TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Author: Trench Reynolds

  • Brandon Bigsby: sex offender and parole violator

    Brandon Bigsby: sex offender and parole violator

    MySpace.com Used To Track Sex Offender:

    Registered sex offender Brandon Bigsby, 24, must have really been addicted to MySpace considering he broke basically all of his parole conditions to use it…

    On Thursday, officers were dispatched to Taft College, where they found Bigsby’s GPS tracking device. He was believed to have left an hour previously to the deputies’ arrival. Deputies tracked Bigsby to the Beale Library in downtown Bakersfield, where he accessed a MySpace forum. Officials arrived and found Bigsby, where he was arrested.

    Bigsby pleaded guilty to one count of a lewd and lascivious with a child under 14 years of age in May 2003, according to Superior Court records. He was sentenced to three years at Wasco State Prison and required to register as a sex offender. He is listed on the Megan’s Law Web site.

    If parole violations aren’t enough to keep predators off MySpace I don’t see how any legislation could either.

    I was unable to find a MySpace for Bigsby.

  • More on Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation

    More on Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation

    False promises on MySpace safety:

    I’m kind of relieved that I’m not the only person who thinks Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation is pointless…

    Flummoxed by bad press, the folks at MySpace.com are scrambling to derail the perception that they’ve become the preferred dating service of pedophiles.

    The first arrow in their anti-Cupid’s quiver is to enact state and federal laws requiring that convicted sex offenders register their e-mail addresses just as they already must register their physical one. Armed with the new database, MySpace and other sites will be able to bar the cyber-gates against perverts.

    On Monday, Virginia’s Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced his backing for the required legislative changes here.

    McDonnell is right to be concerned about the issue, but if his loud endorsement causes parents to ease up on supervising children’s Internet use, the effort will be worse than irrelevant. The idea is so ridiculously full of holes that any predator familiar with such obscure Internet technologies as Yahoo! and Google can get around it with a minute’s effort.

  • James Lewerke gets trial date

    James Lewerke gets trial date

    Trial Underway for Teenager Who Attacked Classmates:

    A trial date has been set for James Lewerke. He’s the Valparaiso, Indiana, teen who attacked his classmates with a machete. His trial is scheduled to start January 8th.

  • Teenybopper Killa wanted to kill his mom

    Teenybopper Killa wanted to kill his mom

    “Killa” had mother on his hit list:

    Just doing some vacation clean up, so the next few entries are going to be brief.

    To start it seems that the self-proclaimed Teenybopper Killa, Darren Thompson, wanted to kill his own mother too.

    When police searched Thompson’s home, Stone said, they found a diary in which he penned a to-kill wish list in that included “teenyboppers”, his mother Janet, with whom he lives, and his brother, who spends most of his time at U-Mass Amherst, where he attends college.

  • Va. Attorney General piles on MySpace

    Va. Attorney General piles on MySpace

    Virginia Attorney General Proposes MySpace Bill:

    Another State Attorney General who doesn’t get it jumps on the MySpace scarewagon. This time from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

    Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced plans today for legislation to require convicted sex offenders to register their online identities with the state.

    That would allow social networking Web sites like MySpace to delete or block access. McDonnell’s says in a statement that Virginia would be the first state to propose registration of e-mail addresses and instant messaging identities on the state’s sex offender registry.

    McDonnell says it’s important these changes be made at a state level because most prosecutions of sex offenders happen at the state level. There are more than 550-thousand registered sex offenders in the United States and 13-thousand in Virginia.

    MySpace officials applauded the Virginia announcement, saying the Internet “is a community as real as any other neighborhood and is in need of similar safeguards.”

    In my opinion, this proposed legislation is just to garner votes from the equally clueless soccer mom types.

    Again I say, what’s to stop the sex offenders from creating another account different from one registered with the state. And how will this prevent those predators who haven’t been caught from claiming another victim?

    When you have those questions answered, then you’ll have some legislation with teeth instead of the same old crap that legislators have been trotting out.

    Politicians and lawmakers should learn how to use the internet first before they start legislating it.

    And again, not one mention of more vigilant parenting.

  • Oakland craigslist assault

    Oakland craigslist assault

    Police: Oakland Student Raped, Attacker Met Online:

    You know, while all the soccer moms and do-gooders are ranting and raving about MySpace, craigslist keeps sneaking in under the radar…

    (AP) OAKLAND An Alameda man is under arrest for allegedly raping a graduate student who answered a classified ad on a popular Web site.

    Police say a 31-year-old student at Mills College in Oakland was raped Thursday night after answering an ad on Craigslist offering modelling jobs.

    49-year-old Gregory Hayes was picked up by police Friday morning after the woman spotted him at a gas station near campus.

    Police say the woman sent her alleged attacker e-mails and talked to him on the phone before he arrived at her on-campus residence claiming he had a gun and raped her in his van.

    Hayes asked for a lawyer after his arrest and refused to talk to investigators. Police are investigating whether he met other women on Craigslist.

    At least MySpace is making attempts to keep their userbase safe. Craigslist doesn’t do anything.

  • Malicious intent

    Malicious intent

    In our view: Memorial shooting:

    Over the years on this site, there has been a lot of debate about trying juveniles as adults for school shootings and the like. The latest debate rages over Memorial Middle School shooter Thomas White. To refresh your memory, White brought his father’s MAC-90 assault rifle to school, firing one round into the ceiling before the gun jammed, preventing any bloodshed. A lot has been argued about his intent. I think this article should clear up his intent, yet I’m sure the debate will still go on. This is from an editorial in the Joplin Globe which favors trying White as an adult, but it reveals one fact that I didn’t know of until now…

    We will disagree in this case, though every instance must be looked at separately. If anyone doubts the intentions of this disturbed young man, they should re-examine testimony in last week’s hearing in which a juvenile detention officer reported a conversation between White and another boy on Oct. 10, the day after the incident.

    The boy remarked to White that he should have gone ahead and shot Principal Steven Gilbreth in the head.

    “I would have shot him in the head,” White reportedly replied, “but my f—— gun wouldn’t shoot.”

  • Patrick Armstrong pleads guilty to manslaughter

    Judge Accepts Plea Deal In Armstrong Case:

    It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted anything about Patrick Armstrong. The news out of Maine hasn’t been exactly forthcoming. With this story, we get a year’s worth of news all at once.

    For those of you who may have forgotten, Patrick Armstrong was 14 at the time he was arrested for the murder of 14-year-old Marlee Johnston. During the investigation, police found a website made by Armstrong where he professed his admiration for serial killers and the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

    Today, Patrick Armstrong pleaded guilty to manslaughter. In return for his plea, he’ll serve 25 years with 9 years suspended.

    Tell me if this sounds like manslaughter to you…

    Armstrong is accused of brutally beating 14-year-old Marlee Johnston to death. In testimony Friday in Augusta, a state police detective testified Johnston was beaten repeatedly on the head with an aluminum baseball bat. The detective also said Armstrong told a fellow inmate that he “loved every minute of it.”

    Detective Adam Kelley testified Johnston went to Armstrong’s house to see if she wanted him to join her in walking her dogs. They were neighbors in the town of Fayette.

    So Marlee Johnston befriends Patrick Armstrong and in return, he bludgeoned her to death. And now he’ll be out when he’s 30, possibly sooner.

    It could be that the Johnston family may just want to put it all behind them. If that’s true, I respect them for that. However, in my opinion, not enough justice was served.

  • Douglas Russell

    Douglas Russell

    Man met alleged victim on Myspace:

    PEKIN – A Pekin man is being charged with committing criminal sex abuse three months after he is alleged to have had sex with the 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet.

    Douglas M. Russell, 18, was arrested in September for criminal sexual abuse.

    The charges were filed on Dec. 6, the same day police arrested Russell for allegedly having sex with the 14-year-old girl again.

    On Sept. 12, the Pekin Daily Times reported that Russell and the 14-year-old girl met through the popular networking Web site Myspace.com. According to police reports, the two spent hours chatting online before they finally decided to meet.

    Arrangements were made between Russell and the 14-year-old girl for him to come to her residence so he could crawl through her bedroom window, police said.

    Through their investigation, officers learned that Russell had been to another Pekin residence. Officers went to that house and spoke with a 14-year-old girl who told officers that Russell had recently left the house, Salmon said.

    The 14-year-old girl told police she heard a knock on her bedroom window, saw that it was Russell and let him into the house.

    Detective Dustin Salmon said police did not know if the two continued to communicate between the summer encounter and the most recent incident.

    Russell is charged with criminal sex abuse, a Class A misdemeanor, criminal trespass to private property, a Class 4 felony and obstructing justice, a Class 4 felony.

    I was unable to find a MySpace for Russell.

    And again I have to ask why these 18-year-olds are continually going after underage girls. Can’t you get girls your own age? If you have to tap on somebody’s bedroom window late at night, you know you’re doing something wrong.

  • The overlegislation of MySpace continues

    The overlegislation of MySpace continues

    And while we’re plugging other blogs (because you know, we were) Pat from BelchSpeak has a great post about new proposed legislation that would make it illegal for sex offenders to use fraudulent e-mails to sign up for MySpace…

    The danger in this is that the Federal government suddenly gains the power to monitor the email activity of everyone in order to enforce a law against a small portion of the population. Otherwise this law banning the use of non-registered email addresses is unenforceable. Are liberals going to be outraged over the civil rights of sex offenders being violated?

    Thank you, Charles Schumer and John McCain. Is there nothing you two won’t try to legislate?