president, Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the NSA, paid a visit to the president-elect and allegedly informed him that the Obama Whitehouse was spying on him. Trump moved his headquarters out of Trump Tower to New Jersey the next day. President Trump later claimed Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. The media poo-pooed the claim but it was later revealed that it was true. The FBI or NSA were monitoring a computer system in the building for sure. Admiral Rogers had not gone along with actions taken by other senior intelligence officials and took a less aggressive stand in a report Obama released just before Trump’s inauguration. The admiral DID NOT advise Obama of his visit beforehand. In retaliation, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, claimed he had recommended that the admiral be fired.
The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are both extra-constitutional organizations. There was no Department of Justice in the Federal government prior to 1870 when the Grant Administration established it, ostensibly to “prosecute Klan members.” However, there is a problem with this claim – the Klan, which was confined mostly to Tennessee, had already disbanded. The original Klan was formed in Pulaski, Tennessee as a fraternal organization of former Confederates modeled on college fraternities and other men’s organizations of the time. The founders came up with some silly rituals and costumes – not the peaked white hat and robe of the Twentieth Century Klan. They started meeting in a large mansion outside of town that had been damaged by a tornado. They established “guards” at the entrance to the drive who told passers-by that they were the ghosts of soldiers that had been killed in the war. This had a frightening effect on local Negroes, who were superstitious. There had been a lot of problems from the recently freed slaves but the news of the “ghosts” caused them to moderate their behavior. The Tennessee governor, William G. “Parson” Brownlow was a Radical Republican and he had disenfranchised former Confederates and was causing other problems. Tennessee Confederate veterans realized the Klan could be used as a weapon. Their activities escalated to violence. However, the Klan disbanded when Brownlow left the governorship in 1869 and went to Washington as a US senator. His successor, Dewitt Clinton Senter, who had been a Radical, changed his mind about treatment of former Confederates and abolished most of Brownlow’s policies. With Brownlow out of the way, the Klan leadership decided there was no longer a need for the organization and disbanded. Senter disbanded the “militia” Brownlow had formed and re-enfranchised former Confederates. (To his detriment, they voted him out of office the next election.) Historians claim the new DOJ prosecuted hundreds of “Klan” members prior to the end of Reconstruction seven years after it was formed.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations came into being almost forty years after the DOJ was formed, and without Congressional approval. The Constitution left most matters to the States and no organization had been created to investigate Federal crimes. The only Federal law enforcement/investigative organization was the Secret Service, which was part of the Treasury Department and was primarily responsible for the investigation of financial crimes. Washington established the US Marshals whose primary role was serving Federal warrants. They later enforced laws on Federal lands, including US territories in the West. President Theodore Roosevelt established an investigative unit within the DOJ by executive order. The DOJ had been lobbying Congress for its own investigative unit but had been opposed on the basis that such a unit wasn’t necessary. When Congress returned from recess, they let the new organization stand. The new Bureau of Investigations set out to garner more power for itself. During World War I, it took for itself the responsibility of finding enemy agents. When J. Edgar Hoover became head, he continued the effort to expand the bureau and garner more power for it and himself. The FBI achieved fame as it battled various gangs of criminals involved in Federal crimes, primarily robbing banks.
Until recent years, the FBI was led by men with strong conservative bent. That has changed as more and more college graduates joined the Agency whose political views are leftwing. The same thing has happened in the Central Intelligence Agency, starting during the Carter Administration. Although the FBI is supposed to be apolitical, the agency seems to have become politicized with certain presidents using it as their personal police force. The investigation of Donald Trump as a candidate, then as President of the United States is without precedent. Although the DOJ IG investigation of DOJ actions regarding the investigation of President Trump did not find that the actions of particular agents were politically motivated, neither did it rule it out. The timing of the raid on Donald Trump’s home – three months before a Congressional election and as candidates are starting to declare for the 2024 presidential election, and with a current president whose standing in the polls is at rock bottom – is very suspicious.
A few weeks ago a “woke” academic named Timothy Tyson unscrupulously “released” the unpublished memoir of now 88-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the then 21-year-old 5’2”, 103-pound white storekeeper at the center of the incident that led to the beating and shooting of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy in Money, Mississippi in 1955 and the acquittal of his killers at trial a little over a month later. The death of the teenager has been a major focal point of civil rights leaders and black activists ever since. Most blame Mrs. Bryant for what happened, mainly because she’s the only one still alive. Numerous attempts have been made to have her indicted, well, for something! None have succeeded. Although the memoir has not been released to the public – members of the media have read it and “’splain’ed” it to the rest of us without letting us read it and decide for ourselves – excerpts reveal that Mrs. Bryant, now Mrs. Donham, never recanted her account of what happened as Tyson claimed in a 2017 book he wrote about Till. He obtained the memoir from Mrs. Donham in 2008 when he interviewed her for his book about Till and submitted it to the University of North Carolina archives after promising that it would not be released to the public until 2036.[1] Tyson reneged on his word after “researchers,” actually members of Till’s family, recently came across a 67-year-old warrant against Mrs. Bryant in a box in a Mississippi courthouse basement.
Activists claim the document is justification for arresting the elderly woman on the basis that Mississippi has no statute of limitations for kidnapping. Tyson claims the memoir is “evidence” and decided to hand copies to the media. However, it’s not new – he gave a copy to the FBI more than a decade ago. At some point, Tyson went to the FBI and claimed that Mrs. Donham had recanted. They opened a new investigation. However, the FBI determined that there was no way to prove his claim. FBI agents interviewed Mrs. Donham and she denied that she had ever recanted and added no new information. Furthermore, the FBI found holes in Tyson’s explanation of his claims. The investigation was closed. The FBI also determined that even if Mrs. Donham lied in the testimony she had given more than a half century before – the judge refused to allow her to testify before the jury – they didn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute and neither did the state of Mississippi since the statute of limitations on perjury had expired in 1960.[2] They had no basis to open a hate crime investigation because the murder had occurred long before such legislation became law.
The recent investigation was the second attempt to have Mrs. Donham indicted. The first was in 2004 after the death of Emmett Till’s mother and publication of her memoir when family members convinced the FBI to open an investigation on the basis that others had been involved in the abduction and murder of Till besides the two men who were tried and acquitted – then later admitted the killing in interviews with Alabama investigative reporter William Bradford Huie. The FBI report is available on the FBI web site. I have read the report. There’s little evidence in it, if any. Most of it is nothing but hearsay. Some is interviews of people (2) who were present outside the store. One was Simeon Wright, who evidently was one of those who went to Mississippi to press to have the case reopened, the other was a female cousin who was present at the store. Wright, who was 12 at the time, claimed he was the one who went in the store and got Till. He claims Till was only in the store alone with Mrs. Bryant for “less than a minute” but offers no proof of how he made this determination. However, the accounts they gave differ substantially from what investigative reporter William Bradford Huie was told in Chicago a few months after the incident.
In the late summer of 1955, the black community was shocked at the news that a young Chicagoan named Emmett Till had been brutally murdered in Mississippi. News of the boy’s death was picked up by black newspapers and magazines and photographs were published of his battered body. Blacks in Chicago were incensed. They became even more incensed when the two men arrested for his kidnapping and murder, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, Bryant’s half-brother, were acquitted by an all-white jury at their trial in Sumner, Mississippi the following month. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) made the murdered teenager a poster boy for their civil rights campaign and newspapers ran countless editorials decrying the verdict. Over the past sixty-seven years, black activists, journalists, film makers, Till’s relatives and “historians” have done their best, with great success, to revise the story to suit their own purposes.
The NAACP was hated by many whites, especially in the Mid-South. The organization was founded in 1909 by a consortium of progressive whites, many of them professed socialists, and blacks. Included among the founders were W.E.B. Dubois, a black socialist who eventually left the United States and joined the Communist Party, and Ida B. Wells. Ida Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, a town in north Mississippi just south of Memphis, Tennessee. After the Civil War, her father became a member of the Loyal League, a black vigilante group founded by free blacks who came South after the Civil War, who harassed their white neighbors, particularly former Confederates. Although a child, Wells was active in the League, which was largely responsible for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. She lost her parents to yellow fever as a teenager and moved to Memphis where she continued her radical antiracial activities. She became a newspaper publisher, publishing articles designed to inflame racial hatred. She frequently wrote about lynching after three black men that she knew were hung. They were lynched after a mob broke them out of the Memphis jail. However, the piece that led to Wells being run out of Memphis was one she wrote in which she essentially said that white women craved sex with black men.[3] She had conveniently left town and gone to New York “on vacation” before the piece ran. A few days after it came out, the newspaper office was burned to the ground. Wells never went back. She remained in the North and continued her campaign against lynching. The NAACP gained little support in the South until a black woodcutter named Elle Persons (or Parsons) was burned to death in 1917 by an angry mob after he was arrested for the brutal murder of a young white teenager named Antionette Rappel. The pretty fifteen-year-old high school student left home for school one morning and never came home. Her body was later found in a woods a half mile from Persons’ home. Her head had been cut off with an ax and there was evidence she had been raped. Persons confessed to the murder but many, blacks in particular, believed the confession was coerced. After Persons was taken off a train and burned to death in front of a large crowd, the NAACP was finally successful in forming a chapter in Memphis. NAACP chapters soon sprang up throughout the South, including Mississippi.
Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till was a fourteen-year-old Negro from Chicago whose relatives had gone “straight north” from Mississippi. In the summer of 1955 he was invited by his great-uncle (by marriage), Moses, or Mose, “Preacher” Wright to spend time in Mississippi, where his mother had been born, to see what it was like.[4] Although articles about Till focus on his youth, most leave out that he was big for his age. Wright testified that the stocky five foot, five inch teenager “looked like a man.” In her memoir, Carolyn Bryant Donham says she thought he was in his late teens or early twenties when he came in her store. Although apologists, including his mother, claim he wasn’t a smart-aleck, he was described as one by some. She even hinted at it in her description of what she told him before he left on the trip. At the time of his death, he was living in the South Side of Chicago in a predominantly or all-black neighborhood. He and his mother lived on the second floor of a two-family home owned by his grandmother. In South Side, he was part of a culture characterized by fast-talking and violence. He had not lived in South Side all his life, though. His mother was from Argo, a predominately white community just west of Chicago, and Emmett lived there off and on for much of his childhood. He had polio as a child and had a stutter as a result. Preacher Wright testified that he was difficult to understand. However, Carolyn Bryant testified that he spoke clearly. Wright also allegedly told his abductors that the boy “don’t have good sense. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Young Emmett did not spend all of his time in South Side, however. He had family and friends in Argo, where his mother grew up, a community that had become part of the village of Summit. Named for the Argo mill, it is a multi-racial community – the 2000 census showed the population to be 61% white and only 12.5% black, with a number of the people of Polish, German and Irish ancestry. His grandparents had settled there when they came up from Mississippi in the 1920s. Other family members had settled there as well. Moses Wright would settle there when he left Mississippi after the trial of Emmett Till’s accused murders. His mother related in her memoir that from age ten, Emmett road the streetcar to Argo to visit his relatives and friends.
His mother, Mamie Carthan Till-Mobley, claimed later that she warned the boy about his mouth before he left on the trip, advising him that he should be respectful to whites to avoid violence. She told him that Mississippi was not Chicago. She told him to say, “yes sir” and “no sir” and not to smart off.[5] He said he would. He took a train to Mississippi with his great-uncle. Another cousin came down later. When he got to Mississippi, he didn’t take his mother’s advice. Instead of addressing whites with “yes sir” and “no sir” he said “yeah” and “nah.” He regaled his Mississippi cousins and their neighbors with stories about Chicago, allegedly including how he had sex with white girls, a taboo subject in Mississippi. On August 24, he was involved in the incident that led to his murder. Exactly what happened that Wednesday evening is disputed. The accounts given at the time have been challenged by an army of black “historian”/activists and white leftists along with Till’s family, all eager to absolve Till of any blame for what happened. According to contemporary accounts, Carolyn Bryant’s testimony and her memoir, Till made sexual advances toward the 21-year-old white owner of a store in Money.[6]
Carolyn Holloway Bryant was a young married women with two children. She had grown up in Indianola, Mississippi, a town just west of Greenwood. An attractive young woman (she had participated in local beauty contests) of five foot two inches height and weighing 103 pounds, she dropped out of high school at age 17 to marry 20-year-old soldier Roy Bryant whom she had known and been dating since age 14. Roy served in the Army with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina during the first years of their marriage. He came home in 1953 and took over the store in Money and operated it with his wife. He also drove a truck for one of his brothers.[7] They lived in two rooms in the back of the store with their two small children. Carolyn did not stay overnight at the store when Roy was away, she stayed with relatives. They considered it unsafe for her to be there alone at night. The area teemed with blacks. Some were from sharecropping families, some were employees of local farmers or businessmen like Roy Bryant’s family. The five older children were Milams and the six younger were Bryants. Eight of the siblings were boys and three, Bryants, were girls. Male family members made a living running stores, operating trucks and renting agricultural equipment, particularly cotton pickers, to local farmers. They provided the cotton pickers with black drivers.
Money is a small crossroads community, like so many in rural America, on the eastern side of the rich Mississippi Delta land on the Tallahatchie a few miles north of Greenwood. In 1955 Money consisted of a post office, a filling station, three stores – one of which belonged to the Bryants – a cotton gin and a school. To the east the state becomes hilly and is populated more by small farmers while the Delta is home to the large cotton plantations for which Mississippi is famous. The region once belonged to the Choctaw. They sold their land to the United States in 1831 after the Treaty of Dancing Creek and settlers moved in and established cotton plantations using slave labor. After the Civil War and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, the slaves who had worked on the plantations remained as farm hands. Some became sharecroppers.[8]
In the 1950s the Mississippi Delta looked like a Third World nation. I grew up in rural West Tennessee about 100 miles northeast of Memphis, which sits in the corner of the state just north of Mississippi. Money is about the same distance south of Memphis. My homeland was rolling hills, river bottoms and woods. We raised cotton as did other farmers – we picked it ourselves – but we only had a few acres.[9] We also raised corn and livestock. The big cotton plantations were west of us in the flat lands east of the Mississippi. Although the West Tennessee bottomlands are technically not part of the Mississippi Delta as it is defined, the land and culture are the same. We had blacks around – they were called “colored people” – but not in large numbers. Most blacks lived in town. I don’t recall there being many black sharecroppers – most sharecroppers in the area were white. Rather, local blacks either worked for the farmers in the region, as domestics working for some of the wealthier families – mostly in town – or had jobs. About once a year my family would drive some 100 miles to Memphis for an outing which usually included a visit to the Memphis Zoo. What struck me was that once we entered the flat Mississippi bottom region between where we lived and Memphis, we started seeing large numbers of what most would call shacks, all occupied by black families.[10] Sometime in the 50s, probably around 1958, my family took a trip to Leesville, Louisiana to visit my aunt and uncle who was in the Army stationed at Fort Polk. Once we got south of Memphis, we were in a different world. We passed mile after mile of ramshackle shotgun houses with black families sitting on the porch or standing around in the yard. It was in the spring and there was no cotton to hoe or pick. Huge cotton fields surrounded the houses. It was like that all the way to Greenville, Mississippi where we crossed the Mississippi River into southeast Arkansas and continued like that as we went south into Louisiana and across the state to Leesville.
I graduated from high school in 1963 and enlisted in the Air Force some two months later. The Army and Air Force induction center was at the VA hospital in Memphis. There were five of us, all white, who had been sent there by our recruiters and a large group of colored boys who had enlisted in the Army or been sent there by their draft boards. Most, if not all, were from Mississippi.[11] We all went through the mandatory enlistment physical and took a battery of tests. One of the Army medics who took us through the process told us that they’d have to send nearly all the blacks home. Either they couldn’t pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test or they had diseases such as syphilis and TB that barred them from military service. He said it was the same every week. (Two years later the Johnson Administration ordered the military to start accepting men with substandard scores. They called it Project 100,000 – it was a disaster.) Such were the kinds of young blacks often found in the Mississippi Delta. It was not the kind of place where a white woman should be alone, especially after dark.
Mississippians and other Southerners were well aware that there were different classes of blacks, an awareness dating back to slavery when slaves performed various functions. Some were “house Negroes” who worked in the plantation houses as servants, some were craftsman who worked as carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, seamstresses and the like and some were “field Negroes” who were only capable of menial tasks, namely plowing, hoeing cotton in the spring and picking it in the fall. During slavery, slaves in the upper categories looked down on the field hands. They also looked down on the “white trash” who lived nearby and were barely getting by.[12] After slavery ended, blacks in the craftsman classes moved into towns where they continued their craft. A few became educated. The field hands mostly remained on the plantations. There were also classes of whites: the well-educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers, bankers and teachers; the farmers and businessmen who were successful but not well-educated; then the “white trash” – landless whites with no prospects. The so-called “white trash,” also sometimes called rednecks or peckerwoods, were often descendants of children and young adults who were brought to the English colonies as indentured servants then at the end of their indenture were released with the equivalent of fifty dollars and no prospects. They became hired hands and sharecroppers and were in competition with blacks.
A word about sharecropping. Although black activists try to claim it was unique to the American South, it had actually been around for centuries and was common in the Midwest and West as well as Europe. Not all sharecroppers were black. Many were white. Sharecropping was basically farming in which a wealthier individual or family provides the land, equipment, seed and fertilizer and the sharecropper provides the labor. The landowner provided the sharecropper’s family a house in which to live as well as land on which they could grow a garden and raise livestock. They even provided mules or horses and plows, then later a tractor and equipment to till the land they were sharecropping. On large plantations, the landowners often provided supplies through a store they owned. They sold groceries, farm supplies and other commodities to the sharecroppers on credit. They even provided medical care. Their debt was taken out of the sharecropper’s share of the crop. The Bryants’ store was not a “company store,” they were merchants who sold to their mostly black customers on credit, as was common throughout the South and Midwest. They operated on credit themselves. They mainly sold groceries and meats but also had a candy counter. The main counter with the cash register was at the back. Although various articles and books about the store don’t say so, they probably made sandwiches, usually bologna, for their customers – the stores I am familiar with did. Roy Bryant had set up checker boards in front of the store where blacks congregated. He sometimes played checkers himself and let the young Negroes buy cold drinks on credit.
Emmett Till’s mother Mamie was evidently intelligent and capable. Although she was born in Mississippi, her family moved to Illinois when she was two as part of the “Great Migration” when millions of blacks moved out of the South. (Although blacks claim so many left the South due to the threat of lynching and lack of economic opportunity, it was more the latter than the former. Not only did blacks leave the South, so did millions of whites, far more than blacks.) She was an honors student at a predominantly white school in Argo, Illinois and only the fourth black student to actually graduate from it.[13]Emmett’s father, Louis Till, however, was either not intelligent or he had something about him that made him violent. There is no information about Louis Till’s background other than that he was allegedly an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri, a Mississippi River town south of St. Louis. How and when he made his way to the Chicago area isn’t recorded. Mamie met Louis when he was seventeen and employed at a corn mill in Argo, Illinois where her father had worked prior to her parents’ divorce and his move to Detroit. She said he had just come up from Missouri but offers no details. She claimed that her parents didn’t approve of Till and she broke off the relationship, but he persisted.[14] They were married in 1940; both were age eighteen. Emmett was born within a year. The marriage didn’t last long. Louis became violent. One night he pounced on her she continued to eat some greens her mother had sent over after he told her not to – Louis did not like his mother-in-law. He got her on the floor and choked her to the point she almost passed out. She retaliated by dousing him with hot water when he came in later that night. She got a restraining order which he repeatedly violated. In 1943 he went into the Army, allegedly because a judge told him to either enlist or go to jail. Mamie was notified after the war that Louis had been executed for “willful misconduct.”
Little Emmett grew up essentially without a father but he did have male influences in his life in the form of great-uncles and cousins then later his mother’s boyfriend, Gene Mobley. He never really knew his father because he left while he was a small child and never came back. Whether he knew he had been executed is unknown. His mother indicated that he didn’t. He only had one grandfather who was only peripherally involved in his life. His mother remarried a man named Mallory in 1946 but the marriage didn’t last long. Mamie’s first job was at an aeronautics school but she got a civil service job as a clerk at an Air Force procurement office in downtown Chicago. She moved to Detroit and lived with her father, who had moved there after he and her mother divorced. She worked as a clerk at a military induction center while in Detroit. Her mother was a strict Church of God in Christ holiness but her father liked to play the piano and sing In clubs. One day he walked out and didn’t come back. She was eleven. She was almost thirty when she reunited with him in Detroit. She married a man named Pink Bradley in Detroit in 1951 but the marriage only lasted two years. Emmett wasn’t around him much. The little boy didn’t like living in Detroit so he went back to Argo to live with his great-uncle and aunt.[15] He lived with them in Argo until his mother returned from Detroit with Pink Bradley. His grandmother had sold her house in Argo. She and Mamie bought a two-flat house in South Side Chicago. Mamie quit her job in Detroit and they moved to Chicago and into the second floor of her mother’s building. Pink went with them. Mamie’s mother got him a job at Corn Products in Argo. She got another civil service job with the Social Security Administration. However, Pink would take Mamie’s car and drive back to Detroit every weekend, to see his mother, he said. She learned he was seeing a woman named Margaret and threw him out of the house. After she divorced Bradley, he would sometimes come to visit. Although they had got along while Mamie was married to him, Emmett no longer liked the man. When Pink stopped by for a visit in Chicago and started in on Mamie, Bo, who was sick in bed with the flu, got out of bed and grabbed a kitchen knife. He said to Pink, “if you put your hands on my mother, I will CUT you!” He was eleven at the time. Mamie’s job with Social Security wasn’t panning out. She was working a lot of overtime but couldn’t get promoted. She either returned to her old Air Force job or took a new one. She was moved into a new position working with classified files.[16]
After they moved to South Side, Emmett was enrolled at McCosh Elementary, an all-black school. (Class photos show no white students.) He was described as an average student. He had completed eighth grade when he left for Mississippi and would have been a ninth-grader when he got back. Yet even though they were living in South Side Chicago and he was attending school there. Emmett spent much of his time, most of his weekends, in Argo. His mother relates in her memoir that he started taking a streetcar to Argo when he was only ten years old! She relates accounts of things he did in Argo, such as playing baseball, but she had no idea what else he and his cousins, some of whom were two years or more older than him, were doing. She was working fulltime for the Federal government in downtown Chicago. Emmett was tending to the house and cooking for her during the week but there’s no telling what he was doing on the weekends when he was an hour away in Argo.
The various accounts on the internet focus solely on the Tills and provide no background at all on the whites who were involved. There’s reason for this – Emmett Till has become an industry for some historians, writers, journalists and some of his relatives. They want the focus on him and his mother and don’t want anyone to know anything about J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, because J.W. Milam was a sure enough bona fide war hero and a man not to be trifled with. He had enlisted in the Army in 1941 and served in North Africa and Europe with the 2nd Armored Division, then transferred to the 75th Division. Even though he only had a ninth grade education, he was awarded a battlefield commission which explains the transfer – men who were commissioned from the ranks were normally required to transfer to a different unit. He was wounded by shrapnel – seventeen pieces struck him in the chest. An FBI report of the 2004-2006 investigation only acknowledges that he had a Purple Heart but he was actually highly decorated with a Silver Star, the third-highest US military combat decoration. He probably also had a Bronze Star since he had been awarded the combat infantryman’s badge and the Bronze Star was automatic for anyone with the CIB. This would make him a highly decorated soldier. He held a commission as a first lieutenant in the Army reserve. Known as “Big Milam”, he was a big man with a bald plate and had a reputation as a killer because of his wartime experiences. It was claimed that he had killed Negroes but it wasn’t true. He was also a successful businessman. He owned interests in several stores and some trucks and provided cotton pickers with black drivers to local plantations. He was known as a man who knew how to deal with Negroes. He lived among them. He employed several blacks. Roy Bryant was J.W.’s half-brother. He, too, was a veteran. He had volunteered for the Army in June 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War and trained as a paratrooper. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division but probably didn’t go overseas – the 82nd remained Stateside at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Roy knew how to fight but he wasn’t a killer like his brother.
Bobo or Bo, as he was called by his family, arrived in Mississippi on August 20, 1955, after a long train ride from Chicago. His uncle lived on a farm just under three miles from Money and sharecropped. It was late August and the cotton fields were coming ripe. Bobo picked a little cotton – 25 pounds – for the first time in his life, but he turned out to be a bust as a cotton picker and his uncle let him go back to the house. He’d only been to Mississippi twice before, the first time as a baby and the second when he was nine.[17] He spent his time with his Mississippi cousins and neighboring teenagers when they weren’t in the fields. Mrs. Mobley related in her book that the family picked cotton in the morning, weighed in at lunch, then picked again until four PM when they weighed in again then went to the house and were free until morning.[18] He was described as a stocky youth who looked older than his fourteen years. He was five foot four or five and weighed 150-160 pounds. Some called him fat. Moses Wright testified that “he looked like a man.” Carolyn Bryant said she took him to be in his late teens or early twenties when he came in her store. In her testimony she referred to him as “a man.”
There are conflicting accounts about a girl, a white girl. Contemporary accounts claim he had a picture of a white girl in his wallet and was showing it around and claiming she was his girlfriend. (His mother later claimed the picture came with the wallet and was of actress Hedy Lamar.) He also claimed he was having sex with her. Later, one of his cousins claimed he had a picture of his integrated class, which is odd since he supposedly went to an all-black school. The explanation is that he went to a summer school and there were some white kids in the class.[19] In 2018 a Chicago woman named Joan Brody told a friend she had known Emmett Till in elementary school and they decided she was the girl in the picture. She was twelve at the time (which would have made her a seventh grader) and Emmett was thirteen. Although she wasn’t Till’s classmate at school, they attended a brief summer class and sat side by side. She was allegedly the only white girl in the class. She denied having sex with him, however. She also said she couldn’t believe he would have told his cousins he had. However, the girl in the photo probably was someone else.
Investigative journalist William Bradford Huie wrote both an article for Look magazine about Bobo’s murder and an expanded account of how he came to investigate the case and some of his actions while researching.[20] After meeting with Milam, Bryant and Mrs. Bryant, he flew to Chicago and talked to Till’s family and friends, including his cousins from Mississippi – and his mother. Preacher Wright and some of his family left Mississippi right after the trial and settled in Argo. They talked candidly. Milam had told Huie Till actually had not one but three pictures of girls in his wallet, one of which he claimed to be his girlfriend. His wallet fell out of his pants and he looked to see what he had and saw the pictures. He also claimed he was having sex with her – he taunted Milam, telling him she “liked it.” Milam told Huie and his attorney, John Whitten, that he became enraged at Till’s taunts and decided to kill him. He’d bragged about the girl to the Mississippi Negroes but the cousins thought he was just bragging, although they told Huie he was “getting close.” They knew where his girlfriend, or the girl he claimed as his girlfriend, lived and took Huie by the house. Huie saw the girl in the yard. So there evidently really was a white girl. Whether it was Joan Brody or someone else remains unclear but it was probably not her. The girl was probably someone he knew in Argo since his cousins knew where she lived. His grandmother lived there and he had lived there off and on. Even after he and his mother moved to South Side Chicago, he often took a streetcar to Argo, a predominantly white community, to see people he knew.[21]
Emmett Till may have been telling the truth. Sex between white girls and black boys in Chicago was not uncommon. It’s not at all impossible for Bobo to have been having sex with a white girl in Chicago regardless of the scoffing by his mother and others who always passed it off with “he was only fourteen!”[22] (Young teenage boys DO have sex! There is an article in today’s New York Post about a case in Tomball, Texas of a teenager who started having sex with his teacher shortly after he turned thirteen and continued having sex with her for the next three years.) They said Till had had sex and that he had sex during his Mississippi visit. He wasn’t a virgin. Although his cousins didn’t believe he had sex with the white girl, it’s possible he had. Black boys having sex with white girls was not uncommon in Chicago and other Northern cities in the 1950s. After all, unless she made it up as later claimed by his relatives, Bobo told Carolyn Bryant that he’d “f—-d a lot of white women.”
Although some of them later recanted, contemporary accounts relate that Bobo’s cousins didn’t believe his stories about having sex with white girls. Neither did other blacks around Money that Till bragged to. One Wednesday evening, August 24, they drove into Money to hang out for a while after having picked cotton. They were on their way to a “joot” – a juke joint – but it hadn’t opened yet so they went to Money to hang out until it did. There were checkerboards in front of the stores – including Bryant’s Grocery which was one of three stores in the community. A group of young blacks, perhaps as many as a dozen, were hanging out in front of the stores when they arrived. Some were a little tired of Bobo’s boasting. Bobo was making one of his claims about having sex with white girls when one of the crowd called him on it. “There’s a pretty white girl in that store over there. Go over and ask her for a date.”
Regardless of whether he was dared or not, Bobo went in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. He either went in the store by himself or went in with someone else who left him alone in the store. His cousins acknowledge that he was inside alone with Mrs. Bryant for at least a minute. They stayed outside to watch. A lot can happen in a minute. Evidently, something did.
This is Carolyn Bryant’s testimony in her husband’s murder trial. The judge ordered the jury out of the room then refused to allow it to be admitted as evidence:
NOTE –The so-called “n-word” appears in the transcript. Following is her testimony. I removed the challenges from the prosecution for the sake of brevity. The prosecution did not want the jury to hear an account of what had happened four days before Emmett Till’s abduction.
MRS. ROY BRYANT,
A witness introduced for and on behalf of the defendants,
being first duly sworn, upon her oath testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. CARLTON (attorney for Bryant and Milam):
Q What is your name, please, ma’am?
A Mrs. Roy Bryant.
Q You are the wife of one of the defendants in this case, the defendant Roy Bryant, is that right?
SMITH: We object, Your Honor. That is incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant.
THE COURT: The objection is overruled.
Q When did he enlist in the Armed Forces?
A In June of 1950.
Q That was about ten months, I believe, before you married?[24]
A Yes.
Q How long did he stay in the service?
A Three years.
Q Did he get out in about June of 1953 then?
A Yes.
Q Now Mrs. Bryant, I direct your attention to Wednesday night, on the 24th day of August, on that evening, who was in the store with you?
The prosecution objected. There (was) a discourse between the attorneys and the judge, who instructed the jury to leave the courtroom. The judge then allowed her testimony to continue.
Q Mrs. Bryant, on Wednesday evening or Wednesday night, the 24th day of August, 1955, did anyone — who was in the store with you that night?
A No one.
Q You were alone in the store at the time?
A Yes.
Q Was there anyone in the living quarters at the rear of the store?
A Yes.
Q Who was back there?
A Mrs. Milam and her two children and also our two children.
Q Did any incident occur in that store on that evening which made an impression on you?
A Yes.
Q And what time of the evening was that?
A About eight o’clock.
Q Was that before or after dark?
A After dark.
Q Just tell the Court what happened there at that time, please, ma’am.
A This nigger man came in the store and he stopped there at the candy case.[25]
Q And in the store, where is the candy case located?
A At the front of the store.
Q And on which side is it?
A It is on the left side as you go in.
Q And that is the first counter there, is that right?
A Yes, Sir.
Q Now, is the store, with reference to that candy counter, is there anything back of the candy counter towards the wall of the store?
A No.
Q Is there any place to walk there or anything of that sort?
A Yes, an aisle.
Q When this negro man came in the store, where were you in the store?
A I was farther back in the store, behind the counter.
Q Where were you in the store when this man came in?
A I was farther back behind the counter.
Q Were you on the same side or on the other side?
A The same side.
Q And when he came in, I believe you said he stopped in front of the candy counter, is that right?
A Yes.
Q And what did you do then?
A I walked up to the candy counter.
Q And what transpired up there at the candy counter?
A I asked him what he wanted.
Q And did he tell you?
A Yes.
Q Do you know what it was he asked for?
A No.
Q And did you then get the merchandise for him?
A Yes. I got it and put it on top of the candy case.
Q And what did you do then?
A I held my hand out for his money.
Q Which hand did you hold out?
A My right hand.
Q Will you show the Court how you held your hand out?
A I held out my hand like this (demonstrating by holding out her hand).
Q Which hand was that?
A My right hand.
Q And will you show the Court how you did that?
A Like this (demonstrating by holding out her hand).
Q And did he give you the money?
A No.
Q What did he do?
A He caught my hand.
Q Will you show the Court just how he grasped your hand?
A Like this (demonstrating with her hand).
Q By what you have shown us, he held your hand by grasping all the fingers in the palm of his hand, is that it?
A Yes.
Q And was that a strong grip or a light grip that he had when he held your hand?
A A strong grip.
Q And will you show the Court what you did? How did you get loose?
A Well, I just jerked it loose, like this (demonstrating).
Q It was about that difficult to get loose, was it?
A Yes.
Q And it was with that much difficulty that you got your hand loose?
A Yes.
Q Just what did he say when he grabbed your hand?
A He said, “How about a date, baby?”
Q When you freed yourself, what happened then?
A I turned around and started back to the back of the store.
Q You did what?
A I turned to get to the back of the store.
Q Did you do anything further then?
A Yes. He came on down that way and he caught me at the cash register.
Q You say he caught you?
A Yes.
Q How did he catch you?
A Well, he put his left hand on my waist, and he put his other hand over on the other side.
Q How were you going down along the counter there? Did he approach you from the front, or from the rear or how?
A From the side.
Q Now, Mrs. Bryant, will you stand up and put my hands just where he grasped you? Will you show the Court and jury?
A It was like this (demonstrating by putting Mr. Carlton’s hands on her body).
Q He grabbed you like that, did he?
A Yes.
Q In other words, with his left arm around your back?
A Yes.
Q And his left hand on your left hip?
A Yes.
Q And he had his right hand on your right hip?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything to you then at the time he grabbed you there by the cash register?
A Yes.
Q What did he say?
A He said, “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it?
Q He said, “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it?”
A Yes.
Q Did you then try to free yourself?
A Yes.
Q Was it difficult? Did you succeed in freeing yourself?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything further to you at that time?
A Yes.
Q What did he say?
A He said, “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
Q And did he then use language that you don’t use?
A Yes.
Q Can you tell the Court just what that word begins with, what letter it begins with?
A The witness did not answer verbally, but shook her head negatively.)
Q In other words, it is an unprintable word?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything after that one unprintable word?
A Yes.
Q And what was that?
A Well, he said — well — “With white women before.”
Q When you were able to free yourself from him, what did you do then?
A Then this other nigger came in the store and got him by the arm.
Q And what happened then?
A And then he told him to come on and let’s go.
Q Did he leave the store willingly or unwillingly?
A Unwillingly.
Q How did the other negro get out of the store then? How did they leave?
A He had him by the arm and led him out.
Q Were there any white men in the store at the time this occurred?
A No.
Q Were there any other negro men in the store at the time?
A No.
Q Were there any other persons outside the store?
A Yes.
Q Were they white men or colored men?
A Colored.
Q Were there a number of them out there? How many of them were out there?
A Oh, about eight or nine.
Q When he went out the door, did he say anything further after he had made these obscene remarks?
A Yes. He turned around and said, “Good-by.”
Q And when he got out the door, what did you do?
A I called to Mrs. Milam to watch me and then I ran out the door to go to the car.
Q Which car did you go to?
A Mrs. Milam’s.
Q What did you go to the car for?
A For my pistol.
Q Where was your pistol in the car?
A Under the seat.
Q It was under which seat?
A The driver’s seat.
Q As you went out the door and went to the car, did you see this man again?
A Yes.
Q Where was he then? Where was he standing?
A He was standing by one of the posts on the front porch.
Q Your store has a front porch to it?
A Yes.
Q And these posts are on the front porch?
A Yes.
Q Did he say or do anything at that time?
A He whistled and then came out in the road.
Q Can you give a sound something like the whistle that he made there? Was it something like this? (Mr.
Carlton demonstrated by giving two low whistles.)
A Yes.
Q When you got your pistol, Mrs. Bryant, where was this boy then? Or I should say where was this man?
A When I turned around, he was getting in a car down the road.
Q Did you rush back in the store then?
A Yes.
Q Had you ever seen that man before?
A No.
Q Have you ever seen him since?
A No.
Q Tell us what size man he was. Describe about how tall he was.
A He was about five feet, six inches tall.
Q And that is about four inches taller than you are, is that right?
A Yes.
Q And how much would you say that he weighed?
A Around one hundred and fifty pounds.
Q Did he walk with any defect?
A No.
Q Did he have any speech defect?
A No.
Q Did you have any trouble understanding him?
A No.
Q What sort of impression did this occurance make on you?
A I was just scared to death.
Q Mrs. Bryant, do you generally know the negroes in that community around Money?
A Yes.
Q What kind of store is it that you run there?
A It is just a general store.
Q Are most of your customers negroes or white people?
A Most of them are negroes.
Q And of course, you come in contact with most of the negroes around there in that way?
A Yes.
Q And you know most of them around there, do you?
A Yes.
Q And was this man one of those?
A No.
Q Did he talk with a southern or northern brogue?
A The northern brogue.
Q Did you have any difficulty understanding him?
A No.
Q Did you have any white men anywhere around there to protect you that night?
A No.
Q Was your husband out of town?
A Yes.
Q Do you know where he was?
A He was in Brownsville.
Q What was his purpose in being away from home then?
A He had carried a load of shrimp there.
Q Where had he started out with that load of shrimp?
A From New Orleans.
Q When did you expect him home?
A I didn’t know.
Q What was the reason for Mrs. Milam and the children being there with you?
A So that I wouldn’t be alone.
1. CARLTON: Now, we submit, Your Honor, that the testimony here is competent on the basis of the testimony which was introduced by the State to show that there was some talk in Money, and to remove from the minds of the jury the impression that nothing but talk had occurred there.
THE COURT: The Court has already ruled, and it is the opinion of the Court that this evidence is not admissible.
(The jury returned to the courtroom, and the proceedings
continued with the jury present.)
Till apologists claim that Mrs. Bryant “lied” in her testimony because she had talked to one of her husband’s attorneys previously and hadn’t mentioned that he had laid his hands on her or his words about his sexual experiences with white women. This is simple to explain. First, they base this claim on a “statement” she allegedly gave that was later found in Huie’s notes. This was probably not a sworn statement; it was not a statement to law enforcement but to an attorney and was not a deposition. Second, what people tell an attorney and what they later testify to in court are often different. There is also another explanation – Carolyn Bryant had been severely traumatized by the experience and she simply didn’t want to talk about it. She hadn’t wanted her husband to know what had happened because she feared he would do something to Till. Now he was in jail awaiting trial for his murder. Those who claim she “lied” are merely voicing their own opinion and point to the difference in the two statements as “proof.” They cannot explain why she felt threatened and ran outside to get the pistol.
The following is an excerpt from Carolyn Bryant Donham’s memoir. Although the complete manuscript hasn’t been published on the internet, excerpts have. This is her description of what occurred in Brytan’s Store:
The FBI report on the 2004-2006 investigation is heavily redacted and does not give the names of people who were then living, but there is one account that seems to relate that Juanita Milam later claimed she didn’t believe Carolyn’s story and thought she might have made it up in order to convince her husband not to go off and leave her alone in the store.[26] However, this doesn’t make sense because Roy was on trial for murder when she testified. She claimed she thought she was in Greenwood and wasn’t baby-sitting Carolyn’s kids. She WAS in Greenwood that weekend when the abduction occurred. She did not make a statement at the trial. More than likely, Mrs. Milam’s memory was confused since the event had occurred a half-century earlier. The investigation was in 2004-2006. By that time Carolyn and Roy Bryant had been divorced for a quarter century.[27] Whether or not she and Juanita remained in contact is unknown. Juanita passed away in 2014. Her husband, J.W. Milam, died in 1980.
Carolyn followed the two boys out the door. She ran to her brother-in-law’s car and reached in and got the pistol out from under the front seat. At some point Bobo let out a “wolf whistle.” His cousins definitely believed it was aimed at the white woman.[28] One of them saw that she had the pistol and shouted, “Come on, we got to get out of here!” They eventually ended up at Preacher Wright’s place, at least some of them did. Wright was told or somehow learned what happened although not in detail. He wanted Bobo to catch the next train headed north. Bobo himself reportedly was frightened and wanted to go home but Wright’s wife, his grandmother’s sister, convinced him to stay. She said it would all blow over. Just what they knew is not known. They may have only known about the whistle since there were no witnesses in the store to hear what was said. One of the older cousins told Huie he ran inside when he saw Bobo put his hands on Mrs. Bryant and pulled him out of the store.[29] This may have been Maurice Wright, who was sixteen at the time.
Carolyn told her sister-in-law Juanita what had happened but they agreed not to tell her husband when he came by to escort them home later. Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, was off on a trip in a truck hauling shrimp to Texas and wouldn’t be back until Saturday. Even though the two women remained silent, word started getting around. There were other people on the streets who saw and heard the wolf whistle and saw Carolyn come running out of the store to get the gun. It seems to have been circulating only among the black population because J.W. Milam, Juanita’s husband, wasn’t aware of it. Had any whites known about the incident, he surely would have been informed.
From all indications, Roy found out about the incident before he went home, probably from one of the colored men who worked for his brother. Blacks claimed there was a “Judas nigger” who told Bryant. Some believed it was Maurice Wright but his family denied that it was him. Maurice became estranged from his family and died an alcoholic. He talked to Carolyn about it. Just how much she told him is unknown as is how much he had already been told. When he learned what happened, he knew he had to do something or he’d be a laughingstock for not taking some kind of action against the person who had insulted his wife. He decided his only option was to whip the Chicago Negro to avoid losing the respect of his black customers. Later that night he called J.W. and told him he needed him to do something for him but J.W. said he was busy. He explained what had happened and J.W. said he’d be over as soon as he closed the store where he was working sometime after midnight. Sometime around 2 AM they showed up at Preacher Wright’s house. Wright knew why they were there. Bryant identified himself and said they were there to talk to the boy from Chicago who had “done the talking” down at Money. There was no mention of a whistle. Reporters and blacks later claimed Till died “because he whistled at a white woman.”
Wright said he’d get him.[30] He took them to where Bobo was sleeping with his cousins. He was in bed with Simeon Wright, Preacher’s 12-year-old son. Wright begged Milam not to take the boy, he said “he ain’t got good sense” and didn’t know what he was doing. Wright’s wife offered to pay for any damages. Milam told her to go back to bed. Wright would later testify that a third man waited on the porch and that he thought he was colored. After they took the boy outside, Wright claimed they heard them ask someone “Is this him?” and a voice responded that it was. He claimed the voice was “lighter than a man’s” which has led to much speculation that Carolyn Bryant was with them and somehow culpable in the kidnapping.[31] After they left, Wright waited around for some time trying to decide what to do. He finally drove somewhere and filled his car up with gas. He eventually went to his brother-in-law and told him; the brother-in-law took him to the sheriff.[32] One of the boys visiting from Chicago went to a white neighbor and called his mother, who notified Mamie, who went by Mamie Bradley. They called the Chicago police, who started calling Mississippi sheriffs.
Was Emmett Till not right in the head? Wright did not mention making the comment in the trial but J.W. Milam claimed he said it. There is a distinct possibility that he was not. He was born in a breech birth, with his butt coming out first, and his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. It’s possible he was brain-damaged. The doctors apparently thought he was. They told Mrs. Till (Mamie) her baby had problems and would probably have to be institutionalized for life.
Somebody, probably Moses Wright, swore out a warrant for Roy Bryant and possibly J.W. Milam for kidnapping. Evidently a warrant was also sworn out for Carolyn Bryant but never served.[33] In her memoir, Mrs. Till-Mosely, as she later identified herself, said the sheriff told her they had Bryant and Milam and were looking for Carolyn Bryant.[34] Roy Bryant was arrested at the store on Sunday afternoon based on what Preacher Wright told the sheriff and carried to jail. Milam was not arrested at the time but he came to the jail later and turned himself in. The two men were charged with kidnapping but were never indicted. Bryant admitted that they took the boy from Wright’s but he said they had taken him to the store and showed him to Carolyn. She said it wasn’t him and they set him free. But Bobo hadn’t been seen since so they kept them in jail until a grand jury could meet. Everything changed when a fisherman spotted some feet sticking out of the water in the Tallahatchie River the following Wednesday. The body was badly swollen from having been in the river for three days but Moses Wright thought it was Emmett Till mainly because of a ring that was found on the body.[35] The ring has the initials “L.T.” inscribed inside. Emmett’s mother later said the ring was the only thing the Army sent her from her estranged husband’s effects. The kidnapping was now a murder.
Because the body was found in Tallahatchie County, jurisdiction switched to there from LeFlore County where Money is located and where Preacher Wright lived. An 18-man grand jury indicted Bryant and Milam for murder. They were tried a month later in Sumner, the county seat of Tallahatchie County – and were acquitted. Although the outcome was never in doubt, the prosecution had no witnesses to the murder and all evidence was circumstantial. The sheriff who saw the body said it was unidentifiable. A local embalmer said the body had been in the water at least ten days. The black press went ballistic, and the furor was joined by other media. Bobo’s mother had called the black media in to see the boy’s battered face before the funeral. They accused the authorities in Mississippi, perhaps with some justification, of looking the other way.[36] They claimed a white man would never be convicted of murdering a black in Mississippi. Some ranted that Bobo’s father had died fighting for freedom in Europe and his son could not find justice in racist Mississippi. Headlines claimed that Bobo had been murdered for “wolf whistling at a white woman” and the killers had been found not guilty.
Alabama native William Bradford Huie was a highly respected journalist. Born in 1910, he graduated with honors from the University of Alabama in 1930 and began a career in journalism. He sold his first story to True magazine while still in college. After working at several newspapers, he went to work for H.L. Mencken at Mercury Magazine. He served as a Naval officer in World War II, then returned to Mercury where he became editor. He authored numerous books and novels, several of which were made into movies. One of his books was about the execution of Private Eddie Slovik, the only US soldier escorted for desertion in World War II. During a visit to an office in the Pentagon he “obtained” a key to the numbers on the graves in the cemetery in France where Slovik was buried. Later on, when people started claiming that Bobo’s father died “for freedom”, he remembered the key and found that Louis Till was buried three graves from Slovik. He and another black soldier were executed after being found guilty of raping two Italian women and murdering another during an air raid. Although this was immaterial as far as Emmett Till was concerned, the prosecution had introduced Louis Till’s death when they put Mamie Bradly on the stand. They asked her about Emmett’s father and she answered that he had died in the service in the European Theater on July 2, 1945. The defense had no idea that he’d been executed for rape and murder and the failed to pick up on the date, which was two months after the war in Europe had come to an end. Mamie may have known that he’d been executed for rape although she later claimed she only knew it was for “willful misconduct.”
Huie, who wasn’t present for the trial, decided to offer Bryant and Milam a payment for the screen rights to their story in anticipation of making a movie about the death of Till and the subsequent trial. Since they had been acquitted, they could not be tried again for Till’s murder because of the double jeopardy clause in the US Constitution. He went to Mississippi and met with John Whitten, who was part of Bryant and Milam’s defense team – it seems that every lawyer in the Greenwood area wanted to defend them. Money poured in for their defense. Some of it came from New York and New Jersey. He asked Whitten if Milam had ever said if he had killed Till; Whitten said he had never asked. Whitten volunteered that Milam was “a killer,” that it was the reason for his battlefield commission. He commented that he was the kind of person you need around for a war. Huie came up with a plan to offer the two men a sum of money for rights to their story. Whitten said he’d ask them. Although he was there on his own, he got LOOK magazine to offer the money in exchange for an exclusive story in the magazine. Huie was criticized by members of the media for what they call “checkpoint journalism” but Huie said it never bothered him – “it gets results.”
Huie told the two men he’d meet with them over five nights and in the daytime he’d go around and verify that they were telling the truth. He promised to pay them some $4,000 but only if they told the truth. He wanted verifiable facts. Although Bryant talked some, Milam did most of the talking. Milam, who was an Army officer, was the more articulate. Milam admitted that although they hadn’t intended to kill Till, he became enraged by Till’s taunting about how black men were better lovers than whites and bragging about all the white women he had had.[37] His wallet fell out of his pocket and they found three pictures of white girls in it. Till claimed one was his girlfriend, that he had sex with her and “she loves it.” He said that although they had pistol-whipped him, Till never seemed to be frightened of them. After he became enraged, Milam shot Till in the side of the head then they dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. They had attached a heavy fan from a gin to his neck to submerge him.[38] After he had finished his story, he had Milam and both Bryants read it and initial it. It was the first that Carolyn had heard of what they had done to the boy.
When Huie’s story came out, many blacks became even more incensed then they already were and some blacks have been incensed ever since, at least in part because Mamie Till-Mosley and others, including Preacher Wright, went around the country talking about Bobo and his murder, and talking about how bad Mississippi was. One northern black woman who Huie knew told him that his Look article would affect their efforts to promote his death as a case for civil rights. Black activists and white activist/historians claim that Huie lied because he didn’t mention others who might have been involved but Huie’s intent was to tell Bryant and Milam’s story, not speculate about who did what and who didn’t. He went to Mississippi to get their story, not to investigate the crime. Witnesses had testified in Bryant and Milam’s trial that others were involved. Many were up in arms because they didn’t believe Carolyn Bryant’s account – and black activists today are STILL up in arms. Like the Jews who refuse to accept that Leo Frank might have been involved in the death of 13-year-old Mary Phagan[39], many blacks and white civil rights activists refuse to accept that Emmett Till may have actually propositioned Carolyn Bryant. And that is exactly what Emmett “Bobo” Till’s actions were, if Carolyn Bryant was truthful. Tim Tyson claims she recanted when he was interviewing here in 2008 but after his book about Till was published, Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law, who was present and who had typed up her manuscript, said she didn’t.[40] FBI investigators determined that Tyson had no proof of her recantation. He taped the interview but her recantation is not on it. He claims she said it while he was setting up his tape. He points to a single-sentence note he claims he wrote down at the time as proof. She definitely didn’t recant in her manuscript. Based on what Mrs. Donham said in her testimony and what she said in her manuscript, Emmett Till not only made an unwanted sexual advance, he put his hands on her, which constitutes assault.
Bobo Till was definitely capable of violence, as his mother’s account of his attack on his former stepfather demonstrates. Although she and others praised him as a well-mannered boy, that incident puts the lie to their assertions. Her claims are based on her perceptions of him and the reality is that parents have no clue what their kids are like when they’re away from them after somewhere around age nine. Probably every murderer’s mother since Caine has claimed “my boy is a good boy.” She and other’s also claimed he wouldn’t have bragged about sexual conquests because “he was only fourteen.” Well, some fourteen-year-olds have sex. Do they tell their mothers? Actually, when Huie asked Mamie if Bobo was having sex, she replied that she didn’t know, that he was at the age when boys become interested in sex and that if he was, he wouldn’t tell her.[41]
Some of the blacks present that night later claimed that Till didn’t do anything but take her hand, if that. One of the girls said all he did was put the money in her hand instead of on the counter.[42] Simeon Wright claimed a half century later that there was no photograph, no one dared Till to accost Bryant and that he was the one who went in the store and he didn’t drag Till out by the arm. However, these claims were made more than fifty years after the fact after tons of publicity about the case by civil rights activists and possibly pressure from family members. Just how the family and civil rights activists have presented the story is evidenced by the sign they placed at the place where Milam and Bryant threw Till’s body in the river. The sign says it was thrown in the river “as a warning” to other blacks when they actually threw it in the river in an attempt to conceal it.[43]
There were assertions that the Klan and the White Citizens’ Council were involved. However, FBI investigators determined that none of those accused in the kidnapping and murder were Klan members or had any association with it.
The reality is that blacks and white civil rights activists have been looking for someone to prosecute for Emmett Till’s death ever since Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted. They first focused on other members of the Milam/Bryant family. Now that they’re dead, they’re focused on Carolyn Bryant Donham. They’re pressing the state of Mississippi to bring charges against her. They don’t have long to force such an action and even if they are successful, it’s doubtful she’ll live long enough to stand trial because she is an 88-year-old woman and is currently under hospice care while dying of cancer.[44] Relatives of Till formed a legacy foundation in 2005 with the goal of finding somebody to prosecute for his death.[45] The foundation is a continuation of an organization Mamie Till-Mosby formed after the NAACP withdrew their support of her speaking engagements. They managed to get the FBI to conduct an investigation which led nowhere, a grand jury that included black members refused to issue any indictments. Incidentally, although the FBI agent in charge of the investigation has commented that Donham’s manuscript and the warrant is “evidence,” the FBI has actually had the manuscript for years.[46] Every single document the foundation and other “researchers” have been able to scrounge up had been turned over to the FBI.
The Till foundation members are going after Bryant-Donham on the basis of a single comment made by Moses Wright in his testimony. He testified that he heard a voice that was “lighter” than a man’s. Trying to prosecute on the basis of this statement would be beyond impossible. Moses Wright has been dead for decades, as has everyone else known to be there that night. The Wright children were in the house and didn’t hear what was said. They have no witnesses and Wright did not identify the voice as that of a woman, much less Carolyn Bryant. Although Simeon Wright later claimed that his father said the voice was a woman, he is dead as well as his father and there is no way to corroborate what would be hearsay evidence. Mrs. Donham did not admit to being at the house when Till was taken – she said they brought him to her at the store.[47] In her testimony, she said she did not see Till again after the incident in the store so there is a conflict, but the statute of limitations on perjury is long-since past. She can also claim she did not look at him. In short, there is no case against the woman.
Incidentally, an autopsy of Till’s remains released in 2015 revealed that he was killed by 7 ½ birdshot. This is a good indication that Milam DID NOT intend to kill him. Cartridges containing birdshot are normally used to kill rats and other small rodents from a few feet away. Cartridges designed to kill humans use solid or hollow-point bullets, not birdshot. Why Milam had his pistol loaded with birdshot will never be known. Perhaps he intended to shoot Till to scare him. He told Huie that he decided to kill him because he kept going on and on about sex with white women.[48] The shot killed him because it was fired from very close range, close enough the shot entered his brain.
Then there is the matter of Emmett Till’s father. This is what Huie later told an interviewer about how the story came out:
William Bradford Huie: I was in—I wasn’t in Alabama when the trial was held. I came back—I was in California working on a film, I came back to my home here in Hartsill, oh, three or four months after the trial. And uh, I picked up Look magazine one night, and I looked at the letters written in, and somebody had taken this fact: it had been discovered by then. And that—-young Till’s father had been killed during the Second World War and was a soldier. And so some uh, white boy out of Harvard-—a black man would never have done this—-some white boy out of Harvard had written a poem about the irony of young Emmett Till being killed in Mississippi while his father gave his life for the proposition “All men are created equal,” etc. etc. Well, I looked at it, and I said, nonsense. It doesn’t happen that way. I was in the Second World War, and most black men were stevedores. They were not where they would give their lives for the proposition that all men are created equal. So I had one of the strangest experiences in my life, one of the great coincidences in my life. When I had done the story of He Slew the Dreamer, three …
William Bradford Huie: When I did-—when I wrote the, when I was doing the research for The Execution of Private Slovik, I was in the Pentagon. Ninety-six Americans were executed during the Second World War, 95 of them for murder and uh, rape, and Slovik who was executed for desertion.[49] And all 96 of those men are buried in a secret plot, uh, near, um, or adjoining an American cemetery in Northern France. And I had to-—the Army when they finally cooperated with me on the Slovik story I wanted to photograph Slovik’s grave. And so I had to get, uh, permission. I had to get from them to tell me the row number and the number of Slovik’s grave in this plot of 96. And the Colonel had had it for me, and they took it out of the vault, because they never expect—-it was top secret everything. On his desk he had a key, as to the numbers of the graves. There are no names on any of these graves, just numbers. But there’s, on this key, there’s a, there’s a name and an address, who that man was. And the Colonel had to go away somewhere, and I should have been court-martialed for this, because the moment I saw it, I knew that there was a story on, in each of those numbers. So I whirled it around here, and I’m copying it down just as fast as I can. He goes away twice and I get most of the names down and I have that now. I really shouldn’t say this on the air, because the Army may court-martial me for this now. But at any rate, I’m the only man outside of somewhere in the depths of the Pentagon that’s got that key. And after I read this piece in Looke, I whirled around, picked up that key, and I looked just three graves from Eddie Slovik, and I saw, Private Louis Till. And this only means that the man has been executed for rape and/or murder. And I said, “Oh no, this can’t be the same man.” The next morning I got up and I called the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, whom I knew. Now this man came from Georgia, he had typical Georgian racial attitudes.
William Bradford Huie: And uh, so, I called him and I said now this is the story in Mississippi, um, the boy who was killed over there, I said, “I have just found this and I want you to check it for me and tell me who it is.” Uh, he was interested. About two hours later he called me and he was just overjoyed. And he says, “Goddamn Huie, that’s the same damn nigger.” I said, “That’s that boy nigger’s father.” He said, “I’ve got the case in front of me,” he says, “The most fool case of killing two Italian women during a, air raid we ever had. We hanged him in Langert.” And uh, so uh, he said, I said, “Well, send me the case.” And then I said, “Now listen General, let’s just wait a minute.” I said, “Now this boy in Mississippi never knew his father.” I said, “This hasn’t got anything to do with this case over there, and it doesn’t excuse anybody from murder or anything of this sort.” Uh, so I don’t think any of this should be, I said, “I don’t know whether I’m going to write the story or not,” because I said, “I don’t think this ought to be revealed.” So [cough] we sit down down on it. Well, at any rate, later the story crept out, because he gives it out. It’s too good. He has to tell Senator Eastland and so forth and they call a press conference and so forth.
Huie related that some black friends of his, including at least one NAACP official, were incensed when the news came out. They had been using Bobo’s death and his killers acquittal in their campaign for civil rights in Mississippi. That his father had been executed for rape and murder of white women might be construed as an indication that Emmett was a potential rapist. NAACP executive Roy Wilkins told Huie he “almost feel into the Louis Till trap.” He planned to refer to the contrast between Louis’ and Emmett’s death in a speech but at the last minute decided not to use it.
Some black activists have attempted to whitewash Louis Till’s conviction for rape and murder. Black author and civil rights activist John Edgar Wideman took up the cause of Louis Till and all but claimed he was “lynched” by white officers just like his son Emmett was “lynched” by whites in Mississippi.[50] Louis Till and Fred A McMurray, were convicted of rape of two Italian women and murder of another on the basis of testimony of another black soldier who was with them and a British soldier when they broke in on the women during an air raid on an Italian port near Rome. The records of the court martial were classified, as are all court martials, until Till’s were declassified in the wake of Bobo’s death.[51] Wideman obtained a copy of Till’s court-martial then wrote an article for Esquire and a book in which he speculated that Till might have been innocent but was convicted by racist white officers. He claimed the black soldier who testified against him did so to save his own ass. He took Till’s silence as a sign that he was reconciled that he had no hope. In short, Wideman seems to have sought to exonerate Till because he was Emmett’s father. Although some claim there is a genetic connection that may lead some to become criminals, the claim is disputed by psychologists who claim that culture, not hereditary is a determining factor in a person’s actions. Psychologists refuse to accept any finding that might indicate that there is any difference between the races, particularly anything that might suggest an inferiority of members of the Negro race.[52]
Milam claimed to Milam that Till said his grandmother was white. If so, he would have to have been referring to Louis Till’s mother because he only knew one grandmother and she was Moses Wright’s wife’s sister. If true, that might indicate why Louis Till was orphaned. However, photographs of Louis Till do not show the face of a mulatto. If he did have white ancestry – and many blacks do – it was probably further back in his ancestral line. Existing photos of Emmett Till, all black and white, indicate that his complexion was lighter than most blacks, more brown than black, which is an indication of white ancestry. In fact, when Emmett was born, he had light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. His mother’s friends and neighbors thought she had been sleeping around – the milkman was a favorite bet, so was the iceman. They were both white. She claims she was a virgin when she got married and that Louis was the only man she’d slept with. Photos of Mamie show her as having a lighter complexion. Huie described her complexion as café a lait. Perhaps the white ancestor was on her father’s side of the family. His ancestry is irrelevant to what happened except that Milam may have told the truth about Till’s actions and claims.
Soon after the trial, Preacher Wright moved to Chicago. His wife Elizabeth had already gone; she left immediately after Emmett was taken. She is reported to have not spent another night in their house. Some, if not all, of his cousins also moved to Chicago. Mamie Bradley, her name at the time, went on a speaking tour talking about Emmett’s death. The NAACP saw her as a cash cow but she said if anyone was going to make money off of Emmett’s death, it should be her. An angry Roy Wilkins said she was capitalizing her son’s death. The organization stopped funding her and started funding Preacher Wright instead. She formed her own organization to attract donations and continued speaking. Emmett became a poster child for the civil rights movement, which was eager to point to his murder as an example of injustice in Mississippi in particular, and elsewhere in the United States, particularly the South. Before the NAACP broke ties with her, his mother is reported to have gone on the most successful fund-raising tour in the organization’s history. Alabama civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested the following December for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery. She claimed Emmett Till’s death had inspired her.[53]
The death of Emmett Till was made for the civil rights movement. According to their claim, he was an innocent young boy who was murdered for “whistling at a white woman.” His family – actually Mamie’s family since his father had no family – were demoralized by Bill Huie’s story and Carolyn Bryant’s testimony. Mamie and others who knew Emmitt later claimed he couldn’t have done the things she had accused him of. They justified their beliefs with the “he was just fourteen” statement. None of them had been in the store and they had no idea what had happened, but they begin to think they did. One of the two girls who was in the group with Bobo claimed she watched him through the window and all he did was put the money in her hand instead of on the counter. (There was evidently a practice in local stores that whenever a black man bought something from a white woman, they put the money on the counter rather than putting it in her hand and touching her.) One of the men claimed Bobo was only in the store for less than a minute. Obviously, no one timed the incident so they really had no idea how long he was in the store. Moreover, no one heard the conversation. They only knew that she had come running out of the store and Bobo had wolf whistled at her, and that she went to the car and got a pistol.
Around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of Emmett Till’s death, a number of people started “researching” the event – working on books, film projects and the like. By this time most of those who played a role in the incident had died. Those who were still alive were approaching old age, or were already elderly. Moses Wright passed away in 1977. His wife Elizabeth had died seven years previously. Mamie Till-Mobley had written a book about her son’s death – she died of heart failure the same year it was published in 2003. Researchers started claiming there were inconsistencies in what Carolyn Bryant told her husband’s lawyer and what she said in court. They started looking for someone to prosecute. A black doctor named Howard had gone around drumming up witnesses to testify against Bryant and Milam. He found one witness named Willy Reed who claimed he had heard the sound of beatings coming from Leslie Milam’s barn, and that he had seen J.W. Milam come out of the barn and get a drink out of a well. Leslie Milam managed a farm in an adjoining county. If Reed’s accusations were true, the trial would have had to have been held in Sunflower County rather than Tallahatchie County and the judge would have had to declare a mistrial.[54] He also claimed to have seen three white men in Milam’s truck with three blacks in the back, one of which he claimed was Emmett Till. Two black men who worked for J.W. Milan were claimed to have been with him and Bryant when they abducted Till and subsequently killed him. A story circulated that they were being held under assumed names in a jail in another town so they couldn’t testify. Both men denied that they played any part in the murder. Reed left Mississippi for Chicago after the trial and had a nervous breakdown shortly after he got there. Bryant and Milam had both been dead for some time, as had Leslie Milam. Carolyn Bryant Donham, however, was still alive. They began focusing on her as someone guilty of – something!
Simeon Wright, Preacher Wright’s youngest son who had been 12 at the time, wrote a book in which he contested Carolyn Bryant’s version of events. He claimed he was the one who went in and got Bobo and that he didn’t drag him out as she claimed. He claimed Bobo was in the store “less than a minute.” He also said that there was no picture, that Bobo never made any claim about having had sex with white women, that there was no dare. Whether his version is true or not will never be known since he is now deceased. It is possible that Simeon carried a lot of guilt. He also claimed that his father had told him that the voice he heard outside after they took Bobo out was a woman. Members of the family gave interviews on camera about the event – fifty years after it happened. Curtis Jones, the cousin who came down from Chicago after Bobo claimed he was present at the store but later recanted on his version of events when he realized -or was coerced into believing – he didn’t get there until Saturday after the event on Wednesday evening. Fifty years is a long, long time and although we like to think we have perfect memories of events, the reality is that we can’t even remember what happened five minutes ago! This is especially true as we get older. Our perception of events are colored by what we’ve heard from others, read, dreamed or imagined. People involved in the same event may remember it differently – and probably will. In Vietnam I was on an airplane that blew two main gear tires when the pilots were backing out of our parking spot. The copilot remembered that the tires had blown right after we pulled off of the runway after landing. I had another memory of something happening to me. I believed for years it happened but then it came to me that it had happened to a buddy and what I was remembering was the mental picture I had as he described it to me. Memory cannot be trusted.
Sometime around 2004 members of Mamie Till-Mosely’s family journeyed to Mississippi to meet with FBI agents in an attempt to have them open a case against Carolyn Bryant. Mississippi is a conservative state but its justice system, like the justice systems in nearly every state and the Federal Department of Justice, had been taken over by political progressives devoted to the concept of social justice. Prosecutors who weren’t even born in the 1950s and 60s were reopening old cases related to the civil rights movement, particularly the murder of Medgar Evers, a NAACP official who was shot at his home in Jackson in 1963. Evers was allegedly “investigating” the death of Emmett Till. Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and Marine Corps veteran who had fought on Guadalcanal and was wounded on Tarawa, was charged with the crime. Beckwith was tried twice; both trials ended with a hung jury. Evers’ widow pursued the case. Reporters from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger investigated Beckwith’s previous trial and found that jurors had been investigated illegally by a state agency. The state used that as grounds for a new trial. Beckwith protested that it was double jeopardy but a court ruled that it wasn’t. Prosecutors were able to coerce a former Klan member to testify that Beckwith had boasted of killing Evers at Klan meetings and he was convicted. Others who had been involved in notorious murders in the 50s and 60s were also convicted. The success in those cases convinced the Till family and various civil rights activists that they would be able to convict Carolyn Bryant. The trouble was, they had no evidence, just opinion.
Emmett Till’s relatives were convinced that “evidence” uncovered by a film maker and certain authors was enough to get Carolyn Bryant, who had divorced Roy Bryant in 1975 and remarried, indicted for murder, kidnapping or something. They asserted that she had lied in her court testimony because she added things that weren’t mentioned in her “statement” to Roy’s attorney. They managed to convince the FBI to investigate and the “evidence” was presented to a grand jury. However, their “evidence” was likely to lead to a no bill and that is exactly what happened. Then in 2017 Timothy Tyson’s book The Blood of Emmett Till came out. Tyson claimed in the book that Carolyn Bryant Donham had “recanted” her testimony. The Till relatives thought again that they had her. Tyson obtained Mrs. Donham’s unpublished memoir and turned a copy over to the FBI after submitting the original to the UNC archives. However, the FBI determined that Tyson lacked proof of a recantation and Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law, who was present when Tyson interviewed her, denied that she had recanted. Once again, Till’s relatives were disappointed.
The latest “new development” was the discovery of an unserved warrant for Carolyn Bryant’s arrest for kidnapping followed by Tyson’s “release” of Mrs. Donham’s manuscript to the media. Black activists went into a North Carolina nursing home where they thought Mrs. Donham was to harass her, but she wasn’t there. The family, represented by the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, a 501c (3) charitable organization run by family members, is pressing Mississippi to reopen the case in hopes of having Mrs. Donham indicted for kidnapping. All I can say is “good luck”! There are no longer any witnesses to testify against her and even though the memoir is revealing in that she says she lied to her husband that Till was not the one who had accosted her in the store, her description of the incident is the same that she gave to the court with the exception that she said she screamed for help in the memoir. She did not mention that she screamed in her testimony.
Did Emmett Till assault Carolyn Bryant and did he say the things she testified that he did? While there’s no way to be certain, it’s extremely likely that he did. The later claims by members of the Wright family that he didn’t are suspect. The passing off of his alleged remarks with the comment “he was only fourteen” is not only meaningless, but smacks of disinformation.
Was Carolyn Bryant present at Preacher Wright’s house when Emmett Till was taken? I don’t know, but I doubt it. If she was, she didn’t admit to it in the memoir. Wright does not claim that she was. He told the court that he heard someone in the yard with “a lighter voice” but he also told the court he couldn’t tell whether Bryant and Milam were in a car or a truck. (They were in Milam’s green and white 1955 ½ ton Chevrolet pickup.) Simeon Wright claimed his father told him the voice was a woman but he and his father are both dead. The witness who testified that he saw Emmett Till in the back of J.W. Milam’s pickup did not mention a woman – he said he saw three white men in the cab and two black men in the back with Till. William Bradford Huie said that Mrs. Bryant didn’t know what they had done to Till until she heard it in the law office where he met with Bryant and Milam.
Chances are, Carolyn Holloway Bryant Donham will be dead soon. Hopefully, her death will not make the news and the Till Legacy Foundation won’t find out about it. If they do, they or their supporters will do something. They’re too filled with hatred not to.
Note – The Leflour County grand jury just announced that they are not going to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham based on the ancient warrant. Wheeler Parker, who is not a blood relative of Emmett Till, made a statement to the press in which he lamented that the state of Mississippi failed to convict Till’s killer. Parker went to Mississippi with Till on the train and was present at Bryant’s store when the incident happened.
[1] Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law claim Tyson was going to help them get the memoir published but Tyson denies it.
[2] The FBI press release mentions the consideration of charging Mrs. Donham with the dubious charge – the FBI uses it when there’s no indication of a crime – of “Lying to the FBI.” However, there is no mention of charging Tyson with the same crime even though he was unable to substantiate his claim that she had “recanted.”
[3] Ironically, the incident that prompted Well’s editorial hadn’t happened in the South, but in northern Ohio in a suburb of Cleveland. A black man was convicted of rape although he claimed the sex he had with a white woman was consensual. Allegedly, he had been having sex with a married white woman and when they were caught, she hollered “rape.”
[4] His mother was born in Mississippi but never lived there after age two. Her family left Mississippi in the 1920s and moved to Illinois and settled in the Chicago area. Some of her relatives remained in Mississippi.
[5] “Smarting off” was and is common among blacks, particularly in northern ghettos like South Side Chicago and parts of Detroit. Black comedians make it part of their act.
[8] Some “histories” of Mississippi claim the bottomlands were unsettled, but former slaves and other blacks moved into the region after the Civil War and established farms, which were later wrested from them. However, it is a historical fact that whites moved into the region along the Yalobusha River immediately after the land was purchased from the Choctaw. Some came down from West Tennessee, which had just been settled a few years before.
[9] Farmers were allotted the amount of cotton they could grow by the Federal government as part of a program instituted during the Roosevelt Administration called the Farm Service Agency. Allotments were determined by the amount of acreage owned by the farmer. I don’t know what our allotment was but it was somewhere around ten acres. Landowners could rent their allotment out to other farmers to grow cotton on their land. Payment was often a share of the revenue from the sale of the cotton.
[10] Some would have probably referred to the house we lived in as a shack. It was an unpainted clapboard house that had been built in the 1840s-1850s. We had no running water; we got our water from a well outside until my dad had a well put in several years after we moved there.
[11] The induction center served West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas and North Mississippi.
[12] “White trash” is a term coined by slaves to describe the poor whites who lived near plantations and sometimes did menial tasks such as cutting and hauling wood.
[13] Why an intelligent black woman who had been educated in white schools would move with her son into an all-black neighborhood and send him to an all-black school is inexplicable.
[14] “Parents” is used in the Wikipedia article about her but her father was living almost 250 miles away.
[15] His grandmother’s husband had died and she had remarried. Although her new husband liked children, he didn’t want them in the house.
[16] She was probably working on procurement of items for classified projects.
[17] Some accounts claim he’d been there three times, the second time as a toddler.
[18] I have some problems with Mrs. Mosley’s account. My family raised cotton and I picked cotton each fall. We couldn’t start picking until the dew was off – wet cotton causes problems at the gin – and didn’t get to the field until mid-morning. She also claimed they were paid $2.00 per hundred-weight. I don’t know about Mississippi, but where I came from, cotton pickers were paid a nickel a pound, which amounts to $5.00 a hundred.
[19] In those days composite pictures were made of elementary school classes but they were not wallet-size. If Emmett Till had one, he wasn’t carrying it around in his wallet unless he’d folded it.
[20] I have a copy of Huie’s book Wolf Whistle and Other Stories – I did not pay $400 for it! The book is becoming rare.
[21] His mother indicated that he went to Argo nearly every weekend.
[22] Actually, his mother told Huie when he asked her if Bobo had been having sex that he was of the age when boys discover sex and if he had, he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Mamie Till-Mobley would make no mention of having talked to Huie in her memoir. She only mentions that she mounted a – unsuccessful – lawsuit against Huie and Look for “defaming” Emmett Till.
[23] In Huie’s account, he gives her height at five feet even.
[24] This places their marriage at the end of the 1951 school year, when she was seventeen. Accounts claim she “dropped out” of high school. Schools in the South got out in May then went back in July for the next year, then got out again in September for six weeks for “cotton-picking.”
[25] The so-called “N-word” was not considered a slur in the South in the 1950s. It was in common use by blacks as well as whites.
[26] Woke journalist Jerry Mitchell, who has written numerous articles claiming Carolyn lied, W.B Huie lied and so forth, claims that he asked Agent Killinger, the agent who investigated claims against her, says the person referred to was Juanita Milam.
[27] Roy and Carolyn Bryant remained married for twenty years after the Till incident. They divorced in 1975. Till’s mother claimed in her memoir that J.W. Milam and Juanita Milam were also divorced but there is no record of a divorce and her obituary mentioned him as her husband.
[28] His mother, who wasn’t there, later claimed it might not have been a wolf whistle at all but just a whistle. She said he sometimes whistled, she had taught him to whistle when he was having trouble with a word. Some of his relatives later claimed he was whistling at a checker move (which makes no sense at all since they said Carolyn Bryant had got her gun out of Juanita Milam’s car.)
[29][29][29] Simeon Wright was twelve years old at the time of the incident. He made his claim a half-century later when he wrote a book about himself. He accompanied some of his relatives to Mississippi and talked to an FBI agent. Whether he actually went in the store or his memory is faulty will never be known.
[30] Although there were later questions about who identified Till, it was obviously his uncle.
[31] Simeon Wright later claimed that his father told him the voice was a woman.
[32] In Huie’s account, Preacher Wright and his wife went to her brother’s home. Her brother, Crosby Smith, went to the sheriff’s office in Greenwood.
[33] It’s claimed that the sheriff didn’t want to arrest her because she was a mother.
[34] There are a lot of things in her memoir that don’t ring true. Roy was at home in his bed in the back of the store sleeping when the sheriff came by. Whether his wife was there or not is unclear. She may have been running the store. She claimed that Bobo’s remains only had two remaining teeth but a 2005 autopsy seems to indicate that only one tooth was missing. I say “seems” because much has been redacted in the report.
[35] Some accounts claim Bobo’s mother identified the body; it was actually Moses Wright. After identification, the body was embalmed and shipped to Chicago where Mamie Till-Mobley, as she later identified herself, insisted on an open-casket funeral even though Mississippi officials had directed that it remained closed.
[36] In reality, the state of Mississippi had charged Bryant and Milam with murder after they were indicted by a grand jury. They were tried but acquitted.
[37] Till apparently took his wallet with him when they took him and they found the picture of the white girl.
[38] The fan turned out not to be heavy enough for the swift current and the body drifted several miles downstream and hung up in a drift.
[39] I personally believe that Mary Phagan’s death was accidental but it occurred because she fell while Frank was having sex with her, probably from behind, and she hit her head on a lathe.
[40] Mrs. Donham’s daughter-in-law claims that Tyson had promised to help them get her manuscript published but he claims he made no such promises. He did submit the manuscript to the University of North Carolina archives. He made a copy and gave it to the FBI to review.
[41] Mrs. Mosley does not admit to talking to Huie in her memoir. However, he described her home as it was in his article “Wolf Whistle,” on the second story of a two-story building. She was there with her boyfriend Gene Mosley and a police officer who had been detailed as her bodyguard.
[42] Although I have not been in the store where the incident took place, there were several similar stores around where I grew up. My uncle operated one for a while. Although they had electric lighting, they were dimly lit. I find it doubtful that outside observers could have seen far into the store.
[43] They failed to weight it down properly. The fan was attached to his neck and his body floated free. Had they weighted down his feet, it probably wouldn’t have been found. The current was strong enough to move the body and the fan. Still, if it hadn’t hit a snag, it might have floated all the way down the river to the Yazoo then into the Mississippi and all the way to New Orleans. It might have never been found.
[44] After word of the discovery of the ages-old warrant against Carolyn Bryant and Tyson’s release of her manuscript, black activists in North Carolina stormed a nursing home where they thought she was. This shows how callous they are. As it turns out, she is not in North Carolina.
[45] There doesn’t seem to be any public record of the finances of this organization. I found one site that shows them with just under $1 million but whether this is how much revenue they have or how much they have collected is unclear.
[46] The ancient warrant the foundation uncovered is evidence, but it’s a state of Mississippi warrant, not a Federal warrant, and the FBI has no jurisdiction over it. Furthermore, a grand jury met in Greenwood after Bryant and Milam were acquitted to consider indictments for kidnapping but their proceedings resulted in a “no bill.” In short, the warrant is for a crime for which the actual kidnappers were never charged. Good luck proving something with that warrant!
[47] In the Look article, Huie related that Milam and Bryant said they did not take Till to Bryant. Milam told Wright they were there to get the “boy who did the talking” in Money and Wright took them to him.
[48] It is possible that Till really didn’t have good sense, as Preacher Wright told Milam when he and Bryant came to his house to get him. He said the boy “didn’t know what he was doing.” Till may have not had the sense to shut up, but kept going on and on and making Milam madder and madder. Milam was not the kind of man to make mad.
[49] Huie is referring to the 96 men who were executed in the European Theater. There were others in Asia and Australia.
[50] Technically, Emmett Till wasn’t “lynched,” he was murdered. The word “lynch,” which dates back to the Revolutionary War, was coined in reference to what was known as “Lynch’s law” in Central Virginia where a judge ordered the hanging of Tories who had collaborated with the British. The true definition of “lynch” is “to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission.”
[51] It is true that some 80% of the American soldiers executed for crimes in Europe were black. What this means is unclear. Does it mean white officers were more likely to convict black soldiers of capital crimes or does it mean that blacks were more likely to engage in such offenses. With the exception of Slovik, all of the men executed in Europe were convicted of rape and/or murder.
[52] “Negro” is the correct term, “African” is not because there are other races on the African continent than Negro.
[53]Rosa Parks was an activist. She was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and had attended a seminar at the notorious Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee a few weeks before her famous protest. Although she claimed to have not been a member, she had been involved with Communist Party in Alabama, as had her husband. Four other black women had been arrested before she was. They filed the suit against the Montgomery bus company that led to the changing of the company policy.
[54] Certain black activists believed the Tallahatchie County jury was going to acquit the two men. If they did, they couldn’t be tried again. However, if the judge declared a mistrial because of Reed’s testimony, Sunflower County might be able to arrest and indict them and try them again. Reed, who was only eighteen at the time, was promised that he’d be moved to Chicago if he testified.
Three Texas lawyer-politicians recently released a report they sent to the Texas legislature of their determination after their prompt “investigation” of the massacre of children and teachers in Robb Elementary School on May 24th of this year. As a result of that report, the Uvalde school board decided to take action against the chief of the school police, Chief Pete Arredondo, because of the politicians’ accusations of improper actions against the chief and other law enforcement officers who, in the opinion of the three politicians, were negligent because of the 77-minute delay from the time the shooter, Salvador Ramos, entered the school and his death at the hands of a US Border Patrol tactical team. However, by taking action against the chief, the school board members are overlooking their own failures as reported in the same report.
In response to the 1999 shooting at the Columbine, Colorado high school, Texas schools, like schools all over the country, were fitted with self-locking doors that can only be unlocked with a key or key card, not only on outside entrances but on classrooms as well. All of the doors at Robb Elementary had been fitted with the “Columbine” doors, doors which lock automatically when they are pulled shut. The doors also are solid steel with narrow windows in the middle mounted in a steel doorframe. They open outwardly, rather than inwardly, which makes them more difficult to batter in or open with a prybar or sledgehammer. Although some schools are fitted with locks that can be opened with a key card, the Robb doors seem to require a key. Each teacher was issued a key to his or her room that can only be used for that particular door. The principal, custodian and other school staff were issued master keys that can open any look. Some school police officers were evidently also issued master keys. Teachers and other staff at Robb were under supposedly “strict” orders to keep all doors locked at all times. Responsibility for ensuring that those orders were carried out rests on school officials, including school police, the principal and assistant principal AND the superintendent of schools as well as the school board.
However, a lackadaisical attitude seems to have developed at the school (and possibly other Uvalde schools) in regard to security. Rather than ensuring that doors were locked, teachers were known to prop the outside doors open with rocks to allow students to return to the school. (Although there was a video of a teacher propping a door open with a rock, she was found to have pulled the door shut when she saw the shooter. However, the door had been unlocked and could not lock when she closed it.) Some allegedly kept their classroom doors unlocked because they didn’t want to carry a key. There was also a problem in that substitute teachers were not issued keys and were unable to gain access to their classrooms. They had to have a custodian or someone come and unlock the doors. A method of getting around the locks using magnets had somehow been developed at the school and substitutes were instructed to use the magnets.
Robb Elementary is a multi-building facility rather than a single large structure as most schools are. There are no less than FOURTEEN separate structures on the facility, all connected by walkways. The shootings were in the West building, the western-most of the facilities buildings. Although the school was built in 1955, the West building was more recent; it was built in the 1980s. The outside of the building is brick while the interior rooms seem to be of wooden frames with drywall. The building has three entrances, one on the west, another on the east (or northeast) and the third on the south end of the building at the end of the corridor where most of the classrooms are. Rooms were entered through a door in a vestibule off of the corridor. Adjoining classrooms have a door between them.
For some reason, all three doors in the West building were unlocked on May 24. Whether leaving the doors unlocked is common practice or they were left unlocked on this particular day is not revealed in the report. It was the last day of school and there were visitors on the campus, parents and family who were there for awards presentations and other formalities. District policy was for those doors to be kept locked and both the custodian and school police were required to ensure that they were. School police conducted routine walkthroughs of the district schools, checking doors to make sure they were looked. However, teachers had a practice of warning each other when officers were in the school so they could make sure their doors were locked or lock them if they weren’t.
The report states that there was a negligent attitude in the district regarding maintenance of the door locks. The locks used at Uvalde had been discontinued by the manufacturer but the real problem is that either teachers and staff weren’t reporting malfunctions or they were being ignored – or both. The door to room 111, one of the two rooms Ramos, the shooter, was in was known to require “extra effort” to ensure that it was locked. There is some question as to whether this issue had been reported to maintenance. The report does not state that the door would not lock, only that it required “extra effort” without stating what that effort was. I assume the “extra effort” was either pulling or pushing the door to make sure the lock engaged. Without evidence to indicate which of the two doors Ramos entered, the report assumes that he entered room 111 under the assumption that it was not locked. There have been media claims that the door was not locked although this is an assumption, not a fact.
Ramos entered the school through the unlocked west door of the West building. It is the closest door to where he entered school grounds after driving his grandmother’s truck into a ditch. He was shooting at the school in the some-five minutes from the time he crashed the truck until he gained entry through the unlocked door. His entry and stroll down the corridor to the vestibule of rooms 111 and 112 were captured by a school security camera. (One media article claimed the camera caught him “roaming the halls” of the school.) Although one little girl in another classroom claimed he tried the door to her room and fired a shot into the room, the video does not show this. The video shows him slowing momentarily possibly by a vestibule on the right (north) side of the corridor but he continues on to the vestibule for 111 and 112 without further pause. He’s too far from the camera and inside the vestibule so there’s no way to tell what he did from the video although he starts firing into one of the classrooms then walks in. After that, there are a couple of minutes in which he fires repeatedly.
By the time the first officers come in the building three minutes after Ramos entered, the firing has stopped and the screaming of children referenced in the video has ceased. The officers reported that the hallway was filled with smoke and debris from drywall in the air. Unfortunately, the editors placed lettering right over the most important point on the video and it’s difficult to see what happened by the vestibule of the two rooms. However, once the lettering is removed, the corridor in the vicinity of the vestibule appears murky. The released video is misleading because it’s so far from the two rooms and only shows the officers who came in the east and west entrances. Chief Arredondo and other officers came in through the south entrance and were in the immediate vicinity of the two classrooms the entire time, at least Arredondo was. The video shows at least two figures in the vicinity of the classrooms with four others initially entering through the west entrance, the same entrance used by Ramos. None of the six officers first on the scene in the north end of the corridor are armed with anything but pistols. While they are all wearing vests, some of which were armored, none wore rifle rated vests capable of stopping a rifle bullet. None were wearing helmets or leg protection.
The officers advance down the corridor looking for the shooter. They peer into the glass in doors. After they reach the vestibule for rooms 111 and 112, Ramos somehow becomes aware of their presence and fires a burst of fire at the doorways. Two officers are hit by flying debris, none seriously. The officers retreat out of the line of fire. It is at this time that the officers become aware that Ramos is armed with a rifle. One says “that’s an AR” meaning an AR-15.
There is no fire from Ramos and officers said they heard no screaming and no voices to indicate there were children alive inside the two rooms. It’s not until a half hour later that one of the victims calls 911 on her cell phone. (She was apparently in room 112 while Ramos was in 111.) Whether this changes the situation is debatable. Although he said he did not consider himself the on-scene commander – there were other officers in the building from both the school police and the Uvalde police department who got there the same time he did or perhaps slightly before – Chief Arredondo took action. He sent a man outside to call for a SWAT team. Ironically, the Uvalde police SWAT commander was already in the building. He also requested a Halligan tool or some other means of breaching the door, although he didn’t consider it likely they would be able to break the door down considering their construction. Arredondo said he now considered that the shooter had been neutralized in that he was inside a locked classroom and was no longer a direct threat to those in other rooms. He said he believed the most important thing was to evacuate the school and he sent officers outside to initiate an evacuation using the school windows out of fear the shooter would hear children in the hallway and fire through the walls. There were children in room 109 and their teacher had been hit by a bullet that came through the wall. Not all classrooms were occupied. Ramos entered the school at 11:33. Some children were in the cafeteria and others had been on the playground.
The authors of the report somehow jumped to the conclusion that room 111 was not locked. They saw reports that the lock wasn’t working properly and assumed the door had not been locked when Ramos arrived and that he entered through that door. The teacher in the room, who was wounded but survived, said the door was locked. He also said Ramos came into his room from room 112. The “investigators,” if they should be called that since they are lawyer/politicians, concluded the door had been unlocked and that it remained unlocked. They never acknowledged the possibility, at least not in the report, that Ramos could have found the door unlocked but then pulled it shut as he entered, thus causing it to lock. (The door was unlocked by the BORTAC agent in charge of the team so it would have been unlocked when investigators looked at it.) Chief Arredondo was close enough to the door that he could see the cylinder protruding into the door frame. The Border Patrol tactical team commander, who physically unlocked the door with a key, said the door was locked. In short, the report authors and the “experts” who scrutinized some investigative reports are second-guessing.
The criticism of the officers is that they didn’t take action soon enough but chose to protect their own lives. Media reports often mention that there were 379 officers involved, without acknowledging that some of those officers came from as far as an hour away and didn’t get there until near the time when Ramos was finally shot. The BORTAC team that finally ended the incident came from Del Rio, a border town some 70 miles to the west. Map Quest shows a driving time of one hour and six minutes. Granted, the agents were no doubt driving at much higher speeds but by the time they learned of the situation and got there, at least an hour had elapsed. There were other Border Patrol agents at the school but they were from the local station. Some were parents of children in the school. One group of Federal marshals came from San Antonio, which is 84 miles and an hour and 25 minutes away. It wasn’t until the Federal marshals arrived that a rifle rated shield became available. Other shields had been brought in but were not rifle rated.
Critics and “experts” advocate that the officers should have breached the door and rushed right in but they didn’t always have the facts. ALLERT, a law enforcement academic department at Texas State University at San Marcos, put out an unfactual report claiming officers should have used equipment they did not have. [1]
Then there is another issue: There is evidence to indicate that the Uvalde school system failed Salvador Ramos. His school records indicate that he had a learning problem but no action was ever taken to help him. He wasn’t placed in a special education class nor was he offered any tutorial help. His situation was complicated even further because of the bullying he received, not only from fellow students but also allegedly from teachers. His family says that both he and his female cousin were bullied, perhaps because they were poor. Ramos’ grandmother was a Uvalde school system employee who retired with 27 years’ service according to the report. His mother, however, who worked as a waitress and was known in the community, had a reputation among some neighbors as a drug user. His parents had split up at some point while he was a child. He had an older sister who had finished school. He was found to have researched the learning comprehension problem dyslexia, a medical condition that causes the person to misunderstand words. Dyslexia can be overcome; there have been people in history who were dyslexic, General George S. Patton for one, famed physicist Albert Einstein for another. Ramos stuttered; stuttering can be dyslexia-related. Following are symptoms of dyslexia:
Salvador Ramos exhibited many, if not all of these symptoms.
In short, there were many failures at Uvalde and a lot of people should be held responsible, including the staff and teachers at the school and even the school superintendent as well as Chief Arredondo and others.
[1] I have read the ALLERT report and found it to be mostly theory and little fact. For example, they state that Ramos entered through room 111 then went back out and shot in 112 and went back in when there is no proof of such an action. The video does not show what took place in the vestibule for the two rooms. They also state that the rooms had to be locked from outside without recognizing that the complaint about the room 111 lock was not that it wouldn’t lock, but that it took additional effort to ensure that it engaged.
Some ten months ago, the nation and some of the world, at least those on social media, were obsessed with the case of Gabrielle Petito, a young new Long Island woman and wannabe social influencer, who disappeared while on a trip with her fiancée, Brian Laundrie. Laundrie, Laundry; Petito, Potato – tennesseeflyboy (wordpress.com) Laundrie also disappeared – but was “seen” all over the country, particularly along the Appalachian Trail in the Smoky Mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Ms. Petito’s remains, or what was left of them, was found a couple of weeks after her parents reported her to New York law enforcement as missing and Laundrie’s remains were also found a few weeks later after flood waters subsided in the park near his home where he had gone hiking. Among his belongings was a notebook. FBI specialists were able to replicate the pages, or some of them, and the FBI, who has sole jurisdiction over the case since Ms. Petito died on Federal land, issued a cryptic statement that Laundrie “took responsibility” for her death. The young couple’s belongings were recently returned to the two affected families’ attorneys, including Laundrie’s notebook which the Laundrie family attorney released to the media, at least in part including the last pages in which he related generally what had happened. Her death is shocking to say the least.
At this point let me comment on my background – I grew up on a farm in rural West Tennessee and spent most of my time out of doors. Later in life I became a hiker, backpacker and caver in northeast Kentucky where I lived for a time. As an Air Force aircrewmember, I completed extensive survival training in the mountains of Washington State and Idaho and sea survival training off of Okinawa. I also had a neighbor die of exposure recently practically in my backyard. I’ve been in every state in the Union as well as several foreign countries and have hiked in the Rockies. I find Laundrie’s explanation perfectly plausible.
According to what Laundrie wrote in his last minutes before he put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out, he and Petito were exploring along Spread Creek in the Bridger-Teton National Forest south of Yellowstone National Park when she slipped and fell in the water and suffered injury to her forehead. Night fell quickly and temperatures dropped. She was in agony and after failing to carry her back to where their van was parked, he decided to put her out of her misery. Naturally, those who had already made their minds up that Laundrie was an abuser and had killed her in an act of domestic violence pooh-pooh his account. However, as an experienced outdoorsman, I see nothing wrong with it. Barring evidence to contradict it, I must accept his account at face value. The FBI seems to have.
Laundrie and Petito were camped on a spur of the main forest road leading into the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. The Forestry Service designates camp sites where people may camp for specified periods. Spread Creek drains from east to west into the Snake River about 3.5-4 miles from where Petito’s body was found. He doesn’t say whether they went exploring upstream or downstream from where their van was parked. He only says they were caught by darkness and were making their way toward their vehicle when he heard her cry out in pain. The creek bed is over 1,000 feet wide although the stream, which is divided into forks in places, is only a few feet wide except when it’s filled with water during wet weather. Darkness fell quickly. They were east of the Grand Tetons and thus in their shadow. Concerned about the sudden approach of darkness, they hurried toward their van. She fell in the water.
He didn’t see her fall but heard her cry out. It took him awhile to find her in the darkening twilight. When he did, he picked her up and started carrying her toward their van. Her clothes were soaking wet and she was shivering. He carried her as far as he could until he could carry her no further. He had apparently carried her to within 500-1,000 feet of their van but could carry her no further. He put her down and built a fire. He doesn’t say how he built it but he was an experienced backpacker and probably had matches. Although the coroner didn’t say much when he announced his findings – Wyoming coroners are prohibited by law from revealing the results of an autopsy – he did acknowledge that Petito had “blunt force” trauma to her head along with evidence of strangulation. This is consistent with Laundrie’s description of a growing knot on her forehead.
Falling in a stream is not uncommon, especially since she was hurrying and in dwindling daylight. Laundrie says the bump was on her forehead, which may indicate she fell forward and hit a rock. Spread Creek is very rocky. He also says the bump was rapidly enlarging, an indication of bleeding under the skin. She was shaking and complained about her feet hurting. How Petito was dressed is unclear. Regardless, her clothes were soaking wet after her fall in the stream. He believed she was becoming hypothermic, which is very well possible. Hypothermia is a cooling of the body. An internal body temperature of 50 degrees F is fatal. One “expert” interviewed by FOX News claimed the temperature in Wyoming then was “only” in the high forties, which is definitely cold enough to cause hypothermia, especially if the person is wearing wet clothing. As an Air Force crewmember, I often flew over cold Arctic waters. I attended survival training and refresher training several times. We were taught that our survival time in such waters without an exposure suit, a rubber suit in which some water is allowed in to form a layer of insulation, is measured in minutes. A few years ago a neighbor died of hypothermia almost in my back yard. It was on New Year’s Eve. This is the Texas Gulf Coast and it wasn’t that cold that night, probably in the forties. He went to a New Year’s Eve party at another neighbor’s house. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. His wife left him and went home. The next morning someone saw him sitting with his back propped against a fence. Several people passed by before someone went over to check on him. He was dead. He died only a few hundred feet from his house.
I had my own experience with hypothermia one January night. I flew a load of automotive parts, Holly carburetors, from the factory in West Tennessee to Detroit. The Piper Navajo I was flying had a Janitrol gasoline heater. The heater worked part of the way up but didn’t come on at all on my return trip. I spent over 2 ½ hours in the cockpit in temperatures below zero. I have no idea what the temperature was in the airplane but it was COLD. I was dressed warmly, or so I thought. I had on flannel pajama bottoms under corduroy slacks with a flannel shirt under a sweater. To top it, I wore my L.L. Bean Stadium Coat, a long pile-lined coat with a hood. I also had on a stocking cap, gloves and insulated hunting boots. Still, I got cold, really cold. I was shivering. Every minute seemed like hours until my home airport finally came in sight. After I landed and parked the airplane, I went outside and started my car then went back inside the office, a large room with a gas heater, to do my paperwork. I continued shivering. I shivered all the way home even though I had the heater on full blast. I didn’t stop shivering until I got in a warm bath my wife drew for me. Gabby Petito was shivering while Brian Laundrie “spooned” against her in front of a fire he had built.
Petito was in agony. Her head was hurting and she was fading out of consciousness. Fearing she had a concussion, Laundrie kept waking her up. She berated him for bringing her back to the agony she was enduring. He wanted to leave her by the fire and go try to find their car and get help, although just where he would have found it is uncertain. They were next to a creek bank in a National Forest in Wyoming, some thirty miles from Jackson, the nearest town. He doesn’t mention trying to call on a cell phone. Chances are, there was no service since it was a remote area. Gabby wouldn’t let him leave her. She was afraid the fire would go out. She was unable to move and wouldn’t be able to put wood on it. Laundrie feared the same thing, that the fire would go out and she’d die of hypothermia. He didn’t know what to do.
Laundrie was in the worst kind of predicament. He was thirty miles from the nearest civilization in a national forest with no facilities. His partner, his fiancé, was seriously injured and in agony. He had no way to relieve her pain and felt unable to leave her side. He had no idea of the extent of her injuries other than the knot on her head, which was growing larger, and that she was in excruciating pain. He does not state that she asked him to kill her but the implication is certainly there. He doesn’t say how he did it – he merely says, “I ended her life.”
Immediately after he did it, he felt he’d made a terrible mistake. It occurred to him that he should have built a fire as soon as he found her rather than trying to carry her to the car. How far away they were from the car when she fell is unknown. Her remains were found several weeks later on the side of Spread Creek less than 1,000 feet from where their van showed up in a passerby’s video. He does not say what he did immediately after her death other than to say that he “panicked”, although he doesn’t state if it was before or after he killed her. He apparently decided right then to kill himself but he wanted to go back home and see his parents and other family first. Just when he killed Petito is unknown nor is it known when he left for Florida. All that’s known is that he returned to his parent’s home on September 1; a traffic camera captured the van coming off the interstate at 10:30 AM.
Just what Laundrie told his parents when he returned home without Petito is unknown. Either he or they contacted an attorney they knew in New York and he told them not to talk to anyone, including Petito’s family. The situation has been complicated because her parents and stepfather have filed a wrongful death suit against the Laundries, although how they can expect to win such a suit is unclear since they had nothing to do with her death. They hired an attorney soon after they reported her missing and set up a foundation and started collecting money from the public immediately after her remains were found. They are linking her death to domestic violence even though Brian’s suicide note states that she was injured in a fall and he killed her to end her misery. The suit is ongoing and the attorneys are restricted as to what they may make public.
The FBI put out a statement that Brian “took responsibility” for her death in a suicide note several months ago. Both the Laundries and the Petito/Schmidt families were advised of the contents. Schmidt’s attorney alleges that there is another document “on an electronic device” that is different. The Laundrie’s attorney has acknowledged that there is something else. The contents of that document have yet to be revealed. Unless there is something dramatically different about it, I see no reason to doubt Laundrie’s account. He was the only one who knew what happened.
Since the tragic shooting deaths of nineteen school children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, there has been a lot reported in the media about the events, nearly all of it wrong. This is not surprising since, for all their crowing about being the source of truth, media knows absolutely NOTHING except what they’re told and what they publish is mostly the product of their own mind. After word of the shooting got out, a massive army of media descended on the small Texas community and reporters proceeded to interview anyone they could get to talk. They probably interviewed live oak trees if they couldn’t find a person. (They’d have interviewed cactus except the only cacti in that part of the country are prickly pear and they’re notorious for their silence.) All that could be said with certainty was that a Uvalde teenager named Salvador Ramos entered the school with a rifle and started shooting. Besides that, things were sketchy. Even the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state law enforcement agency, failed to get the facts straight before the commander, Steven McCraw, conducted a press conference in Uvalde three days later. Some of the things McCraw said turned out to be different than he reported. McCraw said that Ramos entered the school through a door a teacher had propped open with a rock. It turned out the teacher hadn’t left the door open; video showed she had pulled the self-locking door closed. He also said that Uvalde school district chief of police Pete Arredondo had assumed the role of on-scene commander and that he had ordered a pullback and prevented officers from “breaching” the classroom because the incident had gone from a shooting in progress to a hostage situation. This has also turned out to be untrue. McCraw also stated that “based on hindsight,” Arredondo “made the wrong decision” and has caused massive criticism of Uvalde law enforcement by people who had no clue what had actually happened. The media in many articles left out McCraw’s “based on hindsight” comment along with his other comment “I was not there.” Media took the word of parents who came to the school and saw members of law enforcement outside and assumed no one was going after the shooter.
Now that Arredondo has told his story to the media, a clearer picture has emerged, at least it’s clearer to those who don’t have their own preconceived notions of what happened. There has been a lot of “woulda, shoulda, coulda” on the part of media, political pundits, and “experts,” none of whom were present. They point to a protocol developed by the FBI after the Columbine, Colorado shootings – by an FBI agent who has never been involved in a mass shooting in her entire life – that establishes that law enforcement must rush in and kill the shooter without regard to their own life. Unfortunately, protocols are theories, not reality, usually advocated by those who have never been there and never will be, and what law enforcement is taught in classes and seminars may be entirely different from real-life situations such as the one at Uvalde.
Just how Ramos got into the building is still not clear. Since it’s been confirmed by video footage that the teacher who allegedly left the door propped open actually closed it, it’s been theorized that the self-locking door somehow failed to lock. Now, my wife is a Texas teacher and I know for a fact that outside doors automatically lock when they’re closed and the only way to get in is with a key. Although she’s a certified teacher, she now substitutes. She frequently mentions that she had to find someone with a key to let her class back inside the building after recess. None of the articles I’ve read – including the one linked above – consider that Ramos may have actually had a key to the building. Not a lot of attention has been paid to it in the media, but his grandmother is allegedly a Uvalde school district employee, and she worked at Robb Elementary as a teacher’s aide at the time of the shooting. Why she wasn’t at the school at the time is unclear. Perhaps she had the day off or perhaps she went home for something during lunch. Regardless, Ramos shot her in the face before he went to the school. He got from her house to the school in her truck, which means he had her keys. Whether or not he took the keys when he jumped out of the truck after driving it into a drainage ditch has not been addressed.
Although numerous articles have been written implying that law enforcement left the building and did not reenter it until well over an hour after the shooting started, McCraw pointed out that officers entered the building within two minutes after Ramos and a total of nineteen officers were in that particular section of the building. He did not make clear that there were officers in the building the entire time – including Chief Arredondo, who was one of the first officers in the building and did not leave until after all of the dead and wounded children and teachers had been carried out. Although parents implied that law enforcement did nothing, they had actually evacuated the building, except for the two adjoining classrooms where Ramos did his killing and wounding. Some five hundred (500) children and staff were brought out of the building during the hour and seventeen minutes from the time Ramos entered the building until he was shot and killed. Just where they were taken is unclear, although law enforcement apparently kept them somewhere, perhaps in the gymnasium, in order to make sure that all were accounted for. The parents and onlookers outside had no clue what was going on in the building.
Many articles implied that Ramos was continually shooting and killing kids the entire time up until he was killed. McCraw made clear in his press conference that law enforcement believed the killing took place in the first five minutes when Ramos fired at least a hundred rounds. (Around 120-125 empty cartridges were found in the classroom and 22 others were found outside – he fired at people in the parking lot at the funeral home across the street and possibly at the school building.) After that, he fired sporadically at the doors where he knew there were law enforcement officers waiting outside. Some of his bullets penetrated the steel door and others went through the wall into the opposite wall. Much has been made over Arredondo not having a radio with him. He said in his interview that he left them in his vehicle because they would get in the way as he rushed inside to confront the shooter. Even though he didn’t have a radio, he had a cell phone and was in contact with his office and local law enforcement. He was NOT out of communication as the media has implied.
Once the word got out about the shooter, dozens of law enforcement personnel rushed toward the school. Some came from as far away as San Antonio some eighty miles away – including US marshals. A Border Patrol tactical team came from Del Rio, a border town some sixty miles due west of Uvalde. It would have taken them an hour or more to get there from the time they left which means that, other than local law enforcement, most didn’t arrive until just before Ramos was killed. Other Border Patrol personnel were in the town; many live there. Some were off duty but had children in the school as did members of local law enforcement. One of the slain teachers was married to a local officer. Much has been made of how one Border Patrolman took his barber’s shotgun and proceeded to the school and went in and got his children. (He did not get them out of one of the two classrooms where Ramos was holding up.) Those same articles fail to mention that law enforcement were in the process of evacuating the school while being careful not to attract Ramos’ attention. Those in the classrooms in the section where Ramos was in a locked classroom were brought out through the windows – the officers in the hallway didn’t want them to be brought out into the hall where they could be fired on by Ramos – .223 bullets can penetrate concrete. Media and political pundits have focused on a woman who claims she drove forty miles after she heard of the shooting and was arrested by “Federal” officers for interfering with police. She claims that after they let her go, she went “inside the school” and got her children. Her story does not jive with the fact that children had been brought out of the school by the time she would have arrived. However, they were being kept away from the parents until a determination had been made that all children were accounted for. She also claimed that law enforcement “threatened her” if she went public but the facts are that the woman is on probation and defying law enforcement is clearly a violation.
There were actually two groups of law enforcement outside the classrooms where Ramos had locked himself in. Arredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and attended Robb Elementary, had entered the building through the south entrance along with a Uvalde officer and was outside the southernmost of the two classrooms while another group of local Uvalde police (possibly including Arredondo’s subordinates) had come in through the main entrance and entered the hallway from the north. They were pointed to the classrooms where the shooter had gone by teachers. Ramos fired at the group on the north and wounded two of them, but their wounds were sleight and they returned to the hallway outside the classroom after temporarily withdrawing.
They had no means of breaching the reinforced steel doors; the doors open outward and couldn’t be battered in. They also have steel door jambs rather than the usual wood. Some have raised the question of using shotguns to shoot out the locks but this requires special shells with clay rounds inside and some articles indicate that only specially designed shotguns should be used. Arredondo says that he called for breaching equipment along with a sniper and armored shields but the breaching equipment never arrived. He and the other officers tried for some time to find the right key to open the classroom doors. Apparently, the school does not have a single master key but each door is keyed separately.
Although Arredondo’s interview doesn’t say, apparently the Border Patrol tactical team arrived at some point with tactical equipment, including shields, and came in the hall. Someone in the group on the north end of the hall finally found the right key and notified Arredondo. Allegedly, someone told the Border Patrolmen through their headsets not to enter the classroom but they chose to ignore it. (There may have been a jurisdictional issue.) Someone opened the door and they rushed inside. Ramos started shooting at them but one finally killed him.
Much is being made over the fact that Ramos was able to buy two AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles manufactured by a Georgia firm called Daniel’s Defense. Although they fire the same ammunition as AR-15s, they are actually knockoffs and sell for twice as much as most AR-15s and AR-15 clones, which sell for around $800-$900. Just what makes them more expensive is unclear. The company manufactures rifles for law enforcement and the military as well as for consumers. Ramos’ age is often brought up – Federal law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from purchasing ANY firearm. The age limit for firearms purchasing was implemented in 1968 in the wake of the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations.[1] That Ramos was able to purchase the two rifles is only indirectly related to the shootings – thousands of 18-year-olds purchase firearms, including semiautomatic rifles, each year and only very rarely is one used in a so-called “mass” shooting.
Contrary to popular belief, the AR-15 and other military-looking semiautomatic rifles are NOT assault rifles! The definition of an assault rifle is one that can fire fully automatically. Nor is the AR-15 the first military-style semiautomatic rifle or even military rifle available to the public. Civilians have been able to purchase M-1 carbines since they became surplus after World War II. Along with the larger caliber M-1 Garand rifle, the M-1 carbine is semiautomatic. It also is capable of firing as many as thirty rounds if a 30-round clip was used. Originally, the carbine came with a 15-round clip while the more powerful Garand used an eight-round clip. The M-1 was initially intended to have a fully automatic feature but the feature was left off due to production considerations. A later version with full-automatic capability was produced as the M-2. Civilians are allowed to own M-1 carbines but the M-2 requires special licensing due to 1934 Federal firearms laws that prohibit the ownership of unlicensed automatic rifles. (The same laws prohibit ownerships of shotguns with less than a 26-inch barrel.)
Air Force chief of staff Curtis Lemay chose the AR-15 as the official rifle of the Air Force to replace the carbine in 1963. Carbines were issued to Air Force air police security forces as well as aircrews and other Air Force personnel who might be exposed to combat and all male Air Force recruits were required to qualify with it in basic training. I went through Air Force basic training at Lackland AFB, Texas in July and early August 1963 and, like every other recruit, was given training on the disassembly and reassembly and cleaning of the carbine then went to the range to fire it. I was looking forward to firing the carbine as I’d had an interest in firearms all my life. My dad had a .22 rifle and several shotguns and I started hunting at a very early age (9 years old). I was given my first firearm, a 20-gauge Ithaca pump shotgun at age eleven (I still have it.) I started hunting squirrels with the .22 at around 12 and fired the 30/06 automatic my dad bought to hunt deer. I didn’t do as well with the carbine as I thought I would. At that time the Air Force used standard targets with bullseyes and all of my shots weren’t in the center of the bullseye. Still, I did okay. After firing, we took our carbines to a nearby shed and broke them down and cleaned them. That time on the firing range was my only exposure to the carbine.
After basic and technical training as an aircraft mechanic, I went to Pope AFB, NC. Sometime the next spring we were told that the Air Force had purchased the M-16 to replace the carbine. I knew that the M-16 was the military designation for the AR-15 but that the military had ordered new features – including a selector switch on the side to allow full-automatic fire. We went to the range and went through the same training as we had at Lackland – instruction on the weapon itself followed by instructions and practice breaking it down and cleaning it – then fired it from the standard Air Force positions, prone, standing and kneeling. The Air Force had gone to silhouette targets rather than conventional bullseyes. The instructor demonstrated the full-automatic feature by firing at a concrete block. The block exploded as it was hit by numerous rounds – I could have done the same thing with a single round from a 30/06. We did not fire it on full-automatic; we only fired single-fired rounds. We were also admonished that firing full-automatic for more than a couple of bursts would burn up the barrel and cause the weapon to jam.
We were also given instruction on the 5.56 millimeter bullet used by the M-16/AR-15. The bullet is actually .223 caliber, which makes it only slightly larger than the .22 bullets I had hunted with and used in the .22 rifle I have in my closet (and which is semiautomatic with a 15-round magazine.) The .223 caliber is not new. Hunting rifles with .222 cartridges to hunt varmints such as groundhogs have been around a long time. However, they were forbidden for use to hunt deer, which required a larger caliber bullet. Although the bullet is the same size but longer, the .223 cartridge is much larger than the common .22, which makes it “high-powered.” (The “high-powered” term is in relation to the smaller .22 and pistol cartridges such as those used in the .30-caliber carbine.)
At the time, the Air Force was the only service using the M-16. Army special forces had acquired some and liked it because of it’s light weight but Army and Marine infantry were using the M-14, a larger .30-caliber rifle. They started issuing M-16s to troops after LBJ sent troops to South Vietnam in 1965. I later went on flying status as an aircrew member and started flying missions in Southeast Asia. The two enlisted men on our C-130 crew were required to carry an M-16 as well as a .38-caliber revolver. All Air Force aircrew were required to carry a pistol on combat and combat support missions. At one point the Air Force ran out of .38s and we carried .45 automatics. We went to the range and learned to clean the pistols then fired them for qualification. I checked out a M-16 and pistol every time we went into the combat zone. Later on they decided we didn’t need the M-16s since we were no longer going into secure fields but we continued carrying the pistol. Fortunately, I never had to fire either one in combat.
With that said, I don’t feel there is a need for people to have AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles, except for one thing which I’ll get into. I’ve only known a few people who owned an AR-15, AK-47 or similar rifle. Although I no longer hunt, my brothers and their sons are hunters. To the best of my knowledge, all of their rifles are bolt-action. I don’t think they even own an automatic except, possibly, for the automatic 30/06 our dad bought back in the late 50s when he started hunting deer. My uncle had a similar rifle but it was a pump rather than an automatic. AR-15s aren’t really suitable for deer hunting. Someone in Uvalde mentioned that he hunts pigs with an AR-15. Wild hogs are rampant in Texas, to the point they have become pests. AR-15-type rifles are popular with some people for a couple of reasons, with one being that the LOOK LIKE military rifles. Actually, there have been actual military rifles available to civilians all along. Some, like the M-1 Garand, are much more powerful than the AR-15. So are most high-powered hunting rifles. In fact, Army and Marine snipers used common hunting rifles with telescopic sights in Vietnam. Sniper rifles have since been developed but they are basically modifications of hunting rifle designs. AR-15s and AR-15 clones are also popular with target shooters. I’m sure it gives them a thrill to shoot at a watermelon and watch it explode (watermelons and other fruits will explode when hit by a .22 long rifle too.)
Now for the really big elephant in the room – the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Only those who wish to construe it otherwise don’t accept that it gives the right of ownership of weapons to ALL Americans. The amendment, which reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” was adopted by the first US Congress in 1791 after a bitter fight over ratification of the Constitution in 1788-89. Although most Americans seem to have the idea that once the Constitution was drawn up, everything was hunky-dory, In reality, there was strong opposition to the new Constitution, particularly in Virginia where the famed patriot Patrick Henry was in strong opposition as were George Mason and James Monroe. Opposition was so strong that James Madison was in danger of losing the election to the First US Congress to Monroe or a New England Baptist minister named John Leland who pastored a church in Orange. Madison finally convinced Leland to drop out of the race and support him by promising to introduce a bill of rights.
One of the key points of the anti-Federalists, as those in opposition to the Constitution and a Federal government were called, was the maintaining of a standing army. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provided for a standing army under the command of the President, who would also command the militia when called into Federal service (which meant the Constitution recognized the militia.) By definition, the militia act of 1792 defined the militia as all able-bodied white men from age 18-45. During the debate over the Constitution, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, in particular, advocated that the militia would stand as a defense against any standing army that a president or Congress might attempt to use to suppress the rights of citizens. Hamilton, who was an immigrant from the British West Indies and was commissioned in the Continental Army and served as Washington’s aide de camp, proposed that the militia be part of the army while Madison saw the militia as a safeguard against it. Leftists zero in on the militia clause as the intent of the Second Amendment and link it to the modern National Guard when Madison intended just the opposite.
Hamilton’s views were no doubt prompted by many Continentals lack of confidence in militias during the just concluded Revolution. They saw the militias as ill-disciplined and likely to break and run when under fire in a war where the Continental Army was trying to fight on British terms, meaning standing in lines on fields and shooting back and forth at each other in European style. Hamilton’s service was all in the North and he wasn’t present at Kings Mountain, where a force of “overmountain men” from the Carolina and Virginia frontier which later became Kentucky and Tennessee, routed a larger force of British and loyalists under Major Patrick Ferguson, or Cowpens, where militia under General Daniel Morgan fired the first volley at British troops under Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton then pretended to break and run, thus suckering the British into a trap. Militias, particularly those from the Carolinas and Virginias, were often made up of men who had fought Indians and were used to firing from concealment. In many respects, they were the forerunners of modern warfare as nations moved away from the European-style toward armies trained to fight without needlessly exposing themselves.
Madison, who was born and raised in Virginia, saw the militia as local organizations that could be called up by the states in opposition to the Federals. He made this clear in his missive now known as Federalist 46 in which he said: “Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the state governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield in the United States an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.” Madison also recognized that much of the United States was still frontier and that arms, particularly firearms, were needed both to hunt for food and for defense against hostile Indians as well as outlaws. There can be no doubt that Madison saw the necessity of prohibiting Congress from passing any laws that would disarm American citizens.
Opposition to independent state militias rose after the War Between the States when the seceded states were able to quickly raise an army of men. The Federals also depended on state militias and volunteers raised by the states to fill out the Union army. However, it wasn’t until after the Spanish-American War that Congress incorporated the National Guard into the US Army. The Militia Act of 1903, commonly called the Dick Act after Ohio Republican Charles Dick, an Ohio National Guardsman who had served during the Spanish-American War, effectively made the National Guard part of the United States Army. In the modern military, Army Guard and Air National Guard troops are extensions of the active duty forces.
I see the AR-15 and other semiautomatic rifles as important to James Madison’s original intent. Although they are not military weapons per se, they are equal to the M-16 and its successors in every respect. Democrats and liberals (both words are oxymorons) are scared shitless by the millions of firearms in American civilian hands. No one really knows how many AR-15s and AR-15 clones are in civilian hands, but estimates indicate there are well over 20 million. President Joe Biden recently commented that if Americans were to revolt, they’d be going up against tanks and F-15s. Mr. Biden apparently is not aware that a very large percentage of the American arsenal is in state hands, and in the event of a revolution, many National Guard, Air National Guard and possibly active duty and Reserve units would join it. That’s the main reason modern military commanders are trying to purge their units of men and women who don’t go along with current “woke” political thought. Democrats like Beto O’Rourke want to confiscate every firearm in America because they see armed Americans as a barrier to their goals. They’re using Uvalde as ammunition for their efforts.
[1] Just how age became a factor at that time is unclear since neither of the accused shooters was under age 18. They were both adults.
UPDATE – The attorney for the teacher who was alleged to have left a door propped open claims – and video confirms – that she did not leave the door open, but that she kicked the rock she had placed to hold it open while she went to her vehicle for some food away and pulled the door shut, thinking it would lock automatically.
By now, most of America has heard of Uvalde, the sleepy little Texas town on US 90 some eighty miles west of San Antonio and 60 miles east of Del Rio. For me, it’s a bit personal because, unlike most Americans, I’ve been there a few times. South of the Hill Country and north and east of the Rio Grande – the river’s “big bend” is west of Uvalde at Del Rio – Uvalde is east of the Chihuahuan Desert but it almost seems like a desert town, at least when coming from the west. My wife and I used to stop at the local HEB to pick up sandwich fixings while on our way to a camp on the Frio River north of Concan, a tiny community about 25 miles north of town. The Frio is a popular destination for people from all over Texas, including Uvalde, in the summer months. They go to the little camps to camp out and rent large tubes to float on the beautiful river. I’ve also driven through on US 90 and have flown into Garner Field. Needless to say, I was shocked when I learned there had been a school shooting there.
The Uvalde shooting is not the first one to strike a personal chord with me. Four years ago in 2018 a teenager in Santa Fe, Texas took his father’s shotgun and pistol to school and shot and killed several of his classmates. (The young man was so traumatized he hasn’t been adjudged capable of standing trial – the last I heard, he had no memory of what he had done.) In the Santa Fe case, the shooting was in the high school; in Uvalde, it was in one of the town’s two elementary schools. The Santa Fe school is familiar. The town sits on Texas 6, a highway running from the Houston western suburbs to Galveston. It runs just up the road from my house. We travel it most of the time whenever we go to Galveston and go right past the high school.
In both instances, the shooter was reported to have been the subject of bullying by his classmates. There appears to have been a girl involved in the Santa Fe shooting. One of the victims, a 16-year-old girl, was reported to have humiliated the young man just before the shooting. She is reported to have told others that she feared for her life. The Santa Fe shooter discriminated – he only shot people he didn’t like and spared those he did. Salvador Ramos, the Uvalde killer, apparently did not discriminate. There’s no known reason why he picked that particular school instead of the other elementary, the middle school or the high school.
At first, the Uvalde incident was misrepresented in the media. There was also confusion among the Texas law enforcement community. There were initial reports that a school security officer confronted the shooter and was wounded. However, it turns out he was not on the campus initially but quickly arrived and went after someone he thought was the shooter but who turned out to be a teacher. Some law officers were wounded a few minutes after the shooter entered the school. He fired at them through the locked door of the classroom where he did his damage. Then the media focused on parents who arrived and saw law enforcement personnel outside the school and – mistakenly – thought they weren’t doing anything. Parents became incensed and refused to obey law enforcement, who were trying to maintain order and access the situation around the school while other law enforcement personnel were inside the school confronting the shooter. Some parents were arrested for interfering with a law enforcement operation. Media put out reports that law enforcement did not go into the school for an hour. This isn’t true. There were claims that Ramos was outside shooting at the school for 10-12 minutes before he went in. This isn’t true either.
The Texas Department of Public Security has established a timeline. At 11:27 a teacher opened one of the back doors for some reason. She apparently propped it open. (My wife is a teacher and I know that school doors automatically lock and can only be opened with a key. The teacher may have opened the door so the children could go outside to play after lunch but that is speculation on my part.) A minute later Ramos drove his grandmother’s truck through the fence and into a concrete drainage ditch. He got out of his truck and fired a couple of shots at two men in the parking lot of the funeral home across the street then ran (or walked) toward the school. The teacher saw him and realized what was happening; she went inside to her classroom to get her cell phone. She then called 911 to report the situation. However, in her haste, she failed to let the door come too and lock. Ramos found the open door and went in at 11:31, only three minutes after he crashed the truck, not twelve as a witness claimed. There were children close enough to hear him. They reported that he said, “Now what do we have here” when he found the open door. He went inside and found a classroom with children and opened fire. Audio reports indicate the firing lasted for some five minutes. It was during this time that the children were killed and wounded. One teacher, who was apparently in an adjoining classroom, was still alive. Police arrived at the classroom four minutes after the firing. They called out asking if anyone needed assistance. The teacher replied that she did, at which point Ramos shot her dead according to one of the surviving children.
Four local police entered the building and reached the classroom four minutes after Ramos entered. He fired at them and his bullets “grazed” two of them. Three others arrived shortly afterward. They went to work evacuating other classrooms. Other law enforcement arrived, including off-duty Border Patrol agents who lived in the town, some of whom had children in the building. One Border Patrol agent borrowed a local barber’s shotgun and went into the building and got his child. Nineteen law enforcement personnel, including school police, local police and Border Patrol were in the building. Some state DPS personnel (state troopers) also arrived along with additional Border Patrol personnel. All told, some eighty Border Patrol personnel eventually arrived at the school. The chief of the independent school police assumed the role of on-scene commander since the school was his jurisdiction.
Since Ramos was no longer firing except sporadically at the officers through the door, the school chief decided that they now had a barricaded situation rather than an active shooter. Some children who were in the rooms made 911 calls asking for help, but for some reason those messages seem to have never reached the chief. The chief decided they should call for a SWAT team with tactical equipment to force entry. Part of the problem was that Ramos had locked the doors to the classroom and police were unable to force them open. Eventually, a janitor arrived with a key (the two teachers who had keys were in their classrooms dead.) The closest SWAT team was a Border Patrol team who had been trained to confront cartel members along the border. They finally arrived. Someone unlocked the door and they barged in and shot Ramos dead at roughly 12:50, an hour and twenty minutes after he entered the school according to the timeline. The media has made much of DPS Chief Steven McCraw’s statement that the on-scene commander “made the wrong decision” without recognizing that he qualified that statement with “what we know now.” He also stated that “I was not here.”
Needless to say, the antigun lobby quickly blamed the shooting on Ramos’ ability to buy an AR-15 (or something similar) after his 18th birthday a week before. DPS revealed that he had tried to get his older sister to buy a rifle last September but she refused. DPS also revealed that Ramos had engaged in conversations on the Internet in which he hinted that he was planning a school shooting. In short, his ability to purchase the rifles at a local sporting goods store were only incidental to his plans. He could have obtained them elsewhere or if he was dead-set on killing a bunch of school kids, there were other ways to do it. The real issue is what prompted him to do it.
Ramos’ family and friends said he had been bullied or picked on all through school because of a speech impediment – he had a lisp and a stutter. After the Columbine, Colorado shooting, the FBI did a study of school shooters and discovered that a common factor was that they had been the subject of bullying at school. (Classmates denied they had bullied the Colombine shooters.) Bullying was a factor with Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Shooter, and with Parkland, Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the Santa Fe shooter, had also been bullied although it appears that an incident with his female classmate prompted his decision to kill her and some of his other classmates. Shana Fisher, one of his victims, told her family that Pagourtzis had been pestering her for months, trying to get him to go out with her and she repeatedly rebuffed him. Her best friend was his former girlfriend and she knew him. She publicly embarrassed him in class. She told her mother he was going to bring a gun to school and kill her and if he did, she was “going to haunt him forever.” A spurned relationship with a girl was also a factor with Cruz in Florida. Ramos had some relationships with girls but it’s not known that any of them factored into his decision to shoot up a school.
Details about the bullying of Ramos have yet to emerge. One high school classmate claimed he wasn’t bullied but other classmates and family members said he was. Coworkers at a Wendy’s where he worked said he was sullen and withdrawn. One person who knew him said he was cruel to animals, particularly cats. One person alleged that he had once held a dead cat outside the passenger window of a car he was riding in. He is also alleged to have shot at people from a car with a BB gun. Nikolas Cruz was accused of bragging about killing animals and birds. One of his friends said Ramos was bullied a lot on social media. He was on some social media apps and was involved in online gaming according to the DPS.
I am no child psychologist but I did take some psychology classes in college, including one on adolescent psychology. The one thing adolescents crave is acceptance. While young children are innocent, that starts to change when they are about nine or ten. In Christianity, this is called the age of accountability, the age at which a child begins to realize the difference between good and evil and becomes accountable for their actions. It is also the age when school children begin forming cliques and ostracizing those who don’t fit in for whatever reason. There were kids in my classes more than a half-century ago who were “picked-on” because they didn’t fit in, for whatever reason. My recollection is that boys were much worse than girls although girls can be quite cliquish. Being ostracized means lack of acceptance. Sometimes the children’s actions go beyond ostracism to actual abuse, usually verbal such as name-calling or running the person down. The reaction to such actions is to become withdrawn, then sometimes to lashing out and calling people names in return. In short, it’s bullying and although those who do it don’t realize it, they may be creating social monsters.
I don’t know a way to prevent bullying. It’s as natural as air. People have been bullying others since the dawn of time. It’s probably part of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” philosophy, that those who are stronger weed out the weaker by bullying and pushing them around. Sometimes the bullied push back, particularly when they gain assess to and proficiency with weapons. Sometime in the nineteenth century, Samuel Colt’s family of revolvers came to be known as “the great equalizer.” Often young men who have been bullied discover that they have a means of not only being equal to those who bully them, but also a means of getting back at them. In truth, bullied men had already found the equalizer in flintlock rifles and pistols, knives and tomahawks but Colt’s revolvers became more prevalent in the latter part of the century. In the early eighteenth century, the Harpe brothers (some say cousins) terrorized the Tennessee and Kentucky frontier. Believed to be from North Carolina, the Harpes were allegedly the sons of Tories who supported the British during the Revolution. Some believe they were mixed-race. They had a reputation for meanness and a willingness to kill at the drop of a hat. They are alleged to have once killed a man for snoring. One of the Harpes was alleged to have bashed his own child’s brains out by swinging the child against a tree because its crying disturbed him. Yep, those who shoot up schools are monsters but monsters are nothing new.
I don’t know what’s going to come out of the Uvalde shooting. Probably not much. Leftists are using the incident to push for more gun laws, such as raising the age for buying firearms to 21 while hoping to have “assault rifles” banned. The problem is that there are no “assault rifles” IN circulation! Assault rifles are already banned! The assault rifle term comes from a German selective-fire rifle developed during World War II. In order to be considered an assault rifle, it must have selective-fire capability, meaning it can be switched from semiautomatic to full automatic. Full automatic rifles and submachine guns have been banned in the United States since the 1930s when submachineguns and Browning Automatic Rifles were used by mobsters. The AR-15, the rifle the media usually refers to when attempting to describe a semiautomatic rifle, is not an assault rifle although the military derivative, the M-16, is. (Personally, having qualified with and carried an M-16 in the military, I don’t know why the AR-15 is so popular. I’d much rather have a Winchester Model 70 bolt-action. The AR-15 is a short-range rifle but I can kill from 1,000 yards with the Winchester. As for massive firepower, a shotgun loaded with buckshot will do the trick.) Leftists seek to ban ALL firearms in civilian hands because they see them as an obstacle to total government control over the populace which, by the way, is the purpose of the Second Amendment. It, along with the First and the other eight amendments in the Bill of Rights, was adopted because certain patriots, specifically Patrick Henry and George Mason, were opposed to the ratification of the Constitution because it granted no rights to the people. Virginia was not going to ratify the Constitution without a bill of rights and without Virginia, the Constitution was dead.
As far as Uvalde goes, the one person who is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life (and whose life is probably threatened) is the teacher who failed to close the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus. Her mistake cost the lives of the 19 children and 2 adults killed by Ramos. He’d have had a difficult time gaining access to the building had the door not been left unlocked. Law enforcement would have probably engaged him before he gained entry. Whether or not the chief of the school police bears responsibility is questionable. The media is raking him over the coals for deciding to wait for a well-equipped tactical team to storm the classroom where Ramos was. He was armed with a high-performance rifle after all. Had police attempted to get into the classroom without armor, some would have likely been killed.
Are such shootings preventable? The answer is – probably not. The reality is that the world is a violent place, it always has been violent and it always will be. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that Buffalo Hump’s Comanche were coming down off of the plains into Central and South Texas and killing every white and Mexican they saw, usually after raping the women and girls.
The Gabby Petito/Brian Laundrie circus is continuing, even though Laundrie’s remains were found in a Florida park near his home. New things have come out that show that the narrative expressed in the news was often wrong. Some things, particular those put out by Tik Tok users, are flat-out lies. If there’s anything to be learned from this circus, it’s that the media is hardly ever right about anything.
Gabby Petito and her fiancée Brian Laundrie, set out from her parent’s home on Long Island in July on a nationwide “van life” trip they planned to end in Portland, Oregon on Halloween. They made it to Grand Teton National Forest where something happened to Petito and Laundrie returned to Florida without her. That is basically all that’s really known about the young couple, at least as far as the media is concerned. Much of what has been reported in the media came from “online sleuths,” who perhaps really should be called online idiots since much of what they have been posting has been wrong, if not lies they made up themselves.
A major error in reporting was the claim that Petito and Laundrie were high school sweethearts and that she moved to Florida from Long Island to be with him. In reality, although they graduated from the same high school on Long Island, they did not start dating until almost two years after Petito graduated and three years after Laundrie. What kind of relationship they had prior to March 2019 is unclear. One person claimed he worked with Laundrie at a landscaping company on Long Island in 2018 and Gabby would come to the business to visit him. When she did, according to this individual, Brian displayed jealousy. There is a problem with this claim – Gabby Petito was not living on Long Island in 2018, she was 500 miles away in Wilmington, North Carolina where she lived in a house on Carolina Beach and worked at a nearby restaurant called Smoke on the Water. Brian was also probably gone from Long Island by then. His family moved to Florida sometime after his high school graduation and at some point he moved there with them. He was apparently with them in 2017 because the family tried to “flip” their home and a room the New York Post claimed was his room was shown on the listing. There is no doubt Petito lived in Wilmington – I used an Internet search site and found her address. The restaurant says she worked for them from September 2017 until January 2019. Her family has said that she and Brian started “dating” in March 2019. The restaurant reported her employment in an article in a local newspaper. Yet this information is left out of the narrative.
Internet “sleuths” and domestic violence “experts” claim that Petito’s body language and whatnot in the Moab, Utah police bodycams show that she was being abused. The reality is that the police decided Petito was the abuser, not Laundrie, based on her actions as she herself reported and what she said. She somehow got in the van after Laundrie got inside to get away from her, crawled over him then began beating him and was continuing to beat on him when they were pulled over just outside of town. In fact, she was beating on him so hard that not only did she cause him to be bruised, she caused him to run off the road and hit the curb. Laundrie claimed she “pulled the wheel” but Petito denied it. Police decided her beating on his right arm caused him to swerve. It was Petito, not Laundrie, that the officer was planning to charge until someone, either another police officer or a female park ranger, talked him out of it.
A social media user who claims she saw Brian Laundrie cause a scene in a barbecue joint in Jackson Hole, Wyoming misremembered what she saw, if she actually saw them. She claimed Laundrie was upset and that Petito was crying. The restaurant manager told a reporter that it was actually Petito who was upset and that Laundrie was calm. She said the couple left the restaurant without paying and the waitress went out the door after them and got them to pay. Then Petito got upset and ran back into the restaurant to argue about the bill, not to apologize for Laundrie’s behavior as the woman claimed. (Perhaps she was apologizing for skipping on the bill.) Now, there is some question whether the couple who left without paying was actually Laundrie and Petito. The woman from New Orleans who claimed the couple was Petito and Laundrie saw their pictures some two weeks after the incident. It’s possible it was them since they were in the area but, then again, there were probably dozens of young couples who resembled them in the area. If it was them, according to the restaurant manager, Laundrie WAS NOT upset as the woman from New Orleans claimed; it was Petito who was upset.
A Tik Tok user who claims to have picked Laundrie up hitchhiking claims “a red flag” popped up in her mind when he said he had gone off backpacking and left Petito alone at the van to work on her website. Actually, according to posts by Petito, that was something he did frequently. Laundrie was an avid backpacker and while Petito said she enjoyed hiking, she never claimed to enjoy backpacking. Leaving women alone in the wilderness is not uncommon. I have a nephew who lives in a rugged area where mountain lions and grizzlies are seen. He goes off to work while his wife stays at their cabin. He also goes on hunting trips and is gone for several days. I don’t know where the woman who made the claim is from, but I’d be surprised if she’s from Wyoming.
After Laundrie’s remains were found and removed from the park where he died, a “social influencer” went to the park looking for clues. She found a Nalgene bottle with a logo on it from REI, a popular mail-order/internet company that caters to outdoor people. She claimed she had found “Gabby’s bottle” because a similar bottle is seen in a photo of their van. Now, even if the bottle was from Laundrie’s backpack, that doesn’t mean it was “Gabby’s bottle.” Laundrie and Petito probably had several such bottles. I imagine Laundrie probably carried at least two in his backpack. The bottle seen in the van may have actually been Laundrie’s. After all, he was the one who modified the van for their trip. The bottle was no big clue. It was already well-known that Laundrie and Petito were together. Yet certain elements of the media made a bigger deal over this bottle than was necessary. Incidentally, the bottle may not have been Laundrie’s. He was found in an area that had been under as much as eight feet of water. The bottle could have floated in from anywhere! After all, there are NINE REI stores in Florida not to mention that they sell their products on the internet and by mail. (I’ve been an REI member since the 1980s and have some of the same bottles with my camping gear.) The same “social influencer” posted photographs of a rope even though the same rope had been mentioned by the media as one that was in the park. “Social influencers” also posted photos of a revolver found in a park where the Laundrie’s went camping and tried to connect it to Brian. (No mention of Brian having any kind of firearm with him on his and Petito’s trip has ever been mentioned. She posted no photos of him with a firearm or any other weapon.)
Then there is the “social influencer” who circulated rumors that the remains found in the Myakkahatchie Creek Nature Preserve were not Laundries. (Incidentally, the media reported he was found in the Carlton Reserve – he wasn’t.) Some even claimed the remains were of Laundrie’s “twin.” They accused his parents of planting the remains there for police to find. Some articles claimed Laundrie’s parents found the remains. They didn’t; they found a dry bag and something else belonging to Brian. Police found his backpack and the remains. “Experts” speculated about how the parents being present when he was found is odd and irregular. The fact is that the park had just reopened after being closed for a month. Most of it was underwater but the water in the Big Slough had subsided. They, his father, knew where Brian’s favorite place was and speculated that was where he had gone. He was right.
The media has also made a big deal over how police saw Mrs. Laundrie when she returned home with her Mustang, which Brian had driven to the park, and thought it was him. They went to the park and got it after seeing a police notice on it when they were there searching for Brian the previous day. They decided to go get it to avoid it being towed. By the way, Brian Laundrie had NOT been mentioned as “a person of interest” when he was last seen on September 13, less than 48 hours after Petito’s family reported her missing. Police didn’t start surveilling the Laundrie residence until the 15th, by which time he was probably already dead. Even the North Point police admit as much. There has been a lot of tisk-tisking because the Laundries didn’t report Brian missing for four days. So what? They knew he knew how to take care of himself in the woods and thought he’d show up. The Petitos didn’t report Gabby missing for more than two weeks since they’d last heard from her.
The Laundries did not “deceive” police, they just refused to talk to them on the advice of their attorney. He had not been charged with a crime and police had no warrant. They did what any American should do, take the advice of their lawyer. Incidentally, the single charge levied against Brian is bogus. A Federal grand jury issued a warrant on the basis that Brian had used Petito’s credit or debit card without her permission under the assumption that she was dead. The reality is that the exact date of her death is unknown. It is definitely possible that she was alive when Brian last saw her. Just because it is assumed that he killed her in an act of “domestic” violence doesn’t mean he did. Unless his notebook reveals something or he had told his parents something, the world will never know. (The Laundrie’s attorney has stated there is more to tell but now is not the time to reveal it.) We’ll see.
NEW UPDATE! Remains confirmed to be those of Brian Laundrie. Confirmed by dental records.
UPDATE! Laundrie’s backpack and notebook have been found in a park near his home. Human remains have been found nearby.
While the world now knows that Gabby Petito is dead, and that the local coroner attributed her death to homicidal strangulation, in reality, very little is known about either she or Brian Laundrie themselves other than that they went to the same high school on Long Island then later became engaged and lived in Florida before they decided to set out on a national “van life” adventure visiting various national parks. There is a little bit of information about Petito, but not much, and practically nothing about Laundrie except a few reminiscences from people who knew one or the other of them in high school. Although there were reports that they were high school sweethearts, this doesn’t seem to have been the case. They were a grade apart and classmates have described Laundrie as a loner with few friends while Petito was gregarious and outgoing with many friends. Yet at some point they ended up together a thousand miles away.
Not much is known about Laundrie other than that he had few friends and kept mostly to himself. One of his classmates said he hung out with a group who had an interest in firearms. He graduated from high school in 2016. After his graduation, his family relocated from Long Island to North Point, a community near Sarasota, Florida, where they own a juicing machine distributorship. Brian moved with them and got a job at a Publix grocery store. Petito eventually ended up living with him and his family.
What Petito’s family does for a living isn’t mentioned in accounts of the ongoing saga. Her parents are divorced and her mother remarried a man named Schmidt; their combined family consists of six kids, of which Petito was the eldest. Her mother lives on Long Island while her father relocated to Vero Beach, Florida. (He claims he moved to Florida to be close to Gabby but Vero Beach is on the other side of the peninsula from North Point and 125 miles away.) One source claims he is a “former fire department chief.” She has been described by neighbors and her mother as “an artist” and “a free spirit.” Petito graduated from high school in 2017 and though her mother paints them as having a close relationship, within a few months after finishing high school the teenage girl had left home and moved over 500 miles away from her mother to Carolina Beach, North Carolina. It is known that she started work at the Smoke on the Water seafood and barbecue restaurant on the Cape Fear River in nearby Wilmington in September 2017. She apparently started out in the kitchen as an assistant then was promoted to hostess. She worked at the restaurant for over a year until January 2019. Those who knew her said she “loved everyone” and had a lot of friends.
Just how Laundrie and Petito got together is unclear. They evidently knew each other in high school. Laundrie said as much when he was talking to police in Moab, Utah. What is known is that they shared a common interest in nature and the outdoors. According to comments Petito posted on her Instagram, they were hikers and backpackers. Laundrie seems to have been an avid backpacker. He is reported to have hiked segments of the Appalachian Trail and to have spent three months camping and living on peanut butter and crackers. She bragged that they were young, fit and able to climb rocks and had no fear. Although she was in North Carolina and he was in Florida, they somehow got together. She quit her restaurant job in January 2019 and eventually wound up in Florida living with Laundrie in his parents’ home in North Point. (One journalist claims they “started dating” in March 2019, two months after she left Smoke on the Water.) She made reference to having spent time in Charleston, South Carolina with her godmother. After she got to Florida, Petito seems to have worked a couple of jobs, at Publix and with a juice bar. (She would later describe her profession to a police officer as “nutritionist.”) In July 2020 Petito announced their engagement. They were planning a beach wedding but the COVID epidemic put a halt to their wedding plans.
At some point, the couple decided to go on the move, to quit their jobs and travel around the country in a small van visiting various national parks. They both had jobs but were living with his parents so their expenses were minimal and they were able to save up for the trip. Petito either bought or already had a 2012 Ford cargo van and they began modifying it for their trip. It’s registered in her name but she told a police officer she hardly ever drove it. Laundrie worked on the van to make it suitable as a home on wheels – although they planned to tent camp – including installing solar panels to power batteries so she could use her laptop to tell the world about their adventures. They made a trip to California then returned to Florida. (The California trip was before they set out on their van life trip and may have been before they bought the van.) With their wedding plans on hold, they drove to Long Island for Petito’s younger brother’s high school graduation. They evidently took their time and drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway during the trip.
They left Long Island in early July to begin their trip. They planned to visit several national parks and end up in Portland, Oregon by Halloween. By August 12 they were in Moab, Utah where they were reported by witnesses to have got in an altercation near a grocery co-op in town. Someone called 911 and reported that a man slapped a woman. Police followed the van and pulled them over outside of town after it hit a curb. Petito admitted that she had “distracted him.” Brian told the officers she had “grabbed the wheel.” Petito claimed she didn’t but admitted she was hitting him on the arm; he had the bruises to prove it. He had numerous scratches on his face and arm. Petito had one; she told one officer that Laundrie had “grabbed” her face and one of his fingernails dug into her skin. Laundrie had numerous scratches and bruises on his face, neck, hands and right arm – she had been hitting him so hard it left bruises. It came out during the interrogation that she suffered from anxiety. The altercation came about either because Petito complained about Laundrie getting into the van with dirty boots or because he had criticized her ability to make the website she planned to use to become a social influencer among those who follow or are interested in “van life.” The officer put Petito in the back of his cruiser so she could benefit from the air conditioning then went to talk to Laundrie. At one point Petito is shown to be on the telephone to someone, apparently her mother. After talking to them separately, the officer decided that Petito had been the aggressor. She claimed she attacked Laundrie because he was telling her to “calm down.” He locked her out of the van to get away from her but she came in through the driver’s side and climbed over him then continued assaulting him while he was driving out of town. They both told the officer she was beating on him while he was driving.
After determining that Petito had been the aggressor, the arresting officer decided to charge her with assault and domestic abuse. However, a female park ranger who had responded to the call got involved. Apparently, they were pulled over inside the park boundary and she and a male ranger came to the scene. She is seen in the background on the officer’s bodycam talking with Petito, who had been placed in the back seat of the police SUV. She seems to have been sympathetic to Petito as evidenced by comments she made to a Deseret News reporter after Petito was found dead. Although her comments to the officer are blanked out on the bodycam footage, she evidently tried to convince him not to charge her. There was a comment that Petito didn’t want to be separated from Laundrie, as would have been the case if she was charged with assault. After discussion with another officer and the park ranger, the officer asked Petito if she had intended to cause Laundrie bodily harm. After she answered “no,” he decided not to charge her but recommended they separate for the night with Petito sleeping in the van while Laundrie went to a local hotel. He admonished them to have no contact at all that night, not even a text. When the officer handed Petito the keys to the van, which is registered in her name, she said she hadn’t been doing any driving. He told her she didn’t have to go far. He would take Laundrie to a hotel but she wouldn’t know which one. She left and the officer took Laundrie to a hotel for the night. They evidently continued their trip the next day.
I have watched the dashcam footage of the Moab incident. There is no doubt that Petito was agitated and distraught and became more so as the interviews by the officers continued. She was facing incarceration and a domestic violence charge after all. She admitted to attacking Brian and when asked if he had hit her, she replied with hesitation “I guess so.” She said he “grabbed” her face and his fingernail dug in. She didn’t want to be separated from Brian and said so. I thought while watching the footage that she appears to have PMS. She also appears hysterical. A young woman named Brittany Anne Coleman who knows the Laundrie family – she worked with Mrs. Laundrie – and Brian and who knew Gabby said in a Facebook post that Petito had “a laundry list” of mental and financial irresponsibilites yet she lived with both the family and his sister. (Rose Davis claims they were putting her and Brian up in a condo.) She also says they used Brian’s savings for their trip. Whether this includes the purchase of the van she doesn’t say.
It has since come to light that Laundrie left Petito in Salt Lake City and flew back to Florida on August 18, allegedly to clean out a storage locker, then returned on August 23. Petito’s friend Rose Davis claims they had been living in a condo – paid for by his parents. They may have put their things in storage prior to leaving on their trip and he returned to remove them before the rent came due. The last definite sight of Petito is when she was captured on video as she was leaving the hotel on August 24. What happened after that is unclear. Various people, mostly Tik Tok users, reported seeing the couple in stores in Idaho near Grand Tetons National Park and in a restaurant in Jackson Hole. The reliability of those reports are unclear. The couple who claimed to have seen them in the restaurant made their claim several weeks later and although they claim they were “1000 % certain” it was them, they may have actually seen someone else. The restaurant commented on social media that Laundrie and Petito were there. (When taking into consideration “eyewitness” sightings, it is important to recognize the power of suggestion. The photos of Laundrie and Petito didn’t start appearing until after she was reported missing, some two weeks after they were in the Jackson Hole area.) Their van appeared in a video shot by a fellow van lifer on August 27. The van was parked on the road near where Petito’s body was eventually discovered by searchers. (Media has claimed that this video pointed searchers to their campsite, but in reality campers on Federal land are required to register. The Spread Creek campsite where Petito was found is behind a gate. It’s shown on Google Earth. They probably had to have a key or a combination to get through it. They were apparently assigned to Spread Creek site 5 since that is where the van appears on the video. Her remains were found about 600 feet from the site.) Two other women, both Tik Tokers, claim to have picked Laundrie up while he was hitchhiking on August 29 on a road some distance from where Petito’s remains were found. The first woman says he told her to let him out when she revealed they were going to Jackson Hole. (The woman also claims he offered them $200 to “take him to Jackson,” which sounds far-fetched.) He apparently wanted to go to Jackson Dam on Jackson Lake. The second woman says she picked him up and took him to the entrance to the dispersed camping area. The entrance is just off of US 191.
There is one thing for certain; Laundrie drove the van back to Florida. The van showed up on highway video near his home at 10:30 on the morning of September 1. His family says he came home that day. Laundrie or his family contacted an attorney in New York who advised them not to say anything to anybody, including Petito’s family. Obviously, something had happened but just what has yet to be revealed. Petito’s mother claims the Laundries ignored her texts and phone calls. Allegedly, Laundrie and his parents went camping at Fort De Soto on an island off of St. Petersburg then returned home. Brian Laundrie allegedly told his parents he was going hiking in a large nature reserve on September 13 (originally reported as September 14) and hasn’t been seen since.
Petito’s family notified police on Long Island that they had not heard from her since August 25 and she was declared a missing person on September 11, two days before Laundrie disappeared. He and his family have been harshly criticized by media and social media users for following their attorney’s advice and not talking to anyone. This is what anyone should do who finds themselves in a potentially liable situation. It is in accordance with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment and legal procedure nationwide. Although the North Point police somehow got involved, they have no jurisdiction over the case since her death occurred in Wyoming. (North Point can handle the missing person case regarding Laundrie.) On the other hand, the FBI does because the remains were found on Federal land. The Laundries seem to have been interviewed by FBI agents. Brian Laundrie has been charged with misuse of a bank card but he has not been charged with anything related to Petito’s death. FBI agents are naturally close-mouthed about ongoing cases, which drives media into a frenzy. In fact, the main thing I’ve noticed about this whole circus has been the tendency of media to exaggerate and seemingly make things up.
What happened to Petito? I don’t know but I can think of several possibilities. That she is dead is undoubtable. Her remains were found by searchers on September 19, twenty-four days since she was last heard from. The local coroner, a medical doctor who was elected to the position, declared her death a homicide then almost a month later stated that cause of death was by strangulation. (By definition, strangulation is “The act of suffocating a person by constricting the trachea or upper airways.”) Naturally, the band wagon immediately found Laundrie guilty of Petito’s death as a result of domestic violence. While this may be the case, there are other possibilities.
Law enforcement determined that Petito attacked Laundrie in Moab, Utah. They also determined that she suffers from anxiety. Her actions in Moab indicate that she had a violent temper. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that she attacked Laundrie and he grabbed her around the neck. That is one scenario but there are others.
Laundrie and Petito had been living and traveling together for two years, so it can be assumed that they were sexual partners. Laundrie is 23 and Petito was 22. Petito has been described as “an artist” and “a free spirit.” She had several tattoos, which her mother said were an expression of her artistic bent. She was dressed somewhat skimpily the day of the Moab incident, in white shorts and a top that revealed her breasts beneath it. It is possible that she was into sexual experimentation. A practice sometimes used by sexual partners, particularly among those in their twenties, is “choking” which consists of one partner pressing on the neck of the other to cut off circulation so that they nearly black out. (One study determined that some 40% of twenty-somethings had been exposed to choking.) This creates a sensation that allegedly enhances the person’s orgasm. Choking is not advocated by sex therapists because it is a very dangerous practice that may result in death. It is possible that Laundrie choked Petito while they were engaged in intercourse and she failed to revive.
There is also another possibility – someone else killed Petito and Laundrie either found the body and panicked or discovered that she was not at the van. According to her Instagram posts, Brian would often go off on hikes and leave Petito alone at the van to work on her web postings. The first Tik Toker who claims to have picked Laundrie up while hitchhiking claims he told her he had been on a 5-day hike. She expressed amazement that he didn’t appear dirty but there is a public shower for hikers near where she picked him up. He was allegedly picked up on August 29, five days after they left the hotel in Salt Lake on August 24 and apparently drove north to the Tetons. It is possible – even likely – that the man seen arguing with restaurant staff in Jackson Hole was someone else. After all, the “recognition” came several weeks after the incident. It is also possible that the woman misunderstood him or misremembered and thought he said five days when he said two. It is possible that Laundrie returned from the hike to find Petito gone. Based on the dialogue picked up during the Moab incident, the two had started bickering. A witness alleged that Laundrie threatened to go off and leave Petito (he didn’t.) It is possible they had further discussion and when Laundrie returned to the van and found her gone, he may have thought she had left him. He may or may not have searched for her and discovered her body. The remains were found some 600-700 feet from dispersed campsite 5 where the van was parked, which is a considerable distance.
Where did I come up with this imaginary killer? The possible killer is not imaginary at all. His name is John Freeman Colt and at the time of Petito’s death, he was at large in the Rocky Mountains after escaping from a mental hospital in Kansas where he had been incarcerated after prison doctors determined he was too dangerous to release. He told doctors that if he ever got out, he’d “go on a rape spree.” Colt was sentenced on Dec. 14, 2001, to five years in state prison in Kansas for aggravated sexual battery, attempted rape, aggravated burglary, and four counts of aggravated battery against law enforcement. He was required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. Doctors determined that he was hostile toward women and his hostility was increasing. Consequently, he should not be released so he was confined to a mental hospital instead. He had been in the hospital since 2007. He is believed to have planned his escape for some time and managed to ingratiate himself with three female hospital employees who helped him. He had someone buy a motorcycle and had it waiting for him when he managed to convince staff he was a new doctor who didn’t know his way around the hospital and went out the door. He had changed his appearance by cutting off his hair and shaving his beard. He somehow acquired camping equipment, a shotgun and a rifle and set out for the Rocky Mountains where he intended to hide out in state and national parks, particularly in Colorado.
By August 12, Colt was in southern Utah. He showed up in the town of Torrey and found employment at a restaurant called The Chuckwagon. He was using an assumed name – Jason Holt. He even had the audacity to set up a Facebook account under the Jason Holt name. He posted pictures of himself at his campsite – with a tent IDENTICAL to the one used by Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito! (The tent he started out with was reported to be green.) Colt’s camp was in a park near Torrey which is less than 400 miles from where Petito died. Petito’s remains were found on Spread Creek less than three miles from US 191, a through highway running from Douglas, Arizona to Yellowstone National Park. The highway passes within 75 miles of Torrey and is easily accessible from there. He was only a 6-7 hour ride from where Petito was found. He could have ridden to the Tetons, came across and killed Petito and been back at Torrey in less than 24 hours.
John Colt is a sexual predator, a hunter. He told his doctors he was going on “a rape spree” when he was released. A lesbian couple was found murdered in a campground near Moab. By an odd coincidence, one of the women worked at the store where Laundrie and Petito had the incident which led to their van being stopped by police. (Some “sleuths” have tried to blame Laundrie for their murders.) The two women were last seen the night of August 13, the day after Laundrie’s and Petito’s police incident and the day after Colt allegedly showed up in Torrey. Moab is right at 100 miles from Torrey. It is possible that Colt decided to take a trip north to the Tetons in hopes of finding a woman by herself in the park. He no doubt knew that Grand Teton is a magnet for campers in the summer and that nearby Jackson Hole is a playground for the rich and famous just like Aspen, Colorado. The road to the Spread Creek dispersed camping area is gated (which means Laundrie and Petito had a key or combination) but Colt was on a motorcycle and could have gone around it. Colt could have come up on the unfortunate young woman and realized she was by herself. He could have forced her out into the creek (he had weapons) then raped her and strangled her, then went back to the van and took her tent and other of her possessions (Where did he get the computer to access the internet? And the camera?) then hopped back on his motorcycle and headed back to Torrey. There can be no doubt that the FBI is looking at the possibility.
There is also another possibility. If Colt didn’t kill the two women, whoever did could have gone on up US 191 to Grand Teton and happened upon the girl. They could have kept going west, which could explain the “No service in Yosemite” message Petito’s mother got. They could have taken her cell phone and gone west to Yosemite, some 600 miles to the southwest. As far as is known, Petito’s cell phone has not been recovered.
If Colt (or someone else) killed Petito – and there’s good reason to believe he did – Laundrie may have come back from his hike after his ride dropped him at the gate and found Petito gone, along with some of their possessions. He may have thought she had left him. She had spent four nights in a hotel at Salt Lake and, in his mind, could have met someone and decided to take off with them. Who knows? He may have thought she was gone and decided to go home. In fact, that’s the only explanation for his return home that makes sense. If she died accidentally, why not report her death to the authorities? Granted, he could have panicked. If he killed her deliberately, there’s no telling what he thought but it wouldn’t seem that he’d head for home since that was the first place law enforcement would look for him.
The local coroner determined that Petito died some 3-4 weeks before her remains were discovered. Her body had lain out in the elements in a region where grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, possums, raccoons, rats, vultures and bald eagles could feed on her flesh while insects and worms wiped her bones clean. Her remains weren’t identified by distinctive markings, they were determined to be what was left of her because an item of clothing found with the remains was identified as hers by her stepfather. I grew up on a farm and we occasionally lost a cow. I remember one cow that died in the edge of a woods. I rode by the carcass on my horse a day or so later. I rode back by there a few days later and there was nothing left but skull and bones. It’s unlikely law enforcement was able to get any useable DNA from her remains. Although the weather was dry for most of the period, there were several days with rain, including the day her remains were found. That she lay dead for almost a month raises another question. Her remains were on the other side of a wide creek bed from a segment of road in the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. She died in summer when the park is full of visitors. Why didn’t anyone notice the odor of decaying flesh or see the flock of vultures that no doubt circled over her? Perhaps people thought they were circling over a dead elk or pronghorn. On the other hand, I’d think a ranger would have seen them and rode over to investigate.
Now that Petito’s remains have been found and identified and the coroner has issued a cause of death, the big question is where is Brian Laundrie? Laundrie told his parents on September 13 he was going on a hike in the Carlton Reserve and they have not seen him since. The Mustang he drove to the reserve was reported on the 14th and the Laundrie’s went to where he had left it and retrieved it. The media has made much of the 25,000 acre reserve but in fact the combined acreage of the reserve and the adjacent state park as well as other reserves and parks that interconnect is more like 100,000 acres, much of which is swampy. Law enforcement has made repeated searches but have yet to turn anything up. The media claims that the recreational park where the Mustang was found is an entry to the reserve. In fact, it is not. A canal separates the reserve from the park although aerial photographs indicate the presence of a sand bar near where the Mustang was parked Laundrie may have used to cross into the reserve. Heavy rains hit the area after Laundrie disappeared causing flooding and leaving much of the area under water. The weather history for September shows there were heavy thunderstorms nearly every day. Law enforcement reported that the street where the Mustang was parked was underwater.
The media has made much of the presence of alligators, black bears, panthers and poisonous snakes in the reserves. But the fact is that alligators rarely attack humans. When they do, it’s usually someone who is in the water. The same can be said of bears and panthers. As for snakes, the most poisonous in Florida is the coral snake. A reclusive, fangless reptile, it practically has to be picked up to bite. Cottonmouths and rattlesnakes have fangs but they’re not going to bite unless they’re disturbed and their bites are rarely fatal, regardless of how they’re depicted in film. Just what kind of equipment Laundrie took with him has not been revealed, if known. He was an experienced backpacker and no doubt had a sleeping bag and probably a tent, or a bivie sack, which is a lightweight shelter just big enough to insert a sleeping bag inside to be out of the rain. He may have had a hammock. (There appears to be a large blue backpack in the back of the van in the body cam footage taken in Moab. Laundrie also appears to be somewhat dirty, an indication that he had just come in from a hike – which may have been what set Petito off. Backpackers typically carry a sleeping bag and tent, sometimes with a sleeping pad.) “Survival experts” point to the need for fire without recognizing that backpackers carry small stoves that burn with a small blue flame and put off no smoke. They use white gasoline which is pumped up to create gas. Laundrie has allegedly lived for three months on peanut and butter crackers. In short, he could have survived in the reserve and state park. However, I don’t think he did.
Rumors have been spread that he somehow made his way to the Smoky Mountains and is “hiding on the Appalachian Trail.” This started after Rose Davis, who claims to be Gabby Petito’s “only friend” in Florida, commented that Brian Laundrie had hiked on the famous trail. (Rose’s claim of being Petito’s only friend is somewhat odd since her coworkers in North Carolina describe her as friendly and outgoing.) The Appalachian Trail is a footpath that starts in Georgia and follows the Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains through North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia then continues on to Maine. It’s just that, a simple walking path with shelters at various intervals where hikers can spend the night. It’s not a place to hide. The trail is near the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. (I’ve hiked segments of it and have driven the Blue Ridge Parkway from its terminus at Smoky Mountain National Park to Rockfish Gap in Virginia and have also driven Skyline Drive.) Although the trail is heavily traveled, the Appalachians are remote and secluded in places with little human visitation. Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph hid out in the North Carolina mountains near Murphy and eluded FBI agents for five years. He was finally captured when a rookie cop inadvertently came across him while he was rummaging through a dumpster and recognized him from a mugshot. A Florida “hiker” claims to have encountered Laurie – in the middle of the night – on a lonely road just off of Interstate 40 at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. He claims that Laundrie was driving a white pickup truck. He never thought of Laundrie at the time but thought later it might have been him. He then pulled up photographs of Laundrie and decided he was “1000 percent certain” it was him. Now, this encounter occurred literally in one of the darkest places on the continent. He indicated the other driver stopped beside him, meaning the only light was from their dashboards. (Headlights are directional and don’t reach back past the side of the vehicle.) There is NO WAY he would have made out features in such a situation! While I don’t doubt he had an encounter with someone in a white pickup, I seriously doubt that it was Laundrie. Others have reported seeing Laundrie in places as diverse as Alabama and Indiana, with numerous “sightings” in North Carolina and around Florida.
My personal opinion is that Brian Laundrie is dead. Regardless of whether he killed her or not, he was no doubt distraught at the news she had been reported missing by her family. (He disappeared right after she was reported missing and several days before her remains were found.) I would not be surprised if he waded out into one of the many pools in the reserve and shot himself, knowing his body would likely be consumed by alligators. It’s been over a month since he was last seen and no sign of him has been revealed. If he is dead, the real story of what occurred between him and Petito will never be known.
There are some things that disgust me about the circus, because that is what the story has become. First, there are the two clowns, John Walsh and Duane “Dog” Chapman, who have inserted themselves into the story. They are TV personalities who thrive on publicity. Walsh has brought millions and millions of dollars into the foundation he set up after his five-year old son was kidnapped and murdered – over $42 million in 2015 alone. Chapman served time for murder than became a bail bondsman. He managed to get a TV show after he went into Mexico and captured fugitive Andrew Luster – and was himself arrested by Mexican police for violating Mexican laws prohibiting bounty hunting. Then there is Gabby Petito’s family. Her father, mother and stepfather lost no time in setting up the Gabby Petito Foundation, then began appearing on television programs such as Dr. Phil. They’ve even appeared on foreign television. They are capitalizing their daughter’s death. Chances are, the foundation will fold once the furor has died down but it could potentially bring in millions of dollars, as John Walsh’s foundation has. The media has also been disgusting by engaging in yellow journalism – putting out glaring headlines for articles that contain very little information. Perhaps the worst are the know-nothings who have parked themselves around the Laundrie home and have been tormenting the family, as if their protests are going to accomplish anything.
At this point, no one really knows anything about what occurred at the campground except, perhaps, Brian Laundrie. He may not know – or have known – either since Gabby may have been killed and he came back finding her gone and thought she had taken off with somebody. Who knows? If he’s dead or never reveals himself if alive, no one ever will.
Well, they’ve done it again – the news media and irresponsible politicians, all Democrats, from Joe Biden on down, have taken an incident and remanufactured it to serve their own agenda. I’m referring to the murders of eight employees and patrons of three Atlanta area “Asian Massage Spas.” Even though law enforcement has made clear that there is no motive for the crime – the accused told law enforcement he is a sex addict and there was no racial motivation – members of the media and dozens of politicians have turned the murders into “hate crimes,” attacks on Asian women because of “white supremacy” even though there is no evidence to support such claims.
The facts are that 21-year old Robert Long went into three massage parlors and shot and killed eight people, six of whom were Asian immigrants; most were South Koreans although one was Chinese. Long was raised in a Baptist church but had developed an addiction to pornography and has been treated for sex addiction. His parents threw him out of their house the night before the shootings because he was continually watching pornography. Long told law enforcement that he went to the three massage parlors with the intention of killing the staff because they were engaged in sexual activities. He has said that he had patronized all three facilities and a former roommate at a therapeutic institution says that he told him that he frequented massage parlors because they were a “quick” way to get sexual relief. Although the Atlanta mayor claimed that the facilities were not under any kind of investigation, two have actually been under investigation for prostitution for several years. The third is outside the city.
As soon as the victims were identified, Asian and other activists and Asian politicians began claiming that the shootings were motivated by “white supremacy” and the women were targeted because they were Asian. They conveniently left out that two of the victims were actually white, a female and male customers. Members of the media began, without evidence, making the same claim. A number of “experts” appeared on cable news outlets and were interviewed by the media and claimed the shootings were racially motivated, again without evidence. They claimed they “fit a pattern” of “white supremacy.” Some members of the media and “experts” claimed that Long was lying when he claimed he attacked the three massage parlors because of his sexual addiction. Incidentally, when he was finally apprehended south of Atlanta, he apparently told law enforcement he was on his way to Florida to attack pornographers. The media reports and activist’s claims have caused panic among Asians, particularly women. (A week after the murders, a West Asian man in the Boulder, Colorado area went into a local supermarket and started shooting. He killed ten people, all white, before surrendering to a SWAT team.)
Now, there are occasional attacks on Asians, just as there are attacks on members of other races and cultures, but there is no evidence to link such attacks with “white supremacy.” In fact, the highest percentage of attacks on Asians have been by blacks, many of them women. “Attacks” include name-calling and even shunning, by the way. A few have involved violence. In fact, the number of actual attacks on Asians are actually very few. While the percentages of such attacks are rising, those percentages may be as few as two incidents. As for the Atlanta attacks, the only connection to Asians is that the parlors were owned and operated by Asians and most of their employees were Asian immigrants. Had Long wanted to kill Asians, why not attack Chinese and other Asian restaurants, or start shooting people on the street in Chinese districts? Like every other major city in America, Atlanta is home to large numbers of Asians.
Some media accounts attempted to link Long’s actions to the sermons he heard at his church. One article reported that the pastor had preached that women are to “obey their husbands,” which is exactly what Paul said in his letter to the church at Ephesus and Peter said in his first letter which he addressed to certain churches in Asia. Just what the admonition to wives to obey their husbands has to do with Long’s actions is unclear, since his targets were staff and customers of Atlanta area massage parlors where “happy endings” seem to have been common. The “happy ending” massage is common in massage parlors throughout Asia, either through masturbation, oral stimulation, or actual intercourse. Long seems to have blamed the women in the massage parlors for abetting his sexual addiction. Two of the three establishments are known to have been under investigation for prostitution in the past.
Having been raised in a Baptist church and been a member of various Baptist congregations and also attending a Baptist Bible college, I understand Long’s problem. Unfortunately, while God’s grace is the center point of Baptist theology, many Baptists, particularly preachers, fail to make the distinction between the soul, which is saved, and the flesh, which is not. The writers of the New Testament made clear that Jesus’ sacrificial death brought salvation to the souls of those who believe but not their body, which dies and decays and returns to dust. (The Bible promises that some will not die, but that their bodies will be “changed” and they will meet the Lord in the air at His return.) Christians have the same body they had prior to the conversion of their soul and that body has the same physical urges as any other body. This causes problems for young men and women as they reach puberty and find themselves with sexual desires. They become confused, sometimes coming to believe that they’re not saved because of such desires. This is a result of Puritan teaching. Puritans were the seventeenth century version of the first century Jewish Pharisees, who believed they earned favor with God by their own works. The apostle Paul acknowledged sexual desire when he proclaimed that it is “better to marry than to burn.” However, Long seems to have carried his confusion to a different level, to the point that rather than resisting Satan’s temptation, he came to the conclusion that he should eliminate the source of his sin by murdering sex workers and pornographers.
It does not surprise me that the media took off running with the “hate crime” against Asians narrative. Although members of the media portray themselves as purveyors of truth, they are anything but. Rather than reporting news, journalists and broadcasters actually seek to influence, and they do this by manipulating the public discourse. Speech is the manifestation of thought, and members of the media, who wear the mantra of the “free press,” are expressing their own thoughts, not reporting “truth.” Truth to them is whatever they perceive as truth, even if that “truth” is a product of their own imagination. Rather than being purveyors of “truth,” journalists are actually propagandists and what they write and speak is actually propaganda designed to promote a particular view. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since the first “newspapers” in what became The United States of America were actually pamphlets put out by those who had access to a printing press in order to gather support for their cause, whether it was to support the King of England or rebel against him. After the Revolution, Federalists put out pamphlets seeking support for the Federal government established by the new Constitution while anti-Federalists put out pamphlets advocating that Federal government was a bad idea. The situation was at least partially rectified by amending the Constitution to express certain defined rights to the people and the individual states. In later years, newspapers bore the name of the political party they were aligned with. Some still do.
While growing up, I read the newspaper every day and continued to read newspapers as a young adult and adult. It was while serving in the US Air Force in Southeast Asia that I realized that much of what appeared in news accounts wasn’t true. I was flying missions over North Vietnam and Laos supporting strike aircraft while the New York Times and other news outlets were claiming that Americans were “bombing indiscriminately”. In fact, just the opposite was true. There were strict procedures that had to be followed before a target could be attacked. We would spot a convoy of trucks but before we could run fighters in to attack them, we had to get permission from the US Embassy in Vientiane, Laos on missions over Laos and from higher headquarters on missions over North Vietnam. US aircraft NEVER bombed indiscriminately yet the media reported that we did. I learned then not to trust the media. Since that time I have been involved in several incidents that attracted media attention and have been interviewed by members of the media. NOT ONCE did a member of the media report what I had actually said. They had to put their own spin on it. NOT ONCE did I see an accurate account of an incident I had personal knowledge of.
In addition to a dishonest media, we have irresponsible (and dishonest) politicians. A good example is how President Barack Obama inserted himself in the George Zimmerman case. The media and black activists – and Obama – jumped to the conclusion that because Zimmerman had a German last name, he was white while Trayvon Martin was black. Actually, Zimmerman is of mixed race and at least ¼ black. His father is white, but his mother is from Peru and is of mixed Amerindian and African blood. But the incident that led to Martin’s death was portrayed in the media as a racial incident. Now we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris doing the same thing with the Atlanta shootings. (They haven’t said anything about the Colorado shootings, which involved a West Asian man (Syria is in West Asia) shooting and killing whites.) They claimed the Atlanta shootings were somehow related to “white supremacy.” They joined a horde of Democratic Congressmen and women, including nearly every Asian member, who blamed the murders on hatred of Asians – and somehow related to Donald Trump because he referred to COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, as the “Wuhan Virus” or the “China Virus.” In fact, the virus did come from China and was brought to the United States – as well at to Italy and other countries – by Chinese travelers. Incidentally, the deadly flu epidemic of 1957 was called the “Asian Flu” because it originated in Asia (China) just as the 1918 flu was called the “Spanish Flu” because it was first reported in Spain (although the first cases were actually in the United States.) Then there was the Hongkong Flu in 1968 that originated in Hongkong, or possibly Mainland China.
The Atlanta murders occurred late on March 16. On March 22, a Syrian immigrant named Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa went on a shooting rampage in a supermarket in Alveda, Colorado and killed ten people, all whites, with a semiautomatic rifle he had purchased six days before. Alissa, who is Muslim, had expressed outrage over “Islamophobia”. Syria is on the Asian continent, yet the media has yet to connect Alissa’s actions to his Asian origin. Were his actions prompted by the “anti-Asian” hysteria? We’ll never know. Already the media is portraying him as a deranged individual while portraying Long as a “white supremacist” whose actions were motivated by hatred of Asians.
tennesseeflyboy 