Beloved member of Petit Family Passes

Very, very sad news.

Dennis Chapman, 66, husband of Johanna Petit Chapman and brother-in-law of Dr. William Petit Jr., died unexpectedly at his Plainville home Friday.

Dr. Petit Jr.was the sole survivor of a brutal 2007 home invasion robbery and murder in Cheshire. His wife, Jen-nifer Hawke-Petit, and two daughters, Hayley and Michaela, were killed.

Dennis Chapman was heavily involved in the Petit Family Foundation and was the founder of Michaela’s Garden Project. The garden project was started after family members went to the charred remains of the home to salvage what they could of the family’s belongings and the garden was found with 11-year-old Michaela Petit’s favorite flowers, four o’clocks.

The flowers were dug up by Dennis Chapman, taken to his home in Plainville and replanted, according to Johanna Chapman. For the past three years, under Dennis Chapman’s guidance, the four o’clocks have been replanted from seeds harvested from the original plants. With the aid of volunteers, about 5,000 plants have been produced from the original garden and the seeds from those plants are sold in packets as a fundraiser for the foundation. Now, those seeds are planted all over the state, country and even overseas, his wife said.

Monday, the family was dealing with the loss of not just an instrumental part of the foundation, but a family member.

“I don’t think I have the words to describe the loss,” said Chapman’s father-in-law, William Petit Sr. “He is the one who came up with the idea for the garden, made the program, and circulated it throughout the state.”

Dennis Chapman, who was the Connecticut Lottery’s vice president for marketing and sales until his retirement a number of years ago, also provided outreach help for the foundation.

“Whenever someone asked him to do anything, he was our go-to man,” Petit Sr. said.

“He was a very kind, tender and gentle man, not a big talker,” Johanna Chapman said.

She added that he was always a farm boy at heart, “you could never take the farm out of him.”

The reason he started Michaela’s Garden Project was because “he wanted a way to keep her spirit going,” she said.

“With his nature, it was just another nice thing he could do to make people feel good,” she said. “Everybody at some point in their life has planted something. Like my mother said, ‘this is the one thing I can grow.’ ”

From the Record Journal Meriden.

Bullied Boy Dies: Bailey O'Neill, 12, Dead Weeks After School Bullying

Here is a more detailed article about young Bailey O'Neill's death which occurred as a result of a violent bullying episode and a traumatic brain injury sustained in the school yard attack.

Laws must change to accommodate tragic deaths like this, caused by assault related traumatic brain injuries, where the full scope of the damage is often not immediately appreciated.

Seizures and other serious seleleque caused by swelling of the brain will often begin days weeks and months after the TBI is inflicted. As well, there is the chance of slow bleeds,( hemotomas), Diffuse Axonal Injuries, fractures of the skull that go undetected, (especially basilair fractures ) and a host of other evolving conditions that can be life debilitating, or life threatening.


Rest in Peace Bailey 

Bailey O'Niell dies from Bullying.Assault

This poor little 12 year old boy from Pennsylvania died while  in a medically induced coma, eight weeks after suffering  a "concussion " when two boys assaulted him outside of his school..

Bailey by all accounts " wasn't right" after his concussion: He slept a lot -  somnolence is really a kind of coma in and of itself after a TBI  ie "Traumatic Brain Injury"  a more accurate term which has replaced the old verbiage of more innocuous sounding "concussion" of the past.



According to his family, his personality had also changed after the assault caused head injury with little Bailey having uncharacteristic anger - another common side effect of moderate yo severe TBI.. Then he began having seizures and was rushed to the hospital where he died from complications of Pneumonia.


Bailey O'Neill dies in Coma

Jodi Arias brings attention to the Narcissist and/ or Sociopath In Your Life - Watch out for these Predators Among us!

This article on Sociopaths and Narcissists is an extremely important series about the sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring qualities of Narcissists and Sociopaths. All women - and men - need to read about these dangerous people that live among us. They are growing more prolific and they usually carry themselves with what appears to be  above average intelligence, articulate and often charming natures and  physically - they appear "normal".

In the year 2000 I had a near deadly experience with a Sociopath/Narcissist who turned out to be a batterer, a rapist and an attempted murderer.

He did not appear to be any of those things.

He wore neatly pressed attractive suits and ties nearly every day. Unbeknownst to me, they were mostly Armani suits - which it turned out he procured at consignment stores and Goodwill's in wealthier suburbs, where high end designer castaways were more plentiful.

He drove a BMW sedan - with what later turned out to be a stolen license plate, ie he did not have the title to the vehicle, undoubtedly having procured it illegally.

The man never worked a day in his life, unless one counted a very short stint at a photo developing shop where he was fired for stealing expensive equipment.

This, again, I discovered after the crimes.


He operated out of his elderly parents home in Fairfield Connecticut, they, having long transplanted to Georgia for the warmer climate. This left  their forty year old divorced son to "watch over their house" unwittingly giving a dangerous predator a perfect cover, naturally claiming his parents residence as his own.


A basic colonial n the Fairfield lakes area purchased in the early seventies for 40,000, in the late nineties, now lent the appearance of  middle class respectability in a town that had grown leaps and bounds in popularity. In fact Fairfield would be enjoying its highest Real Estate surge throughout the eighties and nineties.

Commuters from NYC and Stamford could not afford the obscenely rising real estate prices in Westport  New Canaan Wilton, and certainly Greenwich. In droves they now purchased 20 miles up the coast in Fairfield. a smallish town rife with much more affordable homes minus the soulless snobbery that had begun to swallow the region

This snobbery was the very reason my parents ultimately left Westport moving to the Branford Guilford area where small town quaintness and charm could be had without the insufferable snootiness that had consumed my childhood town.

I mention these seemingly innocuous facts because  the sociopath that almost killed me was obsessed with money affluence and the appearance of success.

I soon began to see a chronic restlessness in this man; Charming at first, he now seemed bitterly unhappy with his lot in life. There was a good deal of soap boxing about the many people who had wronged him and were somehow responsible for what his life Lacked.
He spoke of an abusive mother who "destroyed any chance of happiness he had.He regaled me with emotional stories of corrupt businessmen who ruined him financially..

Being a naive kind and compassionate person I stupidly took him at his word often giving him latitude due to an abusive childhood that again I later discovered was completely false. He invented his abused childhood with a precise purpose. He knew it would buy him sympathy from me.


He would dress meticulously each day in a freshly dry cleaned suit, with literally no where to go;
He would troll at local coffee shops, restaurants bagel stores and small businesses looking for victims, typically of the female persuasion. He was however an equal opportunity sociopath, gender only mattered insofar as what he was looking to procure for himself.at that moment or that day.


As this excellent set of linked articles so aptly describes Narcissists Sociopaths view all people as objects to fulfill a need or desire, or as was often the case with this textbook Sociopath, he often used people as bridges; the appearance albeit erroneous of credibility which in turn helped him to use and or abuse other people in a perverse cyclic mode of operandi that in the short term worked well, until he was found out and had to move to another geographic area. I later discovered he was working the Greenwich Wilton area simultaneous with disastrous results on many other women - and men's lives.

For example he would earnestly pursue a "friendship" with woman related to a prominent family in the area; At the time that I first met him I was told he was having lunch with the sister of the Mayor of Bridgeport. This was at an obscure coffee shop called Art Greens on Black Rock Turnpike ( The shop is no longer there)

I later found out that this man was merely having an impromptu cup of coffee with the mayors younger sister and indeed she had simply run into him at the coffee shop and he'd foisted himself upon her insisting she stay for a cup of coffee and a chat. She like me at the time was too polite for her own good and this is the exact type of person that sociopaths and narcissists have their antennas honed for, as we make perfect victims.

Unfortunately this man led the owner of the coffee shop and a gaggle of regulars to believe that he was dating  this woman and that they were in fact and item.

Note; It should be mentioned that I am the antithesis of an elitist, despite, or perhaps because of my Upper middle class roots. Growing up in huge lonely homes in Westport Connecticut  a sprawling estate directly on the Long Island Sound only served to convince me as a child and young adult that money did not buy a happy loving family.

 This is directly related to the role of the so called relationship between the Sociopath and the mayors sister. I down played important instincts that right off the bat were telling me that despite this mans seeming charm, there was something wrong with him something dangerous even.

And then I would think to myself..."but he dated the mayor"s sister for  almost a year/ I know this for a fact, so how could he be a psycho?"

 I knew the Mayor second hand as he had attended UConn with my eldest sister. I was also aware that his family was rife with lawyers who were all well known and respected in the Bridgeport/ fairfield area. This wasn't simply the sister of the mayor, this was the sister of a well known and at the time very respected family.

Unfortunately and foolishly I was trusting a sociopaths claims that he had dated the mayors youngest sister for a year, especially when it seemed corroborated by the people at the coffee shop. But again the owner of the coffee shop as well as the regular patrons had only seen the two together a handful of times and they also took his word that the two were an "Item"

 This is where I wince at my own naivete and how easy it must have been for this man to bamboozle me.
 I think he thought Id be impressed that he'd dated this women, when in fact I was not the sort of person to be awed by such a thing at all! However it served instead as a misleading counter to my growing gut feeling that this man was not who nor what he professed to be and indeed that there was much amiss with many of his claims about his life, including his so called career and a constant stream of casual lies and secretiveness regarding his own life paralleled by an irrational growing demand to know where I was at al times.

I was begging to see signs of extreme jealousy and my sister who didn't like him from the moment she met him kept claiming that he was driving by my cottage in Fairfield during the wee hours of the morning. Then there was his growing propensity to attempt push my family and friends out of my life, particularly my sister who lived up the street and my little nephew whom I adored. None of this seemed normal and I began to pull away and all hell broke loose.
In retrospect it is not a coincidence at all that this is in fact the same mayor that a few years later was convicted  for bribery, racketeering, extortion and  a gaggle of other federal charges.

You see, the man that nearly killed me had an antenna for people who had  moral weaknesses be it outright criminal involvement or simply chronic adult, drug use fellow scam artists on larger and smaller scales and his cohorts ran the gamut from a very casual acquaintanceship with the mayors brothers to involvement with small time con men who he would use and extricate services from, with promises of future business with his myriad of prominent local connections.

After breaking off the relationship this man as diplomatically as possible he walked into my home through a back door  and spent several hours assaulting me and very nearly killing me with multiple blows to my head against a plaster wall, and the wood floor where he had dragged my lifeless body. He continued to smash and pummel my head as he alternately stood over me and railed at me for such things as "not introducing him to my parents"  He punctuated each bizarre accusation with either a smash of the back of side of my head into the floor or a karate type blow to my temples and boxing of my ears . I was choked alternately until I became unconscious which is when he would stop shake me by my concussed damaged head only to start choking me once again.

Soon thereafter he began pulling off his tied to finish me off or so I believed, and when I finally mustered some small strength to move away on my back he changed his mind and began to undo my belt instead. I believe he realized that his DNA would be on his tie and that this could be present possible evidence pointing to him. When I saw that, my Adrenalin kicked in and I began to yell and plead, my voice box had been damaged from the severe choking screaming was impossible; Photos of my neck taken the following day clearly showed his fingerprints on my THROAT in deep purple furrows.

To this day, I will never forget the empty dead look in this mans eyes that resembled an animal just before the first terrible blow of the back of head into my living room wall. Plaster with wooden lathes behind it somehow miraculously despite his using all of his strength  it did not knock me completely out or kill me as he clearly expected it would. I slumped down the walls tilted hideously my legs buckled and a sound came from my mouth that I didn't recognize as myself or even human. But I fought to stay conscious, believing I would surely be killed and my body disposed of  if I gave in to the lure of the unconscious. As He peered into my face it was with disbelief that I was conscious and the disbelief seemed to turn into rage that I was still breathing.


This man convinced a fair amount of educated women and men that he was alternately an "investment banker' a real estate developer, and volunteered with orphans in Sarajevo

After the criminal court proceedings we discovered he assaulted at least four other women each one too terrified to report the incidents to Police. He had told me in no uncertain terms that he would kill me if I ever told the police. He held me all night as I was in and out of consciousness refusing to let me call an ambulance, unable to see out of one eye temples swollen purple eyes whites and bruised ears something I later discovered was called Battle sign. I was certain I would never wake up with bleeding in my brain from over 40 blows to my temple region an area that has the thinnest bone covering the brain.

I was not alone. This man ingratiated himself into the lives of some fairly prominent people in Fairfield New Haven Counties, including Attorneys, Politicians and a myriad of small local businesses, almost always using other faux connections to make the new connections. He pored over newspapers  to absorb every new real estate project and local political happenings in order to present a believable version of a successful investor and man about town.

As I was awarded a standing criminal restraining order, ( lifetime) the Police inform me of this man's whereabouts from time to time. They recently warned me he is currently living with a much older wealthy woman in Southport Connecticut.

He uses various misspelled versions of his last name in order to avoid detection of his criminal history (both the felonious charges for the crimes against me, as well other less serious charges such as check forgery) the four violent felonies committed against me were plead down and this man was given a 3 year suspended sentence: Criminal Restraint first degree Assault second degree terroristic threatening and Stalking all magically became misdemeanors in a plea deal that is standard fare at GA2 superior Court.

I pray for the woman that he lives with and is supported by:  I am certain that this man has committed violence against her and likely is abusing her considering his track record with women. I fear for her life. Partner and domestic violence is statistically rarely reported by the wealthy; There is a huge emphasis on appearances and despite how far we think we've come, the stigma associated with interpersonal violence is alive and well.

He has surely convinced her via force or contrition not to report him to Police or he will go to prison for a long long time( presumably as a repeat offender).The battered women's syndrome has a tight hold over even the most intelligent successful and independent women.  Lenore Walker defines this complex and frustrating relationship and the victim's shame that helps perpetuate the cycle of  violence and the ensuing honeymoon
  .
This post began with my eyes trained upon the murder trial of Jodi Arias. The now thirty two year old woman who " confessed" to killing ex boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008. After watching her on the stand  for days it's become clear that Arias is a Sociopath and  has Narcissist Personality disorder,. the former statistically a much rarer occurrence in women.

Arias's "confession" is obviously a complete farce. And as is so often the case she maligned her victim's character whilst trying to absolve herself of pre-meditated murder. It is obvious to me that this murder was 99 percent premeditated, meaning Arias went with a plan that is she got what she considered the typical booty-call dismissive demeanor from Travis Alexander after their love-making, she was prepared to murder him.


 The Gun matched the caliber of her grandmother's stolen gun. She had just changed her hair color prior to that particular visit to Travis's. The pair were no longer in a genuine relationship which

Much is being written about Arias lately,she has been n the stand for several days, and the media is having a field day with the paradoxical baby faced looks and soft spoken voice  and the level of violent carnage that she committed. I have yet to hear anyone utter a word about her  psychological profile which is strange considering it literally reeks of Sociopath but again in my opinion Ms Arias has more than one disorder including borderline PD and POSSIBLY Dependent PD. I suspect we will hear more about Arias's Psychiatric evaluations a bit further down the line within the trial, but again where are these Psychologists now, because I for one am having a field day with assessing the relationship of This victim and Jodi Arias and the role that Mr Alexander's attitudes towards women, and Arias in particular, might have set off a ticking time bomb.

In other words after reading many of Travis Alexanders blog entries online dating service profiles, watching video clips of his " motivational speaking" events, a picture of this man is emerging that is somewhat less than flattering when it comes to his views and treatment of certain women. In one of Alexanders emails to a friend he even states I am a bit of a sociopath after all" indicating that he is aware of a certain disconnect and or lack of empathy or compassion for women in the context of this particular email.

This comment from Alexander speaks volumes and I am surprised that more attention hasn't been forthcoming. Likely the press may be reluctant to write anything that appears critical of a man who was so violently victimized , yet we need to look at details like thee in order to learn from "intimate violence".

In the end I believe that this was a case of two disordered young people whose lives intersected and violence of some kind was almost guaranteed by the nature of both of their personalities. This is in no way placing blame upon the victim Travis Alexander. It is simply necessary food for thought.


In any event, p lease read the linked website thoroughly : It is very comprehensive yet uses layman's terms and thus easier to understand and apply to either your or your loved ones life.  Learn about  Sociopaths, Narcissists Borderline PD's - for they are all among us. Statistics bear out huge percentages that would stagger most people.

As such this information may save your life. Not all Sociopaths are killers, the very best and brightest some might manage to use their aggressiveness and ability to manipulate to rise to successful positions.....  but one can be sure of this just about every person with a serious personality disorder will run roughshod through every single life that they intersect with, leaving emotional, psychological and spiritual damage from which many many people never recover.

Awareness is the first step for those who have been damaged by Personality disordered people,be it a casual dating situation a child a parent a sibling a spouse or a so called "friend"

 Most of the victims of these people are not aware of what exactly the problem  is within their relationship with such a person and as one can imagine this often leads to a good deal of self blaming and a mind and soul quandary of sorts, whereupon a well meaning kind healthy person simply cannot fathom why their relationship is so filled with tumult and discord with the sociopath or narcissist  persona.

These reasons are why I am so tenacious about bringing the realm of character and personality disorders to the general public. This information needs to be understood and even prerequisite for every single boy and girl at an age whereby they can understand process and apply it to their lives. This applies to adults as well for many are parents who owe it to their children in this violent society to arm them with as much knowledge about how to spot the behaviors of what usually turn out to be chaotic and or violent people.

 We cannot afford to live in the dark about these " unpleasant and complex seeming subject any longer. Violence among teens is on the rise and too often the warning signs are ignored by others including adults who either don't understand don't know or do not think it would ever happen their teenager or young adult child.

 The following link and other sites like it on the Internet can save lives preventatively as well as begin the healing process for people who are either entrenched in or survived relationships with narcissists and sociopaths. This is not limited to romantic relationships their are siblings and friends co workers or even acquaintances whose relatively small involvement with the Personality disordered person has literally left their life in total chaos, and them questioning why did this person act like this and or they may blame themselves as Socio's are experts at playing the persecuted or victimized role to better ensnare potential victims. Victims need only be anyone who has something that the narcicist or sociopath want's or need or simply wants ti control.

Arm yourself  Narcissistic Sociopaths | The Narcissist In Your Life

Re: Christopher Dormer's Murder

The Christopher Dormer situation has been bothering me for weeks and now it has come to its violent fiery end, just as I feared  it would.

This Post at Alt.net describes some truths regarding the so called " shoot out" at the cabin where Dormer was holed up. It is very disturbing and very credible.
How law enforcement and media covered plan to burn Christopher Dormer alive

I have been following the story closely and I have had mixed feelings about the situation from the moment I read about the case.  From Dormers myriad of  initial complaints about the LAPD in his oft repeated "rambling manifesto"  on Facebook a "manifesto" that was not in fact rambling at all. This is worrisome as it speaks of not only the LAPD P.R machine, but mainstream medias willingness to lap it up like milk and help malign this man.

It was articulate, precise and believable, pulling the curtain back on a what certainly appears to be a morally defunct  Police department including some  hideous everyday behaviors of LAPD police officers: From cell phone photos of crime scene corpses, that Police officers would send each other in a sick daily game of who could capture the most gruesome image , to more standard fare such as the already infamous police brutality and racism that the LAPD is notorious for. Since the advent of cell phone cameras, these events of brutality have only increased and become more credible. However it is still rare to see justice served to LAPD police officers accused of brutality, even when caught on tape.


I am certainly not condoning Christopher Dormers murder of a retired LAPD Police Captain who had once been Dormers Representative ie akin to a lawyer at the hearing where Dormer officially lost his career with the LAPD for supposedly slandering a Police trainee for physically abusing a mentally handicapped man.

Nor do I condone the murders of the captain's daughter and her fiance, who was also a member of the LAPD. I was very disappointing that Dormer chose violence of this sort particularly against non LAPD members as part of a campaign, that at its core was seeking to expose wrongdoings within that Police department. He could have ripped the lid off of that department instilling permanent change if he had used the media and the celebrities that he purposely mentioned in his manifesto as PR and insulation. Obvioulsy Dormer felt that it was futile any attempts to expose this department would be met with

Much of the information that Dormer posted about the LAPD'S inner workings were far too detailed to be fabricated. I believe they were and are in fact valid. The trouble is that Dormer had two agendas; one was revenge for his unfairly lost career, and forever maligned character, a character that was important to him as he felt he had led a decent life and indeed from all appearences he had. As time went by the outcome that his dismissal from the department had on a life that seems from all angles devoted to service.

There is no doubt that his methods were wrong. However, his anger and resentment had three years to fester. From all appearances this man was intelligent and sensitive. He was appalled at the police brutality that was an everyday occurrence with his department. The bully tactics and the blue wall that surrounded what really went on at the LAPD both on the beat and on an administrative level to silence allegations and anyone that threatened that blue code of silence that we are all aware exists in every department to some degree.

A perfect example of some of Dormer's claims occurred within the LAPD's over zealous pursuit of Dormer:. The haphazard shooting of two innocent older women in an SUV that slightly  resembled Dormer's SUV is a perfect illustration of a Police department out of control on hyped up adrenalin fueled revenge, operating  without constraints, rules or following proper police protocol .

All witnesses to those shootings have said that the LAPD officers opened fire upon the vehicle and the two women without any verbal commands to the occupants of the car, and quite easily could have killed both women.

The officers thought that one of the two occupants might be Christopher Dormer.

What does this say about the way that Dormer was eventually cornered and murdered. Reading the article below unfortunately did not bring any surprises. Once I looked into the LAPD shooting of the women in a "Dormer like" car, I knew that this department was hell bent on murdering this man.

And my personal belief is that the bulk of the LAPD'S hatred for Christopher Dormer did not stem from  the murders of the LA police officers, but more-so the fact that Dormer had already exposed so many of the department's dirty secrets such as the cell phone crime scene photo's etc.

The threat that this intelligent and  articulate man posed to this police department as a believable whistle blower was enormous. If Dormer shared as much as he had on the Facebook page, imagine what an official inquiry into his allegations would mean to a police department rife with abuse of power, police brutality, racism, corruption  and much worse.

Bottom line The LAPD murdered this man. They burned Christopher Dormer to death. Two wrongs do not make a right.  When I heard on the radio that the cabin " burst into flames" I was immediately suspicious. I knew that this fire was intentional despite the official version being fed to the media once the smoke cleared and the  LAPD  gathered themselves up

As well keeping the media at bay, news helicopters with their cameras were not allowed near the perimeter of the scene as it unfolded and afterwards, in effect  putting a blanket upon the entire "shoot out" scene, All of this raises red flags galore. The entire media ban by the LAPD was purportedly made in order to protect the police officers.

And what a surprise, the mainstream media complied. However, Police scanner  radios, and the many  listening ears tell the real story - and those words cannot be undone..

On a final note (for now)  had Dormer been the monster that the LAPD made him out to be, he would have simply killed the couple whose cabin he ran into  before the LAPD cornered him. Indeed he was cornered because he let the couple live. Murdering or even maiming the two would have completely changed the outcome of the day, and dormer knew the chance he was taking allowing them to live.
He likely would not have been captured and the scenario that unfolded would have been completely different.

Instead, Dormer told the couple that "he didn't want to hurt them" and tied them up, leaving them unharmed. The Woman wrested out of her ties and called 91, citing that a man resembling Dormer had just been in their cabin and Dormers fate was decided as Police swept in, cornering him.

Christopher Dorrner Is Killed by LAPD

This is the official version

How Christopher Dorner Went Down - The Daily Beast

The LAPD's shooting of Two Innocent Women during Manhunt for Christopher Dormer

Suffice to say that today's indiscriminate shooting of two innocent women by the LAPD is a perfect example of the dangerous and illegal practices and tactics employed by far too many members of this Police Department:

Above Property of the LAPD 

Ironically, one of  Dormer's main focuses regarding the LAPD in his mainstream - media dubbed "rambling manifesto"  was the LAPD's  refusal to adhere to proper police protocol describing in detail episodes of  brutality, racism violence and death resultant from this unrestrained police department.

It should be said that the word "rambling and manifesto" were inseparable in virtually every major News source's description of Dormers tell all essay. The "Manifesto" was a detailed report that included information surrounding his dismissal from the LAPD for reporting a female recruit for kicking a mentally handicapped man. He explained the ensuing damage that his dismissal from the force has on his military career his character and reputation as a person who had served others most of his adult life. He also detailed some horrific behaviors among LAPD officers and I found  all of it credible. Too many details to be fabricated.

Interestingly there are three versions of Mr Dormers manifesto now floating around the web.
I've read them all and only one is consistent and believable  as  having been written by one man. Intelligent, articulate and very detailed the manifesto delved into the issues and happenings surrounding his dismissal from the LAPD as well as extremely disturbing inside the blue wall information about brutal and even ghoulish behavior that was everyday occurrence with many of his fellow LAPD officers.  .

Clearly, if Christopher Dormer did kill a former LAPD Captain's daughter and her fiance,  a man who also was an LAPD officer, this is brutality and revenge gone awry and Dormer should face the consequences in Court I don't believe for a moment that the LAPD intends to capture Dormer alive, they are obviously out to assassinate him.

I feel deeply for the murder victims and their families, they too have been victimized by these murders.
I have prayed for them as I do all people touched by violent crime especially murder of two young people.   In no way is my empathy for victims made less by my concurrent outrage regarding the LAPD and their obvious out of control gunning for this man; It is my belief that they wish to silence Dormer, procure revenge for his outing them ie crossing that Blue wall. And last on the LAPD's revenge list is  Dormers alleged killing spree. The media is simply sating that Dormer murdered these people and there has been no evidence offered and certainly no due process. The public has no way of knowing for certain that Christopher Dormer in fact killed all of the victims that the LAPD has attributed to him.

We do know that the LAPD's haphazard revenge - bent methods and mentality in pursuit of  Dormer is glaring proof that the LAPD  is intent upon "taking Dormer down", in these two shooting incidents the officers involved seem akin to thugs with badges.

Abuse of power, Police brutality, Corruption and  cover-up has haunted the LAPD for decades. We now have indisputable proof that their officers are guilty of excessive force, operating out of proper Police protocol within these two shootings; Two women minding their own business, driving a truck that was vaguely similar to Christopher Dormer's truck. as the linked article explains the truck was a different make and color than the last reported known  vehicle that Dormer was driving.

According to witnesses and the victims themselves, the police began shooting at the women in thier truck, seemingly out of nowhere from behind the truck, with absolutely no verbal warnings, no chance to "surrender".Ambush is the word that comes to mind, and ironically tis is the word LAPD bandied about regarding Dormers alleged shooting of two LAPD Officers, who it turns out were in fact      pursuing Dormer when they were shot. One Police officer died and the other survived.

The LAPD Police officers shot one of the women in the back and the other was ONLY BY CHANCE grazed by an LAPD bullet, causing significantly less severe injury.

On the same day in another town LAPD officers shot at a slender man driving another truck that was not the same make as Mr Dormer's.

Why the LAPD methods in Manhunt for Dormer are indefensible


Two Innocent women Shot by mistake in Manhunt for Christopher Dormer had no warning

A Psychiatrists response to " I am Adam Lanza''s mother"

The article highlighted below was written by an anonymous Psychiatrist in response to a post entitled I am Adam Lanza's Mother written shortly after the Newtown School Murders.

I wrote my own post about the "Lanza's mother" article, and the multitude of eye opening comments following the original article in "The Blue Review."

The comments were almost more important than the Post. They were very telling, serving as a representative slice of the enormity of this issue, and the far reaching ill effects that volatile "problem" teens like "Michael" have on the population.

Many comments were from damaged and angry adult siblings and other family members of  so - called "problem" kids/ teenagers, a term the writer/mom uses to describe her violent son, along with the substantially softer "special needs child."

Like the term "Mental illness" "special needs" has been misused and abused since the Newtown Murders It has become this crazily broad reference that far too many people are sweeping children and young adults with evreything from mood disorders such as Bipolarity, to Schizophrenia and its sub-types,  to Autism and Aspergers ( completely different brain syndromes) and the mos insidious Personality disorders.

I say insidious, because certain personality disorders are generally far less overt to the untrained eye  (and even the trained eye) than true mental illnesses. This is because manipulation and deception are key features of the more dangerous personality disorders.

At the same time there are a bundle of more innocuous personality disorders,such as Dependent PD Avoidance PD etc, can be more subtle.However by adulthood, the teen who has Oppositional defiant disorder, diagnosed or not, statistically will evolve into Anti Social personality disorder - .aka  a "Sociopath."

Anti Social Personality Disorder is not mental illness per se, nor is it " curable." Sociopaths also don't typically have odd and eccentric behaviors nor look like " crazy people". Our prisons are filled with sociopaths, probably because they share a disdain for authority and lack normal conscience and empathy, yet they can be educated, and  articulate; think Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer etc.

As described in my earlier post, sociopaths from middle or upper middle class families become the most dangerous criminals, due to their enabling, unwitting or not, who decry I CANT bear to see my " child" in prison, or forced" institutionalization".

The teen at the center of the "I am Adam Lanza's mother article is a perfect example of dangerous volatile adolescent with an enabling parent; Despite repeated violence, including weaponry (Knives etc), and serious threats to both his mom and her other "normal" children, his mother, Lisa long, cannot help but tell us of his " high intelligence, (common for ODD and socio-patholgy) and his articulate, sometimes charming behavior and these "special" qualities that clearly add her reluctance to have him institutionaluzed  removed from harming her other children.

The best part of the Post below is the fact that this Anonymous Psychiatrist doesn't simply lament, he proposes solutions, and asks for tangible "help" from a variety of agencies and sources that need to be involved or become more proactive if we are to put a dent in these violent occurances.

Several of these requests parallel issues that I addressed in my earlier post and I have underlined the ones that I feel are most imperative.. Number one and two on his list are clearly essential, but I would also add that on the State level lawmakers and the Courts that carry out the actual sentencing and have the power to put someone into mandatory treatment institutionalization or prison - "Man up", as he suggests and do so with haste..


A Response to I am Adam Lanz's Mother from " I am Adam Lanz's Psychiatrist.."

Over the weekend, the viral blog post “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” spoke to the complicated relationship of a mother to a potentially dangerous and mentally ill son. xoJane asked a psychiatrist to respond.

“I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza's mother. I am Dylan Klebold's and Eric Harris's mother. I am James Holmes's mother. I am Jared Loughner's mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho's mother. And these boys -- and their mothers -- need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it's easy to talk about guns. But it's time to talk about mental illness.”

These are the words that spread across the Internet written by Boise mother Liza Long describing the challenge of grappling with her exceptionally gifted -- and exceptionally aggressive -- teenage son. Long gave a voice to the complicated "risk" burden that lies on parents, doctors and community to identify these potential dangers before it’s too late.

Or as in the case of the “Dark Knight” shootings, to prevent another mother from wearily confirming over the phone after being informed her 24-year-old son could be the culprit of mass homicide: “You have the right person.”

As Long wrote incisively in her essay about her 13-year-old, “I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me."

I know what challenges she faces, because -- in the words of Long -- I am Adam Lanza’s psychiatrist. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s psychiatrist. I am James Holmes’s psychiatrist. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s psychiatrist. And it is absolutely time to talk about mental illness.

Parents like Long definitively do not cause these types of mental illnesses that morph into violence. More often than not, the desire is there for the best treatment possible. Unfortunately, my chosen field of psychiatry has a lot of limitations.

In terms of the relationship between mental illness and violence, here is the little we do know. According to APA Council on Law and Psychiatry (Access to Firearms by People With Mental Illness: Resource Document, Arlington, Va., American Psychiatric Association, 2009), "The 'absolute risk' message is that the vast majority of people with mental illness in the community are not violent. The 'relative risk' message is that people with serious mental illness are, indeed, somewhat more likely to commit violent acts than people who are not mentally ill. And the 'attributable risk' message is that violence is a societal problem caused largely by other things besides mental illness (ready availability of guns, for example)."

criteria for commitment to a hospital).

Because this boy was missed. That moment is now gone, and we as a nation are grieving with the consequences of the failure.

The only move left is foI have had patients who have believed they were “chosen” to carry out a mission or who started to speak of the devil being present in the form of human beings. But are they violent? Do they need to be locked up? At what point do I inform the authorities when no specific plans to commit violence are mentioned to me, but the words start to become more terror-inducing. “Enemies” are mentioned. “Hate” punctuates every other word. Conscience can appear strikingly absent or little, if at all. Behavior is erratic -- but does not pose a technical threat.

I have had patients that are ticking time bombs.

I know the responsibility that lies upon me. When there is a sense that a patient is near breaking. When it is missed, I spend the rest of my life second-guessing myself and wondering what I may not have seen. It happens. Too often.

It is fair to say that pretty much everyone is enraged at my profession right about now. This is what happens when the time bomb is not caught, not stopped, not prevented.

We as psychiatrists need to find a way to catch our troubled sons -- the next Adam Lanza -- in the moment when he changes from chronically dangerous (that dreaded sense of ticking time bomb) to acutely dangerous (when the violence amps up to meeting the r me to ask for help. And that’s exactly what I am doing.

1) The US Congress: Please create better laws to ensure the ticking time bomb is caught before it is too late. Make it much easier for a family to get a potentially dangerous person into mandated treatment. This means less paperwork, too. We need to support parents and mental health professionals.

2) The US Justice Department: It’s time we enacted a Health Law Court. Have doctors serve as judges and streamline legal proceedings for tough medical and psychiatric cases. Go to commongood.org for ideas on how this can be done.

3) Health Insurance Companies: Man up. My main complaint is with you. You make it so hard to keep people in the hospital when they need to be there, and it’s even harder to keep them in intensive outpatient services. Please create protocols for difficult cases and loosen the purse strings for extremely troubled individuals –- before it’s too late.

4) Network TV: Please create some exciting television that is actually educational about mental illness. Or least give us a “Gossip Girl” who takes her medication and sees her psychiatrist regularly. Less stigma, better health.

5) Drug Companies: You are always trying to ply me with coffee and doughnuts. I have trust issues with you. Don’t want anything, thanks.

6) The Hollywood PR Machine: Please find the mental health community a really attractive celebrity to get the US mental health system some money. I am glad that George Clooney and Angelina Jolie are doing so much for Africa, but can we borrow one of them please?

7) High School Students: Tell the popular kids to stop being such dicks to the odd kids or the ones they don’t understand.

8) Community Psychiatry Health Researchers: You have kick-ass and innovative ideas for how to reform the system. Could one of you put on a sequin dress and walk a red carpet please? We need to get you more money.

Me? I will keep trying to do my job. But I want to be better equipped the next time the risk appears before me. Because these young men need help. We all do.

Legislation re institutionalization of violent teens

This  article  about a shortage of child therapists in the State of Connecticut is most timely following
the post below about a mother struggling with a personality disordered teen. The boy she calls "Michael" is rapidly outgrowing her, and already poses a physical threat to  both she and her two other children at the age of fourteen..

When I read that article, I thought immediately of Joshua Komisarjevsky, the young sociopath that followed Jennifer and Michaela Petit home from a local supermarket in Cheshire with his eye on the blossoming 11 year old Michaela. Michaela - clearly a girl, not a women, she was a bit tall for her age and looked at the most thirteen or fourteen.

The entire state of Connecticut and most of the country is familiar with the crimes which ended with Komisarjevsky, the ringleader and his much less intelligent and evolved sidekick Steven Hayes, setting a strategically planned fire in attempt to destroy their own DNA left from the sexual assaults that were the motivator for the crimes. Both men as repeat felons were in the state's DNA database.

Hayes assaulted Mrs Petit hours after the break in just as she returned home from the bank; Komisarjevsky jumped on her and helped tied her up with Hayes. According to Hayes, Komisarjevsky told him to kill Jennifer Petit and encouraged him to rape her: My guess is that this is the truth.

Komisarjevsky wanted a fall guy; he even told a writer that he'd planned on killing Hayes after the crimes. At that time of Mrs Petits murder, the fire had already been planned the gasoline purchased, yet only komisarjevsky's DNA was an issue at that time, as he'd been molesting Michaela all morning and had just raped her and then had her bathe hoping to remove any internal DNA that he feared might linger through an autopsy.

Hayes had done all the dirty work, such as going out at 6 am to buy the gas to burn down the house, he hadn't raped or molested anyone at that point, he had simply ransacked the house as a common thief would. The trip to the gas station left his image on the gas station video, albeit several towns away, where police might be less likely to look for these images.

Komisarjesvky used that time that Hayes was out again to return to his main objective; molesting Michaela and take cell phone photos of his molestation's. All of this was done quietly, unbeknownst to Mrs Petit who was tied and blindfolded in another room on another floor. He needed her compliance and trust to ensure that she would in fact bring back the 10,000 he asked for from her bank when it opened at 9 am

Always the shrewed one Komisarjevsky had Hayes bring Mrs Petit to a bank several towns away where she wassn't a familiar face, and giving him more time with Michaela. Hayes, again the fall guy none to bright, was the one who could be spotted or caught if Mrs Petit decided to bolt, despite her family being held hostage by Komisarjevsky who was in communication with Hayes via cell phone.

These are all indicators that Komisarjevsky was calling the shots, and his plan all along was to blame the older much more sinister looking Hayes, whom he'd  used as back up brawn to get the house under control. He used Jennifer Petit's attractive looks as bait as she was Hayes; age, and the stunted Hayes who had mostly been with prostitutes his entire life was undoubtedly revved up by komisarjevsky's descriptions of  a house ful of attarctive that he would have access to.

Komisarjevsky who promised Mrs Petit so convincingly that her family would not be harmed if she went to the bank in the morning and extracted her 10,000 in cash, was sexually assaulting eleven year old Michaela the moment Mrs Petit left the house with Hayes. Up until that point, he had been superstitiously molesting the little girl in another part of the house, while her mother tied in another room was completely unaware. Mrs Petit even asked to see her girls prior to leaving for the bank with Hayes. Komisarjevsky had re-dressed Michaela in her pajamas after taking cell pictures which involved putting his victim into outfits. Jennifer Petit was so fooled by this sociopath that her girls were unharmed that she continued to cooperate with what was a consummate evil con artist.

Mrs Petit had only seen komisarjevsky's "nice" soft spoken side up to that point she returned from the bank. She'd been unawares of the violence that he alone had committed upon her husband whom he repeatedly hit in the head with a bat, while the head of the house lay sleeping on a sunporch visible to both men from outside. The kid who has broken into hundreds of homes for the "thrill" easily broke  a dysfunctioning lock on a basement dooe. He was upstairs in minute.

Holding a Pellet pistol that looked exactly like a 9mm gun (he'd again had Hayes buy that day at Walmart )looked like a 9mm the men dragged Mr Petit to the basement and tied him bleeding and semi-conscious to a pole, with his hands and feet zip-tied. In the end he was awakened by loud noises and a man yelling to him "don't worry it ll all be over soon"

That voice was JOSHUA komisarjevsky , he was the only one who had done all the talking to Dr Petit throughout the assault and afterward.

Jennifer Petit told the teller at the bank that the men were being " really nice"and she "believed them that they'd be "on their way" once they got the money and wouldn't hurt her family.

Those words " on their way" were spoken by Komisarjevsky the consummate liar. Remember somehow at 26 with over 40 breaking and entering arrests the bulk of which he committed only when the homeowners were in the house only served two and half years in prison before being released to a halfway house where he was free to come and go which he did.with his underage girlfriend victim.

The fact that he only broke into houses at night when other burglars avoided homeowners at all costs. should have flagged the police the court and the Parole board that this was a dangerous stalker, a sexual predator well on his evolutionary ladder to attaining what he felt was power and control over others in what was supposed to be their sacred haven their home.

He also had a history with local police of harassing and stalking young girls for years, a  cheshire detective stated that he would watch girls from trees on their property a crime once thought to be a nuisance crime along with exposing oneself has long been known as a serious offense that the criminal is testing the waters for sexual assault.

Young girls  posed no emotional threat to Komisarjevsky and thus he could more easily con and manipulate them. He had sired a child a girl with a 15 year old when he was 22. This was statutory rape and again a missed chance by the system to have komisarjevsky a registered sex offender which is exactly where he belonged. On that registry. This wasn't a 16 year old with a 15 year old as well  he continued his pursuit of underage girls thereafter;

He had a 15 year old out of state girlfriend at the time of the Petit assaults and murders. The girls parents had just moved her to Arkansas leaving Komisarjevsky angry and looking for This man was in our criminal justice system starting at 12.

Komisarjevsky was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder at 16 and his parents were told he should be  institutionalized where he would receive anti-psychotics. With deadly results his parents declined land by the time Komisarjevsky committed the Petit sexual assaults baseball assault upon the Dr William Petit Jr.

He was a full blown psychopath who has attained early release parole and primary custody of his five year old daughter, despite having an ankle tracking bracelet on his leg for a lifetime of felony's which  should have been considered violent crimes, but were stupidly viewed as nuisance crimes -To the tune of 48 arrests and 23 convictions. Meaning Connecticut's plea bargain system made half of those crime charges " disappear"  Had he been convicted for all of the crimes he actually committed komisarjevsky would have been in prison for 16 years.

As it was he was supposed to be prison for nine years according o the judges orders, and then if he caused no trouble in prison which he couldn't as he asked to be put in solitary due to being harassed by other inmates" more manipulation with his parents intervention with the DOC.undergo 6 years of special parole.

None of this happened as Connecticut's parole board was doing business as usual when giving this dangerous man early release without  the inmate actually being present called administration parole and the norm at the time and worse yet with no paperwork for the 40 some odd arrests and the details of his history including the essential information that  he'd spent a life time breaking and entering first his neighbors homes while they were eating or sleeping and then once caught moving on B and e binges in other townships where he was eventually caught again.

His case was not unusual the Connecticut Parole board which had long been operating with next to no paper records for the men and women they were setting loose upon our community's and our children.
The prosecutor's who handled the cases that traversed to the parole board refused to pay for the copying costs for any of the inmates records who were up for parole. They felt if the parole board a separate state entity, should pay.

In the meantime no one paid and the records were shipped off to Meriden to a makeshift warehouse for criminal records of dangerous criminals that meant life and death to Connecticuts citizens..

This sociopath and the long and winding path of his criminal behavior that ultimately led to the Petit family assaults and murders is a classic illustration of all that is wrong with our state;s handling of  teenagers that run afoul of the law again and again.

There must be legislation that forces the parents of underage komisarjevsky like kids to be institutionalized post haste the moment the law allows it. Many of these so called problem kids and teenagers are coddled by both the system and thier parents both of which are completely ignorant re the symptomology of a personality disorder and the fact that it is not curable or treatable and it will escalate and innocent people will be hurt maimed or killed.

Komisarjevsky gave police and his parents stories of childhood abuse. With an oppositonal defiant kid lies and manipulation are as inherent to them as breathing is to most of us. The key element to their persona is a lack of conscience and and mendacity - they will try to rationalize every anti-social act with whatever is at their disposal. However, that deceitful manipulative nature that can sometimes be wrapped in what appears intelligence, articulate and even charming, as is required for the situation.

While I am loathe to bring back the pain of these crimes that still reside in so many peoples hearts, it is a necessary evil of sorts, if we hope to change what happened with Joshua Komisarjevsky  His is a particularly glaring case of State irresponsibility, and our government must adapt and change every mistake and oversight along the way of this perfect example of a set of crimes that should have never happened.

These were not first time offenders by any stretch and the young man who planned these crimes should have been forced into institutionalization, no matter what his parents wanted, the moment he ran afoul of the law. There were arson's, stalkings, Breaking and entering's, serious larceny's, all before Komisarjevsky was 18. His parents should not have had the discretionary right to keep him at home where he was able to continue to harm others.  He was thus diagnosed when the police and the courts forced the issue very early in his criminal career, but nothing was done with that information.
Later after he set fire to a gas station for his parents were given the choice to institionalize or " move out of state". .They chose the latter.

We need laws and mandatory sentencing to ensure  that something like this never happens again.Komisarjevsky was an unsually overt case of repeat criminology that was like a ticking bomb due to the failure of many arms of Connecticut's " justice system"

Read the comments section after the link in the Post below and you will find that this country is rife with personalty disordered teenagers and young adults. The parents and other relatives decry again and again a lack of resources to turn to. We have doctors nurses surgeons traversing their way to other countries for all kinds of Pro Bono assistance such as helping surgically repair children born disfigured and haven't the resources to pay for the relatively simple surgery..

I certainly don't begrudge this wonderful program, but let's apply this same benevolence here where there is great need and a corresponding lack of resources, as a palliative measure for our victims of crime.

The Newtown Murders alone have left thousands of children and adults in need of counseling and mental health treatment: this is as,or more essential than fixing a facial disfigurement. Hundreds of thousands of peripheral victims are created every time an innocent person is murdered, especially a child.

The governor should weep for each and every one..

Re: "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother"

" I Am Adam Lanza's Mother "  is a autobiographical Web post, written by a Mother of four about life raising a teenager with a burgeoning personality disorder.

Actually, nowhere in this harrowing tale  is there any mention of this or any other formal diagnosis for her volatile teenage son; yet she shares enough information about him to render it clear to most College Psyche majors what her son's is "suffering" with.

And it's a serious...

This glaring omission of anything akin to a diagnosis, is very worrisome and would appear to be a theme consistent with thousands of other families in this country with so called "problem" kids or teenagers: One finds a huge sampling of adult siblings who were raised with destructive kids teens.

Lisa Long, the author, does not mention a father on the scene, and as such we must guess that she is a single parent,   struggling alone on the edge of a proverbial cliff with her eldest of  four, whom she dubs "Michael" for anonymity sake.

She refers to her son alternately as" troubled", "special needs", and "mentally ill" and makes the proclamation " I am Adam Lanz's mother" in her title and her first line, she reiterates this theme in the conclusion. While this certainly grabbed my attention, and many others I'm sure, it is a far cry from being correct or reasonable.

From the harrowing  life- accounts that the long shares,"Michael" has something called "Oppositional defiant disorder".which is an outcropping of "conduct disorder" the term given to younger children displaying some of the same traits.  ODD often evolves into adult Socio-pathology, although a small percentage of children and teens respond to treatment if its earnest and begins early enough. They are the exception.

Laymen bandy about the term psychopath and sociopath interchangeably, but they are somewhat different. Either way, the two diagnosis are  a far cry from Adam Lanz who according to sources had Autism -  a completely different disorder. The last thing we need is the public connecting mass violence with Autism. Lanz might very well have had other diagnosis' which has yet to be revealed.

Of course, the parent must actually bring the "troubled" teen to one mental health specialist long enough for them to make a proper diagnosis, be it inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment  In small snippets of 20 minute sessions Sociopaths and Narcissistic PD are very difficult to expose. In teenagers a history of their behavior from parents are the
A surprising number of parents do not bring their volatile ODD children into regular treatment.

Some, like the mother of "Michael",  use hospitals as a temporary strait jacket which while one step better than nothing,  serves only a a temporary intervention for each crisis with no lasting change or informed decision making regarding institutionalization the teenager to preserve her other children's mental health who are deeply affected by Michael's tyranny.

The thing that disturbs me most about the article and the barrage of comments after,from other parents with "problem children" of their own, is the fact that few discerned the difference between kids or teens with mood disorders such as bi-polar (which can be pharmacological treated (with relative success) schizophrenia, Autism or the more common personality disorders that so often wreak havoc upon the entire family unit as well as all siblings of that disordered child/ teen.

There seems an abundance of parents in our country that are lumping all of these into " Special needs" kids  These kids run a broad gamut from suffering from actual brain conditions such as Autism/ Aspergers to Bipolar mood disorder and many of the more dangerous personality disorders such as Sociopaths and Narcicisists.

The whole article would seem at once an outcry and com-plaintive wail for help: "I have a son that might wind up like Adam Lanza and there are not enough resources to "fix" him or her!".

The author relates that she is told that the only tangible way to deal with her predisposed to violent son is the criminal justice system. Where this article is a cry for help from a parents perspective.  I see society's growing plaintive wail that your son and others like him, left untreated or institutionalized, are likely going to commit violence against someone or many someones, perhaps sooner than  later. Especially teens that are already attacking the authority figure in their life - mom..

"Michael" has physically harmed his mother, repeatedly threatens her and his siblings who are both younger, and undoubtedly scarred quite deeply by their brothers unpredictability, although" sometimes charming.... anything can set him off...."  and the family is forced to " walk on eggshells around him".

This particular parent recognizes that her son might kill someone, yet she is reluctant to bring in the law and follow through, even though he is breaking the law, and wreaking havoc in what is supposed to be a safe haven for her two other children. She also does not mention institutionalization, which seems a no brainer to me, and indeed a social service agency should have already intervened on behalf of the other children in the household. Yet despite years of rage fueled attacks, regular trips to hospitals with policemen restraining "Michael" not one agency has stepped in be it in concert with the crimnal justice or not.

Authority, consequences and accountability are despised by ODD teenagers, yet so many parents of what could be an evolving sociopath will cocoon thier teenager and even their young adult sociopath, from the criminal, legal and even social consequences of their own actions. These Parents create criminals and adults who wreak havoc upon every life they touch.And these are just the emotional scars.

Some parents believe they are doing the right thing hiding the behavior  their "child" after all", or worse  try to cover up the legal financial and criminal "troubles" of their sociopath and narcissist adult children out of  fear of exposing their family's "failings". Middle and upper middle class families are more likely than poorer families to enable their destructive offspring well into the child's adulthood and their own deaths.

In this enabling and bailing out covering up propping up, these parents embolden their evolving sociopath offspring with a sense of non - accountability - ( ie' My parents will bail me out of this again - or later in life, my sister or brother.)

And while it sounded heartwarming to this writer mom that her violent son has a nice articulate charming side that will often regale others with subjects from philosophy to physics( like many ODD he has a high IQ ) ..... who cares if he has a genius IQ - if his emotional IQ is that of a 2 year old and his family and others are not safe around him?!

It is this exact coddling and enabling that makes bigger monsters out of  kids already pre-disposed to criminal behavior Yet somehow the refrain.' But he is so intelligent or artistic or speaks well.....' is heard above the we better insulate others from his volatility because its not getting better.

Anti social Personality disorder is not curable' Sociopaths hate Authority, are highly manipulative and deceitful, with no true conscience or ability to empathize as they are immersed with self. Other people are to be used abused or in the case of unflinching authority and those who see through them - avoided but even this they do with bitterness and often a sense of vengefulness.

We know that talk therapy doesn't work with sociopaths, in fact is usually forced upon them by either the criminal justice system or family members and they are re known for manipulate the therapist even feigning other mental illnesses in attempt to control the psychiatrist and the therapy..

Anti-psychotics may or may not dull the edges of a teen with op positional defiant disorder, but they are notorious for being non compliant with medications, they do not want their volatility dulled. They cannot be trusted to take those medications by the very nature of their disorder and outside of a controlled environment unless the teenager or young adult is inpatient psychiatric and even then closely supervised..

Whenever we look over our collective shoulder to see why and how most sociopath's became people that murder and/or maim, there is often an enabling parent or parents that did all the wrong things and often for selfish reasons. The enablers often produce a more serious criminal than negligent parent's as the latter wind up in the criminal justice system after running afoul of the law time and again.

If you have a child that has symptoms of oppositional defiant , conduct,  intermittent explosive -and or  PD  your first responsibility is to protect your healthy children who will not be healthy if you allow what is akin to a brewing sociopath in their midst. The community and society at large are equally important .They are all someone elses child sister brother parent.

The mother writing this story actually has a rehearsed drill for her two other children, who are to lock themselves in or out if rooms, the house or the car, (depending on the locale) any time that "Michael" begins to have a rage attack. The fact that this has happened so many times that this mother feels she has to physically remove her children from harms way, translates into"Michael" requiring segregation/ institutionalizing, period.

Because 'Michael also likes Harry Potter when he's not terrorizing and attacking  has a genius IQ however, this mom is sucked into the typical vortex of wanting to fix him because he is articulate and intelligent - and her "child" after all.

If finances and insurance are issues; as they are with this family, there are state assisted programs and hospitals. Obviously we can do more in this arena.  However many parents do not enter the realm of mental health, until authorities intervene or someone has been hurt.

After reading through every one of the comments following this piece, I was shocked by just how many so called "problem" kids and teenagers exist in this country and how far reaching their destructive behaviors are. Due to so many parents lack of firm action with those problem kids years later, the adult children that shared their lives with this volatile person make a chorus of bitterness over the pain and damage visited upon them by one problem relative often given far too much  always beginning in childhood or adolescence..

Shortly after this article was published  one appeared in the New Haven Register about the shortage of child psychiatrists in our State of Connecticut.  The daunting costs due to the supply demand would seem to be pushing the Psychiatrists to an ugly avarice provoked by the fact that they are so exclusive.

Shortage of child Psychologists Psychiatrists in Connecticut

Jane Doe No More recieves Grant from Petit Foundation For Self Defense Class

Kudos to Jane Doe No more and The Petit Family Foundation for strengthening this program!

I strongly recommend that all women and girls take a Self-defense course like this one, being offered free of charge via Jane Doe No More and a recent Grant by the Petit Family Foundation, I have taken a course that taught self defense specifically for women and girls and includes instruction on how to defend yourself in the midst of  our"fight or flight" "adrenalin dump" which was the most important part of the class for me

It is one thing to practice - defend when an instructor is simulating an attack or attempted abduction, but one must also learn to override the actual chemical rush of adrenalin ( which in a real life situation often causes the victim to freeze, go blank)  and become accustomed to defending ourselves with that surge, using it in fact, then all students of defense are equipped to fend off  and escape a predator.

                                       Petit Family Foundation Self Defense Class Gramt!

Petit Family Foundation Gives Grant to YWCA Greenwich

YWCA Greenwich, the only agency in the community licensed to treat victims of domestic violence, has received a $4,000 grant from the Petit Family Foundation for emergency shelter.

“We are very grateful to the Petit Family Foundation for this important grant. Emergency shelter is a vital component of our program to keep domestic violence victims safe,” said the YWCA’s president and CEO Adrianne Singer.

The YWCA offers a wide range of free, confidential services to victims of domestic abuse including a 24/7 hotline (203-622-0003), crisis intervention, safety planning, shelter, individual and group counseling, court advocacy and referrals. In addition, community-wide prevention and education efforts are undertaken.

The Petit Family Foundation says that it honors the memories of Cheshire residents and murder victims Jennifer Hawke-Petit, Hayley Elizabeth Petit and Michaela Rose Petit by “continuing the kindness, idealism and activism that defined their lives.” The foundation’s funds are given to foster the education of young people, especially women in the sciences, to improve the lives of those affected by chronic illness and to support efforts to protect and help those affected by violence.

http://www.greenwich-post.com/online/daily-featured/local-news/101771-ywca-gets-4000-grant-.html

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The Sandy Hook Murders; An Essay On Violent Criminals and Would be Predators

PREFACE

Adam Lanza (L) killed 27 people before turning the gun on himself in Newtown  Conn. James Holmes (R) is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58.  It happened after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colorado., and now Sandy Hook Massacre here in Connecticut.



Many people assume correctly that there surely there were signs of impending violence.

But experts say pronouncing loudly that who will be the next mass murderer is virtually impossible, partly because as commonplace as these calamities seem, they are relatively rare crimes. THEY are becoming less and less rare as copycat attention seeking persons with personality disorders and or a beef with the world, are on the increase.



Still, a combination of risk factors in troubled kids or adults including drug use and easy access to guns can increase the likelihood of violence, experts say. 


Warning; graphic descriptions of violent crime  are contained in this Post They are included  for informational purposes; the victims experience is the embodiment of all violent crime, and  within these details the reader may discover details about predators are found ways to he victims to t written with full respect for the victims and their families and loved ones.


Chasing Justice deplores the sensationalism of crime.

 Many of us have seen television series and specials that grab up "real life" crime, and sensationalize and infuse salacious quality for money and hype as opposed to informative and  preventative work.  Some of these programs, and the hosts, are as morally repulsive as the parade of criminals they purport to deplore.

It is my earnest hope that reading about the entire sequence of events and foreshadowings, often missed prior to crimes, will help to prevent the next one from happening.

There have been many, many missed opportunity's to stop some of the worst violent crimes, by family members, psychiatrists, Parole Boards, Judges. prosecutors and the ever present family, "friends" and acquaintances who unwittingly or not, become allies of the sociopaths helping to kill and or maim.

An article entitled Predicting mass shooters  in the Huffington Post was one of the first that I read that dealt with identifying those who are on the brink of committing acts of violence such as but not limited to the tragic Newton School murders.


Futilely, the article offers little insight, belying it's title and adding to the collective helplessness that most people feels about eradicating this raging epidemic of violence..


Needless to say, I disagree with criminologist James Fox, when he opines that "there are no RED FLAGS  with these crimes, only yellow - they don't become red until blood has been shed." 

This is an atypical over simplified shoulder shrugging reminiscent of  when it comes to the issue of what preventative measures can be taken The irony was thickened when I noticed that James Fox's quotes were located inches below a photo of James Homes, the Colorado theater murderer.

Mr. Holmes, authorities discovered soon after the seeming willy- nilly bloodshed, was under psychiatric treatment and had recently been turned down for inclusion into a gun club that he'd applied to. This rejection, was due to his eccentric answering machine message that put the Club president's antenna This was certainly at least a  flag of some color.


More importantly  the clearly psycho-social young man left multiple messages on his psychiatrist's voice-mail, specifically telling him that he was going to kill a bunch of people!.

That killers therapist allegedly didn't RETRIEVE any of those five messages until long after the evening of the theater murders. This was definitely a red flag.

.

In the Newton School, the killer's mother did not respond properly upon what surely were signposts regarding this young man's mental issues. She had a large gun collection in the house, and taught her son how to shoot at a gun range!

But the issue doesn't begin and end with those guns; the killer tried to procure a gun on his own and decided not to wait for the background check.  He was too eager to execute people..


Guns are a clearly too accessible, as well ammunition which is designed to destroy bodies such as the hollow point but this is not the black and white problem/solution that many believe it is.


Video games desensitizing especially unstable youth to massacre strangers and win points for agility and style in how they murder; one video instructs the player to sweep out the victims legs first then approach and shoot them close range in the face.



This game and others like it certainly do not need to exist. Nor so computer websites such as Gore and Liveleak where real rape and murders are shown on video to anyone who claims they are 18. This is creating a generation of desensitized human beings who after watching be-headings and other murders, can grow so immune to human suffering that they are forever changed, callous and even create anti-social personality disorder of a new breed. Much like the army creates it's most deadly of soldiers trained to hunt and execute.



Some of these murderers would have found another way to kill, as we saw when Joseph Duncan killed an entire family including a large man, who himself was a hunter, ambushing the couple sleeping on a couch. He made one tie the other and tied the others himself with zip-ties including a 13 year old Slade Groene . Duncan then murdered each one with a hammer blows to their heads despite having a shotgun that he'd procured from the man's own collection on a rack.




The Newtown school murders as close to home as they are are tragically no longer a rarity!
 It is one terrible mass murder in an ever augmenting collection of similar crimes that all have one thing in common: Quite likely, the crimes could have been prevented if  people involved with the killer's life, took action along the steps along the path to becoming a murderer.



These crimes happen after months weeks or years of escalating symptoms of  mental illness with anger/rage aimed at "society" or an entity such as a school (ie the Columbine School Massacre) the Groene family murders,( ie Joseph Duncan's family and "friends" that enabled  his earlier crimes against children as he blogged about the persecuted life of a registered sex offender)



Another perfect example The Petit family crimes, where there were so many enabling people and government agencies the list is unbelievably long. Ringleader, J  Komisarjevsky's parent's enabled the Petit home invasion murders, first with years of bailing out their son who refused to stop committing  breaking and entering which they saw as innocuous apparently despite the fact that the owners were home making these crimes more akin to stalking and resembled a sexual predator Heaps of stolen goods were found in an ex girlfriends basement where they sat unsold and unused  They were incidental and komisarjevsky had been caught over 40 times plenty enough for the various agency's of the justice system to make certain he stayed locked up after it was clear he was escalating.



Komisarjevsky's sentencing hearing lasted weeks and was a parade of people who basically attested to how easy it was to see this kids manipulative nature as he stalked girls from trees looking into bedroom windows, painting hate kill murder etc on his bedroom wall and refusing too abide by any of his parents house rules.


Yet the Komisarjevksys might as well have killed all three Petit family members themselves and they did in effect ; by giving their 26 year old life long felon son; ie their perpetual bailing him out of prison- jails programs he was expelled from for stealing, arson peeping tom-ism and more.


That family enabling was very much akin to the frustrating Natalie Holloway murder in Aruba by Joran Von der Sloot. That was a case of an upper middle class father who by all accounts, was more of a pal than a father, weak ineffectual parent his sociopath son Joran , he was a former judge of considerable stature in Aruba.



And tragically for Joran Von der Sloot's next victim after Natalee Holloway,  a young teenager in Peru, the elder Von der sloot a judge, became a dogged enabler of ultimately two murders. 


The now deceased Senior Von der sloot robbed Beth Holloway and her husband of a daughter, and caused another parent the terrible lack of closure of not knowing where your daughters body is and the truth of what happened to her. Joran was detained jailed but never arrested nor prosecuted for the murder of Natalee. When he was caught dead to rites murdering another young women in a Peruvian hotel,  we were heartbroken angry but not surprised.



Von der Sloots mother finally told the press she gave up on Joran after the Peruvian conviction but still tried to maintain his innocence insofar as his taped confession of killing Natalee Holloway, proffering that the stress of being accused of that assumed homicide is partially what drove her son to kill "that girl in Peru"



In Joshua Komisarjevsky's case, his parents had a tremendous role in aiding and abetting their criminally  helped their son to obtain custody of his 5 year old daughter just weeks after being given early parole for a 9 year sentence for convictions totally 23 felonies. Actual sentence just under three total years and the last leg of said sentence was spent in a Hartford halfway house where Komisarjevsky was free to come and go and in fact was committing voluntary statutory rape with a 15 year old girl whose father was a minister. Komisarjevsky took cellphone pictures of the girl and he having sex in the Manchester mall bathroom, all whilst he was still under the Ct Dept of corrections possession.



Komisarjevsky's parents babysat his child, rather than demanding that he stay home and serve his parental responsibility, as well as act upon what they admitted was a deep suspicion that he was going out to btrak into homes the night he murdered the Petit girls she told Police after the crimes he always wore heavy dark hoodies to rob and it was the heat of July.


 Both father and mother were clearly not in denial about what their son was up to but they still allowed and enabled it completely right up until July 22 2007 as he left their home 3 days after his ankle tracking device was removed, informing them that he was" meeting a friend about a job in a bar at 9 pm."



Of course, The criminal justice system specifically the Parole board and early release programs were partners in these terrible murders that included an 11 year old child, however again intervention by family.



Mrs Komisarjevsky calling the Cheshire police and telling them that her son had left " suspiciously on what was surely a break in"  as was his style dressed in black Hooded sweatshirt in late July. Car description and other pertinent information given to the police would have surely led them to the bar where they met prior to the rapes and murders!



One step better would have been to call the Cheshire Police department the evening before the Petit murders while the two men were committing practice runs for their "ultimate" home invasion which revolved around kidnapping and rape with robbery as an aside a bonus. Komisarjevsky's parents watched as his criminal habits and behavior resumed the very day his ankle tracker came off - while they babysat his child fed and housed him, a parolee 26 years old.


Rape which is really about control was surely a common interest the two men lit upon, both sociopaths in their own rite Komisarjevsky clearly the more refined evil leader.



That night Komisarjevsky and Hayes broke into two other homes in Cheshire both has multiple occupants including children sleeping upstairs just feet away. In one house a knife was left stuck into a butcher block, in the other a photo of the attractive woman who slept upstairs with her husband was taken.



Intervention by the Connecticut Parole board all the way to Komisarjevsky's parents would have saved four lives and Dr William Petit would not have suffered traumatic brain injury and the loss of his family had just one of these enablers, nay - co conspirators -  acted responsibly.  The same can be said for the Groene family murders and child abductions.



From his blog to the doctor who applied to be Duncan  guardian for the parole board - which they declined as he pronounced he has children of his own in the house where Duncan would be living. The Doctor shared with the Parole board that he was bi sexual and Duncan had been convicted of homosexual rape of a 14 year old! Undeterred this doctor a pediatrician no less, continued to financially help Joseph Duncan for years as Duncan traversed the country killing and raping children, some of which he videoed such as poor little Dylan Groene who he ultimately shot with shotgun and then as the boy begged him not to he shot him in the head telling his  little sister Shasta who watched in horror that Dylan was" too far gone and had to be " finished off for his own good"



Duncan later admitted at the trial lying to Shasta at the time when he told her the first shot was accidental and had happened while he was cleaning he shotgun. He stated that he needed Shasta's complacency and even pretended to cry when he first shot this beautiful 9 year old child.


Everyone from the doctor to the businessman who bailed him out from yet another attempted abduction of two boys in a playground, to the judge who gave such a low bail amount to a convicted aggravated child rapist registered sex offender - each was an accessory to his murders of Slade and Dylan Groene and Anthony Martinez another child in California that Groene now has been charges with his fingerprints on the duct tape used to bind the abducted boy whose head he smashed in with a rock after assaulting him for days in a remote location.



The Newtown Sandy Hook Murders have less information available and the murderer appears a totally different breed  from the organized intelligent evil of Joseph Duncan and Joshua Komisarjevsky, However I  stress that all of these murderers had parental and friendship"  enabling them in their criminal life and/ or absentee parenting as in the Columbine Massacre, all highly contributory factors in all of these violent crimes against  children as their preferred prey.



Clearly a more attuned collective awareness about what to look for in such persons long before they commit crimes such as the school massacre, the Colorado theater shootings, the Newtown murders and the Petit and Groene murders,  is essential if we hope to wage out own war against this violence.



James Holmes's therapist didn't retrieve for days the slew of desperate messages left by the man who professed "he was going to kill a bunch of people". The embarrassed therapist claimed he didn't check his messages for days but hadn't seen his client as capable or heading towards such violence.


Psychiatrists clearly are not going to save our country from violence if this is the norm. voice-mail and the many individual murders that seemingly came from nowhere according to friends neighbors etc of the people who rape murder and desecrate.



These questions do not apply solely to the growing epidemic of  mass murders, shootings, bombs ( in the case of Columbine) These same issues of awareness and prevention apply to all violent crime and the predators who commit them; domestic violence to familial murder, sexual assault, child assault and abduction and dating violence.