TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Author: Trench Reynolds

  • John Jason McLaughlin’s sentencing today

    John Jason McLaughlin’s sentencing today

    Victims’ families to have their say:

    John Jason McLaughlin, the kid who shot and killed Seth Bartell and Aaron Rollins at Rocori High in Minnesota, is scheduled to be sentenced later today.

    Under Minnesota law, family members of the victims have the right to address McLaughlin to describe the emotional, social or economic harm they’ve suffered.

    Tom Rollins, his wife Sherry, and his daughter Rachel plan to address McLaughlin, as does Seth Bartell’s mother Kim. I’ll have news on the sentencing as soon as I can, but you may want to keep your eye on this thread as someone may post the sentence here.

  • Louis Jourdain to be tried as a juvenile

    Louis Jourdain to be tried as a juvenile

    Jourdain to be tried as juvenile:

    Louis Jourdain was the 16-year-old kid who was arrested in connection with the Red Lake school shooting. The charge was never announced, since he is a juvenile.

    Now according to family members of Jourdain, he is going to be tried as a juvenile. So we may never know what Louis Jourdain is being accused of.

  • Esmie Tseng’s website

    Esmie Tseng’s website

    I originally told you about Esmie Tseng here. She was the 16-year-old girl from Kansas who allegedly stabbed her mother, Shu Yi Zhang, to death.

    At that time, I asked if anybody knew what her website was. I got an e-mail giving me a link to her Livejournal which according to the e-mail was shut down by a friend of hers who knew the password.

    I did a little more digging and I found a Google cached version of her Xanga site. Nothing of any great note. Nothing that would lead you to believe the crime she’s been accused of committing.

  • Insanity plea for James Lewerke

    Insanity plea for James Lewerke

    Lewerke enters insanity plea:

    For those of you who don’t remember, James Lewerke was the kid from Valparaiso High School in Indiana who slashed five of his classmates with a machete and a tree saw.

    Luckily, none of the injuries were serious and no one died. As of now, he is being tried as an adult. However, defense attorneys have entered an insanity plea for Lewerke.

    You might think I’m going to jump all over the defense attorneys on this one, but you’re wrong. I think that this time it’s more than likely a legitimate defense.

    The reason I think that is, first off, I’ve heard no real motive come out of this case. No excuses made by the defense or otherwise. No bullying. No rejections. No previous behavioral problems. The only thing I’ve heard so far is some rumblings that he allegedly heard “voices from God”.

    So, I think for once we may have a legitimate case of insanity. I’m not saying that’s 100% true, but with the facts that I have at hand, I don’t doubt it at this time. Also, defense attorneys are trying to get the case moved back to juvenile court.

  • Andrew Osantowski: Addendum

    Andrew Osantowski: Addendum

    Just some tidbits about Andrew Osantowski.

    Here is his profile with the Michigan Department of Corrections.

    And here is his Yahoo Profile where he still is linked to my site. It looks like he still has net access because that picture has changed. It used to be this picture…

    Anybody else recognize the shirt he’s wearing? That’s right, it’s a t-shirt from the now-defunct white supremacist record label Panzerfaust Records.

    And if he still does have net access, which it appears he does, and he still has links to white supremacist sites and the like, then it seems like he hasn’t learned his lesson.

  • Consecutive Sentences Sought for John Jason McLaughlin

    Consecutive Sentences Sought for John Jason McLaughlin

    Extended Sentence Sought For McLaughlin:

    Prosecutors in the case of the Rocori High School shooter John Jason McLaughlin have requested that a judge sentence McLaughlin to two consecutive sentences.

    If you remember, McLaughlin was found guilty of shooting and killing Seth Bartell and Aaron Rollins at Rocori High School in Minnesota. If the judge approves the request, McLaughlin could be looking at more than 40 years. Only 40? I thought he was looking at a life sentence.

    Anyway, sentencing is still scheduled for August 30th.

  • Esmie Tseng

    Esmie Tseng

    Kansas

    Teen is charged in mother’s death: (Log in info)

    Reason to Blow Up the World: The article isn’t too forthcoming with motive details, but since prosecutors intend to try her as an adult, we can possibly rule out self-defense.

    Anyway, for the fact that this 16-year-old girl, Esmie Tseng, would stab her own mother, Shu Yi Zhang, repeatedly. If tried as an adult, she could be sentenced to life. The article says that she had a website (probably myspace or something like that).

    Tip to VonMexican.

  • This is why

    This is why

    Yesterday, Bookhouse Boy over at The Crime Spree did an entry where he made the following statement to me…

    Trench, in my opinion, wastes time when he bothers to debate these guys when they show up on his message boards. They’re the equivalent of Holocaust deniers, Trench.

    9 times out of 10 I would agree with Bookhouse Boy if it weren’t for instances like this.

    The other day I got an e-mail from someone named James and this is what he had to say…

    i haven’t processed this email into a verbal system so bear with me. i’m in one of those periods of transition, being 17 and a “pariah” at my highschool. it’s certainly of my own volition since i still enjoy acting the way i do…but, for about 3 years i was what you’d characterize as a mutant. i’m not anymore. this was because of stumbling across your site in one of my vapid searches for those two fuckers as well as other mass-murderers to re-read information that i already knew. when i read the articles on your site, scrolling down and down and down, the content seemed so disaggreeable. all of my reactions were anathematic, as though you just didn’t understand something. i now know this was utter bullshit on my part. for those years i thought that those two were something that i could relate to, but they were spoiled, unempathetic and utterly self-important in any sense of the word. they didn’t kill people who deserved to die, they didn’t leave the world a better place than they found it. there’s many other things…but i found your site a few times before i bought a computer, after i got one i joined one of those fucking message boards on the subject (and trust me it was pro-asshole), it took about 2 weeks of reading other peoples comments and opinnions of them to realize what the fuck this was all about, i saw myself by looking at all of the poorly typed idiocy. this was something of an existential crisis, because i’d been expelled/arrested/lost several friends/would have died because of this entire situation. i think you should display a copy of the script to the play Bang Bang You’re Dead, because after i read it, it really helped me realize that there’s no fucking point in having anything crossing the line of animosity for this kind of thing. also, i know a two paragraph blurb won’t change the minds of dumbass mutants, but you should try to clearly articulate to these people why the hell they should stay around and stop spending 70 percent of their day thinking about people they otherwise wouldn’t have liked in real life anyway.

    I don’t have to articulate it. You already have.

  • The Myth Spreads Like Cancer II

    The Myth Spreads Like Cancer II

    Bully for Them:

    Who would have thought? A factually inaccurate article from the Washington Post. I’m stunned. (Not really)

    Basically, this is just another “feel good” article about bullying. It states the obvious by saying bullying is a real problem in our schools but, as usual, doesn’t offer any real solutions that can be applied in the real world. It relies a lot on parental involvement. In a perfect world that would be enough, but as we all know, the parents of bullies are either bullies themselves or refuse to admit that their kids are bullies.

    And they blame the usual suspects, TV, Movies, video games, but still not offering any real solutions on what the schools can do to stop bullying. However, my major bone of contention is with this…

    Bullying’s link to violence has been repeatedly documented. For example, the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., by two students who had been bullied, resulted in the deaths of 12 classmates, a teacher and the shooters themselves, and the wounding of 23 others.

    WRONG!!! Again I refer to what, I think, is the definitive article about Columbine, “The Depressive and the Psychopath” written by Dave Cullen for Slate. An addition to the article deals with the myths of Columbine…

    Here is the straight story on seven of the central myths:

    1. Targeting jocks, blacks, and Christians: There were no targets. Harris and Klebold just wanted body count, and they didn’t care who died. They expected their bombs to do most of the killing, murdering everyone in the cafeteria, irrespective of clique or social standing. When the bombs failed, they shot indiscriminately, firing into open crowds and under tables without bothering to see who their victims were. They taunted jocks briefly in the library, but they taunted virtually everyone else there, too.

    7. Outcasts: Perhaps the most pervasive myth is that Harris and Klebold were rejected outcasts. They were not captains of the football team, but they were far more accepted than many of their schoolmates. They hung out with a tight circle of close friends and partied regularly on the weekend with a wider crowd.

    In other words, they weren’t bullied.

    Even though some people think I encourage or excuse bullying, you couldn’t be more wrong. As a former victim, I think bullying is a cancer on our education system. But unfortunately, I don’t think there will ever be a realistic solution to eliminating bullying from our schools.

  • Marilyn Niqui McCown

    Marilyn Niqui McCown

    One of my readers on the Latoyia Figueroa thread came forward and said that she too had a missing relative. A commenter by the name of Michelle said that she is the sister of Marilyn Niqui McCown. She has been missing since July 22, 2001, when she disappeared from a laundromat in Richmond, Indiana.

    The link provides all the details you need. Take a minute and click on the link to see if you can help.