Kimberly Cates Machete Slaying Causes Uproar in Small New Hampshire Town

October 22, 2009

All is not baseball and apple pie lately in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire.  The residents of this small, quaint New England town of about 2,000 people are in an uproar over the recent random attack of nurse Kimberly Cates, 42, and her 11-year-old daughter, Jaime, in an unprovoked incident believed to have been carried out sometime prior to 4 a.m. on Sunday, October 4, 2009.

The plan to rob a home at random was purportedly hatched the night before when a group of four teenagers got together at the home of William Marks, 18, one of the alleged planners.  The other three teens included Steven Spader, 17, Christopher Gribble, 19, and Quinn Glover, 17.  One of the teens, Gribble, described by friends and acquaintances as a home-schooled Mormon with aspirations to do missionary work, apparently told friends that he saw himself as a "destroying angel."  He also allegedly told a friend that he hated his father and wanted to kill him, and once told someone that the most difficult of the Ten Commandments to follow was "Thou shalt not kill."

"He comes out and says the hardest commandment to keep is murder," said the friend.  "You just don't want to think that your friend could ever do something like that.  They say things about killing someone and you don't know they are going to do it.  You just brush it off and hope he's going to get help.  Really, we should have been calling the police."

The plan, according to prosecutors, was to kill anyone who was at home at the time of the invasion.  After the plan had been set, Spader allegedly drove the other three teenagers to Cates' neighborhood and the group chose Cates' home because it was on an isolated road.  Cates' husband, David, was out of town on business.

Spader has been accused of cutting Cates’ head, torso, arms and legs with a machete while she was in bed, and Gribble has been accused of stabbing her with a knife.  Spader and Gribble were also accused of attacking Cates' daughter, Jaime, by slicing her throat open.  After allegedly taking valuables from the residence, Spader acted as the getaway driver.  Prosecutors have implied that Spader may have been the group's ringleader.

After the four teenagers left the home, Jaime Cates was able to call 911 for help.  Thankfully, she survived the attack and was being treated at a Boston, Massachusetts hospital.

Later that same Sunday morning, Spader and Gribble walked into a store at the Pheasant Lane Mall, both seen smiling and calm, where they allegedly sold gold necklaces and chains believed stolen during the robbery of Cates' home.  Gribble provided his name and address to the store's clerk, which undoubtedly assisted police in identifying the suspects in the Cates' case so quickly.  All four of the suspects were arrested the next day, and made brief court appearances on Tuesday, October 6.  None of them entered pleas at that time.  Authorities have released very few details about the case, and have sealed the affidavits that support the charges.

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Murder Campaign Driving Gay Men Out Of Iraq

October 09, 2009

Although it is not common knowledge to the average reader, Iraq is, and has been for a very long time, an extremely homophobic society.  Gay men who live there with their sexual orientation do so at great risk, and are in near constant fear of being tortured or murdered because of their sexual preference.

Historically, the idea of making or allowing their same-sex preference to be publicly known has typically been out of the question, and still is.  But in the past year or so, things have gotten much worse for outing gay men in Iraq, regardless of whether the disclosure was of their own doing or otherwise.  There has been a marked increase in media condemnation of gays, in which conservative Iraqis commonly refer to gay men as the third sex, and they are now being routinely condemned in mosques.  The growing problem, however, goes far beyond mere condemnation for what many homophobes there call unnatural sexual intercourse.  An unparalleled campaign of organized murder seems to have taken hold there, and is not showing any signs of diminishing according to a recent report put out by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Although murders of gay men have occurred in Iraq in the past, now they are being gunned down in the streets by a variety of militia, mercenaries, or other armed soldier types, and videos are being made of the murders which are then circulated widely throughout the country via mobile phones and other methods.  In the past, such murders did not include the making of videos, and people typically did not talk about them.  Now, the murderous campaign is intended to literally put the fear of death into gay men, and it has been very successful in that regard.

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Mystery in Kentucky: The Death of William Sparkman

September 28, 2009

William E. Sparkman, Jr., 51, affectionately known as "sparky" by some, of London, Kentucky, was found dead at about 6:30 p.m. in a remote area of the Daniel Boone National Forest, not far from a cemetery in southern Clay County on Saturday, September 12, 2009.  He reportedly had been hanged, and had "fed" written onto his chest with a felt pen.  The single father worked two jobs—one as a substitute teacher in the Laurel County school system, and also as a field representative for the U.S. Census Bureau.  He was also a Boy Scout leader.  The area where his body was discovered was described by Clay County Deputy Sheriff Gary Harris as "sparsely populated," and is known to have ongoing drug activity such as methamphetamine labs and outdoor marijuana growing operations.  The police at this time, however, are reporting that they have not yet found any links to Sparkman's death and the drug activity.

Although police have not yet confirmed many of the details surrounding Sparkman's death, his body was purportedly discovered by a man, his wife, and daughter who had paid a visit to the nearby cemetery.  Although his body was hanging from a tree, his feet touched the ground.  According to one of the witnesses, Sparkman's body was nude and his hands and feet were reportedly bound with duct tape.

"The only thing he had on was a pair of socks," the witness said.  "And they had duct-taped his hands, and his wrists.  He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.  He was murdered.  There's no doubt….they even had duct tape around his neck…they had…his identification tag on his neck…duct-taped to the side of his neck on the right side, almost on his right shoulder."

His body was approximately 50 yards from a 2003 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck.  The police were not yet saying who the truck belonged to, or whether it was even Sparkman's.

The question on the minds of his family and those who knew him, as well as that of detectives investigating his death, is:  Who would want to kill a middle-aged census-taker and teacher and scrawl "fed" on his chest?  Was the killer or killers trying to send some type of message?  If so, what was it?  Stay out of that area?

One of Sparkman's co-workers at Johnson Elementary School, a retired state trooper, had warned Sparkman to use caution "when you go over to eastern Kentucky to do your census work." His co-worker had purportedly told him that some of the people residing in that area may not understand that his business there was to simply collect statistics.

At this point, the circumstances of Sparkman's death remain a true mystery.  Sparkman's body has been sent to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy, according to Clay County Coroner James Trosper, which will hopefully shed more light on the circumstances surrounding his bizarre death and will perhaps be able to officially determine the cause of his death.  Preliminary reports, however, said that he likely died from asphyxiation.

Kentucky State Trooper Don Trosper said that even though it was obvious that Sparkman's death was not a result of natural causes, investigators were not rushing to judgment and were consider all possibilities.

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