TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Author: Trench Reynolds

  • Montreal shooting

    Montreal shooting

    2 gunmen dead after Montreal college shooting:

    Two gunmen who opened fire in a downtown Montreal college Wednesday afternoon are dead, and police are hunting for a third suspect.

    Montreal General Hospital officials say 12 people have been admitted, six of them in critical condition, two in serious condition and the rest in stable condition.

    Montreal police confirmed that at least one suspect was “neutralized,” but did not provide details on how the gunman died.

    “Whether he did it to himself or not, I can’t yet say,” said spokesman Yan Lafrenière.

    Television images showed police officers dragging a bloody body out of the main doors of the building.

    Eyewitnesses say they saw a tall skinny man, wearing a black trench coat and a Mohawk haircut, walk into the cafeteria carrying a large gun. He apparently fired several shots.

    Other reports are saying that the alleged second gunman was in camouflage. More on this as details become available.

    Thanks to Badge and Harding.

  • Craigslist prank outs Seattle perverts

    Craigslist prank outs Seattle perverts

    Craigslist sex prankster outs men:

    This is way too funny, and it makes me wonder why I didn’t think of something like this…

    Craigslist, the hugely successful internet classified ad site, has long been known for the rather, um, honest nature of its personal ads. From fetishists seeking out others with the same kink, to office workers looking for quick, anonymous hookups during their lunch break, Craigslist has revolutionised the way people around the world get their sexing.

    But the seemingly anonymous freedom it allows appears to have lulled many into a false sense of security, and in Seattle, over a hundred and fifty of them have just found their personal details published on the web for the whole world to see.

    A ‘prankster’ named Jason Fortuny; a web developer in Seattle – posted an explicit advert (copied from a different city’s personal ads) on the Seattle Craigslist site, posing as a submissive female seeking an aggressive, dominant man for sex. He wanted to see how many responses he could get in 24 hours.

    He received a grand total of 178 responses via email, many including sexually explicit photos of the men  which he then proceeded to post, in their entirety, on the web.

    Many of the men used their real names to contact the ’27 yo sexy str8 woman’. Many used their work email addresses. Some sent phone numbers, or instant messenger screen names. Out of the 178, 145 of them sent pictures  some just of their faces, many others of ruder, less public parts of their anatomy. A good number of them admitted they were married.

    ‘I was a logger, but now I’m in finance. I’m 35 years old, 6’2″ tall, muscular, strong, pushy, and don’t have time to f*** around wasting our time,’ wrote one.

    Another said: ‘Im 22 and i will make you scream in pain but in a good way.’

    And the Microsoft employee, who also provided his cellphone number, sent a message saying: ‘I’m married and looking to fill the needs not being done at home. So if you’re still reading, look at my picture, and think about it…’

    Fortuny published them all in full, and then set his readers the goal of tracking down and outing the real life identities of as many of them as possible.

    At least one man who used a work email address was identified by a colleague; working at Microsoft. Some readers, horrified by the invasion of privacy, emailed many of the men to let them know they’d been had. Fortuny; whose own personal details, including his home address, are readily available online; has already received one threat of violence.

    I’m going to try something like this, but with a slightly different twist. Stay tuned.

  • Katherine Lester in Seventeen Magazine

    Katherine Lester in Seventeen Magazine

    Mich. teen recounts MySpace romance to magazine:

    Our favorite runaway to the Middle East, Katherine Lester, is back in the headlines again for telling her story to Seventeen Magazine…

    GILFORD A Michigan teenager who flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on MySpace.com has detailed her online romance and the fallout her trip caused in Seventeen magazine.

    In the article in the October issue of Seventeen, which hit newsstands Tuesday, 17-year-old Katherine Lester writes about how she has worked to regain her parents’ trust since her romance was revealed and became international news.

    “While my parents were supportive through the legal issues, I can see how much our relationship has changed because of what I did in good ways and bad,’ Lester wrote. “No matter how many times I say I’m sorry, I can’t get back their trust.”

    Lester developed an online romance with Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old Palestinian who lives in the West Bank town of Jericho. For months, she kept the relationship secret before disappearing June 5 from her mother’s home in Gilford, 80 miles north of Detroit.

    “I couldn’t imagine going halfway across the globe,” she wrote in the magazine. “But I realized I didn’t want to wait either.”

    Her father, Terry Lester, who lives near Flint, has declined requests from The Associated Press to interview his daughter. He said Thursday that she is back in high school for her senior year.

    Katherine Lester wrote in the magazine that she and Jimzawi talk daily on the telephone for about an hour. And she reiterated her plans to marry him.

    =”Although a lot of people, including my parents, don’t believe us, we really do love each other and we are going to get married someday,” she wrote. “Love is full of tests, and we’re going to pass ours.”

    What a great message Seventeen is sending to its readers. It’s ok for girls to run off to marry someone at the age of 16. It’s a guarantee that he’ll love you forever. Please.

    And why is her father still allowing her to talk to Abdullah Psycho every day for an hour?

    This whole thing is starting to smell of cashing in. I’ll lay odds that a Lifetime movie gets made about this.

  • Child prostitution booming on craigslist

    Child prostitution booming on craigslist

    Online Child Prostitution, An Alarming Trend:

    This is an article from a Sacramento, CA news station about how child prostitution is proliferating due to the internet…

    (CBS 13) SACRAMENTO FBI agents say child prostitution is moving off the streets and onto the information superhighway. Sacramento Special Agent James Harris said sex peddlers have gotten tech savvy.

    “They figure if pedophiles can entice online, that’s their business, that’s what they do, said Harris.

    Harris says they set up profiles on MySpace or Yahoo to recruit and entice underage girls. Then they advertise them on the internet–through addresses like redbook.com, a bay area erotic services site, or legitimate places like Craigslist, where you can find a car, rent an apartment or an “erotic service.”

    “They’re advertised as of age when you look closer they’re not, said Harris.

    The face is usually cut out or covered in a way so the age is hard to tell and so that law enforcement can’t track them down. Agent Harris says most turn out to be reported missing and runaways.

    The only way to make money is to prostitute. A lot are beginning to see this is a safe way to do it than on the streets, said Harris.

    Hundreds pop up on Craigslist every day in Sacramento. Why the capital city? Harris says it’s a crossroads between Seattle, L.A., San Francisco and Reno, where I-5 and I-80 meets.

    Agent Harris admits these cases are tough to prosecute. Those who post the listings are hard to track down, in some cases out of the country. But the FBI says as their crime scenes shift, they’re investigating child sex for sale with more mouse than muscle.

  • Eric Roscoe

    Eric Roscoe

    MySpace user gets arrested locally:

    I’m going to spare you from copying and pasting this article because it is so poorly written it’s making my left eye bleed. So here it is in a nutshell…

    One 20-year-old Eric Roscoe from Lake Charles, La. was arrested in DeRidder, La. for carnal knowledge of a juvenile and computer-aided solicitation because he was diddling a 15-year-old girl.

    If you can get through the article without having an aneurysm, then you’re a better man than me.

  • Which Amendment is that exactly?

    Which Amendment is that exactly?

    Attorney for “My-Space” Attacker Claims Constitutional Protection:

    For those of you who may have forgotten, Pete Solis is the 19-year-old at the crux of the MySpace lawsuit. The victim’s mother is suing MySpace because Solis sexually assaulted her 14-year-old daughter. Solis’ attorney in the criminal proceedings has made possibly the most outrageous legal claim ever this side of bad police and lawyering shows on TV…

    The attorney for a 19-year-old man accused of sexual assault claims the U-S Constitution protects him from full responsibility for having sex with a 14-year-old girl.

    Yes, you read that right. I’ll let you continue now…

    Pete Solis reportedly met his victim via “My-Space.com,” apparently leading to dinner and a movie back in May, allegedly followed by sexually assaulting the victim afterwards in a shopping center parking lot.

    “We are saying that to create liability for only one party–for the older party, and not the younger party–that violates Equal Protection,” attorney Adam Reposa says outside a Travis County courtroom this morning.

    Reposa claims that extends to protection of procreation rights, despite the victim’s age. He maintains that he is not trying to vilify the 14-year-old victim.

    Solis would face up to 20 years in jail and permanent registration as a sex offender, if he’s convicted. A judge will hear Reposa’s argument next Monday.

    Yeah, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor too.

    Is this assclown serious? Constitutionally protected child molestation? If any judge allows this, they should be immediately removed from the bench, dragged out into the street, and pelted with rocks and garbage. And so should this attorney for even attempting such a defense.

  • Love Gun

    Love Gun

    Castillo’s interests were known:

    It seems that Alvaro Castillo’s obsession with Columbine was not his only obsession…

    Investigators knew in April that a teenager now accused of killing his father before opening fire outside Orange High School was fascinated with school shootings, according to a high-school acquaintance who received a video from him saying he was going to kill himself.
    Alvaro Castillo sent Anna Rose the video last spring. It came in the mail April 22, two days after Castillo was picked up by Orange County Sheriff’s deputies and committed to a local hospital after his parents reported that he was suicidal.

    Rose was away at college when the video arrived at her family’s home, but her mother, Bonnie, immediately called 911 when her son started watching it that night. A deputy came to get the tape.

    Rose’s brother played some of the video over the phone to her that night, and she was so scared she didn’t return home for a couple of months, she said.

    Rose said in an interview Wednesday that she met with Lt. Larry Faucette at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office a few days later and Faucette showed her Castillo’s journal, which included photographs of her and detailed his admiration for the shooters in the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo.

    The day that Castillo was committed, April 20, was the seven-year anniversary of those shootings, in which two high school boys killed 13 people before killing themselves.

    Rose said Faucette told her that he had read the journal and that Castillo was “sick” and would be in the hospital for a long time.

    But a few days after that, Rose said, Faucette called to say that Castillo had been released.

    “I kept saying, ‘Please don’t let him go, he’s not stable no matter what they think,’ ” Rose said.

    Castillo had a high school crush on Rose. In a video mailed to The Chapel Hill News last week, he brandished a gun with her name on it. The video also showed a second gun labeled Arlene.

    Someone from the sheriff’s office might have approached Castillo, according to a letter that arrived at the Roses’ home after the Orange High School shooting. Castillo wrote to Anna Rose that he knew her “parents are scared.”

    “The sheriff told me you went to the police department so I would not bother you again. I kept my word,” he wrote.

    In the letter, dated Aug. 27 and postmarked the day of the school shooting, Castillo also said he would “die in three days or so,” and that he wouldn’t “go after” Rose’s little sister, who is enrolled at Orange High School.

    Bonnie Rose said she couldn’t understand why the system could not do more to protect her daughter and family.

    “That’s why I sent an e-mail asking people to pray,” Bonnie Rose said. “I realized that was the only protection we had, is if God protected us.”

    Which leaves me with two questions. Why did the doctors release him when he was obviously still bananas, and who’s Arlene?

  • Castillo’s mom denies abuse

    Castillo’s mom denies abuse

    Family, friends shocked by killing, reasons:

    Victoria Castillo, the mother of Alvaro Castillo, denies the abuse claims made by her son as the reason he killed his father…

    The mother of Alvaro Castillo says her husband was not abusive, as her son claims in the video on which he confesses to killing his father.

    Victoria Castillo spoke through a neighbor who is helping the family amid weekend funeral arrangements for Rafael Huezo Castillo.

    “I asked Vicki, `Did he abuse y’all?’ ” said Tim Fluet, who lives on a four-home gravel road near the Castillo family in Hillsborough.

    “She said no.”

    But Victoria Castillo did say her husband, who was a night janitor at Oak Grove Elementary School in Durham, was “very demanding verbally” and spanked the children “sometimes,” Fluet said.

    Now I know some of you Nancy types think spanking is abuse. It’s not. It was probably namby-pamby people like you who put your kids into “time out” who put that idea into his head.

    Fluet said he never detected abuse in the family.

    “Honestly, knowing Mr. Castillo and just being with him, I don’t believe it,” he said. “I came from an abusive home. I know what abuse is.”

    A former employer also spoke highly of Rafael Castillo, who Fluet said was from El Salvador.

    Southwest Elementary School Principal Ari Cohen said Rafael Castillo was hardworking and friendly during the three years he cleaned his Durham school before transferring this summer to Oak Grove.

    “He was an evening custodian so he didn’t have a lot of interaction with staff, but when he did he had friendly conversations,” Cohen said. “He was outgoing and enjoyed talking with staff.”

    And he worked three jobs. Sounds like a real bastard, doesn’t he?

  • Alvaro Castillo’s MySpace

    Alvaro Castillo’s MySpace

    Suspect’s Web page offers a glimpse of his life:

    This is an article from the newspaper that Alvaro Castillo sent the video to about Castillo’s MySpace. I’ve been looking for his MySpace since the story broke. Anyway, on to the article…

    Handguns, shotguns and rifles.

    Those are what Alvaro Castillo listed as his general interests on his Myspace.com page.

    He also wrote that he likes cooking, cleaning, singing and target practice.

    Under Alvaro’s “pics” is a photograph that depicts him holding a pair of scissors above another male’s head as if he was going to stab him. The caption reads, “Attempted Murder. Are you scared? Ha ha.”

    The 19-year-old lists his heroes on his site. They include “God, Mom, Dad, Victoria…”

    Let’s stop right there for a second. If his dad was his hero, why did he kill him?

    He also writes that he would most like to meet John Hinckley Jr., Tom Hanks, Michael Moore and God.

    I can see why he’d want to meet John Hinckley, since they’re both batshit crazy gunmen. I wonder why he wanted to meet Fatboy, though. And he may just get his wish in that last one.

    Also on his MySpace, he lists Bowling for Columbine as one of his favorite movies. I think that movie has helped in more school shootings than it tried to prevent.

    You can see Alvaro Castillo’s MySpace for yourself.

  • Why Castillo was kicked out of The Guard

    Why Castillo was kicked out of The Guard

    Suspect in school attack, father’s murder obsessed with Columbine:

    Another detail in the case of Alvaro Castillo. This time the reason of why he was being processed out of the National Guard…

    Officials with the North Carolina National Guard said Thursday that Castillo entered the Guard as a recruit in 2004 and completed basic combat training in August 2005. He was never deployed and was being processed out of the guard after being determined to be medically disqualified for military service, according to the statement.

    The Guard declined to comment on why Castillo was medically disqualified, citing confidentiality laws.

    But according to court records released Thursday, Castillo was involuntarily committed to a state mental hospital on April 20 – the seventh anniversary of the Columbine attack – after he told his family he was going to kill himself with a shotgun.

    Deputies took him into custody and “he stated that he was not going to go back into the Army and was going to kill himself,” an affidavit attached to the commitment order said.

    Castillo was released from the hospital eight days later, according to court records.

    I wonder what made him change his mind about The Guard. I mean, besides the fact that he’s nuts. Anyway, that shoots my theory down about being released from The Guard as the trigger event.