WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The baby girl whose remains were found in a pickle jar in Palm Beach County earlier this year is still a mystery.
Construction workers came across the 2-gallon jar while using a back hoe to clear mud from a cane field off State Road 80 near Belle Glade on Feb. 26. Police said the jar broke open while the workers were digging, releasing a very foul odor.
Inside the "Big John's Pickled Sausage" jar was a baby girl who weighed a little more than 2 pounds and was missing her right eye, police said.
Dr. Stuart Graham, an associate county medical examiner, listed the baby's cause of death as "undetermined" in his report. The report said the baby was a 7-month-old fetus with light skin and curly black hair with her umbilical cord still attached.
Graham said salicylates, a compound commonly found in painkillers, was discovered in the fetus' chest and abdominal fluid, according to the report.
No one has named the baby, and she remains unburied.
About a month before the workers found the jar, a New Jersey woman found a mummified baby boy wrapped in a 1950s newspaper and stuffed inside a suitcase while she was cleaning out her deceased parents' storage unit in Delray Beach. A medical examiner's report said the cause of the baby's death was unclear. · Read The Story.
Last November, recycling plant workers found a newborn's body in a pile of rocks at Sun Recycling in suburban West Palm Beach. Investigators named the child Baby Grace and held a funeral for the child about a month later. An autopsy could not confirm how the child died. · Read The Story.
Florida enacted a safe haven law in 2000 that allows parents to drop off their babies at fire stations, hospitals and emergency medical facilities within three days of birth with no questions asked. It ensures parents can't be investigated, prosecuted or forced to identify themselves as long as there is no indication the infant was abused.
FETHIYE, Turkey - Ozgur Dengiz was arrested in the Mamak area of Ankara recently for the murder and consumption of 55-year-old council worker Cafer Er.
Er had been missing for a week when the police discovered his corpse in the public garbage dump in Mamak. On closer examination of the body, it became apparent that Er had been murdered and his body mutilated. Large chunks of flesh had been cut from the soft parts of his body. Further investigation by the homicide squad turned up information that Er had last been seen arguing with a young man in the council park he was responsible for keeping clean.
The police soon traced Ozgur Dengiz, 27, and when they went to charge him and searched the apartment he shared with his parents for evidence, they allegedly discovered fresh meat in the refrigerator. Immediately suspicious because of the wounds to Er's body, samples were sent for analysis. These came back with the positive identification of human arm, thigh and buttock flesh, police say.
Dengiz showed no remorse for his alleged actions, saying he was irresistibly drawn to eating people. He coolly recounted what had taken place in his police statement:
I was walking around the area under Mamak Bridge. I had gone there to kill someone and had my special knife with me and a gun. I had already fired at someone gathering litter because they were cluttering up my space. Then I saw a man on a bench in the park and sat down next to him and struck up a conversation. After I got up walked behind him and shot him twice. I dragged his body off and put it in the back seat of the car.
I cut off some meat with a cleaver. Then I felt [nauseated], so I ate some of it raw to get over that and put the rest in my bag. I found I liked the taste. Then I wrapped him in a black cloth and put him in the [luggage compartment] of my car and drove around the city for a while. Later I dumped his body at the [garbage dump] and went home. I gave some of his meat to the dogs outside my apartment and put the rest in the fridge.
The only emotion he is said to have exhibited as he explained his grotesque behavior was to break into fits of laughter.
Dengiz had killed before, shooting a friend after a trivial argument when he was 17 years old. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1997 but was released after three under the terms of a "special conditions" amnesty. He also confessed to attacking Abbas, another council worker, a few months ago. Despite having been shot in the head and stomach, Abbas managed to escape. Dengiz said, "If he hadn't gotten away I would have cut him up too. I murder because I want to eat human flesh."
He was also found to be in possession of the gun used to murder computer engineer Sedat Erzurumlu, who was killed last month by a bullet to the head. He said he killed Erzurumlu because the engineer had said Dengiz could not afford to buy the laptop they had been looking at. Dengiz has been officially charged with "murder most monstrous".
Martha Stout in her book The Sociopath Next Door argues that the development of dangerous sociopathic behavior is due half to genetics and half to non-genetic influences. Psychologists and psychiatrists say the following environmental factors can create a psychopath (the most extreme form of sociopath):
# Studies show that 60% of psychopathic individuals have lost a parent.
# A child is deprived of love or nurturing; the parents are detached or absent.
# Inconsistent discipline: if one parent is stern and the other not, the child learns to hate authority and manipulate the soft parent.
# Hypocritical parents privately belittle their child while publicly presenting the image of a happy family.
Although it is probably impossible in any modern society to avoid creating the conditions that encourage the development of sociopaths and psychopaths, these personalities are rarer in Turkey than they are in the West, perhaps because children are less often neglected or unloved. However, Dengiz's family fulfilled at least one of the above environmental criteria. His father was a retired military man, strict and meticulous in his own habits, and it was he who turned his son in for killing his friend as a teenager. His mother made her living as a seamstress and indulged her son, recently renting a small shop for him and outfitting it as a tailor's in the hope that he would work there. In six months, he never set foot inside.
Cannibalism has occurred in serial-killing cases in Christian countries, but Islam's taboos against meat that has not been killed in a halal manner and the insistence that man is sacred (as he is God's image) seem to have stopped it occurring here. Dengiz appears to be Turkey's first man-eater and perhaps one of its few psychopaths.
Certainly his police statement and neighbor's comments indicate some key psychopathic traits. He was purposeless, consistently irresponsible and unable to hold down a job, antisocial and emotionally callous. To him other people were objects to be dealt with as he willed, and his lack of empathy or conscience empowered him to disregard the rights of others. He insists that his behavior was correct and has said, "I don't regret it, my conscience is clear. God told me I was to punish people. I think I will keep on killing and eating."
In a story so full of horror, there is only one light note. The Turkish for "cannibal" is yam yam, pronounced, rather ironically, "yum yum".
I thank Mario for breaking the string of puns and taking the pressure off of me to continue on in such a manner. Anyway, I have a great theory for raising kids, let them sleep in your bed instead of a crib and be as strict as you want. That'll give them all the love they need at night and you can discipline them during the day. I never found anything to contradict this in any of my psychology classes.
Those last few articles pretty much defined this thread... this one isn't quite as "Effed-up" but it still worked best here.
Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
The stake-out was almost comical in its absurdity: On April 4, 2007, undercover police counted how many times Eric Montanez, a 22-year-old volunteer with Food Not Bombs, dipped a serving ladle into a pot and handed stew to hungry people.
Once Montanez had dished up 30 bowls, the police moved in, collecting a vial of the stew for evidence as they arrested him for violating an Orlando, Fla., city ordinance: feeding a large group. Two days into his trial yesterday, Montanez was acquitted by a jury of the misdemeanor charge, but was cautioned to obey the law.
As activists celebrate the verdict, the Orlando Police Department has said it will continue to ordinance, making the fight for the free flow of food in the city far from over.
“He is on trial for the crime of feeding the homeless—literally,” says George Crossley, a member of the Stop the Ordinance Partnership (S.T.O.P.), an alliance of 19 advocacy groups, including Orlando branches of Code Pink, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women.
What Crossley and others are trying to stop is a “large group feeding” ordinance passed in July 2006 by the Orlando City Council that essentially bans groups from providing food to more than 25 people in downtown parks without a permit.
Under the ordinance, groups can only obtain two permits a year per park for the purpose of sharing food with a large group. Although the ordinance does not explicitly target the homeless, the guillotine falls on their heads, as they are largely the benefactors of churches, charities and activist groups serving free food in easily accessible parks.
“Eric’s arrest shows both the heartlessness of Orlando towards the destitute and those who aid them,” the Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) chapter said in a statement in April.
Just as Orlando is cracking down on free meals that make life more bearable for homeless people, so too are other cities. This month, West Palm Beach, Fla., passed a similar ordinance that criminalizes feeding the homeless in public places, and last week officials in Cleveland, Ohio, prohibited groups from sharing food in the city’s Public Square. In February, a man in Jacksonville, Fla., was given a citation for handing out food to the homeless without a permit, though it was later thrown out. And FNB says fear is spreading in Albuquerque, N.M., that city officials may pass a similar ordinance, which has long been an avenue used to force out homeless people.
Volunteers and activists are decrying the laws, calling any measure that keeps free food out of the hands of the needy inhumane.
“It’s essentially saying that homeless people are not worthy of attention or respect and they’re nothing more than pigeons who should be fed some place else so they’re not a bother to mainstream society,” says FNB Co-founder Keith McHenry.
McHenry says feeding the homeless is part of a larger social justice agenda.
“There’s a broader principle in America that we’re trying to address, and that is, food is a human right, not to be relegated to being a commodity,” McHenry says. “People who are hungry in this country deserve good, nutritious food without having to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get that food, and without having to be demeaned.”
As with the other city ordinances, Orlando designated a specific area away from downtown businesses where groups could offer food without a permit. But McHenry says the purpose of visibly feeding homeless people is to draw attention to the problem, and that FNB rejects hiding a situation that the city refuses to confront compassionately.
“They say, ‘If you want to feed people, why don’t you do it out of sight?’” McHenry says. “That’s not our goal. Our goal is… to change society.”
The designated area in Orlando, however, is gated and groups must notify the authorities to unlock the space before every food sharing.
Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, says Cleveland police notified the group on October 3 that groups and churches could no longer provide food in the Public Square because of health hazards. Davis was told the city had discovered rat holes at the park. The Cleveland City Council did not return calls seeking comment.
According to a recent blog post by Davis, “The Chief of Police and the entire command staff stopped a group from unloading their food on the Square. Then they tried to move to another park and that did not work because law enforcement stopped them. The group was told that if they unload that they would be arrested.”
The groups were also given an alternate site for food sharing, but Davis told In These Times, “It couldn’t be a worse place to go.”
Shawn, an FNB volunteer in Cleveland reluctant to give his last name, says the regulation on feedings in the park is taking a toll. “What [the ordinance] has accomplished is probably diminished the amount of people getting fed when you’re forced to move to a location that’s too far for people to walk to,” he says.
Shawn says FNB would return to serving food in the Public Square. “It hasn’t stopped us,” he says. “There should be no law against feeding people.”
But feeding people, says McHenry, is bad for business. As tables of free food attract a larger than usual number of homeless people to city parks, nearby businesses fear their revenue streams may suffer.
“[Business owners] believe that people won’t shop in those neighborhoods. They’re not attractive,” McHenry says.
He also says cities fear the presence of readily available food will bring more homeless people into their community, and “they’ll have to raise tax money to provide affordable housing and public assistance and shelters.”
Heather Allebaugh, constituent correspondent for the City of Orlando, says the city council enacted the ordinance in response to “complaints from residents and businesses immediately following the feedings of activity and drug use around the area.”
Allebaugh also says the ordinance was designed to help maintain the parks. “It’s a balance between the residents and their safety when they come to the park when the feedings are taking place,” she says.
In response to criticisms that an ordinance curtailing the availability of free food is inhumane, Allebaugh says the measure is “not a ban, but a regulation.”
“It’s just about maintaining a regulation just as we do for parades and garage sales so we have an idea of what’s happening at public parks,” Allebaugh says. “Maybe there’s extra security needed for the people attending. Maybe they need extra trash receptacles. It’s just to help us manage events that are happening within our city. I don’t think it was targeted at any group. It was more about the proper location to feed, rather than whether to ban feeding.”
The city did not enact any provisions to feed the homeless people who relied on the routinely accessible free food. Allebaugh says such services do not fall within the jurisdiction of the city.
The crackdown on food sharings follows other policies designed to penalize and ostracize homeless people. Orlando’s estimated 9,000 homeless people are subject to laws that prevent them from lying on benches and from panhandling during certain hours. Cleveland recently enacted a law that sets a 10 pm curfew at the city’s Public Square, intending to stop people from sleeping in the park.
“[The City Council] is brutal about this,” says Crossley of S.T.O.P. “This is not a game to these people. They’re not trying to find a solution to why these people are out there.”
Allebaugh counts, however, that the council is addressing homelessness through a regional commission expected to issue “findings and suggestions” in February on how to “address homelessness and hopefully come up with a 10-year plan to end homelessness.”
The harsh treatment of homeless people also comes as the number of displaced people rises. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that there are an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the United States, although the figure is difficult to pinpoint.
“The criminalization of homeless people shows that there’s no political will by our society to deal with the crisis in a humane and logical way,” McHenry says. “The reality is that homeless people are regular Americans who lost their jobs due to all the different policies that are happening, like outsourcing, and the huge redirection of our infrastructure toward the military and away from things like education and health care.”
Despite the ordinances, and the recent arrest of Montanez, activists are refusing to back down. Coinciding with Montanez’ trial, Orlando FNB has been holding a three-day event with multiple food sharings that violate the ordinance. Crossley says more than 100 people were served breakfast on Monday. As of press time, no other arrests have been made.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, representing the First Vagabonds Church of God and FNB, filed suit against the Council last October, calling the ordinance unconstitutional. In 2006, a federal court judge issued an injunction on a Las Vegas measure that prohibited “providing food or meals to the indigent for free or for a nominal fee.”
McHenry says he thinks the ordinances will spur a new wave of activism. “People are already going to Orlando to risk arrest because they’re so outraged,” he says.
Crossley says volunteers already in Orlando have no plans to back down.
“Are we going to keep the fight up? You bet,” he says. “There’s not going to be any give on the part of the progressive community. The only way that S.T.O.P. would disband would be if the ordinance was repealed or defeated.”
Honestly I feel like I need to undergo a "day in the shoes" of a homeless person, like Wheeler in Captain Planet did, because homeless people really piss me off.
They leave out the whole thing about how it attracts heroine addicts to public parks right next to elementary schools. Most of the cities have designated shelters where the homeless can go for a free meal. If a charity group wants to help out, they are supposed to contact and work with the public services. These self-righteous jerks really piss me off. If they were really interested in helping people, they'd make the effort to work with the established systems. All they do is create a less organized, less efficient, and unreliable source for usually only one meal each month per homeless person of whom they're supposedly taking care.
Behemoth, have you ever been to a Food not Bombs? Generally there is a table with food on it, homeless people come and are served a hot meal, and usually choose to sit in the park and enjoy it, talking with each other, and the volunteers that serve it. This happens every week in Hartford. I personally cannot see how this could possibly endanger anyone, nor can I see any reason why their should be any kind of law against it.
If anything I believe that Food Not Bombs and similar organizations create and promote a sense of community, and help to show that homeless people are a part of our society, and not just dirt to be swept under the rug, ignored, and criminalized.
As for being a, "less efficient, and unreliable source for usually only one meal each month." One meal a month is certainly better than no meals a month.
Behemoth, have you ever been to a Food not Bombs? Generally there is a table with food on it, homeless people come and are served a hot meal, and usually choose to sit in the park and enjoy it, talking with each other, and the volunteers that serve it. This happens every week in Hartford. I personally cannot see how this could possibly endanger anyone, nor can I see any reason why their should be any kind of law against it.
If anything I believe that Food Not Bombs and similar organizations create and promote a sense of community, and help to show that homeless people are a part of our society, and not just dirt to be swept under the rug, ignored, and criminalized.
As for being a, "less efficient, and unreliable source for usually only one meal each month." One meal a month is certainly better than no meals a month.
Yes, and they decide they like that area, and AFTER they leave, the regular homeless people leave as well, however, the few bad elements that it also attracts tend to stay in those locations. They really don't have anywhere else to go. And one meal a month is much much worse than no meals a month. I hate to make the comparison, but (people are animals after all) it's the same reason they tell you not to feed the bears at a park. Even if you think you're helping them out, you're not. It's a nice gesture and it will make you feel good, but you are not saving anyone's lives. All you do is create a system of dependency. they manage to live for the other 29-30 days out of the month, that one day of food does nothing but make them see the park as a place to get an easy meal. I know this sounds a little cold, but it's true. And women with young children are easy targets to harass (and sometimes much worse) until they give you something to go away. I'm not even talking about the people who are able to work, I'm talking about people with real disabilities, physical or mental. I have no compassion for anyone who is physically and mentally well enough to work.
Plus, there are several government programs designed to help individuals who are unable to take care of themselves. The most common one is Social Security Disability. You don't even need to have ever paid into it to receive it.
"but that only pays from $500-$1500 (usually) a month. That's not enough to live."
But it is. There are also several other government subsidy programs, such as section 8 housing, that help out without necessarily providing a tangible gift. For others who cannot liver on their own, there is Medicare to help pay for day-time nurses. And this is all in addition to organizations like Catholic Charities who go through the proper channels and give even more aid to people who require it.
trust me, groups like Food not Bombs cause far more problems than they solve. I know it sounds like common sense; giving food to hungry people is good. but it isn't. Unless they're also telling them where the real shelter that provides DAILY meals is located, they're only making themselves look good. It's that whole "give a man a fish..., teach a man to fish..." thing except that the man you gave the fish also becomes violent with young women if they don't also give fish.
FORT WALTON BEACH — Lawmen issued a trespass warning for a Club 10 patron after he attempted to solicit oral sex from a dancer, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office report.
The 38-year-old Crestview man told investigators the dancer had offered to perform oral sex on him early Sunday inside the club’s champagne room for $500.
He also bought a $100 bottle of champagne to drink, he said.
But the man told lawmen he was upset because the dancer did not actually perform oral sex on him.
“He implied that the dancer was in breach of contract for not fulfilling her end of the transaction,” a deputy wrote in the report.
The man was then handcuffed and detained for solicitation of prostitution.
During a post-Miranda interview, the man “continued to self-incriminate himself by repeating his original complaint.”
Another patron told investigators the man had asked to borrow his credit card “to pay the dancer $500 to receive oral sex,” but he refused to lend it to him “because it was a crime,” according to the report.
“He stated they have been friends for some time and he was not going to get in trouble for (his friend’s) stupidity,” the report states.
The dancer told investigators the $500 transaction was only for a bottle of champagne and the man added a $100 gratuity to the credit card receipt. She said she never told him she was going to perform any sexual acts.
She said while she was performing a lap dance for the man, he “aggressively placed his hands into her underwear” before she left to notify management.
When she returned, she said he had opened his pants and exposed his penis.
The dancer did not want to press charges, but the man was given instructions not to return to Club 10 or Club 51.
Digital audio of his interview with investigators was submitted into evidence.
Hours after being released from state prison, a Burlington County man barricaded himself inside a Mount Laurel townhouse Wednesday and held his 6-year-old daughter hostage with a kitchen knife to her throat, authorities said.
This morning, he was back in jail after a tense three-and-a-half hour standoff with police.
Thomas R. McGriff, 33, had been set free from Bayside State Prison early Wednesday morning after completing the mandatory minimum sentence for a 2003 attack on the child's mother and her boyfriend.
Police received a 911 call shortly before 4 p.m. reporting an altercation at the woman's home on Cypress Point Circle in Mount Laurel. By the time officers arrived, McGriff was locked inside the townhouse, armed with a knife, and threatening his daughter, police said.
About 200 neighbors were cleared from their homes as officers negotiated with McGriff, who eventually released the girl and surrendered, police said.
McGriff was taken to a Willingboro hospital for an evaluation. He was later charged with aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, terroristic threats and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
He was being held this morning at the Burlington County jail after failing to post $132,500 bail.
McGriff was convicted in 2004 on two counts of aggravated assault after he pursued his former girlfriend down the New Jersey Turnpike, ramming her car at high speed and causing both vehicles to crash.
Comments
oh and that article about the restaurant... ewwwwwww... THAT'S JUST WRONG!
Feeding the Hungry is a Crime
If anything I believe that Food Not Bombs and similar organizations create and promote a sense of community, and help to show that homeless people are a part of our society, and not just dirt to be swept under the rug, ignored, and criminalized.
As for being a, "less efficient, and unreliable source for usually only one meal each month." One meal a month is certainly better than no meals a month.
Yes, and they decide they like that area, and AFTER they leave, the regular homeless people leave as well, however, the few bad elements that it also attracts tend to stay in those locations. They really don't have anywhere else to go. And one meal a month is much much worse than no meals a month. I hate to make the comparison, but (people are animals after all) it's the same reason they tell you not to feed the bears at a park. Even if you think you're helping them out, you're not. It's a nice gesture and it will make you feel good, but you are not saving anyone's lives. All you do is create a system of dependency. they manage to live for the other 29-30 days out of the month, that one day of food does nothing but make them see the park as a place to get an easy meal. I know this sounds a little cold, but it's true. And women with young children are easy targets to harass (and sometimes much worse) until they give you something to go away. I'm not even talking about the people who are able to work, I'm talking about people with real disabilities, physical or mental. I have no compassion for anyone who is physically and mentally well enough to work.
Plus, there are several government programs designed to help individuals who are unable to take care of themselves. The most common one is Social Security Disability. You don't even need to have ever paid into it to receive it.
"but that only pays from $500-$1500 (usually) a month. That's not enough to live."
But it is. There are also several other government subsidy programs, such as section 8 housing, that help out without necessarily providing a tangible gift. For others who cannot liver on their own, there is Medicare to help pay for day-time nurses. And this is all in addition to organizations like Catholic Charities who go through the proper channels and give even more aid to people who require it.
trust me, groups like Food not Bombs cause far more problems than they solve. I know it sounds like common sense; giving food to hungry people is good. but it isn't. Unless they're also telling them where the real shelter that provides DAILY meals is located, they're only making themselves look good. It's that whole "give a man a fish..., teach a man to fish..." thing except that the man you gave the fish also becomes violent with young women if they don't also give fish.
South Jersey dad back behind bars after standoff