Defense Intelligence Agency

The mug says “Defense Intelligence Agency,” and it’s where I started my career. The Agency, that is, not the mug. Starting your career in a mug would be really hard, unless you’re the size of a naked mole rat; but that is a subject for a different day. We called it DIA. 

The DIA is the Agency that, more or less, coordinates the functions of all of the military and military-oriented intelligence activities. They try to herd the cats that are running hither and thither on missions assigned by the Army, Navy, and Air Force; and they also try to coordinate what all of those cats are doing with the CIA, NSA, and various other intelligence agencies (the United States has around a dozen or so). This is obviously something that should be done. It is also obvious that it is essentially impossible. At least, it was impossible back in the pre-9/11 days. 

None of that mattered to me, of course. As the lowest of the low (I entered the Army as a Private First Class), such overarching, strategic thinking wasn’t in my job description. I also wasn’t capable of it. It was a job. It got me a Top Secret security clearance, and some experience doing something. When I got back to Huntsville, that clearance and that experience got me a job that eventually landed me where I am now as a senior engineer. 

I’ve always been as vague as possible when discussing my time in intelligence, and I’m not going to break that tradition here; but I will tell you what my jobs were. I started my career at Fort Hood, Texas, as an Army Signal Intelligence analyst and Russian linguist. In addition to tactical missions, I translated and analyzed information that was intercepted by somebody who had antennas in Berlin. After I returned to Huntsville, I was part of the 20th Special Forces group, and I did whatever they told me to do. They were very excited to have a trained Russian linguist as part of the team, and I was glad to be part of a Special Forces unit. 

An interesting historical point: the general in charge of my Army organization was a guy named Colin Powell. He later made something of a name for himself. 

Monterey, CA

If you opened the door to our little apartment in Monterey, you could barely hear the surf pounding on the rocks, and could just make out the sea lions barking their contentment as they laid on the breakwater in front of the pier. I say “open the door” because opening one of the two windows in the ancient fourplex would likely have caused permanent damage to that pile of sticks that we called home for nine months. The walls were so thin that you didn’t have to open anything to hear our neighbor calling Bogey the cat to come in for the night; but, if you did slip out that open front door, and if you stood on your tiptoes in just the right spot on the seashell-covered driveway, you could see a tiny sliver of Monterey Bay where the sea otters played their days away. 

The miserable pile of sticks only lasted 9 months because, for reasons known only to my geriatric, dementia-ridden landlord, we could only get a 9-month lease, in spite of being assigned to Monterey for a year. So, 3/4 of the way through my Russian course, we had to find new digs.We were extremely blessed to be able to live in a 2-room gardener’s cottage on the grounds of a big house owned by some rich guy. The bedroom was big enough; but the kitchen/“living room” was so small that we had to sit on the bamboo love seat and eat on TV trays every night. When we were eating, no one could fit between the TV trays and the television. That was fine with us, of course. We didn’t need to walk around while we were eating, because we were sitting down. 

It was wonderful. I was a Spec.4 in the Army, and Sandra worked at Carl’s Jr., so we lived on practically nothing; but we had each other, we had sea lions and otters, and we had a year to learn about life and to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. 

So what did we do with the year? A lot. The Army had me doing 7 hours a day of classroom work on Russian, and then 2 hours or so of homework at night. The weekends were free, but we had to do laundry. For months, we had to spend our free time on Saturday lugging our dirty clothes to a laundromat and sitting there while it washed and dried. We thought we had died and gone to heaven when we bought an apartment-sized washer that we could hook up to the faucet in the kitchen sink. We could wash clothes anytime we wanted! It was glorious!

Sandra worked at Carl’s Jr. until she got a part-time job at the Naval Postgraduate School teaching a Mother’s Morning Out-like class, which she loved. And the weekends / holidays were epic! We drove Highway 1. We went to Big Sur. We went to San Francisco. We went to Yosemite National Park. We went to Disneyland. We went to Marineland (which is now closed). We spent days watching the sea lions on the breakwater and the otters playing in the bay. We went to Carmel (which is the next town over from Monterey), where they had a big sandcastle-building contest on one of our first weekends there. Carmel was a great place to go for local color because some insanely-rich people live there. Sandra took a French class, and the end-of-class party was where the movie stars live. So we can say that we’ve been to a party on 17-Mile Drive … although in truth, the house the party was in was about 1500 square feet, and nothing to brag about; but still. 

Speaking of Carmel, we were there when Clint Eastwood ran for mayor. He represented the rich business owners against the old-money rich people who didn’t want any change. We thought this was pretty cool, so we decided to watch the debate on the local TV channel. I mean, how often do you get the chance to see an A-list Hollywood star debating whether city ordinances should prohibit ice cream cones being sold on the sidewalks? We tuned in and watched Clint debate the establishment candidate. There was one other candidate - an old hippy who represented “The Party Of The Trees”. He had clearly spent most of his life stoned out of his mind; but I liked him because his answers were always consistent with his platform. The entire platform, as far as I could make out, was to be nice to the trees. Don’t cut down any trees. It was the most entertaining political debate ever.

One of the most important things we did while we were there was to get Buster. Sandra wanted a cat, so we went down to the local pet store, and there he was. He was a rescue, and the store didn’t charge for rescues, so we bought all of the stuff he needed from them and took him home. We talked about what to name him on the way to our little gardener’s cottage, but didn’t come up with anything. When we got there, we realized that we had forgotten to buy something, so I went to the store. When I came home, Sandra had named him - and Buster he was from then on. 

The single most important thing we did while in Monterey was to get pregnant with Christina. Specifically, Sandra got pregnant with Christina within the last week that we were there. When we left Monterey and started the very, very, very long drive to San Angelo, TX, Sandra was uncharacteristically sick to her stomach. We put it down to all the hullaballoo of packing and clearing; but it turned out later to be Christina! That, however, is a story for another day. 

I didn’t buy a coffee mug that says “Monterey”, but I don’t need a coffee mug to remember moving to the other end of the continent with Sandra - who had married me a year prior without ever suspecting that I was going to lead her on a crazed, magic carpet ride. An unreasoning sense of freedom and the firm belief that the world will turn your way are the province of the very young and the very foolish. I was both, and I didn’t care. I had my sweetie. I had my wits, and I had the confidence of a fool. The world was wide open in front of me, and I was on a roll. 

Elena Viktorovna (KGB, Part 2)

Elena Viktorovna Petrenko was 72 years old, but she didn’t look a day over 83. She looked like everyone’s grandmother: white-haired, plump, and cheerful. If you were young and inexperienced, the temptation to underestimate her at your first meeting would be overwhelming. 

I think the first words I ever heard her speak were, “I am coming to America in 1946, and I am becoming citizen in 1954. So I am longer American than any of you.” And she was a real American. She loved America and its mission to protect freedom in a way that people who have never been oppressed can never understand. 

Her story came in bits and pieces over the year we spent together. So here, as far as I can work it out and remember it 30 years later, is her story. 

Her family was from Krasnodar, although it was named Ekaterinodar when she was born a few years before the Revolution. She was the granddaughter (or great-granddaughter) of a man who had a problem. He had won the equivalent of a knighthood fighting in Russia’s wars of southern expansion. That was great, except that it disqualified him from marrying the woman he loved because she was a commoner. He realized that he couldn’t live without her, so he transferred the title of nobility to her. Then he went back to the wars and won another knighthood so that they could marry. He must have been quite a man, and she must have been quite a woman. 

Of course, that’s where the trouble started. His outlandish act of love made the family some sort of minor nobility, which went over very badly with the Bolsheviks. They survived the Revolution okay, and didn’t even do too badly through the Red Terror (if only having a few family members murdered can be considered “not too badly”). However, during the ‘30s, Stalin’s NKVD (the sons of the Cheka and the fathers of the KGB) massacred her family. Not all at once, but by ones and twos - which was the way it was done. Her sister was executed for decorating a portrait of Stalin improperly. I never did understand the excuse for the execution of her mother. I just remember that Elena Viktorovna’s story about her mother’s arrest and imprisonment was my first clue to how fearless she was. 

Her mother had been arrested and was being held by the NKVD, so Elena Viktorovna marched herself right down to NKVD headquarters in Krasnodar to see her. During the visit, she lit into the commander, demanding any kind of evidence of any wrongdoing. She harangued him until her mother said, “Elena, there is nothing you can do. You need to go home.” It takes a special kind of gumption to tell off the NKVD. In prison. Where a lot of your family was murdered. It was the last time she ever saw her mother.

During the war, the Krasnodar side of the family heard that the Kharkov side of the family had food. Since it was walk or die, they walked the 470 miles to Kharkov, and were strafed by the Luftwaffe en route. She said, “The bullets went pft! pft! pft! Right into the ground. It was just like in a movie.” As a result, they were in Kharkov when the Nazis entered the city. They had never been so happy to see anyone! Finally! Here were the Germans, who were going to free them from the repressive totalitarianism of Stalin! “We met the Germans with bread and salt,” she remembered. “And it was great until the SS showed up. Someone had killed a German soldier in the courtyard of an apartment block, so the Germans killed everyone who lived in the apartments. It became obvious that Hitler was just like Stalin; but at least Stalin spoke Russian, so we supported Stalin.” 

Not that their support mattered one way or another, of course. They were tiny bits of refuse floating on a giant wave of history. It was in Kharkov that I lost the story of her family because she and her husband were put on separate trains and shipped to Germany to work as slave laborers in one of the war factories. She remembered being marched to work while the German schoolchildren screamed at them. “Russian pigs! Russian pigs!” She didn’t say much about what she did there. One assumes that she survived. 

She and her husband lost contact with each other for the duration of the war, since being a slave means that no one cares where your family is or what happened to them. Somehow, they found each other after the war, and the only happy part of this tale is that they were both in the American zone. Since all prisoners of war were considered traitors by Stalin, that wouldn’t normally have stopped them from being deported back to the Soviet Union and imprisoned or executed for collaborating with the Nazis; but she was a medical doctor, and her husband was a scientist or an engineer, so they qualified to emigrate to the United States under a special program. They landed in Chicago for awhile, and eventually made their way to Anaheim, California. They owned a house and a small tract of land with orange groves on it, until it was bought by a guy named Disney because he had some daft idea to build an amusement park. 

The KGB (Part 1)

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti
(Committee of State Security)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” - A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The Cold War is like 9/11. You had to live through it if you want to know how passionately we misunderstood it. It was like A Tale of Two Cities. America was at its best. America was at its worst. We were holding back Communism - a menace more deadly than Nazism, with a stated aim of world revolution. We were conducting witch hunts for the “Communist under every rock” - trampling everything we believed in while doing it. I could go on; but I would be supported by half the people who lived through it, and damned for a liar by the other half. I’ve already said enough to incite violence at some college campuses.  

Most of this isn’t related to the fact that I joined the Army after I graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1985. With a shiny new degree in English Literature that had been intended to get me into seminary, but was not likely to get me into anything else, I had some figuring to do. I had been married about a year, and needed to work somewhere other than the convenience store if I was going to support a wife. Seminary, I had decided, was for people who were much more certain about going into the ministry than I was. I knew I was going to need some time and space to think about my decision, and I was going to need money to pay for whatever schooling I needed to get the next degree - the hopefully employable one. 

So I joined the Army. They were willing to give me a reasonable paycheck, a signing bonus, Russian language training, and the GI College Bill in exchange for four years of my life. That sounded like just the ticket! I would have time to think things over, and I would have the next school paid for. It was just what I needed. 

I probably should have told Sandra first; but she was a good sport about it, as she has been about all my insanities.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up working in military intelligence with a Top Secret security clearance and a Russian language qualifier on my title: I needed a job and some space. A year in Monterey, California learning Russian did me no end of good. Working with the Soviet defectors and refugees gave me a clear idea of who we were dealing with. They all had stories, and none of them were good. Next time, I’ll tell one - the story of Elena Viktorovna Petrenko, my teacher. She was the sweetest, kindest grandmother you could ever meet. You would never guess that she had survived war, deportation, slavery, and genocide.

The Coffee Cups

Lining the top of the cabinets in my kitchen; or, rather, in Sandra’s kitchen, are dozens of coffee cups. There are some nice ones, some very cheap ones, one or two historic cups, and many pieces of tourist trap bait. They represent cities, countries, companies, geographic features, and government agencies. They are nothing to anyone except me; but they tell the story of my life, so I won’t give them up. Thankfully, though, she has never complained about them. 

Sometime after I left the Army, I decided that I would get a coffee cup whenever I worked at a company, or took a trip. That would be my keepsake and would help me remember that job, that business trip, that mission trip, or that vacation. I thought that a physical reminder would keep the memories in my brain, so I always bought a cup, was given one, or (in one case) retrieved it from the garbage can. 

Like life, of course, the collection strayed from purity. There’s a shot glass from Moscow, a beer stein from Vienna, a thermos from Kwajalein, a bomblet from a missile, a badge from a missile range, and a piece of an artillery shell from an explosives test. Because I was very fortunate, my experiences were too broad to fit into my plans; but, for the most part, the collection is coffee cups. The tops of my kitchen cabinets have long since been overwhelmed by the cups my life has created, much like the memories have overwhelmed my brain’s ability to hold them; so I am reduced to tucking them into cabinets or into a closet. Occasionally, I’ll see one that I had forgotten about and the memories will roar through my eyes, forcing themselves in on me as if I was still there in that moment. Sometimes I’ll see one and will stare blankly at it for awhile, hoping to remember where it’s from or why I spent my time on it.  Thirty years may not be long to live; but it’s a long time to collect coffee cups, and even my cup-assisted memory is starting to have holes in it. Before the holes grow any wider or deeper, I want to offer you the stories that the cups have to tell. Their stories are important and trivial. They are banal and original. Like the life they represent, they are whatever they are; but the stories belong to the cups and, when you look at all of them, they are my life. 

For some time to come, the blog will consist of a picture of a coffee cup and a story that goes with it. I was going to say “the story that goes with it”; but each cup is a window into a part of my life with a million stories that can never be told with the few words and years that we have at our disposal, so one story per cup will have to do. 

Andrew Pakhomov, Ph.D.

Some Murderers I Have Known

Andrew Pakhomov, Ph.D.

There’s no story here. I really didn’t know this guy; but Andrew Pakhomov was a UAH physics professor (department chair, I think) and I had a lab or two with him several years before the murder. I only include his story because some of you are wondering who the fourth murderer is - and also because this story is so incredibly lurid. 

In late May of 2006, Dr. Andrew Pakhomov murdered his wife, Elena Zakin, and threw her body in the Tennessee River. This case has everything: domestic violence, infidelity, a successful murder, and a botched coverup. It’s such a titillating story that Investigation Discovery used it in “Betrayed”, one of their true crime shows.  The episode is “Blinded By Betrayal”. So, if you’re the sort of person who obsessively watches murder documentaries (Meagan), here’s the link:

https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/betrayed/full-episodes/blinded-by-betrayal 

If you’re not the sort of person who watches murder documentaries; or, more likely, you can’t get access to the site because you don’t have the right internet service, here are a couple of links that will let you read the dishy details. 

https://www.inquisitr.com/3546019/yelena-zakin-andrew-pakhomov-ids-betrayed-missing-wife-found-dead-in-tennessee-river-killed-by-physics-professor/ 

http://www.decaturdaily.com/news/local/pakhomov-s-mistress-testifies/article_3275bca2-c15e-5501-9958-5a45583aed0d.html 

Aaaand here’s the guilty verdict:

http://www.waff.com/story/10949009/jury-hands-down-guilty-verdict-in-pakhomov-trial 

In my defense, he didn’t seem like a raving lunatic at the time. 

Also, I’m not sure why a physics professor can’t figure out how much weight you have to attach to a body to keep it from floating. Those of you who actually critique murders are wondering that, I'm sure. 

Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

Some Murderers I Have Known

Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

(WARNING: This post is a discussion of a visit to death row. If that’s likely to keep you from sleeping, you should go read Calvin and Hobbes or Pearls Before Swine and wait for next week’s post.)

After Steve and I had corresponded for awhile, I went to see him. His mother needed a ride, and Steve thought I’d be okay to meet. I’m not sure when this was. He was executed May 8, 1998, so it must have been before that; but not too much before. I’m sorry I don’t have a really coherent narrative this week; but the visit was just about 20 years ago, so I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to remember most of what happened. Let me just jot down some of the memories that jump into my dreams from time to time. 

When we signed in with the guards, our belongings were inspected and we were checked for contraband. This didn’t make as much of an impression on me as it would have a normal human since I’ve been wandering in and out of secure buildings my entire professional life; but I could tell that a lot of the other people were feeling very put-upon by the process.

After I got there, I felt terrible for going. Steve had recently gotten the word that he would be transferred to Atmore for execution. I realized, too late, that every minute I spent with Steve was a precious minute stolen from his mother; and she had a very short time left to talk to her son. Strangely enough, that’s not how she viewed it. She was delighted that her son had a friend his own age who cared about him enough to visit him in prison. She encouraged us to spend as much time together as possible. I still felt bad, though. 

While I was there, I was really curious about how normal all the murderers looked. I expected them to be a particularly rough bunch of men; but the ones I saw weren’t. If they hadn’t been wearing prison clothes, none of them would have looked out of place at a hockey game on Saturday night or in church on Sunday morning. The visiting area was a cafeteria about the size of a basketball court. There were ladies behind the counter who would sell them food if their families were willing to buy it. Steve’s mother bought some candy bars and a coke for him, and he was careful to thank the ladies for taking care of him. It was exactly like a normal interaction in a normal lunchroom, except that he went on to tell them goodbye since he was on his way to be executed “down south” and wouldn’t see them again.

After he got his food, we sat together in a patch of sun and he raised his face to catch all of the sunlight that he could. He paused and luxuriated in the light that had so recently come from the free air outside the prison. Undoubtedly, sunlight was not a frequent visitor to his cell in the depths of the building. After a few moments he lowered  his face, looked at me, and continued with the visit as if nothing had happened.

I was struck by how digital his thinking was. Things were yes or no, right or wrong, black or white. There was no middle, and no gray. Death row doesn’t grant a man very many luxuries, but the opportunity not to have to deal with the subtleties of life was one of them. In all of his communications and in all of his thinking, he was driven to one extreme or the other. He had only a short time to make his soul right with God, make peace with others, and settle his affairs. Time was not on his side, and he had no patience with half measures. 

Unless he was a great actor, his conversion to Christianity was real. He talked at length, and with obvious knowledge, about the Lord and his hope of salvation. He apparently spent a great deal of time in his cell studying the Bible and talking to the prison chaplain. He was not worried about dying. For him, death was immeasurably preferable to living another forty or fifty years with no hope of being free. His life was a constant agony, and he wanted to be free from the pain one way or another. He wanted to either be with the Lord, or to have the hope of one day being a free man in society; but he could not deal with the dreaded Life Without Parole. He was worried about his mother and the rest of his family. He was afraid that his death would kill his mother, that the stigma of being related to an executed murderer would follow his family, and that they would all wrestle with guilt that it was somehow their fault. For himself, he had not one little concern. He was happy and upbeat the entire time I spoke with him. 

Steven Thompson, Part 2, How I Got Involved

Some Murderers I Have Known

Steven Thompson, Part 2 - How I Got Involved

So, one might reasonably ask, how did I get involved with such an infamous murderer? Or, indeed, with any murderer at all?

I blame my sister. 

Back in the ‘90s, my family attended Whitesburg Baptist Church here in Huntsville, AL. One day, a lady named Inez Thompson gave a testimony in church that moved me deeply. She and her family were living under the shadow cast by her brother’s crime and his sentence of death. I was so moved that I looked up her address in the church phone book and wrote her a note. 

Lo and behold, she worked with my sister Cathy. (Those of you who are familiar with my inability to remember names will not be surprised to learn that I was supposed to have known that already.) Cathy and I talked about it, then Inez and I talked about it. Inez said that he had converted to Christianity in jail, and had turned around his attitudes toward life and the Lord, so I wrote Steven a few letters to encourage him in prison.

He actually wrote me back, which he later told me was very unusual. There are apparently a lot of curiosity-seekers who try to create relationships with death row inmates, and he’d have thrown my letters away if I hadn’t known his sister. As it was, he answered them. 

After a few letters back and forth, we decided I would visit him in prison. His mother was due for a visit, and needed a ride to Bessemer where the prison was. So I agreed to take her down for a visit. 

I’ll get to the visit next time. This time, I’ll just reproduce his first letter to me, dated 16 September 1997. He was executed May 8, 1998, so this was about 8 months before the execution.

I was going to reflect on the letter a bit, but I’ll just let Steve speak for himself. 

“Jack, 

I received your letter last week and like yourself I’m a procrastinator but normally only when it comes to writing which I deplore. You’d think that after 14 years of incarceration with mail as my main source of communication that I’d have a better relationship with pen and paper but I don’t writing is still not my forte. 

I enjoyed reading your letter and I appreciate your taking the time to write a total stranger for the most part. I didn’t know that Inez was talking about me out there but I hope what you’ve heard is only good. Ha Ha! There’s certainly been a lot of bad things said about me in H’ville and rightly so I guess for the one who put himself in here to begin with but the way I see it now is that that child is now dead and now the born again man is suffering the penalty for his actions. In any case I and the Lord know who I am today and that’s all that matters. The world can say what it wants. 

I’ll be honest and tell you that I’m envious of you brother. Here you are at 35 and have a stable job and a wife and family which is what I truly long for and here I am 34 and in prison. Certainly God blesses me daily but in my heart you have what I’d like to have. A little word of wisdom, never take what you have for granted. I’m sure you don’t but there are a lot of guys out there our age who don’t know just how lucky they are. May God keep you and yours safe and well always. 

You mentioned that you work for a defense contractor as an engineer. Are you prior military? I was in the Navy up until my arrest in ’84 and had planned to go back to work for Raytheon upon my discharge. Dad worked forUncle Sam out on the Arsenal in ordinance until he retired so I’m very familiar with contractors and DoD. Even with the cutbacks in defense spending, it’s a good way to make a living. Do you work on the Arsenal?

I don’t know what Inez has told you about me so forgive me if I tell you something you already know. I really don’t know what to say to be honest. I don’t want to sit here and bore you with the goings on of prison life. It’s not something that I would wish on my worst enemy that’s for sure. I thank God that I’m not in a position where I could be facing the rest of my life in here. After much prayer I decided long ago that if I can’t ever be physically free (I’m already mentally and spiritually free) that I’d rather die and go to be with the Lord. I have too many hopes and dreams to spend the rest of my days knowing that they’ll never come to pass. It looks as if I may be going to be with the Lord in the coming year as my appeals run out but I have a peace from God that gives me comfort and so I have no fear of death. Still I’m not giving up. Only God knows my future and I’m confident that God’s perfect will will be done no matter what. I do have concern about my family though and how my death will affect them. I’m thankful for your prayers but I would be very appreciative if you would pray with me for them and their peace and comfort, and strength to face whatever the future may hold. Thank you brother. Thank you for caring about Inez to. As you know from meeting her she is one very special person who has the heart of love for everyone and I pray for her daily that God will not only use her to do His work but that He also brings happiness to her life and fulfill her hearts desires according to His will. I’m thankful that she has friends like you who care about her so much. May God bless you and yours always. 

Well I didn’t mean to get off into a sermon of sorts but you and I both know that we are nothing apart from Christ. Without Him I don’t know how I’d have made it this far and I know that He will be with me forever. 

I’ll close for now then. As I said I’m not much of a writer but I do try to answer all of my mail sooner or later if you want to write again I’d be happy to hear from you and I’ll do my best to reply. Til then take care and I will do the same. 

Your brother in Christ,

Steve”

Steven Thompson, Part I, I Can’t Even

Before I tell you about how I came to know him, you should probably know what he did. I had to wait until after I took my sleeping pill to be able to write even this much about it, and I’m not going to use my own words to tell you. Once again, I’m going to rely on the appeal court’s description. It is horrific, and I will understand if you decide that you don’t really need to know exactly what he did.

Steven Allen THOMPSON v. STATE.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

April 12, 1988.

Rehearing Denied May 24, 1988.

The appellant was indicted for three counts of capital murder as follows:

… <a long discussion of the precise counts of capital murder are given here. Basically, he beat, raped, and stabbed Robin Balarsz to death, tied her up to his car and dragged her 3000 feet down the road, where he mutilated her corpse.> …

The appellant pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The jury found the appellant guilty of the capital offenses charged in the indictment and, following a sentencing hearing, recommended life imprisonment without parole by a vote of eight to four. Thereafter, the trial court sentenced the appellant to death by electrocution.

The trial judge in his sentencing order outlined the facts surrounding this shocking and vicious crime:

"The victim, Robin Balarzs, was engaged to marry David Roberts, a long-time friend of the defendant. On May 11, 1984, David Roberts was absent from Huntsville due to military service. Defendant was aware of this absence. On that day defendant went to the home in Huntsville where Robin Balarz resided with her parents and her young child. The parents and the child were also out of town. Robin and her friend Cindy McElroy were at the residence. Defendant, Robin and Cindy engaged in normal conversation and defendant slept on a sofa while the girls retired to separate bedrooms. Early on the morning of May 12th defendant left the residence. Cindy McElroy left at a later time. Cindy noticed no unusual behavior on the part of the defendant. "Defendant was absent without leave from the Navy and had need for money and goods which he could convert to cash. He planned to return to the Balarzs household to feloniously take money, gold or silver. In his planning defendant bought tape, bandages and other items with which to bind Robin. On his arrival in the night of May 12, 1984, defendant entered the household on invitation of his friend and followed a course of conduct which can be described as beyond human comprehension in its vileness. Defendant bound and gagged Robin with a sock, bandage, rope and tape he had brought into her home with premeditated design. He cut her clothes from her person and beat her with his fists. He took a meager $1.00 bill from her purse (although at some point he also took her engagement ring). He stuffed a sock in her mouth. He cut her with a knife. He positioned his rental vehicle near the garage to facilitate her removal from the residence. He made some effort to conceal the blood and physical tracings of his acts of brutality, placed Robin, still alive, in the vehicle, left the home and drove to secluded Green Mountain, a rugged area in Huntsville, Madison County. There, he proceeded to brutalize Robin Balarzs in a manner almost unspeakable in its nature, character and extent. Defendant had sexual intercourse upon her, shoved a large knife into what he thought to be her vagina, bound her breasts with a rope, tied her to the vehicle and dragged her through mud, over rocks and on pavement for a distance in excess of 3000 feet. At some point he pulled and shaved her hair with a razor especially purchased. He stabbed her about her breasts and cut her with the knife. "Robin Balarzs died during her ordeal. Some of the atrocities were against her corpse. "The defendant realized that left in the Balarzs home were items which would reveal his crimes, if not his identity. He returned to the residence for the purpose of securing these items, leaving Robin Balarzs on Green Mountain. "While defendant was attempting to re-enter the Balarzs home David Roberts returned. Seeing David drive up to the residence, defendant evaded detection and drove away to spend the rest of the night in his vehicle. "David Roberts entered the home and noticed signs of the defendant's depravity. He contacted neighbors and friends of Robin, called hospitals and tried to locate her. Finally, David Roberts called Huntsville Police Department and investigation into the case began. David recalled seeing defendant's vehicle parked near the residence and an alert was dispatched on defendant by radio. At that time it was in connection with a missing person report. In the early morning of May 13, 1984, two uniformed officers saw defendant in his vehicle and stopped him. Defendant's vehicle was dirty and damaged and defendant had what appeared to be blood and mud about his person. Defendant was properly advised of his constitutional rights, taken into custody, removed to police headquarters and questioned. After first denying knowledge of the fate of Robin Balarzs, defendant made statements admitting his activities and led an officer to the scene atop Green Mountain. Robin's battered body was found. Her parents and David Roberts were advised that she was dead."

If you want to read the whole appeal decision, here’s the link:
 https://law.justia.com/cases/alabama/court-of-appeals-criminal/1988/542-so-2d-1286-0.html 

Here are a few newspaper articles: 

Interview with Steve:
 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19860829&id=HLIfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=W9cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1532,6284220&hl=en 

A notice that the execution had taken place, with a brief background on the crime:
 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.true-crime/y5OJdZLi7wU 

I told you it was horrific. Don’t blame me for the nightmares. 

I promise I will post more on this subject. It’s just really hard to think about, much less write about. The bottom line is that he was electrocuted to death in the Alabama electric chair, “Yellow Mama”, almost exactly 20 years ago. 

Next time, I will reveal how I became involved in this, and we will begin to read Steven’s words from his own pen. 

I Dated An Axe Murderer

Some Murderers I Have Known, Part 2

I Dated An Axe Murderer

I didn't date an axe murderer. Not really. She used a pistol. 

She was the sweetest girl you could ever want to meet. Her name was Eileen Orstein. She was a Jewess who had converted to Christianity as a result of our church’s outreach. Her parents, broken-hearted and enraged, threw her out of the house. She was in her late teens and unable to support herself with no notice, so the Crumptons, some of our church friends, took her in. Their daughter Pam was about her age, so it was a good fit. She spent a lot of time with our church youth group, coming to Bible studies and other activities. She was a fixture at church, and had a very pretty smile that was only slightly diminished by a small brown stain on one of her upper front teeth. Everyone was delighted to have her in the church. 

One night we had a banquet at church - a substitute for prom. Everybody wore their finest and got dates. Eileen was going to go with Pam’s brother Danny, who was home from college, and I was going to be Pam’s date. I drove to their house, and we all went in Danny’s car. It was a fun night, and we all had a good time. At least, I assume that’s what happened. In truth, I don’t remember anything about it. It was yet another church banquet that was about the same as ever. Given when it was, there is little doubt that Dad provided the entertainment because he always did. He would write a skit, or get a group together to play music, or do a funny recitation, or some such nonsense. We always laughed ourselves silly when he did that, and I suspect we did that night. 

Over time, I lost track of Eileen. I did know that she had married (turns out his name was Janezic, but I didn’t know that at the time). I went to college, and I didn’t know where she went. I was busy building my life, and I had plenty to occupy me. For example, I started dating Sandra soon after that, so that pretty well dates this story to about 1979. 

In 1993, I was working at SigmaTech in Huntsville’s Research Park when some harsh news whipped through the company. The pastor of one of our co-workers (the lady’s name was Bobbie) had been murdered.  Rev. Jerry Simon, the pastor of Valley Fellowship Church had been murdered, as they say, “by person or persons unknown.” Police were looking for a young, white female. The news followed the investigation for a few days, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of progress. Then, about a week later, there was a media storm as a woman went to a health clinic in Decatur, shot a man (only wounded him) and then went into an armed standoff with police for the next six or eight hours. The police waited her out, and eventually took her in. When I saw the woman they had arrested, she had wild platinum blonde hair, and a crazed look in her eyes. Nothing about her triggered any recognition in my brain. Nothing could have been further from the sweet, quiet girl I knew than the wild, rambling creature I saw on the news. She was clearly in a drug- and insanity-induced fog of rage. 

I could go on, but I’ll let the court speak for me. This is a quote from the decision denying her appeal. 

“The state's evidence tended to show that on August 26, 1993, the appellant shot and killed Rev. Simon at his church, Valley Fellowship Church, in Huntsville. The victim was shot three times and died as a result of a gunshot wound to his chest. The appellant was arrested, approximately one week later, after she shot another man outside the Parkway Medical Center in Decatur. The appellant, armed with a .32 caliber gun, held 30 policemen at bay at the Medical Center for approximately 8 hours. Police Officers testified that during the eight hours, she wielded a gun, smoked cigarettes, and was seen reading from a Satanic Bible.

Carol Simon, the victim's wife, testified that the appellant started coming to her husband's church around 1984 or 1985. She did not attend regularly and in 1989 the appellant asked her to testify on her behalf in a child custody case between her and her ex-husband. Simon said she refused.” 

Eileen Janezic is now serving life in in Alabama State prison. In one of those little synchronicities of life, I am working with Bobbie again, 25 years later. Jeff Sessions, the prosecutor for the Alabama Attorney General's office in Eileen's case, is now the US Attorney General under President Donald Trump.

If you want to read the whole appeal decision, here’s the link:  https://law.justia.com/cases/alabama/court-of-appeals-criminal/1996/cr-94-2338-0.html 

The Sweet Little Murderess Across The Street

Some Murderers I Have Known

This is the first in a series:

I don’t know what pushed her over the very sharp edge of murder. I never got up the nerve to ask, and no one ever volunteered. It was sometime in the late 1970s.I don’t remember exactly when; but I was off at Youth Camp with the church, so it had to be after 1976, and it couldn’t have been much after 1980. When I got home from camp, there were interesting tales in the Parker house about the night when 8 billion cops showed up at the house across the street, along with an ambulance or two. A conference of neighbors and a quick check with the newspapers revealed that the lady across the street had shot her husband, and done quite a good job of it. He was not just merely dead; but, really, quite sincerely dead. 

She had then shot herself in the right temple, and hadn’t done quite as good a job. When the paramedics arrived, she was only mostly dead; and, as Billy Crystal can tell you, mostly dead is still partly alive. The EMTs and the nurses and the doctors must have done a deal with Miracle Max because she did survive the attempted suicide, although she looked like a stroke victim. The right side of her face drooped. She had trouble talking clearly, and she had to walk with a cane. 

I’ve no idea what the legalities were; but, somehow or other, she got out of jail within just a year or two. One day a lady in her 30s (early 40s? Teenagers stink at estimating age) knocked on my door to ask if I could cut “Muther’s” grass. I spell it like that because she pronounced it like that. It is now 40 years gone, but I remember that the way she pronounced “Muther” bothered me a great deal more than cutting grass for a murderess did. 

I cut the grass that summer, but I doubt that I made them very happy. I ran over a tree stump and tore up the lawn mower within just a few weeks of beginning. The son fixed it, and I went on about my job; but I don’t remember that being a long-term situation, probably because of how great I am at cutting grass. 

I spent very little time with the old lady herself. She would occasionally call me into the house to give me something to drink, or to pay me for cutting the grass. The first few times I talked to her, I was waiting for her to do something murderess-like, such as grow a new head, or sprout fangs; but she never did, and I relaxed. She was consistently a sweet, reserved, little, old lady of the kind you can find at any church on any Sunday in the South. Her manners were impeccable, and she was never anything but gracious and welcoming.

I never saw her wear anything other than a pink house robe and slippers, so I got the feeling that she never changed into real clothes. I am pretty sure that she never went out of the house, except when her daughter took “Muther” to the doctor. She locked herself into the house where she had murdered her husband, and had tried to murder herself. Whatever the legalities, she served a life term of imprisonment in that house, with only memories as her cell mates. 

P.S. At this time, we lived on Sparkman Drive, just at the foot of the big hill, about a half-mile from Blue Spring Rd.