Evil and Incompetency

The violent career of Scott Malsky
by Robert A. Waters

Scott Christopher Malsky is the monster you see in horror flicks.  Today, he sits in a Florida prison doing life.  He’s lucky he didn’t get the death penalty.

In July, 1993, Pauline Farrington lived on Ednor Street in Port Charlotte.  Seventy-nine-years-old, she’d been a widow for many years.  After no one heard from her for several days, a neighbor checked her home.  Farrington lay in her bedroom, stone-dead.  Police determined that she’d been raped, stabbed, and strangled to death. 

Malsky, 17, quickly became the prime suspect.  He lived a few doors down from the victim, and already had a long history of deviancy and violence.  At the time, however, investigators were unable to conclusively link their suspect to the murder.

Malsky left Florida and headed back to his home state of Massachusetts.  In New Bedford, two prostitutes claimed he raped them.  In two separate trials, Malsky was acquitted.  A prosecutor implied that the juries did not believe the victims because of their “occupations.”

After his acquittals, Malsky split Massachusetts, ending up back in Florida.  A walking time-bomb, it didn’t take him long to explode once again.  He abducted fourteen-year-old Jennifer Wolfgang from Punta Gorda.  Beating her with a baseball bat, he raped her, stabbed her 40 times, dumped gasoline on her, and set her on fire, leaving her for dead in a Florida swamp.  Eighty hours later, Wolfgang emerged on a rural road where she was rescued by a passing motorist.  Despite numerous injuries, the teen survived and identified Malsky as her attacker.

This time, the much-tattooed suspect would not escape punishment.  His victim testified against him and Malsky received 25 years in prison. 

In 2003, while the rapist was serving time, cops tested evidence found at the scene of the Farrington homicide. DNA matched Malsky.  He admitted killing the elderly widow and plea bargained a sentence of life in prison without parole.

A few months later, residents of south Florida were shocked to read that Malsky would be eligible for parole after 25 years. 

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that “the fatal stabbing of Pauline P. Farrington happened in 1993, two years before the passage of a state law that denies parole to criminals sentenced to life imprisonment.  Malsky's prison sentence, the state discovered, should have been guided by pre-1995 statutes.  Life prisoners then were granted eligibility for parole after serving at least 25 years of their sentences.  In 1995, state lawmakers passed the Stop Turning Out Prisoners legislation, which required that inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentences -- effectively ending ‘early release.’ Prisoners given life terms would get no parole.”

It’s frightening to realize that Malsky might actually get out of prison someday.

And what’s almost as frightening is the fact that the bureaucrats we hire to save us from such people are incompetent.
 

Victim Bludgeoned, Strangled, and Burned to Death

22 years later and still no justice for Marlys Sather
by Robert A. Waters

Marlys Sather worked for a living.

Chadwick Willacy, her crack-head next-door neighbor, stole.

On September 5, 1990, their lives intersected in a violent encounter.  At around noon, Marlys unexpectedly returned home from work.  As she walked through the door, she saw Willacy burglarizing her house.

Court documents describe what happened next: “Willacy bludgeoned Sather and bound her ankles with wire and duct tape. He choked and strangled her with a cord with a force so intense that a portion of her skull was dislodged. Willacy then obtained Sather's ATM pin number, her ATM card, and the keys to her car; drove to her bank; and withdrew money out of her account. Willacy hid Sather's car around the block while he made trips to and from the house. He placed stolen items on Sather's porch for later retrieval, took a significant amount of property from Sather's house to his house, and then drove the car to Lynbrook Plaza where he left it and jogged back to Sather's home. Upon his return, Willacy disabled the smoke detectors, doused Sather with gasoline he had taken from the garage, placed a fan from the guest room at her feet to provide more oxygen for the fire, and struck several matches as he set her on fire.”

When she didn’t show up for work that afternoon, Sather’s employer notified her family.  Her son-in-law entered the house to check on her, and located her body.  He immediately called police.

Willacy’s fingerprints were found on the following items: a fan that lay at the feet of the victim; a gas can; and a tape recorder inside the residence.  Several witnesses testified that they saw Willacy driving Sather’s car to the ATM machine she often used.  The suspect’s wife called police and informed investigators she’d found a “check register” belonging to Sather in a trash can inside their home.  After obtaining a search warrant, officers found other items belonging to Sather, as well as clothing that contained Sather’s blood.

Cops arrested Willacy.  After he confessed to being inside the home when Sather was slain, investigators charged him with first-degree premeditated murder, burglary, robbery, and arson.

An autopsy revealed that Marlys had died of smoke inhalation.

Willacy was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.  Two years later, his conviction was overturned on a technicality.  Once again, the killer was convicted and sentenced to death.

Over the last 20 years, Willacy has had dozen of appeals, all turned down for one reason: the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming.

This case meets my criteria for putting a killer to death: obvious, undeniable guilt, and a heinous murder.

Unsolved Murder in Louisiana

The Cruel Death of Stephanie Lynn Hebert
by Robert A. Waters

Thirty-five years ago, an unknown killer abducted a child from Waggaman, Louisiana. 

On a blazing hot summer day in 1978, six-year-old Stephanie Lynn Hebert left her home to play with a neighbor.  Late that afternoon, her parents, Donald and Joyce Hebert, reported her missing. 

The New Orleans Times-Picayune described the child: “Stephanie, whose 6th birthday is June 30th, was last seen wearing pink shorts and a pink checkered top, her father said.  Also, she was barefooted and wearing blue framed glasses, he said, adding that she had blond hair, is about four feet tall and weighs about 45 pounds.  Last month she graduated from kindergarten at Live Oak Manor Elementary School near her home.”

An ice cream vendor told detectives from Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office that she’d sold cotton candy to a child and an older woman sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m.  The vendor claimed the little girl looked like Stephanie.  (Despite a massive search, the two were never located.)

Thousands of searchers scoured the surrounding countryside, including a heavily forested area near the missing girl’s home.  Helicopters buzzed overhead, focusing on the nearby Mississippi River.  Investigators, including FBI agents, meticulously searched the Hebert home while Stephanie’s parents met with reporters to plead for their child’s return.  Psychics opined on where to locate Stephanie, but those avenues proved unsuccessful.

Finally, on November 29, 1979, twenty-one miles from Waggaman, a hunter found the child’s skeletal remains.  Stephanie, tied to a tree, had been dead for approximately six months, likely since the time she went missing.  Ropes had been secured around her remains, and her clothing and eyeglasses lay on the ground nearby.  Animals had scattered many of her bones.

The child’s killer was never found.

Numerous questions remain.  Why did the kidnapper tie Stephanie to a tree?  Was she still alive when left in those lonely woods?  Did she succumb to the elements or animal attack?  

After 35 years, is the killer still alive? 

NOTE: Stephanie Lynn Hebert’s sad case lay cold, dormant, and forgotten for twenty-five years, until an amateur online sleuth began researching it.  Here's hoping the murderer will be caught, and will face the justice he so deserves. 

Armistice Day Remembered

                     Zack A. Crumpton, far-right on second row

The Heroes of an Ancient War
by Zack C. Waters

This is my brother’s memorial to our grandfather, Zack A. Crumpton. Farmer, mechanic, patriot, Southern story-teller, and thinker, Grandpa made a lasting impression on all he met. 

The old men began arriving in the middle of the afternoon. I knew something important was happening, because my grandfather had changed out of his work clothes after lunch. He wore suits on Sundays, but I had never before seen him “dressed up” on a week day.

The day was November 11, and back then Americans called it “Armistice Day.”

The first time I saw the Armistice Day gathering there were 12 “buddies.” Why they had picked my grandfather’s ranch in north-central Florida for their mini-reunion I don’t recall, but it had become something of an annual event. My grandmother brought pitchers of lemonade and homemade cookies to the front porch and then quietly excused herself, leaving us “men” to our important discussions.

Being eight years old, I thought the men were incredibly old (though they were probably no older that I am now). One was missing an arm, his long-sleeved shirt neatly rolled up to the stump of his arm and safety-pinned in place. He spoke with a Northern accent and had either been a member of the “Lost Battalion” or had been part of the force that relieved the “Lost Battalion.”

Two of the men were occasionally shaken with coughing spasms. They sounded as if they were trying to retch up a lung, their gaunt bodies shaking like spastic puppets. My grandfather later explained that they had breathed mustard gas.

They all wore red plastic poppies in the button-holes of their coat lapels.

                                        Zack A. Crumpton

I don’t now remember the combat stories they told. I’m sure there were tales of machine-gun fire and battles fought across grassy plains dotted with red flowers, because I drew pictures of that scene in my notebook over and over, when I should have been listening to my math or science teachers. My lined paper was crammed with more violence and contorted bodies that any painting Otto Dix ever created.

My grandfather explained that he had been a lowly truck driver during the Great War, now generally known as World War I. He had carried ammunition to the front, and the dead and wounded to the rear, from places like Belleau Woods and Chateau Thierry. He was my hero, and I felt certain he was just being modest. I was pretty sure that when “Black Jack” Pershing had faced a particularly trying problem he stopped by the motor pool to ask “Old Zack” what to do. People in western Marion County often came to ask for his advice, so why not General Pershing.

More than anything, though, I remember the songs the old vets sang. Some were sentimental, some silly, and others heartbreakingly sad. I particularly loved this one:

“Goodbye Maw, goodbye Paw,
Goodbye mule with your old hee-haw.
I’ll bring you a Turk, and a Kaiser, too,
And that’s about all one old boy can do.”

It was the bawdy version of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” that got my grandfather and me in trouble. The next day at lunch I innocently asked my grandfather what was the “clap”? My grandmother hit the roof. She shouted that I would never attend another of those meetings with a bunch of dirty-mouthed old men, but my grandfather must have calmed her down, because the next year I was back on the front porch humming along with their songs.

I missed the last Armistice Day reunion. I was busy with teenage concerns (girls, sports, and food), but my grandmother said there were only four vets at the last meeting. My grandfather was blind by then, and one of the other doughboys was in a wheelchair. Grandma said his “spinster” daughter complained the whole time about having to bring the old man “all the way out to Fellowship to grumble about the government and sing smutty songs.”

So the next November 11, no one showed up. I think my grandfather knew they would not come. Still, he sat on the front porch in his Sunday suit with a red poppy in the lapel, sipping lemonade and keeping a lonely vigil. The hero of an ancient war spent the afternoon humming tunes that only the dead could hear.

Lady Wonder, the Talking Horse

A horse is a horse, of course...
by Robert A. Waters

In September, 1952, various newspapers across the country reported the following dialog, not between two humans, but between a woman and a horse:

Claudia Fonda: “Is Gary Hayman alive?”

The horse, named Lady Wonder, touched rubber discs with her nose until the letters H-U-R-T popped up.

“Where can the little boy be found?”

T-R-U-C-K.

“Where is the truck?”

Lady Wonder touched the discs again.

K-A-N-S-A-S.

“Can Gary Hayman be found?”

Y-E-S.

This bizarre scene might have seemed comical except for the seriousness of the occasion. Gary, a nine-year-old mute, had vanished from his neighborhood in Exeter, Rhode Island. Weeks of searching turned up only one clue: his clothes, neatly folded, lay beside a small stream near his home.

Soon after, Gary’s distraught mother, Mrs. Benjamin Hayman, heard about Lady Wonder. Some cops claimed that the mare could read minds, having helped to solve at least one case concerning a missing child. Mrs. Hayman called Fonda and implored the woman to ask her horse a series of questions about the vanished boy. Fonda, from Richmond, Virginia, agreed, prompting the newspaper articles quoted above.

Fonda asked the horse a final question: “Is Gary with good people or bad people?”

G-O-O-D.

Based on this information, Mrs. Hayman requested that the Kansas State Police search for her son in that state.

Claudia Fonda bought the two-week old filly in 1925. Three years later, she said, she discovered its psychic powers. After some experimentation, Fonda built a “typewriter” on which the letters of the alphabet were spread out in front of Lady Wonder. The horse operated this device by lowering her muzzle onto levers that flipped up, showing letters to the audience.

Fonda charged $1.00 for three questions. Over the years, more than 150,000 paying customers dropped by to question the horse.

Several college professors studied the horse, concluding that Lady Wonder did indeed have psychic powers. At least one egg-head journal, “Abnormal and Social Psychology,” published an article about the horse. The authors (whose names I will mercifully not publish) concluded that the horse had “telepathic” powers through “the transference of mental influence by an unknown process.”

A skeptic named John Scarne decided to check out the talking horse. He later published an article concluding that Claudia Fonda was a fraud.

Scarne visited Fonda and, after giving her various clues, asked the mare several questions. He then carefully observed Fonda and Lady Wonder as the horse answered.

Scarne wrote the following paragraph describing how Fonda manipulated the horse to pick out certain letters: "Mrs. Fonda carried a small whip in her right hand, and she cued the horse by waving it. I detected Mrs. Fonda doing it every time the horse moved the lettered blocks with the nose. This method of doing the trick might have puzzled me if I hadn't known that the placement of horse's eyes on either side of the head gave them wide backward range of peripheral vision. Therefore it offered no problem for me to detect. Mrs. Fonda, when cueing Lady Wonder, stood about two-and-a-half feet behind, and approximately at a 60-degree angle to Lady's head. The shaking of the whip first time was the signal for Lady to bend her head within a couple of inches to the blocks. A second shake of the whip was the cue for Lady to continuously move her head in a bent position back and forth over the blocks. When Lady Wonder's head was just above the desired block Mrs. Fonda made the horse touch the block with her nose by shaking the whip a third time. It was as simple as that."

Alas, the case of Gary Hayman did not turn out as predicted by Lady Wonder. In December, 1953, hunters discovered a skull found in the woods near his home.  A coroner identified the skull as that of the boy, and ruled his death accidental.

Unfortunately, Gary Hayman was not in Kansas being cared for by “good” people.

In 1957, Lady Wonder died of a heart attack. Buried in a local pet cemetery with about thirty mourners in attendance, a minister read the poem, “An Arab’s Farewell to His Horse.” 

Why We Own Guns

Twelve-year-old girl shoots intruder
by Robert A. Waters

In Calera, Oklahoma, Stacey Adam Jones allegedly broke into a home and was shot for his trouble. After ringing the front doorbell several times, he walked around back and kicked in the back door. Making his way through the house, the intruder had no idea that twelve-year-old Kendra St. Clair [pictured] had barricaded herself inside the master bedroom closet.

Jones, who’d allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl just a year before, made his way into the bedroom.

Undersheriff Ken Golden described what happened next. “[From] what we understand right now,” he said, “[Jones] was turning the [closet] doorknob when the girl fired through the door.”

A few minutes earlier, Kendra had called her mother and stated that a stranger was attempting to enter the home. Debra St. Clair told her daughter to get the family’s .40-caliber Glock and hide in the closet.  She did so, all the while using her cellphone to speak with a 911 dispatcher.

Police arrived at the home a short time later and found Jones outside. He’d been shot in the shoulder, the bullet exiting his back.  He was transported to a hospital for treatment.  After spending a day in the hospital, Jones was released, then arrested

Golden told reporters that “[the girl] did everything she was supposed to do and more. And we're absolutely so thankful that she is fine. And I admire the little girl a lot.”

Imagine what may have happened had the girl not had a gun.

Lizzi Marriott is Missing in New Hampshire

Three Week Hiatus

I'm currently completing my fifth true crime book.  The manuscript is due November 1, so I'll be taking a hiatus from writing my blog until then.  Thanks to the many readers who visit here.  More about my new book later.

Florida Cold Case Playing Cards

Don’t Tell Mama I was Drinkin’

Memories of music past...
by Robert A. Waters

One of the constants in my life has been hillbilly music. My earliest memories are of listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. Like many Southern families, in the early 1950s, we’d gather around the radio and thrill to the fiddles and banjos and faraway voices singing of home--both here and in the afterlife.

My grandfather, a World War I veteran, farmer, and mechanic, loved to sing: gospel songs, Jimmie Rodgers’ blues and train songs, and what are now called folk songs. “Life’s Railway to Heaven,” “Waiting for a Train,” and “Trouble in Mind” were a few of his favorites.

In those days, hillbilly music wasn’t politically correct. God existed. People sinned: they drank too much; cheated on their wives or husbands; and were quick to take lethal revenge on being wronged. But God stood over it all, ready to forgive our transgressions.

Hillbillies loved their guns, their freedom, and their country. While intellectuals looked down on their lifestyle and religion and music, with its Rebel twang and steel guitars and broken-life lyrics, songwriters continued to turn out songs that are now recognized as classics.

Like most teens of the time, I went through a rock and roll phase. But my real love was always country--real country, not watered-down Nashville pop. As far as I’m concerned, you can send Shania back to Canada and Keith Urban back to Australia.  Then tar and feather all the Nashville producers and give them a one-way ticket to New York City.

If you’re still reading, here’s one of my favorite songs. It combines three of old-time country music’s constant themes: God, family, and booze. It’s a tear-jerker of the best sort. The singer is Gary Allan.

Don't Tell Mama I was Drinkin’
Written by Buddy Brock, Jerry Lassiter, and Kim Williams

I was headed north on Highway Five
On a star-lit Sunday night,
When a pick-up truck flew by me out of control.
As I watched in my headlights,
He swerved left, then back right.
He never hit the brakes as he left the road.

I found him lying in the grass
Among the steel and glass
With an empty whiskey bottle by his side.
And through the blood and tears
He whispered in my ear
A few last words just before he died.

CHORUS: Don't tell Mama I was drinkin’
Lord knows her soul would never rest.
I can't leave this world with Mama thinkin’
I met the Lord with whiskey on my breath.

I still think about that night
And how that young man died,
And how others sometimes pay for our mistakes.
The last thing on his mind
As he left this world behind
Was knowing someone else's heart would break.

CHORUS: Don't tell Mama I was drinkin’
Lord knows her soul would never rest.
I can't leave this world with Mama thinkin’
I met the Lord with whiskey on my breath.

Don't tell Mama I was drinkin’.