Fifty Shades of Foolhardy

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(Lizon farm in W. Virginia)

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Yes, this post is about the book Fifty Shades of Grey. And you will have the opportunity to disagree with me or share your insights. Please, take a moment to step into my world first.

 There are two kinds of people who end up in newscasts: 1) professional politicians, other activists, over-achievers making the world go round  and 2) Everybody Else.   

Something I hear over and over and over again is "I never thought it would happen to me."  Nobody in Category 2 expects to be on the news. But night after night we see a fresh crop of hikers falling down a cactus-dotted mesa or sheer snow drop, a group of prom kids wrapped around a telephone pole surrounded by ambulances, a guy in handcuffs shuffling off while a group of neighbors/survivors/grievers express their shock and anger.  

If you are a professional reporter, you see these people every day in person. They cry on your shoulder, they beg you for information, they unleash their fury.  After a few years as a reporter, a job I started when I was too young to know anything about anything, it finally sinks in to you that it can and does happen to "you." You develop a caution and a sensitivity about warning signs and unnecessary risks. 

Most of all, you absolutely and forever lose that sense that such-and-such "only happens to other people."

Some times people in my personal life chide me for possibly being too affected by the work that I do--which is now exclusively about crime.  Just the other night as I was passing into the KTAR studios, Congressman David Schweikert was heading out. I was about to take over the "guest" chair he had just vacated. I have known Schweikert casually since he was a young state legislator and I was an also young journalist.  He jovially greeted me and asked me if writing exclusively about crime the last few years was "doing something" to my mind? Then he warned me about someone he knew who worked in a forensic profession for 20 years and it "did something" to that man's personality. 

This was a bit of cheerful conversation-making tossed off in a friendly manner, with smiles all around. I don't want anyone to misconstrue that I'm picking on the Congressman in any way -- it was all fine, he's fine, we're fine. I bring it up only as the most recent example of how people, confident in their own security, can consider someone like me an annoying Cassandra. 

Which brings me to my colleague, the very fine crime writer Kathryn Casey. She went ahead and did something I've been toying with doing for a few weeks: she wrote an essay expressing caution about the mega-blockbuster phenomenon known as Fifty Shades of Grey.  She did a much better job of writing this essay than I could ever do for a very good reason. She was willing to read the novel. I am not.

As a crime writer, Kathryn saw alarm bells flashing in the story of violence. So do I. 

But in the comment trail, Kathryn is taking a lot of heat from people deriding her alleged inability to separate fantasy from reality.  I would like to say I am certain Kathryn understands fantasy perfectly. Fantasy is fiction. It's made up.  

Where I am concerned is that the millions of people sharing the fantasy with the Fifty Shades author don't understand non-fiction. Non-fiction is what Kathryn writes and what I write. It's reality. It's all too, too real.  Too, too painful. Too, too irreversible. 

Members of the BDSM community in particular have been whining and wailing about Kathryn's essay.  I won't repeat the discussion, but I will add here that the world of Christian Grey is not derived from some organized club, it comes straight from the mind of the author. That author gets to make up whatever she wants. Christian Grey does NOT have to follow the rules of established BDSM clubs. As Kathryn points out, he does in fact deviate from several of the rules that the commenters are so passionately defending as safeguards against all possible harm to someone in the fictional Ana character's position.  And, as Kathryn also points out, not only is Christian Grey not required to follow the club's rules, NOBODY is required to follow these rules. Club members may have jurisdiction over themselves, but NOT OVER ANYBODY ELSE.

I myself became most alarmed when I started reading news stories about how the book Fifty Shades was driving all kinds of new traffic to various online services where previously uninitiated women could seek their own Christian Grey experience. This, my friends, is where fiction ends and non-fiction begins. Non-fiction is what Kathryn and I know about. This is the part that makes us very, very nervous.

Defenders of the book are quick to point out that the Ana character "agrees" to most of the things she goes through and even signs a contract (with a draconian non-disclosure clause and other forms of legal intimidation). Just this week, in mine and Kathryn's world, a man named Peter Lizon was arrested in West Virginia for allegedly keeping his wife chained up for 10 years and torturing her. I wonder if as this story unfolds investigators will find that Mrs. Lizon signed some kind of permission slip along the way? She is already denying any of her multitude of injuries were anything but accidents.

We know that Colleen Stan signed such a slave contract with sadist Cameron Hooker in California. Prosecutors were not impressed. Nor the jury. Hooker is now serving a prison sentence of over 100 years. And Colleen herself, with name changed, is now active in an abused women's group.

Try picturing this guy, Cameron Hooker, instead of chic Christian Grey

These are the kinds of outcomes Kathryn and I live with. I know that between the two of us, we could list off zillions more such cases.  This is not fantasy.  This is real life. This is real horror.

So I hereby strongly endorse Kathryn Casey's essay in Forbes and urge you to read it.  If something about Fifty Shades of Grey titillates you, I beg you to keep that safely in your own head, where fantasy belongs. Do NOT go seeking strangers online who will be only too glad to oblige. Do NOT become the person in Category 2 on the news.

I'm begging you, if you want to enjoy a book like Fifty Shades of Grey, please take steps never to become the subject of one of my books. Believe me, it can happen to you.

Now. Go read Kathryn's excellent essay by clicking here.

That comment thread has gotten pretty long, so feel free to come back here to share your thoughts.

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What's In a Name? or Face? James Holmes Case

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Swiveling on a wheeled chair, large microphone suspended in front of my face, I concentrated on the caller's voice coming through the guest earphones clamped around my head.  "We should blur this guy's photo," he said passionately, "we should erase his name."


The "he" referred to by KTAR caller, Jerry, is James Holmes, the man arrested in Aurora, Colorado with his cartoonish orange thatch spilling out over his even more cartoonishly dazed stare.   I was in studio discussing the case with KTAR's peerless talk show host, Jay Lawrence, because not only am I a crime writer but the subject of one of my books, Dale Hausner, has distinct parallels to James Holmes.

Jerry the caller's point was that when these evil maniacs pop up, they get an instant and grandiose "reward" for their heinous acts by seeing themselves plastered all over front pages and television and all other forms of media (which, incidentally, have become too numerous any more to lend themselves to an easily inclusive roll-off-the-tongue phrase).

Jerry begged that we impose a sort of blackout on ourselves to deprive would be mass killers of this incentive.  "Let's hear the names of the victims," Jerry beseeched, "Who cares about this guy? Let's hear the names of the victims in the newscasts instead."

Jerry has a good point. Not just a good point, a point I embrace with the same passion that he so clearly conveyed to the radio and streaming audience.  Everyone who comes to this blog knows, or soon figures out, that A SUDDEN SHOT: THE PHOENIX SERIAL SHOOTER is my flagship project, my home base. Four years after writing that book, I would LOVE to forget the name of Dale Hausner. I have trouble even typing his name now. Even while writing the book, sometimes I avoided using his name on the page, opting instead for pronouns and other substitutes. I couldn't stand to give him any more ink than I had to. Typing his name seemed especially personal and I had to tamp down my disgust whenever I did so. I still do.

Dale Hausner definitely enjoys his infamy and it will likely turn out that Holmes does, too. But there is something far more powerful driving these men than a desire for fame. There are many, many other ways of achieving fame. Dale tried comedy, cable TV, and (quasi) professional photography. For Holmes, real fame seemed within reach as he pursued his elite science education and research goals.  As a young man of just 24, he could realistically still dream of the big invention, the Nobel Prize, the major patent. So what if he had setbacks?  Who doesn't?  That's called adulthood.

In my work with mass-spree-serial (a distinction without a difference for purposes of this discussion) killers, I can not say that depriving them of fame would change their behavior.

What is driving them to aim their sweaty rifles at perfect strangers is not a desire for headlines but a desire to kill.  Remove that desire, then you can change their behavior.

Nobody knows how to do that yet. Psychologists, priests, prophets, and philosophers all over the world are working on that one.  The collective amount of blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this effort is immeasurable. The first one who figures it out certainly will achieve lasting fame.

In the meantime, can we at least slow down these guys down in some way by blotting out their names and faces from news coverage, as Jerry begs us to do?  Over the weekend, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper referred to the terrible man in the bullet proof gear as "Suspect A," putting into action Jerry the caller's sentiment.  I like the Governor's gesture. But he can do that because he is speaking from his own heart. He is not responsible for keeping the public informed in the same way that a news professional is.

One thing there was no time for me to say to Jerry over the microphone last night is that there are tangible benefits to the community by putting the perpetrator's face and name on TV.

First, the safety of the community.  Suppose somebody recognizes the face or the name and realizes there is an accomplice at large or a second crime scene or an as yet un-executed act of violence about to explode in a larger scheme?

Second, the investigation itself. A significant break in the case of the Phoenix Serial Shooter came when law enforcement circulated on TV surveillance photos of two men at Wal-Mart. One of those guys was recognized and an arrest soon followed.  In the Aurora case, a gun club manager has come forward with important information because he recognized the name of "James Holmes" in news accounts. I believe that gun club incident will be of notable significance to investigators.

This dynamic is repeated in crime after crime all across the country.  That's why back in the Old West and beyond they put up wanted posters -- to protect the community from further harm and to facilitate justice.  Now we have televisions and computer screens to serve the same purpose in a vastly more efficient network of communications.

I would love to blot out the name of James Holmes. I would love to, as Jerry suggested, replace it with the names of the victims. But it is just not possible in the regular news cycle. But, in my small way, I do try to give the victims their due in the books that I write and the TV shows that I appear on.  These books and TV shows appear months and years after the initial incident and they take more work to produce than does a daily newscast. They also, and this is very important, require more work from the listener, viewer, or reader.  A member of a radio audience, such as Jerry, can not listen all day long to news broadcasts that repeat the name of 70 victims in every newscast every 20 to 30 minutes. Jerry, and every audience member, needs also to hear about gas prices, economic forecasts, and school closings in his neighborhood. He has to continue to manage his daily life and professional newscasters know that. It is their job to keep providing him the relevant information he needs, in addition to keeping him updated on the process of justice and giving the emotional payoff, when they can, of profiles of the victims and their families' efforts to cope and triumph.

Not the color of Cheetos, but not his natural color, either.
Dale Hausner in 2006

oom

It's up to writers like myself and producers of the shows I appear on to give the audience a chance to really get to know the victims and survivors. Followers of mine know that I enjoy and passionately cherish the good relationships I have with the families in my books. Many of these families use my books to tell their story to their families and friends and squirrel them away to share with their youngsters at a later date, when the kids are old enough, and expect them to be handed down to further generations. I also know that my books have inspired perfect strangers to acts of generosity and warmth toward these survivors. So I can say from personal experience that the victims do get the kind of focus that Jerry hopes for them.


But these books and shows will only reach a certain segment of the audience.  I am the first to admit True Crime is not for everyone.  But for those who do want to learn the names and last acts of heroism of the people who, as Serial Shooter survivor Dianna Bein recently reminded me, "face the business end of a shotgun," my books and shows and those of my colleagues are there.  I am not making a plea for customers here. Please do not mistake me. But I am trying to explain why "general" or "daily" reporters cannot blot out the name of that guy in a Colorado jail cell with the windows taped over. Or the guy on Death Row in Arizona who, as a matter of fact, also was arrested with his hair dyed -- red.

What do you think? Scrub the internet of the Ph. D. student's name and face?  Or keep it out there?

LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW HERE: 
Check this out on Chirbit

(To put faces to these voices, just scroll down one post.)

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James Holmes -- KTAR Discussion Tonight

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ADD:  Listen for soundbites from this interview on the KTAR morning show Monday morning, the same day as Holmes' first court appearance. Expect to hear about comparisons between James Holmes of Aurora and Dale Hausner of Phoenix...

Jay Lawrence & Camille in the studio July 22, 2012

The shooting in Colorado brings me sad thoughts.  I know that a whole new group of families are experiencing that awful grief that no one prepares for. And the rest of us are wondering, yet again, how? why? what was in his mind? Knowing that I spend my time with the criminal mind, Jay Lawrence of KTAR has asked me to join his show tonight.  


That will be 8:00 pm Arizona time.  


You can stream it anywhere in the country.  


www.KTAR.com      92.3 FM in Arizona


Jay is working on getting some other folks involved in our discussion, folks who are currently working directly on the James Holmes story. Tune in or call in. Share your thoughts about this national tragedy, a conversation none of us wishes we had to have. 

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Pssst! Going to jail, buying documents, and everything else it takes to get this kind of info  for the blog takes time and money! Every time you make a purchase here, it helps me be able to do more for you!