Here's a case out of my home town that seems like it should be very solvable, for multiple reasons.

NBC Chicago
“She didn’t disappear on her own accord," says a Chicago homicide detective"

Although she wasn't on duty because she had called out sick for the day, pregnant Kierra Coles was last seen on CCTV footage in her USPS uniform.  Her family is contending that it's someone else wearing her clothing. 

Either way, whether it's her or someone stole her uniform, that should involve the federal Postal Police, and bring all sorts of additional resources into play.  It shouldn't be Chicago homicide detectives getting around to it years later.

Also this is most likely not a whodunit.  The man in her life, Josh Simmons, behaved extremely suspiciously, seen accompanying Kierra to an ATM where she made an abnormally large withdrawal of $400 despite normally being very cautious with her spending.

An unidentified man was seen driving back to Kierra's apartment alone, parking and exiting her vehicle through the passenger door for no apparent reason.  Kierra has not been seen since.  It's believed that whatever happened to Kierra happened within a one-hour window. 

Josh subsequently  moved out of the area with the mother of his other children.

So while there are no charges against Josh at this time, the Chicago detective is confident that Kierra didn't leave of her own accord, and that she's not alive.  My hope is that they can use the same sort of cell phone technology that was used to triangulate Rex Heuermann and his alleged victims to track the time and whereabouts of both Josh and KIerra beyond any doubt.

Being a socially marginalized person means I have unpopular opinions.  And this may be another one.

I'm good with having this child arrested.  They didn't taze her.  They didn't and shouldn't beat her up or put her in prison -- despite the blood-boiling fury that every first responder, including me, feels about this sort of thing. 

But what she did was extremely serious and problematic.  This can't become a thing on TikTok.  She must be made to do significant community service, enough to constitute restitution for the amount of helicopter and manpower hours that she wasted.  She needs to be punished in a way that will fuck her entire life over all the way through high school.  She needs to be made an example of.

The way the police in Alabama handled Carlee Russell -- still patiently waiting until she's ready to talk to them -- has made me want to smash bricks with my face. 

The way many people are talking about her, as though it will be okay as long as she just apologizes, makes me want to laugh while this entire country burns to the ground.

NBC News:
An 11-year-old Florida girl was arrested after falsely texting authorities that her friend was kidnapped by an armed man. She later confessed the prank was part of a YouTube challenge.
The girl texted 911 Wednesday morning to say her friend, 14, was abducted by “an armed male driving a white van on South I-95 in Oak Hill,” the Volusia Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. The girl said she was following the van in a blue Jeep. NBC News is not identifying the 11-year-old because she is a minor.
A dispatcher to the sheriff's communication advised the sheriff's office at 9:45 a.m. of a “suspicious incident reported by text message.” 
The 11-year-old then texted updates for the next hour and a half — describing the male suspect and saying he had a gun. 
Deputies responded along with help from the sheriff's office aviation unit and officers from Edgewater, New Smyrna Beach and Port Orange to search for the suspect vehicle — but no van was found. 
At about 10:30 a.m., deputies tracked the cellphone that was texting 911 to a home in Port Orange. Once at the home, they spoke with the girl's father, who said she was inside with her family.
“As deputies approached the girl, she was holding her cell phone, which was ringing as she walked out to meet the deputies. When answered, Volusia Sheriff’s Dispatch was on the line and deputies verified they were on scene,” the sheriff's office said.
She told deputies she was inspired to prank 911 through a "YouTube challenge" and thought it "would be funny."

The child was charged with making a false police report concerning the use of a firearm in a violent manner, a felony, and misuse of 911, a misdemeanor. 
The sheriff's office shared a snippet of body camera footage showing the girl with her hands cuffed behind her back, with her face blurred. In the clip, the girl says shakily: “I’m not going to do this again.”
She was transported to the Family Resource Center for processing then transferred to the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center, officials said. It's not immediately clear if she has a lawyer.
Sheriff Mike Chitwood condemned the prank as “dangerous,” and warned parents on the importance of monitoring their kids’ social media use. 
“We’re going to investigate every incident but today it wasted valuable resources that might have helped someone else who legitimately needed our help," he said.

Great news today.  Sergio Garcia, the suspect -- who is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law -- in a string of horrific crimes against women, is in custody. 

I have never been to prison or even jail.  But based on what I have heard from people with real-world knowledge, this guy is screwed worse than a chomo.  Regular citizens want to kill him, much less the prison population.  People sit in prison missing their grandmas' funerals all the time.  I can't imagine how the authorities will protect him. 

This was a great press conference -- the part that was available in English-language outlets.  There wasn't the customary 20 minutes of mutual self-praise amongst agencies.  And I could see that the various agencies had taken the matter very, very seriously.  If only the English-speaking media reciprocated. 

But I only found it on one outlet, and they chopped it in the middle.

That isn't a broken system.  It's a system that reflects the ethos of its creators and the violence against women that they demand as entertainment.  A&E will eventually cover it. I will look for more on this in Spanish tomorrow.

TL/DR:  Sergio Garcia allegedly committed a series of violent robbery/sexual assaults on women young and old on the streets of Los Angeles, documented from at least July 10, 2023 forward.  The subject on two occasions attacked random victims, minutes apart.  Two of the most-serious attacks happened within half an hour of each other.  He returned to the home of one woman the next day to steal her car.  One of the elderly women almost died. 

Because of ample CCTV evidence, police were able to develop a suspect profile and name Sergio Garcia, 21.  They tracked him down to Tijuana, Mexico, where the US Marshals apprehended him.  He was expedited and is in custody in California at this time.

I'm pleased, thrilled actually, at the amount of elbow grease that went into (a) putting this series of crimes together, like taking it seriously even though the first few were younger women who weren't seriously injured; (b) culling the CCTV footage to connect all of the cases and develop a suspect profile; and (c) locate him in TJ and expedite him with lightning speed.  :D  Barkeep, a round of donuts on me.

Side note:  ABC News was the only outlet that had this press conference available at all in English, at least that I could find.  And they chose to cut it off arbitrarily, before someone in a blue shirt spoke, and go to the other news.  Absolutely infuriating.  I'm disgusted at the limited coverage in general.  A&E will eventually do an episode on it.

Other side note:  I'm wondering if the California prison system may have limited the availability of this content within its walls, like an in-house version of child-safe, in an attempt to protect his life. 

The LA Times has more information on the crime spree itself.  In the press conference it was noted that although July 10 is where law enforcement picked up the trail, it is very unlikely to be this subject's first day of violence against women.  There are undoubtedly other injured parties out there.

I will leave you with this accounting of the crimes in question, pasted from the LA Times article linked above.  Best wishes to all of the injured parties.  Great thanks to the law enforcement people who worked so hard on this.

• Luna said the search for Garcia began after he allegedly assaulted a 67-year-old woman at around 6:15 a.m. July 15 in the yard of her East Los Angeles home. Investigators working with colleagues from the Los Angeles Police Department determined it was one in a string of attacks on women in the L.A. area.
• Garcia approached the victim from behind, pulled her hair and threw her to the ground, where he repeatedly punched her in the face, officials said. Garcia was startled when a neighbor began to yell at him, they said, but continued to punch the woman two more times before he rode away on a bicycle.
• Luna said that, within 72 hours, East L.A. detectives had learned of two similar attacks inside the city limits with a suspect who matched Garcia’s description. By July 18, he had been identified as the alleged perpetrator.
• The sheriff said Garcia was suspected of assaulting and robbing an 84-year-old woman in the 5200 block of Via Corona Street in East Los Angeles about 30 minutes after the assault on the woman in her yard. In the second case, he allegedly stole the woman’s car keys.
• On July 16, the next morning, Luna said Garcia returned and stole the car and, shortly after, crashed it near the 10 Freeway and Western Avenue.
• A third woman, age 55, came forward after seeing the department’s public outreach on the suspect and reported that she had been assaulted, also in East Los Angeles, on July 10 at 6:45 a.m. in the 1200 block of South Woods Avenue. Charges have been filed so far in those incidents.
• Luna said a fourth possible victim in the sheriff’s territory came forward just two hours before Wednesday’s news conference announcing Garcia’s arrest.
• LAPD Chief Michel Moore said his department had at least four separate assaults in which Garcia was a suspect — one on July 10, another on July 11 and two more on July 15. Moore said he believed Garcia could be responsible for other attacks: “We have likely only identified a small sampling of his activities.”
• According to the police chief, the string of attacks began July 10 when a man matching Garcia’s description followed a woman as she walked under the 110 Freeway near Olympic Boulevard and L.A. Live Way and attempted to sexually assault her.
• Moore said Garcia was also suspected in an attack near Chick Hearn Court and Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles on July 11. Garcia allegedly slapped a woman on her backside and sexually assaulted her, he said.
• On July 15, about three hours after the East L.A. assault on the 67-year-old woman, Garcia allegedly approached a woman who was walking home from church in the 1300 block of South Alvarado Street, hit her in the face multiple times, knocking her unconscious, and robbed her.
• Minutes later, in the 1300 block of South Burlington Avenue, Moore said, he allegedly grabbed a woman who was rummaging through the trunk of her car and sexually assaulted her.

WARNING:  This video is horrifying and heartbreaking.

  Six children were found with several dogs in a hotel room in Las Vegas.  The father believed he had beaten an 11-year-old boy to death.  He then locked him in a dog cage with another child and left them there!

It's not clear how the parents came to be in police custody.  But when the police arrived at the hotel to check on the children, they were afraid to open the door.  Their father had told them never to open it for strangers.  They tried to convince the police they were fine, even though their father thought one of the children had died from the beating.  The female police officer, with her calm, soothing, voice, wasn't able to convince them.  Eventually a maintenance man did.

Fortunately the children survived.  But no child should ever have to endure this.  There is absolutely no excuse.

Unfortunately I'm afraid for the future of these children.  I'm reminded of the Turpin children, who escaped their house of brutality and starvation.  They were sent into foster care where they endured more of the same.

I don't know what became of the children of Gloria Williams from Texas, who allowed her boyfriend to beat her special-needs child, Kendrick Lee, to death.  She then left all of the children to starve in an apartment with no electricity while Kendrick's corpse decomposed.  Those children went to foster care.  Me of little faith, I hate not knowing their outcome.

God bless little Kendrick Lee, America's sweetheart.  I hope these children get to a better place, and soon.  I wish I could bring them all home with me.

As both a rape and cold-case survivor, the Carlee Russell situation -- and especially the discussions surrounding it -- have been really triggering for me. 

There are several large problems in play.  Below are my thoughts on changes I would like to see.  I know they won't happen.  But I pay for this blog so that I can have some voice in this world, even if nobody ever reads it.  Maybe some day someone will, after my death.

1. Racialization of crime has gone full circle in my lifetime.  When I was a child, the races of the people involved were often reported.  Not always.  You wouldn't be told if the criminal was white, unless he was an immigrant.  But you would always be told if any criminal was black, and especially if the victims were white.  That changed over time as African-Americans gained more voice.  We became "politically correct," more aware of appropriate verbal boundaries.  That has come full-circle now.  The race of a perpetrator is always mentioned if they are white, even if it wasn't an actual crime but only rudeness.  Victimization is important if the victims are black.  I'm hoping we will eventually come to a point of actual decency, where we treat people equally.  I'm not counting on it though.  Everything doesn't boil down to race every time.  I must agree to disagree with Ibram Kendi on that point. 
2. Nobody in America actually understands how the 911 system works.  I ran 911 calls for a number of years, both as a firefighter and paramedic.  In my personal experience, Americans of all demographics severely abuse the emergency response system and think nothing of it.  Mitt Romney, in his presidential campaign, advised people to do more of the same -- use ambulances as taxis to the emergency room for primary care.  This is why we can't have nice things, and why firefighters and paramedics have greatly decreased life expectancy.
3. While it's popular to demonize Karen at every turn, every demographic in America does all of the behaviors attributed to white women.  As a homeless person, the first time anyone lied about me to the police it was an African-American woman in Henrico, Virginia.  I saw her stiffen up and zoom past me when she came around the corner walking her dogs.  The police showed up a few minutes later.  They had no lawful reason to ask me to leave.  I left just to humor that bitch, so she wouldn't worsen my situation.  I had an African-American apartment manager once decline to rent to me.  He suggested that next time I park around the corner and walk up so they couldn't see I was homeless.  In Fort Bragg, California, the white librarians, and on another occasion two white guys in a City truck, both called the police and lied about me.  In both of those instances the police were annoyed about it.  That was two incidents of city employees, while on the payroll, filing false, malicious reports with the police.  My point is, not only does the same malicious reporting happen to people who aren't black, African-Americans also do it to people who are below them socially.  White men especially love talking about Karen while doing Karen behaviors.  They talk about male Karen and black Karen, how does that work?  White women make everybody act stupid?  Every obnoxious person gets relabeled a white woman?  That's healthy.
4. There are other horrible ways that people abuse the 911 system that also need to be criminally charged IMHO.  Back when I used to waste my time trying to have reasonable conversations on Reddit, I saw a post about BLM in Rochester.  Someone had set fire to a car in the street -- an incredibly dangerous act.  When the tires explode, they go projectile.  They endangered all kinds of life and property. Worse yet, when the fire crew arrived, someone jumped onto the bumper and wouldn't allow them to put out the fire.  The BLM people of Reddit would not allow themselves to be educated on the many ways in which they endangered lives with that stunt.  I explained that other people were waiting to have their 911 calls answered, waiting for help that would not come while this arsonist was stalling the fire crew.   They could not be convinced that they had ground the paramedics to a halt, because they didn't see paramedics in the video and don't understand how shit works in real life.  The BLM people were as reasonable and rational about it as MAGA people.  They couldn't be convinced that they didn't know what the dispatchers had pending. I'm white and telling them something they didn't want to hear, so I'm fake news.  Many people flatly announced to me that nobody else needed help in that moment.  Like small children who think anything they can't see doesn't exist, as if all of Rochester could be seen in that video.  JFC.   Just like MAGA people, they didn't blink before telling me -- someone with credentials -- how things work.  No matter how patiently I attempted to explain, I got called a racist and my input dismissed.  There was no talking sense to any of them.  I regret that the fire crew didn't floor it and send that idiot flying through the sky.  The arson was bad enough.  Deliberately bringing the emergency response system to a standstill to make your point is domestic terrorism, punishing the most vulnerable and the hardest working simultaneously.  Fuck everything about that guy and everybody who thinks that was fine.  If that's an official BLM thing, that's an OK strategy to employ, I withdraw my support from BLM.  N-O.

SHAMELESS LIARS

I worked as a paramedic in a high-volume, high-acuity urban system.  That means that we ran a lot of bad calls every day, often 14 or more in a 12-hour shift.  We often didn't get a potty break for eight hours or more.  I was frequently much sicker than the people I was transporting,

I was once called to a woman with chest pains.  Because of the seriousness of the call, a fire truck was dispatched because the medics (a) often can't get there fast enough, and (b) may need extra help when someone is dying.

Because of the way we haul ass when we're led to believe someone is dying, the ambulance I was in almost collided with the responding fire truck as they came around a corner.  We almost got killed racing to help this woman.

We arrived to find an elderly woman sitting with her neighbor in no distress at all.  She had a large, necrotic wound on her leg, a dead patch of flesh.  She has needed ongoing care at a wound clinic for months or years.  Her neighbor, seeing her condition, had convinced her to finally seek help.  And that's great.  She definitely needed some intervention.  She may end up losing that leg, which is unfortunate when she could have been helped all along.  This is absolutely not an emergency and does not warrant a 911 call.  The neighbor should have called her primary care physician and made an appointment.  At her age she gets Medicare.  Her Medicare Advantage plan will send free transportation to carry  her to her medical appointments.  These were African-Americans, very unlikely to be Romney voters.

We asked her why she said she was having chest pain.  She flatly explained that she knew from experience if she told the truth, it would take too long to get an ambulance.  She has called for gout before, another thing that constitutes system abuse when you call 911 about it.  Nobody ever dies from gout.

We explained to her that we had almost been killed attempting to respond to her false report.  She shrugged.  It's very special to tell someone you almost died just now because of their lies and have them show you how much they truly don't care.  We explained to her that when it takes so long, that's because we have other people that are much sicker than her, who may die because they're not getting helped while we deal with her.  She just DGAF.  She was fine cutting the line in front of whoever.  She only wants what she wants.  This is America, where everybody uses the wheelchair toilet every time they're going to stink it up, and doesn't think of that as a privilege flex.

So while she's an elderly woman with a serious medical problem, I want her to be criminally charged for what she did there.  And there's no way it will ever happen, because America is a big, fat, selifish idiot that likes to stay broken and blame Karen for everything.

Men and African-Americans are just as likely to make frivolous or retaliatory 911 calls, or be wild and abusive in public, as "Karen." Watch Parking Wars sometime and see.  Watch every demographic of Americans try to call the police on the parking enforcement people, as if they're not on the same payroll. Again, I personally had malicious, untrue 911 calls made against myself by people of all demographics as a homeless person, and I am white and female.  You don't have to be African-American to have your civil rights violated by the police, or be hassled by other citizens.  I could give many examples.

MALICIOUS LIARS

When I lived in Chicago I was once a witness on a malicious, racist 911 call.  Some teenagers were hanging out with a radio near my house.  The police arrived.  Someone had called in a "fight," probably because most of the kids were African-American.  If I had to use one word to describe their behavior I would go with "flirting" or "dancing."  And that's what I told the police.  There was no fight.  So the cops left.  I would like to see the person who called in that report charged for lying to the police.

FREQUENT FLYERS

It was common discussion among firefighters and paramedics, that we had no power to do anything about our "frequent flyers," or chronic system abusers.  There were many people we recognized either by the complaint or the address.  But we had people who called us all the time over absolute nonsense.  And they were just as likely to be male or African-American as white and female.  This isn't a Karen problem.

Unfortunately the police are the only ones who can criminally charge people.  And they don't know or care what havoc people are wreaking on the fire crews.  You have to antagonize the police before they do anything. 

The other issue is that they don't want to discourage people from crying wolf, because then they might have a real emergency, not call and then die, and the county will get sued.  So we have to kiss their butts every time.

NOTE:  If you call an ambulance, and the paramedic asks you, "Have you tried any over-the-counter medications?" that's probably their way of saying you're abusing the system.  You should get in a car and go to urgent care.  They're not allowed to refuse to treat you or tell you how they really feel. 

MY POSITION ON FALSE AND MALICIOUS REPORTING

It's very simple.  As a rape survivor, people have reflexively called me a liar all my life -- even when, especially when, they know for sure I'm telling the truth.  So false reporters really piss me off.

Making a false police report is a crime.  When that guy in Boston murdered his wife, he blamed some non-existent black men.  Guess what?  The police rounded up however many people who had nothing to do with it and hassled them about it.  Did they get beaten up?  Miss time from work?  Who knows how inconvenient it was for how many people.  That guy needed to be charged separately for that.  And because he racialized it, I would be good with adding hate crime charges.

So for another example, say someone calls 911 and says, "There's a black man walking around my apartment and he doesn't live here."  If the police arrive and the person is another tenant, two things should happen.  1. they should be charged with a false report.  and 2. you can add hate crimes, because they mentioned the race of the person as the reason they were calling.  They didn't talk to him, or the building manager.  He wasn't doing anything.  They were just harassing somebody and misusing the 911 system.  Charge them.  Teach them not to do it.

If you drank a box of wine and went to CVS to scream about Sharia law, you can be arrested for drunk and disorderly.

Many people are suggesting that Carlee Russell should just be forgiven, no harm, no foul.  Some people have argued that Carlee shouldn't be charged because the "Karens" don't get charged. 

That person has it exactly backwards.  First of all, it's someone who would rather scapegoat one demographic than actually solve problems, evidenced by their use of the word "Karen" as a euphemism for "problematic person."  But if "Karen" has committed a crime, this white lady would like to see her charged rather than just have people talk shit without learning or solving anything.  And false, malicious reporting is a crime.  Lying to the police is a crime.

The old woman who lied about having chest pains shouldn't go to jail.  She's too old and frail.  But she should be called up in front of a judge and made to explain why she lied to the ambulance crew.  Somebody needs to impress upon her the seriousness of her problem behavior.  She absolutely didn't get it.  I advised the nurse, when I dropped her off, to treat everyone in the hospital, and possibly some people walking past, before seeing that woman.  It was all I could do.

Carlee Russell needs to go to jail for what she did.  It was not okay.  The many people who are fine with turning a blind eye to it are absolutely part of the problem.

WARNING:  This is graphic and will make your blood boil.

The police have named Sergio Garcia a suspect, with several clear CCTV images of him.  He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Mr. Garcia should turn himself in before the neighbors catch him.  That's my best advice to him.  It's not going to end well.  I can't imagine how they will protect him in prison in California.

The A&E network is that digital true crime frenemy.

On the one hand, they do a lot of crime journalism that I don't find anywhere else.  They often get things done that nobody else does.  The problem is right in the name:  Arts & Entertainment.  True crime isn't a form of entertainment, or it shouldn't be.  Therein lies the issue.  We're using the wrong tool to address the crisis of violence against women: entertainment.

Frankly, whenever I see the "graphic content" warning, I bristle.  It always seems to me like the thing creepers use to determine whether they'll be turned on by the content or not.  And unfortunately A&E usually doesn't disappoint them, routinely including at least a few graphic photos of dead/mangled women.

I didn't see the above-linked program, The Killing Season, when it first aired.  I recently watched the whole thing back-to-back.  I have thoughts.

• I'm grateful that the filmmakers put in so much time and effort.  They truly invested themselves in humanizing a lot of disposable, disposed-of women.  They went to a lot of grimy, swampy, crime-infested places, and talked to a lot of people nobody cares about.  As a survivor it means a lot to me.
• It horrifies me how easy it is for anyone with mainstream media access to get a sit-down with the authorities in this country.  As a survivor of a cold case I can't always get detectives to return my phone calls -- a refrain you'll hear over and over from loved ones of murder victims in this series.  But these filmmakers, who have no skin in the game, can get meetings with all kinds of authority figures by the grace of A&E.   Because it's entertainment.   INFURIATING.
• The filmmakers -- and I bless them very much for their efforts -- are out of their depth. 
• This genre of "entertainment" exists because women's needs are not being met by the system itself.  I hear Josh, the male filmmaker, decrying over and over the "broken system."  It is absolutely not a broken system.  The system perfectly reflects the ethos of its designers, and the violence against women that they demand.
• On the one hand, I appreciate that they are willing to track down leads from the crowdsourcers at Websleuths.  On the other hand, there's a reason they don't start police officers with murders on their first investigations.  Street smarts are something people build up over time.  It's painful to watch the filmmakers being played, especially since they don't always seem to know it, even when they should be able to see it coming, even in hindsight.  But I applaud their courage and heart.
• The most cringeable part of the show is their German profiler, a former submarine crewman and current fiction author named Brendt.  He's prominently featured on multiple episodes and even in the intro, and says such laughable drivel that I won't even waste time quoting him.  How did this person make it into the final edits?  WTF?  Don't make me pull quotes.
• The thing is, some of the other people from Websleuths were worthwhile, like the two women with the topographical surveys in New Mexico.  And because they're affiliated with A&E, the crew was able to get access to the New Mexico Department of Geology to coordinate with them.  GOOD JOB! 
  
• New Mexico was where that whole series should have stopped and done some self-examination.  Because they accomplished some very good things.  And in that episode, they also exemplified all that hurts me about A&E.  They allowed the self-important German fantasist to say all sorts of silly things as though he were equally valid as the others, entirely skewing everything IMO.
  
• In the New Mexico portion of the above-linked video, they discuss the West Mesa killer.  This bold film crew took the time and effort to speak with multiple sex workers on the stroll and ask their opinions on the murders!  For that, I give them all the stars.  That's real journalism.  And the women said the same things over and over:  the cops were involved.  They gave the same name over and over, too.  As did the social service and NGO workers they spoke with, that one guy's name kept coming up.  They did some real investigative journalism in New Mexico.
  
• Another excellent thing they did in New Mexico was to work with a private detective and possibly get a confession, or at least an admission, on tape.  Another example of the system not being broken but functioning the way the powers that be want it to work.
  
• They spoke with another credible investigator who discussed a potential Mexican cartel connection. The dumps didn't match her scenario.  And being afraid to raise American law enforcement's attention? Yes and no.  I've seen pictures of the cartels arresting the police in Mexico.  They really don't care how many of their people get arrested here, if they're not already on the ABQ police force. Then again, they don't want to raise a lot of attention if they're on the police force.  Which defeats the purpose of sending a message, right?  If nobody finds the bodies?  But that investigator is still worth listening to, unlike Brendt who is so prominently featured.
  
• Based on what I know, ABQ/Gallup is a major human/drug trafficking thoroughfare anyway, no Mexican cartels needed.  Though they're by no means ruled out.  It's already a huge place for women to disappear, especially Native women.  And all of these women were in or near the local drug scene.  The West Mesa situation looks to me, after watching this investigation, more like a Jefferson Davis 8 situation involving local law enforcement and criminals working together with a nod from the FBI, like with Whitey Bulger.
  
• They spoke with a former police officer from New Mexico -- a woman with actual credentials, who I understand had been professionally vetted by Websleuths.  And the one and only point she made was that there are some very, very bad people in law enforcement.  That was what she tried to impress upon them.  They didn't have any follow-up questions.  They didn't seem to understand what she was trying to say.  They didn't ask her if she was saying that anyone in law enforcement might also work for a Mexican cartel.  They had the German guy, the former submariner with no credentials other than chain smoking on webcam, talk out his butt.  He rambled on and on about who would or wouldn't go out on the Mesa and dump a body where.  Those three people weren't presented as equally credible or valuable.  It wasn't a level playing field. There was much, much more of him.  He was presented as more credible than either of the two women with real-world knowledge, the guy who has no credentials and has probably never been to ABQ. It was a very false narrative in that way. That keeps the conversation firmly at the gibberish level in the mainstream American media.
  
• I don't know if the filmmakers truly lost the plot that hard or if A&E won't let them bite the hand that feeds it.  But this is why we're frenemies.  Because A&E will allow that sort of ridonkulous bullshit to go unchecked.  They don't insist on critical thinking in the final edit.  They allow for emotional baiting and other foolishness, because at the end of the day it's entertainment.
  
• This will be my last point on it, the most important one, and I'll leave you to consider the following.  Because I'm very grateful that they did this series.  And I'll need to rewatch the part about Oklahoma.  I think the part about Daytona is worthwhile and well-solved -- the bikers handle their business however they do.  But what got missed on the Mesa said it all for me.  This last point landed right on my heart.
  
• At one point Josh calls the police officer who was named over and over again as the possible West Mesa killer.  Many sex workers have said they were Holtzclawed by this guy, taken up to the Mesa and shaken down for sex.  Some say they had been taken up there, beaten up, and left up there to walk back to town. These are things police are known have done to harass people in other areas of the country.  None of these complaints, if verified, would be the first time this had happened in America. The filmmakers receive at least a dozen reports on this one person. 
  
• When contacted, the accused cop says that the ABQ police department told women that they were the ones killing and dumping sex workers on the Mesa, in order to keep them off the streets.  He goes on to say that all prostitutes accuse vice detectives, and it's par for the course and means nothing.  The crew accepts both of these explanations and moves on.  I wanted to smash the device I was watching it on.
  
• Again, I don't know if these two lack the street smarts to understand what just happened there, or were not allowed to bite the hand that gets them invited into every police chief's office.  But this is why we can't have nice things. 
  
• Josh, ask yourself.  Why him and not any other officers?  Why his name over and over?  Can you imagine a police agency telling people that they're murdering people and dumping bodies to deter crime?  That absolutely didn't happen.  JFC, man.  And no prosecutor followed up after hearing that phone call, go figure.  Because for sure public safety veterans know that that absolutely didn't happen.
  
• No matter how well these filmmakers may mean, there's always what I've now come to think of as "the Harvey factor."  It's the way movies always left me unsatisfied, and I really never went.  Because movies always have to suit the male gaze.  Harvey Weinstein always has to enjoy them, which makes me not enjoy them.  And you know what?  A&E makes sure that the creepers are always okay with their content, too.  They do.
  

In the old days, I used to waste my time trying to have reasonable conversations on Reddit.  And I once pointed out that I've never heard of a woman or women dragging a random man or boy into their car, sticking things up their butts, and murdering them.  Yet the reverse happens so often that it doesn't always make the news. And because Reddit is Reddit, someone sent me an anonymous link to "Reddit cares," a thing where you can get mental health resources, because I made that totally obvious point.  The suggestion being that I'm unhinged for noticing the rampant violence that men do against women and girls.

In yet another example of the same super-obvious point, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly abducted by an adult man in Texas, as reported in the video above.  After two days of being sexually assaulted and driven around, she found herself in my old neighborhood, Cambodiatown, in Long Beach, California.

This is a very high-crime area, where anything could have happened to her aside from the kidnapping.  But it's also an actual neighborhood, where people know each other.  We even know a lot of our local homeless people in the area.  There are some really good people there.  I'm so glad she was able to get helped.

What bothers me about this story is that yet again the same old magic eraser of police work was used.  She was listed as a runaway despite being forced into a car at gunpoint.  The girl was 13 years old, and the authorities still found a way to not look for her, to blame her and assign her full agency for her own plight at the hands of a grown man.

First of all, thank God this girl is okay.  I'm proud of the strength it took for her to survive that situation and get herself out of it.

ABC13:

"Sunday night, an 18-year-old girl started knocking on doors on Foxmont Lane looking for help, according to the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office.

She told constables that she was tied up and held captive in a home on the street for a month by Macias and Reyes. The girl escaped her restraints when the couple left the home Sunday night and she sought help.

Authorities reported she had marks on her hands and legs.

A search warrant was executed at the home in question on Monday, and Precinct 4 said they found a chain with multiple padlocks in the bedroom. They said other items were found that supported the teen's story."

You can read the linked article for more details.  But the married couple is now charged in her abduction and sexual abuse for a period of one month while she was missing. 

COMPARE TO CARLEE RUSSELL

• This person did not walk back to her mother's house.  She ran door to door in desperation.
• She had visible marks of restraint.
• The ruse used to allegedly kidnap her actually makes sense.  She was well-known to the perpetrators, which is the usual way.  Carlee's "baby on highway" ruse sounds like it was made up by Frank and Charlie from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
• The Texas survivor immediately cooperated with the police.
• She told them where she was held, and they were able to search the location and find evidence supporting her story.
• The police were able to find physical evidence supporting her story, both on her body and in the alleged kidnap location.
  
• She's not claiming they took naked pictures of her without any physical contact.  That is one of the most laughable pieces of horseshit Carlee Russell said.

I can't go on without impacting my mood.  Thank God this Texas woman is safe now.

I followed the Long Island Serial Killer case some years ago and am really glad they caught Rex Heuermann.  I believe they have the right person.

However, along the way, they discovered an incredibly dark web of corruption and violence against women, including a police chief, a doctor, all kinds of rich people.  And a lot of dead, low-income women.

But the thing that struck me about the above video is the gender divide in the comments.  A lot of men are going so far as to call it clickbait, that the voicemail isn't creepy at all. 

Even in hindsight they aren't willing to validate that Rex Heuermann -- described as looking like an ogre by one of Amber Costello's neighbors years ago -- creeped this girl out. 

This woman sidestepped an alleged serial killer, and the comment section is jam-packed with men in hard denial about it.  This is why we can't have nice things. 

I encourage you to scroll through the comment section and see how many men lack self-awareness at that level.  They can't look at the picture of him, and the picture of her, and immediately know why that phone call accurately creeped her out in real time.  They don't get why he shouldn't think he stands any chance with her at all, especially not after bringing up his sex crimes in work conversation.

In the conversation itself he all but admits it's a ruse to talk to her.  Guess what?  Guys make excuses to talk to her all day, every day.  I remember having a similar problem.  She's not confused about it.  Really sad, the percentage of men in the comments who lack the very first clue, even with the stack of evidence in that bail hearing.  They can't give her credit for having accurately read the tea leaves about it.