From his childhood, Charles Cullen was surrounded by death. His dad died while driving a bus when Cullen was seven months old. Four of his eight siblings died in their childhood. When he was seventeen, his mom died in a car accident.

A miserable child, Cullen attempted to commit suicide twenty times in the course of twenty years. Nothing like an annual tradition. The first occurred at the age of nine, when Cullen drank chemicals from his chemistry set. From there, the attempts got more creative, ranging from stealing drugs from the hospital in which he worked, to plunging a pair of scissors through his sick, twisted skull.

Charles Cullen was discharged from the Navy after trying to kill himself. Cullen was discharged from several hospitals for trying to kill himself (and others, as it would turn out later). He was discharged from his family for, once again, trying to kill himself. Cullen was overall a suicidal maniac who wished for others to feel the pain that he felt, but also be free.

Here’s a direct quote from Cullen’s (accurate. I checked) Wikipedia entry: In March 1993, [Cullen] broke into a co-worker’s home while she and her young son slept, but left without waking them. Cullen then started phoning her frequently, leaving numerous messages and following her at work and around town. The woman filed a complaint, and Cullen pleaded guilty to trespassing and was placed on a year’s probation. The day after his arrest, Cullen attempted suicide. He took two months off work, and was treated for depression in two psychiatric facilities. He attempted suicide two more times before the end of the year.

Insanity-pleading worthy? Yes, I think so. But that won’t save Charles Cullen from eternal death in the fiery pits of hell when he dies, now, will it? No, I think not.

Digoxin was Cullen’s weapon of choice. He used it to effectively murder five patients in 1996, and then the hospital bouncing began.

Warren Hospital in New Jersey from 1992 to 1993. Hunterdon Medical Center from 1993 to 1996. Morris Memorial Hospital in 1997. Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center (ironic?) in Pennsylvania from 1997 to 1998. Easton Hospital from 1998 to 1999. Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pennsylvania in 1999. St. Luke’s Hospital from 1999 to 2000. Somerset Medical Center from 2002 to 2003.

In every one of those places, deaths occurred. At all of those job placement instances, Cullen tried to kill himself. And at every one of those occupations, Cullen was present in the room during a good 75% of the deaths. Odd, isn’t it?

Cullen was arrested on one count of murder and one count of attempted murder at a restaurant December 14, 2003. On December 14, 2003, Cullen admitted to the murder of Rev. Florian Gall and the attempted murder of Tin Kyushu Han, both patients at Somerset.

In April of 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty to murdering thirteen patients and attempting to kill two others by his own crude form of “lethal injection”. As part of a plea bargain, Charles Cullen promised to cooperate with the authorities if they were willing to not give him the death penalty. Twenty suicides attempts later, could Cullen be a changed man? Or does he wish to die at his own hand?

In May of that same year, Cullen pleaded guilty to the silent murders of three more patients. In November, Cullen pleaded guilty as the responsible party in the deaths of six patients and attempting to kill three more.

As of July 2005, Cullen remains in the Somerset County Jail as local and federal authorities continue to investigate the definite possibility of his responsibility for numerous other deaths.

As per the news, Cullen is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole for 30 years, to be served consecutively with his other sentences in Pennsylvania. On March 2, 2006, Cullen was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences in New Jersey, to be ineligible for parole for 397 years. Charles Cullen is held at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.

Game shows are a dangerous venue. But sometimes, to find the sickest minds, you look to the contestant, not the host. Case in point: Rodney Alcala.

Alcala was a contestant on the Dating Game (Bachelor number one, to be exact) back in 1978. Alcala actually won, but sadly the bachelorette refused the date. Smartest move in game show history.

“My name is Rodney. I like kids, sharp objects, and hurting people mercilessly. I also enjoy long walks on the beach and my pet cat. Oh, and I’m a photographer.”

Back in the 70’s, there must not have been background checks for game show applications. Ten years prior to the show, in 1968, Alcala had raped and almost killed an 8-year old girl.

Rodney had pulled his car up to the sidewalk when the little girl was walking to school and asked if she wanted a ride. She refused: “I’m not supposed to ride with strangers”. Alcala persisted: “It’s okay, I know your family”. Naïve child takes the bait.

Rodney Alcala took the 8-year-old back to his house, raped her, and almost beat her to death with a lead pipe. Luckily, a police officer noticed the scene and followed Alcala to his house.The officer  broke the door down and found them both naked, Alcala standing on the opposite side of the room and the girl surrounded by blood with a pipe next to her limp form.

She survived, but barely. Like the victim in the Campbell case, every time she looks in the mirror, she surely shows physical memories of the events that took place on that day.

Alcala spent some time in jail, but eventually got out. They almost always do. Between the release and several years after showing, Rodney Alcala was responsible for the death of at least five others.

Jed Mills, Bachelor number two, was stated as saying that Alcala appeared “extremely creepy”, and Alcala himself was quoted as whispering to the bachelorette “We’re going to have a great time together, Cheryl”.

She rightfully refused, as everyone partaking in the show that day sensed something wrong with this man. Odds are, that rejection experience threw the unstable Alcala over the edge, and he snapped. More people died.

Two of the victim’s bodies were posed nude after their deaths and photographed (Alcala was a professional photographer). Several victims were strangled and resuscitated to prolong their pain. One victim was even hacked with a claw hammer.

Eventually, Alcala was found and apprehended. In February of this year. Yes, thirty years later. He’s awaiting sentencing for several counts of first degree murder, as well as a nice collection of several other charges stemming from the 1968 rape and several other incidents. Alcala is facing the possibility of the death penalty for his crimes.

This is Alcala’s third time facing the court for the death of one of his victims, a 12-year old girl. The other two times, the case was overturned on the appeal. And what about the 8-year old Alcala raped and almost murdered?

Rodney formally apologized during the court proceedings, over 40 years after the crime took place. “I sincerely regret the harm I caused you and I apologize for my despicable behavior,” Alcala said to the victim during his cross examination after she testified. Without emotion, without regret, Alcala recited the words as if he had been told exactly what to say.

Anyone know where Dexter Morgan can be found?
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Keith Alan Campbell is the atypical countryman. No mullet on his shiny, bald head, over 50 percent of his teeth remaining in his face, and the reflection of fear in his glasses as he carefully carves with his knife. Slice, slice.

Keith Alan Campbell is 41 years old. He lived in a small mobile home in Hickory, North Carolina. And now he’s one of those heart-pounding yellow dots that pop up when you search for sexual predators on Family Watchdog. Why is this, you may ask? The answer can be found around 11:30 Monday night in the Campbell household. But here’s some back-story:

Somehow, some way, this Pillsbury-esque demon managed to wrangle a woman away from the redneck society and claim her as his own. Her name? Nobody knows but Keith himself.

Campbell has spent the majority of his walking hours and a few sleeping that Monday morning drowning his countless sorrows with alcohol, natures mind-number. The reminiscence must have caused Keith to snap at some point that night, as reports from this anonymous victim show that he began to argue with her.

What was the argument about? What terrible past event caused the switch in Campbell’s small reasoning cortex to turn off? The world may never know, but reports suggest that it had something to do with an ex-boyfriend of the aggressed.

The arguments slowly escalated, as most in Hickory typically do, and eventually crossed the line into what some call the “rope stage”. In the rope stage, the most powerful and usually least attractive of the two opposing forces manages to procure some form of rope. Yet, as Isaac Newton stated several hundred years ago: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

In this case, Campbell got the long end of the rope, and his significant other received the short end of the stick, and found herself bound together at the wrists, unable to move her arms. It is at this point when bad things begin to happen, and this case was no different in the Campbell household.

The warrant for Keith Alan Campbell’s arrest states that he “grabbed the victim out of the chair in which she was sitting, pushed her onto the kitchen counter, and struck her face with his fist”.

Did she deserve to be punched square in the face? Most would typically answer ‘no’, as abuse in any form is morally wrong from most any standpoint in all cultures. Did she deserve to be punched in the face while bound at the wrists and bent painfully over a kitchen counter? Most definitely not. And did this unidentified victim deserve what happened next? Hell no.

Campbell, a modern day William Shakespeare of the spoken word, is quoted as stating the following: “You’re mine. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll kill you before you go back … I own you.”

Fun fact: Some residents of North Carolina and the southeast in general are unaware of the abolition of slavery, which occurred in the mid-to-late 1800’s, and, as a result, still consider some individuals to be “slaves” in their own respect. The more you know!

Campbell wracked his brain for a proper description of the situation as he flipped his victim over and pushed up her shirt, simultaneously grabbing a rusty, dirty kitchen knife from the murky water of the nearby sink. “MINE”, came the brain blast, and the single word was carved with utmost precision into the woman’s stomach. Crude and rude human branding, the newest science to come out of Hickory.

Bleeding and screaming, the woman expected the end to come, but instead found herself blacking out, waking up mid-rape to find herself in some of the most excruciating pain imaginable.

Keith Alan Campbell proceeded to brutally rape the woman, and subsequently passed out. The victim took the opportunity to wriggle free of her restraints, driving herself to the hospital, and calling the police when the hospital attendants found the wounds received from “falling down the stairs” a bit more intentional, and the truth came out.

When Campbell became fully aware of his surroundings, he found himself in a prison cell, facing charges of kidnapping, assault, and first degree rape. He faces several years in jail and fines galore. The victim will never be able to look at her stomach in the mirror again, without the painful, stabbing reminder of the events which occurred on Monday, March 8th, 2010.
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In early 1991, Frank Snyder, nearing 30 years old, was a married college student majoring in sociology at the state university in Sacramento. By all outside appearances, he was a pretty nice compassionate guy too, volunteering as a suicide prevention hotline counselor.

Now enter Benjamin Carlson into the picture. In 1991, Mr. Carlson was 52 and recently separated from his own wife. He became a customer of the suicide prevention hotline, reaching out for help while struggling with depression and loneliness over the holidays.

In short order many of the volunteers at the center were refusing to accept calls from Carlson. Carlson would later deny most of the allegations testified by counselors in court. He was accused of obscenity, sexual harassment, and death threats. According to the service director, Carlson threatened to bomb her car and threatened her children. Carlson was calling the hotline 150 to 200 times a week.

But Frank Snyder was a nice, compassionate guy and decided that he would accept the calls nobody else would take and that he would try talk to Carlson. Snyder took it upon himself to ignore the hotline’s rules and decided to meet and befriend Carlson in person.

Snyder and Carlson quickly became buddies, visiting each others homes and fishing together. Snyder even gave Carlson a puppy. They even scooped up the puppy one night and all three partied together at a topless bar.

But the friendship became a struggle for Snyder. His grades were suffering, his relationship with his wife was at odds, and while helping Carlson through alcohol withdrawal, he himself began to drink more. The hotline center also found out about Snyder’s breaking policy and suspended his participation for three months. According to Snyder, Carlson was unwilling to end the friendship with his only friend when the suggestion was brought up.

On the evening of February 12, Snyder called Carlson and told him he wanted to come over to his house on Whitecliff Way in Sacramento to return some camping equipment he had borrowed. Carlson was not in the mood for a visit and told Snyder to leave the equipment on the front porch. Then Carlson made one of his routine calls to the suicide hotline…

It was past 11 in the evening when Carlson answered the knock at the door. Snyder and another man pushed their way into the house and Snyder slugged Carlson in the face informing him he was going to shut him up for good.

Snyder’s accomplice removed a blade from a snake bite kit he was carrying as the two men hauled Carlson into the bathroom. After slashing Carlson’s wrists with the small blade, the men stood over him waiting for him to bleed to death – all while Snyder held the puppy in his arms to keep it away from the blood.

Once Carlson was dead, the two accomplices were in the living room wiping away fingerprints when the phone rang. Carlson managed to answer it and discovered that the caller was a volunteer from the suicide hotline checking back with him after his earlier call.

“Frank’s here !! He’s cutting me, call 911!!”, Carlson begged to Cheryl who could recognize Snyder’s alarmed voice in the background before the line went dead. The accomplice slit Carlson’s throat and, believing Carlson was fatally wounded, they fled the house.

But Ben Carlson was not dead.

Responding paramedics rushed Benjamin Carlson to the hospital while police went out and had a little chat with Snyder at his home.

Homicide investigators were actually on their way to interview Snyder when, in less than twenty minutes after they were called, all hell broke loose and the sheriff’s department – already stretched thin by a gasoline tanker explosion in a residential area – found themselves responding to a triple homicide at a Quik Stop committed by Eric Royce Leonard (featured here on PYSIH.com).

Snyder’s arrest for attempted murder would be placed on hold for six weeks as the homicide division exhausted itself working nine homicide cases. In the meantime, Carlson – badly stitched and scarred from the wounds on his neck and wrists – would lose his home and job. Even after Snyder’s arrest, he would remain in fear of his life from Snyder’s unknown accomplice who had slit his throat.

Frank Snyder eventually confessed his attempted homicide to detectives. Frank called Carlson a loser who was too afraid to take his own life – so Frank decided to take things into his own hands. Snyder never gave up his accomplice, who to this day remains at large. Frank’s claim was that the man was a “friend of a friend” named “John” who was homeless and living in a car near the state capital.

A jury rejected Frank Snyder’s insanity defense and Snyder received a life sentence for attempted murder with torture.

He would have been eligible for parole in 2001.

In the early summer of 1994, the former suicide prevention counselor hung himself with an electrical cord while serving time at the state prison in Vacaville.
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Jennifer Daugherty may have looked like a 30 years old woman, but because of of some flaw in her brain, she acted more like a 12 year old girl. Like a lot of people with this particular type of mental retardation, she also had a very naive view of the world. According to her sister, Joy Berkholder, Jennifer’s mental disability made her vulnerable:

“She trusted anybody. If you met her today, she was your friend for her life.

And if you had a friend, they would be her friend as well. She trusted everybody, she believed everybody was good and that nobody would hurt her.”

Jennifer’s stepfather, Robert Murphy, echoed Joy’s words;

“Jennifer was just a gentle, laid-back person. There wasn’t a mean bone in her body.”

As I found out more and more about Jennifer Daugherty, she became someone I wish I had known, so I could have protected her from all the evil that exists in the world. It was obvious that her naiveté’ and trusting nature was going to end up getting her in serious trouble.

Jennifer Daugherty’s aunt, Linda Kovaks, must have had that same feeling.

“There wasn’t a mean bone in her body. She loved and trusted everyone.”

“I always worried that Jennie was too trusting.”

Jennifer’s sister Joy said it in stronger terms.

“She was exploited, and her kindness and her handicap made her very vulnerable,”

There are always people out there just waiting for an innocent victim to come along. Some of those people found Jennifer Daugherty, and the aftermath of this fateful meeting was full of broken hearts and tears.

Jennifer was last seen Monday, February 8th, 2010, by Robert Murphy, when he put her on the bus for a routine trip from their home in Mount Pleasant to Greensburg, both in Pennsylvania, where she had a dental appointment and a scheduled meeting with a counselor.

Later that day, Jennifer Daugherty called home and asked permission to stay over at “Peggy’s” house. Apparently, some time ago she had met some people, including Peggy, at a Community Center in Greensburg and told her family that they had become her friends.

Some friends.

Twenty-three-year-old Ricky V. Smyrnes is a just the kind of guy I’d want my daughter to bring home for dinner. He’d been arrested at least three time for beating the women in his life – His ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend and, well isn’t this just precious, his own mother. He’s been released from prison just a couple of weeks ago, I’m guessing for one of those assault convictions.

Bonnie Gordon of Jeannette said she incurred the wrath of Smyrnes when she broke up with him in June 2006. Smyrnes broke a water pitcher over her head and tried to rape her, according to a protection from abuse court order filed by Gordon.

“I asked him to leave. He went berserk on me.”

His constant companion lately had been seventeen-year-old high school student Angela Marinucci. Neighbor Jim O’Brien said that when he saw Marinucci earlier this week,

“She was wearing like a princess crown, a tiara. I thought, ‘You have to be kidding me.’ “

Yes, a match made in heaven my friends.

Our two lovebirds lived in a North Pennsylvania apartment with Peggy Miller, 26, a mentally challenged woman who met a man from Michigan with mental health issues on MySpace. Miller, who had lived in homeless shelters in the area, somehow talked the guy, Robert Loren Masters Jr., 36, into moving to Greensburg.

Also sharing the apartment, which had no furniture, was another couple, 20-year-olds Melvin Knight and Amber C. Meidinger. Knight, like Smyrnes, had just finished a bid in Westmoreland County Prison, on January 27th of this year.

To see summary of each defendant’s criminal record, please click here.

These six misfits were a regular fixture in downtown Greensburg, walking to the library, thrift shops and a community center for the mentally ill. They slept on the floor of their apartment and subsisted on welfare checks and disability payments.

At some point after her call home Monday, Jennifer Daugherty entered that downtown Greensburg apartment. She had no idea of the enormity of the mistake she was making, or that she would never leave that apartment alive.

Sometime that night there was a disagreement, and Jennifer Daugherty lost the argument. The six occupants shaved her head and smeared her face with nail polish. They forced Daugherty to drink and eat urine, detergent, medication, spices and vegetable oil. They beat her with a towel rack, a vacuum hose and a crutch. They wrapped Christmas lights around her.

Neighbors reported hearing screams from a female and sounds of someone being slammed into the ground. This sort of thing went on for nearly 33 hours – THIRTY-THREE HOURS, and no one ever thought to call the police.

Finally, on Wednesday, February 10th, Jennifer assailants forced her to write a suicide note. Then, in the only act of mercy any of them would ever show this childlike woman who trusted everyone, Melvin Knight stabbed her in the chest, side and neck and Ricky Smyrnes cut her wrists, killing her.

Knight and Smyrnes wrapped Jennifer Daugherty in plastic, secured it with more Christmas lights, and stuffed their victim into a trash can. Then they dragged the trash can a few blocks to the parking lot of a nearby middle school, where the it was found about 6:30 a.m. Thursday by a truck driver.

It didn’t take police long to find out that Smyrnes, Masters, Knight, Miller, Meidinger and Marinucci were the last people to see Jennifer Daugherty alive, and even less time for these six morons to start throwing each other under the bus.

On Friday, February 11th, 2010, Ricky Smyrnes, 23, Robert Masters Jr., 36, Melvin Knight, 20, Peggy Miller, 27, Amber Meidinger, 20; and Angela Marinucci, 17, all of Greensburg, were charged with homicide, kidnapping, aggravated assault and conspiracy. All are being held without bond in the Westmoreland County Prison, Pennsylvania.

Cops wouldn’t speculate on each defendant’s degree of responsibility, but the did say that one of the six most likely was the ringleader of the group. I think the smart money is on Ricky Smyrnes; He already has an extensive record for hurting women and was a ticking time bomb, in my opinion.

Police did not comment on a motive for the murder, but the did confirm that Ricky Smyrnes was aggressively pursuing a sexual relationship with Jennifer Daugherty, even though he was supposedly in a committed relationship with the 17-year-old defendant, Angela Marinucci. According to Jennifer’s best friend, Robert Cathcart:

“Jennifer Daugherty didn’t like Ricky Smyrnes, but he would force her to do things with him,”
“He was being a bully toward her, but she wouldn’t let it happen.”

That gives us jealousy and rejection as possible motives, or both. Perhaps Jennifer Daugherty rejected Ricky Smyrnes, and true to form (He assaulted his wife over the exact same issue – he wanted to and she wasn’t interested), Smyrnes snapped and the game was on.

Whatever the reason, Jennifer Daugherty didn’t deserve this. No one does of course. But because Jennifer’s mental disability made her so trusting and friendly, that somehow made it so much more offensive to me. In my eyes it was a child killing, because Jennifer was so childlike.

Jennifer Daugherty’s family has been totally devastated by what’s happened. It seemed to me like they were torn between wanting to protect “Jenni” from the evil in the world, and letting her enjoy life. In the end, their worst fears were realized.

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But what makes Paul Warner Powell stand out from all the other scumbags that get written up here on PYSIH? Well, Paul Powell is incredibly stupid. I’m not just talking two plus two equals five stupid here, I’m talking stuck his hand in the lawnmower, shot himself while cleaning his gun, Darwin Award winning stupid.

But before we get to Paul Warner Powell’s lack of brain power, I will have to tell you a story that will get very dark and seriously disturbing. Unfortunately it’s a necessary part of the process that you, the reader, know everything Powell did and all that’s transpired during the past ten years in order for you to appreciate his ultimate fate.

First, a little background information on the principles. In 1999 Paul Warner Powell was a 20-year-old unemployed day laborer serving a suspended sentence for petty theft. He’d taken a plea deal after being busted for burglary in 1998. This was his latests arrest in a criminal history that began with no less than thirteen convictions as a juvenile:

* Nov. 30, 1992: 18 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* Dec. 30, 1992: 21 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* Jan. 31, 1993: 65 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* April 5, 1993: 10 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* April 15, 1993: 66 days, Department of Youth and Family Services

* Sept. 29, 1993: 56 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* Oct. 20, 1993: Two days, DeJarnette Center

* Dec. 6, 1993: 45 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* Jan. 19, 1994: 89 days, Springwood Psychiatric Unit, Acute Care

* April 4, 1994: 44 days, Springwood Academy

* Jan. 1, 1995: 46 days, Prince William County Juvenile Detention Home

* April 17, 1995: 81 days, Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center

* July 7, 1995: Eight days, Harriet Tubman House

Paul Warner Powell’s adult record began on May 19, 1997, when he was caught speeding 70 mph in a 55 mph zone. He was arrested thirteen (there’s that number again) more times for charges including possession of drug paraphernalia, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, breaking and entering, trespassing, grand larceny and writing a bad check.

Stacey Lynn Reed, 16, and Kristie Erin Reed, 14, were sisters and acquaintances of Paul Warner Powell. They lived, together with their parents, in a small brick house in the town of Manassas, Virginia. It was known that Powell wanted to date Stacey Reed, but was afraid he’d get himself in trouble for if he got into a relationship with an underaged girl.

Paul Warner Powell, a self-avowed “racist and white supremacist,” found out that Stacey, who was white, was dating Sean Wilkerson, who is black. This did not please Paul Powell at all. In fact, he became quite angry about it and decided to do something about it.

Stacey got home from school on January 29th, 1999 at about noon, and found Paul Warner Powell waiting for her. They began to argue, but Powell left when he heard that a friend of the family, Robert Culver, would arrive there soon for lunch. He returned shortly with two knives and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, waited for Culver to go back to work, and barged in on Stacey as she was talking to none other than Sean Wilkerson on the telephone.

When Stacey got off the phone, Paul Warner Powell made a pass at her, but she rebuffed him, telling him she had a boyfriend. This must have truly pissed him off, being rejected in favor of a Black kid, so he slammed Stacey to the floor, pinned her down and told her he was going to rape her.

Stacey began to fight and claw at Paul Warner Powell’s face. He had his knife out now, and told her if she continued to fight he would kill her. When she tried to leave the room, he stabbed her twice in the chest.

She stumbled into her sister Kristie’s room and collapsed to the floor, dying – Powell’s blade had severed her aorta. I guess she didn’t die fast enough for Paul Warner Powell, because he stomped on her neck with his boot several times until she stopped breathing.

Then he went and got himself a glass of iced tea.

Some time later, Kristie Reed arrived home to find Paul Warner Powell lying on her couch sipping iced tea. She asked Powell “where Stacey was.” He replied, “she was in her room.” Kristie walked to Stacey’s room, but Stacey was not there. Then, Kristie turned to enter her own room and saw Stacey’s body lying on the floor.

Powell, who had followed Kristie to the bedroom, ordered Kristie to go downstairs to the basement, where he ordered her to remove her clothes. She took her clothes off because she “didn’t want to die.” Powell told Kristie to lay on the floor, and then he raped her.

After Paul Warner Powell raped Kristie, he dressed himself, and, using shoelaces taken from Kristie’s shoes, tied her feet together. He also used shoelaces to tie her arms behind her back. Someone knocked on the door to the house, and Powell went upstairs, leaving Kristie naked and bound on the basement floor.

A few minutes later, Powell came back downstairs. Without saying a word, he put his hands around Kristie’s throat and strangled her until she was unconscious. Next he stabbed her in the stomach, the knife stopping within a centimeter of her aorta. He slashed her in her neck and stabbed her in the abdomen numerous times.

When he thought she was dead, he climbed those basement stairs one more time, so he could search the house for valuables. The last thing Paul Warner Powell did after his orgy of rape, violence and murder was to grab himself another glass of that yummy iced tea.

Paul Warner Powell and a friend drove to Washington, where they bought some drugs. Then they went to his friend’s girlfriend’s house, got some beer and ordered a pizza. I suppose you must work up quite an appetite after a long day committing murder and rape.

Kristie had multiple stab wounds to her neck and abdomen. She also had wounds on her wrists. The repair of the knife wounds to her neck alone required 61 sutures. But somehow through the grace of God, Kristie Reed lived.

Before Kristie went into surgery, she ID’d Paul Warner Powell as her attacker. Police officers arrested him on January 30, 1999 at his girlfriend’s house, still waiting for that pizza he and his buddy had ordered but would never come.

Now this is important. During interrogation, Paul Warner Powell admitted immediately to the murder of Stacey Reed. But he never told police the he attempted to sexually assault her. At first, he even denied raping Kristie, but during a second interview he finally confessed. He also told police that he had been at the Reed home that day to tell Stacey to stop seeing Sean Wilkerson, that they had argued, there was a struggle, and Stacey got stabbed during that struggle.

Paul Warner Powell was charged with Capital Murder, Attempted Capital Murder, Rape, Robbery, Attempted Robbery, and Use Of A Firearm. His trial was held in the Spring of 2000. Because the prosecution considered the murder of Stacey and the rape of Kristie as one continuous crime, Powell was eligible for the Death Penalty.

This seemingly obvious concept would come back to haunt prosecutors later.

On May 6th, 2000, a jury found Paul Warner Powell guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to death on August 10th, and sent to death row to await his execution. This should have been the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

On April 20th, 2001, The Virginia Supreme Court overturned Paul Powell’s conviction for Capital Murder, citing several trial errors (click here to view the judgment). The most important of those errors appear to be these two;

1. The verdict form was confusing and didn’t make it clear that jurors had the option of sentencing Paul Warner Powell to life in prison. This was a problem with all Death Penalty cases in Virginia at this time.

2. Jurors convicted Paul Warner Powell of capital murder because prosecutors considered Stacie’s slaying and the rape of her sister to be part of the same criminal enterprise. The court ruled that the rape would have had to occur before or during the murder to elevate the charge to a capital case. Of course, the court didn’t know that he lied to investigators when he told them he didn’t attempt to rape Stacey, or that Stacey was actually murdered when she resisted his attempt to rape her.

The court affirmed Paul Warner Powell’s convictions for abduction, rape, attempted capital murder, and grand larceny for the attack. His case was sent back to Prince William County Circuit Court for a new trial, in which Powell would be retried on first-degree murder charges and wouldn’t be eligible for the Death Penalty.

It looked like Paul Warner Powell was going to slip out of the hangman’s noose. That wasn’t right, because he deserved to die for what he did to Stacey and Kristie.

So remember how I told you all at the beginning of this story that Paul Warner Powell is incredibly stupid? Well, now is the time when his complete lack of common sense and intelligence really gets to shine.

Knowing that his “cleverness” has allowed him beat a Death Penalty rap, he couldn’t help himself from telling someone! He sent this letter to one of his ex-girlfriends:

“About when you asked me why I wouldn’t do to you what I did to Stacie, I couldn’t ever hurt you because you mean to much to me. See Stacie didn’t mean anything to me. She was a nigger lover and some of her wannabe skin head friends were supposed to kill me. That’s part of the reason why she died. Almost everything that happened in that house was planned. The only thing that wasn’t planned was trying to fuck Kristie. What was supposed to happen was, Stacie was supposed to die, and did, Kristie was supposed to die and then I was going to wait for their mom and stepdad to get home and I was going to kill them and then I was going to take their mom struck and then I was gonna go to North Carolina and knock this dude off that stole all of my clothes and everything else I owned. I had been thinking about doing it for along time but I could never bring myself to do it. I don’t know what happened to make me finally do it. I feel bad for doing it. Stacie was a good kid.”

That was pretty stupid, to send this letter, what with the new trial coming up and all. But this was nothing compared to the next bonehead move he made.

Like a lot of people do when they finally defeat their main adversary, Paul Warner Powell wanted to gloat. He really wanted to rub the face of the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Prince William County, Paul Ebert, in dog shit. So Powell took paper and pen in hand, and he began to write. And when he was finished, he put the paper containing what he had written into an envelope, sealed the envelope, placed a stamp on it, and mailed it off to Mr. Ebert.

When Paul Ebert, the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Prince William County, opened Paul Warner Powell’s letter and began to read it, I can only imagine the emotions he must have been feeling as his eyes moved down the page…

“Mr. Ebert,

“Since I have already been indicted on first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can’t be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y’all mother fuckers are.

“Y’all should have known that there is more to the story than what I told by what I said. You had it in writing that I planned to kill the whole family. Since I planned to kill the whole family, why would I have fought with Stacie before killing her? She had no idea I was planning to kill everybody and talked and carried on like usual, so I could’ve stabbed her up at any time because she was unsuspecting.

“I had other plans for her before she died. You know I came back to the house after Bobby’s lunch break was over and he had went back to work. When I got back, she was on the phone so I went inside and I laid down on the couch. When the cab came to bring me my pager, I ran out of the house and she jumped and got off the phone and came off the porch to see why I ran out of the house like I did.

“When the cab left we went in the house. I laid on the couch again and she went to her room and got her clothes and went downstairs to do her laundry. When she went downstairs, I got up and shut and locked the back door and went downstairs. We talked while she put her clothes in the wash. We continued talking when she had everything in the wash and I reached over and touched her tit and asked if she wanted to fuck. She said no, because she had a boyfriend.

“I started arguing with her because she had never turned anybody down because of having a boyfriend.

“We started walking upstairs, arguing the whole time. When we got upstairs we went to her room and she turned the radio off. After she turned the radio off I pushed her onto her bed and grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands down by her head and sat on top of her. I told her that all I wanted to do was fuck her and then I would leave and that we could do it the easy way or the hard way.

“She said she would fuck me so I got up. After I got up, she got up and started fighting with me and clawed me face. We wrestled around a little and then I slammed her to the floor. When she hit the floor I sat on top of her and pinned her hands down again. She said she would fuck me and I told her that if she tried fighting with me again, I would kill her.

“When I got up she stood up and kept asking me why I was doing this and all I kept saying is take your clothes off. Finally she undid her pants and pulled them down to her ankles. She was getting ready to take them the rest of the way off and the phone rang. When she heard the phone she pulled her pants back up and said she had to answer the phone. I pushed her back and said no. She said that she wouldn’t say anything about me being there and I told her no and to take her clothes off.

“She tried to get out of the room again and I pushed her back and pulled out my knife. I guess she thought I was just trying to scare her and that I wouldn’t really stab her because she tried to leave again.

“When she got to me and tried to squeeze between me and the door jam I stabbed her. When I stabbed her, she fell back against the door jam and just looked at me with a shocked look on her face.

“When I pulled the knife out she stumbled a couple steps and fell in her sister’s room. I walked over and looked at her. I saw that she was still breathing so I stepped over her body and into the bedroom. Then I put my foot on her throat and stepped up so she couldn’t breath. Then I stepped down and started stomping on her throat. Then I stepped back onto her throat and moved up and down putting more pressure to make it harder to breathe.

“When I didn’t see her breathing anymore, I left the room and got some iced tea and sat on the couch and smoked a cigarette. You know the rest of what happened after that point.

“I would like to thank you for saving my life. I know you’re probably wondering how you saved my life, so I’ll tell you.

“You saved my life by fucking up. There were 2 main fuck-ups you made that saved me. The first was the way you worded my capital murder indictment. The second was the comment you made in your closing argument when you said we won’t know because he won’t tell us.

“One more time, thank you! Now y’all know everything that happened in that house at 8023 McLean St. on Jan. 29, 1999.

“I guess I forgot to mention these events when I was being questioned. Ha Ha! Sike!

“I knew what y’all would be able to prove in court, so I told you what you already knew. Stacey was dead and no one else was in the house so I knew ya’ll would never know everything she went through unless she came back to life.

“Since the Supreme Court said I can’t be charged with capital murder again, I can tell you what I just told you because I no longer have to worry about the death penalty. And y’all are supposed to be so goddamn smart. I can’t believe that y’all thought I told you everything.

“Well, it’s too late now. Nothing you can do about it now so fuck you you fat, cocksucking, cumguzzling, gutter slut. I guess I’ll see your bitch ass on Dec. 18 at trial because I’m not pleading to shit. Tell the family to be ready to testify and relive it all again because if I have to suffer for the next 50 or 60 years or however long then they can suffer the torment of reliving what happened for a couple of days.

“I’m gone. Fuck you and anyone like you or that associates with people like you. I almost forgot, fuck your god, too. Jesus knows how to suck a dick real good. Did you teach him?

“Well, die a slow, painful, miserable death. See ya punk.

“Do you just hate yourself for being so stupid and for fuckin’ up and saving me?

“Sincerely,

“Paul Powell.”

Talk about mixed emotions. He must have been torn between the horror of the subject matter and the realization that Paul Warner Powell was one DUMB son of a bitch.

You see, Paul Warner Powell believed that he was permanently ineligible for the Death Penalty as far a the Stacey Reed case was concerned, because of a thing called double jeopardy. And as things stood the way they were at the time he was convicted, yes, he was.

But what Paul Powell didn’t understand was that because his original conviction had been overturned, it was, in legal terms, as if it had never happened. And because they had Powell’s letter, the prosecution had what amounted to a confession to a new crime in their hands. Remember, Powell never told authorities that he had tried to rape Stacey, and that she’d gotten stabbed while trying to resist him.

In other words, he had been convicted in the first trial for something that never really happened – he’d lied to the detectives, and they believed him because they had no reason not to. Now that that conviction had been thrown out, they were free to re-indict Paul Powell on entirely new charges. Charges that made him eligible for the Death Penalty again.

Just to be sure, Paul Ebert sent two detectives to ask Paul Powell if he had sent the taunting letter to Ebert. Not only did Paul Warner Powell confirm that he sent it, but he proudly bragged to them that every fucking word of it was true.

Stupid…

But Paul Warner Powell wasn’t finished yet. Not satisfied with the damaged he thought he had caused, Powell sent a letter to Lorraine Reed, the mother of Stacey and Kristie. Powell enclosed a photograph of a partially nude woman. Powell wrote:

“Lorraine,

“I was wondering if you might be able to help me think of something. I found this picture in a magazine and it kinda looks like someone I know or used to know, but I can’t think of the persons name.I think you know the person too, so I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the person this picture resembles so I can quit racking my brain trying to think of it? I would appreciate it. If you don’t know the person I’m talking about, ask Kristie or Kelly Welch because I know they know who I’m thinking of. If you talk to the person I’m talking about, please give her my address and tell her to write me.”

The partially nude woman shown in the photograph resembled Lorraine Reed’s daughter, Stacey.

Stupid and cruel…

Imagine Paul Warner Powell’s surprise when he found himself on trial for his life again in January of 2003. Mainly because of his own big mouth, Powell was convicted of Capital Murder on January 16th, 2003, and sentenced to death the next day.

After years of delay caused by endless appeals, The United States Supreme Court announced on January 26th, 2010 that it would not hear Paul Powell’s appeal, effectively ensuring his execution will go forward this Spring. As if to hammer home that fact, today Virginia announced Powell’s execution date will be March 18th, 2010.

So ends the saga of Paul Warner Powell, a man who is a legend in his own mind, but an idiot in everyone else’s. He has already selected the electric chair as his mode of execution – another brilliant decision by this undiscovered Rhodes Scholar. Thank God that, for the rest of us, it will surely be his last.

Note: The young girl on the right in the second picture is Kristie Erin Reed, Stacey’s little sister and Paul Warner Powell’s second victim. If you look closely at the left side of her neck, you can still see several scars from Powell’s savage attempt to cut her throat. I personally had a very hard time with this picture – It brought the crime to life and shook me up pretty badly.

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Jermaine Ruiz is that not-so-rare kind of man that women just seem to go gaga over. Jermaine has those good looks, that casual charisma, that jealous nature and the crazy behavior that women line up around the block for in order to mate with.

Good ol’ Jermaine was known around his neighborhood as someone who would exhibit wild mood swings, often coming into local stores with an attitude that could be described as, “Not nice.”

According to a local deli worker:

Sometimes he came in a little crazy. Sometimes he comes in nice and sometimes not nice. When he wasn’t nice, he’d boss us around. He comes in like, ‘I want something! I want this!’

Yes, Jermaine Ruiz is all alpha male, which he showed to the world on the 20th of January, 2010.

That was the Friday night when he decided that he just wasn’t going to take it anymore.

What was it?

Well, it was the fact that his girlfriend, 22-year-old Jessica Ybe, had mated with another alpha male – an alpha male who was currently in prison and who was going to be getting out soon.

Jermaine Ruiz, who had fathered fraternal twins with Jessica Ybe 7 months prior to this argument, felt that the fact that his babys’ momma wanted to continue her relationship with this other man was unacceptable.

Jessica Ybe, who had a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old from two previous nights of passion, got all up in Jermaine’s face, yo. She told him, in no uncertain terms, that she was going to have sex with whoever she wanted, whenever she wanted.

And, when you consider that out of her vagina may one day spring the person who eventually cures cancer, who are we to tell her that she might want to stop at 4 kids with 3 dads?

Ain’t nunya bidness, world. Stay out of her way.

Well, Jermaine Ruiz had a problem with her plans to have sex outside of marriage. And – respecting her exceptional uterus powers – Jermaine decided that the best way to end an argument about her having sex with another man would be to end her ability to have sex with another man.

So, after engaging in an extensive yelling match outside their apartment building, and after they slugged each other a few times inside the apartment building, Jermaine grabbed a knife and got all stabby.

Jermaine Ruiz started out by stabbing Jessica Ybe more than a dozen times. That resulted in her death.

Not satisfied with one death, Jermaine Ruiz went on a stabbing trifecta, plunging his blade home more than a dozen times each into both Jessica’s 5-year-old and her two-year-old. That resulted in two more deaths.

All that stabbing made Jermaine Ruiz a bit tired, so he left the bodies where they were and went to sleep. He might have checked in on the 7-month-old twins as they slept in the same apartment as their dead mother and dead half-sisters – but he probably didn’t.

The next day, after taking his own, living children to his mother’s house, Jermaine Ruiz told his mom what he’d done to the rest of his household. His mom, taken aback, notified the authorities about what her son had told her.

When the authorities stopped by Jermaine’s apartment to have a word with him, they discovered that he’d been busily working out the best way to cover up his crime.

Jessica Ybe was mostly wrapped up in plastic garbage bags, with her two little girls rolled up into a carpet with plastic bags on each end – presumably to keep their blood from leaking out.

The evidence at the scene was enough for police to place Jermaine Ruiz under arrest and led to Jermaine being charged for several counts of murder.
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There’s something to be said for the natural human inclination to find patterns in everything.

The urgency in the human mind to recognize situations or items, to classify and sort those things and to create some kind of identifiable and predictable pattern – well that’s a drive among many higher thinkers.

Recognizing patterns in human behavior is a large part of law enforcement. By keeping records of misbehavior, we can extrapolate likely future scenarios based on previous behaviors.

Here’s an easy example of the ability to extrapolate future behavior possibilities:

If you put Walter Z. Speller III out in the wild, if you put Walter Speller where he can get his hands on a baby or small child – if you give him a chance – he will seriously fuck that child up.

We can make this prediction and back it with a high degree of probability based on a number of factors. Those factors include three children, two of which are his own flesh-and-blood and all of which have suffered severe brain damage combined with some degree of paralysis.

In December of 2002, Walter Speller was with his 14-month-old son, Isaiah Jones. Nobody but Mr. Speller knows what happened, but somehow Isaiah Jones ended up in the hospital, in intensive care.

Isaiah Jones

Walter Speller was found guilty.

Some of the offered explanations were good – after all the baby could have been given injuries severe enough to put him in a wheelchair for life after he’d been nudged awake after a nap. Or the injuries could have been inflicted from the shaking Isaiah might have suffered as, Walter explained, he had been carried up the street to find a ride to the hospital.

Walter Z. Speller III was sentenced to two years in prison.

Once his time was served, Walter Speller got out and found himself a new baby’s momma.

This baby’s momma brought a girl child into the relationship. Her name is Laniah. Walter, having nothing better to do with his time, started to torture Laniah.

Walter Speller would regularly force the girl to stand in front of him while he held her face in the vise of his hands. As a special treat, Speller would keep his nails long so they dug into the tender skin under Laniah’s ears and around her neck. Walter would slap her face. When the girl fell, Speller would force Laniah to get up.

One time, Speller dragged the child into the bathroom. According to his baby’s momma:

I heard him telling her not to move and to stop screaming because she was crying. Then I heard him telling her to lay down, and he turned the water on her.

Another time, Speller beat Laniah with a belt. He forced the girl to strip and lie on her stomach on a bed, and he thrashed her. When her back was covered with welts and cuts, he turned the girl over and whipped her front with the belt, too.

The abuse continued, getting especially rough after his boy, Ohene Speller arrived.

When the boy was 8 months old, in the month of July, 2008, Walter Speller bit Ohene’s face so hard that Walter’s teeth left indentations. As a result of the bite, the boy’s face turned black and blue. Concerned that his boy’s sudden change of appearance might result in someone possibly calling the cops or child protective services, Walter brought the crying boy to his baby’s momma and told her to put cocoa butter on the wound.

Why did Walter feel the need to bite his son? Well, he explained to his baby’s momma that he did it because he could – which is as good as reason as any, really.

A few days later Ohene Speller got a little sick. The 8-month-old started vomiting and didn’t want to eat his baby cereal. Naturally, Walter Speller took the spoon from his baby’s momma and shoved it into his boy’s mouth. And, just as naturally, that made Ohene cry all the harder.

According to Walter’s baby’s momma:

Walter got upset because he said he was acting like a little girl, acting like a bitch.

And if there’s one thing that 8-month-olds should be concerned with, it’s acting like a bitch.

Walter’s baby’s momma watched as Speller grabbed Ohene by the arm, yanked him out of his car seat, and smacked the baby on the back of the head. That done, Speller threw the baby down on the bed. When Ohene continued to cry, Walter Speller picked the child up again and hit Ohene twice more on the head.

That stopped the baby’s cries, probably because that was the point where the baby started throwing up, turned red and went rigid as it desperately tried to breathe.

According to Walter’s baby’s momma:

He was just, like, lifeless in my arms.

Walter’s baby’s momma told Speller that they needed to go to the hospital, but for some reason he didn’t want to go. According to testimony:

He wanted to know what I was going to tell the doctors about the bite mark he had on his face.

In order to get Walter to take them to the hospital, Walter’s baby’s momma promised Walter Speller she would tell doctors that Laniah accidentally bit Ohene. Satisfied that none of the abuse would come back on him, Speller drove them to the hospital, dropping the pair at the front door of the hospital rather than the emergency department. That done, Walter drove off, with Laniah still in the car, while Campblin tried to find help for her son.

That was the 17th of July in 2008 when doctors treated Ohene for seizures and bleeding in his brain. On the 18th, when Laniah came to visit her brother, hospital staff noticed the bruises covering her body and began to treat her, too.

Photos submitted as evidence at Walter Speller’s trial show bruises and welts covering Laniah’s body. One picture shows a mark in the shape of a belt buckle branded into Laniah’s skin. A forensic pediatrician skilled in assessing cases of child abuse testified that the girl had been repeatedly and severely beaten. No part of the child’s body remained unbruised and Laniah suffered brain damage as a result.

On the 16th of September, 2009, Walter Speller pled guilty to two counts of aggravated malicious wounding.

Speller faces sentencing on those charges in February.

According to the judge, Walter Speller faces a maximum of 21 years under the terms of his plea agreement.

According to authorities, Ohene, now 2, cannot walk or talk. The girl is now 6 and has severe learning disabilities. Both children are in foster care.
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