The Impending Execution of Warren Hill

Warren Hill sits on death row awaiting execution by the people of Georgia sometime during the week of 19-26 February 2013. I find few details of his crime, the most "thorough" collection coming from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals:

In 1990, while Hill was serving a life sentence for the murder of his girlfriend, he murdered another person in prison.  Using a nail-studded board, Hill bludgeoned a fellow inmate to death in his bed.  As his victim slept, “Hill removed a two-by-six board that served as a sink leg in the prison bathroom and forcefully beat the victim numerous times with the board about the head and chest as onlooking prisoners pleaded with him to stop.” Hill “mocked the victim as he beat him.” Even locked up in jail for one murder, Hill continued to kill. 

A jury unanimously convicted Hill of malice murder and unanimously imposed a death sentence. Despite the fact that [Georgia] already exempted mentally retarded persons from execution at the time of Hill’s trial, Hill did not assert at trial that he was mentally retarded.  To the contrary, Hill called clinical psychologist William Dickinson, who testified that Hill’s IQ was 77 and he was not mentally retarded.

There are many, many articles about Hill and his impending execution. They focus almost exclusively on Hill's mental competence or incompetence. In this blog, I limit myself to considering issues of actual guilt or innocence. No one, not even Hill, seems to claim that he did not kill his cellmate as described.

I oppose the execution of any person who might be innocent of the crime for which he is to die. In all other cases, I stand mute with regard to the wisdom of propriety of the execution. In the case of Warren Hill of Georgia, I stand mute.

The Victims of Anthony Shore: Numb3rs

From the fine folks at Wikipedia:

Numb3rs (Pronounced Numbers) is an American crime drama television series that ran on CBS from January 2005 to March 2010. The series ...follows FBI special agent Don Eppes and his mathematical genius brother Charlie Eppes who helps Don solve crimes for the FBI. ... A typical episode begins with a crime, which is subsequently investigated by a team of FBI agents led by Don and mathematically modeled by Charlie ... The insights provided by Charlie's mathematics were always in some way crucial to solving the crime.

It was a decent show, even if you weren't a geek. It's now available on streaming video on Netflix.

The pilot episode dealt with locating the home of a serial killer using a technique known as geographical profiling. That show was based on the real-life work of Kim Rossmo.

Mathematical genius Charlie explained to dedicated FBI agent Don that Don should not be attempting to predict the location of the next murder. Instead, Don should be hunting for the murder's home. Charlie compared the problem to a lawn sprinkler. Even for the mathematically brilliant Charlie, predicting where the next water droplet would land would be an impossible task. However, Charlie could, by examining the location of all the drops, and by using mathematics, predict where the sprinkler was.

With a flurry of clicks on his computer, and with the aid of a large flat-bed printer he must have somewhere in his house, Charlie generated and printed a probability map for the serial killer's home.

That's nice work, and I'm suffering a bit of math envy, and printer envy.

Forty males lived in the central portion of that probability map. Don and his FBI buddies collected rogue DNA from each of the forty males. More specifically, they collected DNA from discarded cigarette butts, coffee cups, water bottles, chewing gum, and other waste products. None of the DNA matched the killer's DNA.

Charlie decided he made a mistake in focusing only on the killer's home when he should have been focusing on the killer's home and work place. He modified his program to allow two hot spots and came up with this.

Even though that was mathematically the weakest part of the show, it did the trick. Don caught the serial killer, the two brothers bonded a bit, and Charlie began working with Don routinely on cases.

The mathematics of geographical profiling is not particularly daunting, as mathematics goes. After reading Evaluating the Usefulness of Functional Distance Measures when Calibrating Journey-to-Crime Distance Delay Functions, I programmed my own version of a serial killer locator using a database software package called Filemaker.

For victims, I used the set of unsolved murders of young women from the Houston area between January 1981 (when Anthony Allen Shore moved to the Houston area from California) and November 2003 (when Shore was arrested). Here's my probability map, crude as it is.

Imagine for now a street map of the Houston area lying underneath. You'll only have to imagine for a little while, since I'll show that soon. Right now, I wanted to explain what you are looking at.

I used a grid of only 50 cells by 50 cells. It's a really crude geometric profile, but I have neither the computing power nor the large flat-bed printer (nor the mathematical gifts) that Charlie Eppes seemingly had. You can seen small dots in some of the cells. Those are the points where the victims were last seen. They are presumably the points-of-first-encounter, or close thereby. Real geographical profilers take advantage also of the locations where the bodies are found and the locations where the murder actually took place, assuming those are known. I'm not a real geographic profiler.

Based on my crude probability map, the most likely location for the home of the serial killer is the red spot. In this case, there are three red spots. I'll call them southeast, west, and north. Perhaps there were three serial killers working the Houston area during that time frame. Perhaps not.

Perhaps instead Anthony Allen Shore lived in three different locations during that time period, and each hot spot corresponds with one of those three residences. To consider that last perhaps, I overlaid my geographical profile over a map of the Houston area, making sure that each of Shore's residences during that period were indicated on the map with a yellow house icon.

Hold on to your fedora. Here's what I got. Click to enlarge. It's worth it this time.

Holy One-to-One Correspondence, Batman. I'll show in a future post that the correspondence is temporal as well as geographical. It seems as if wherever Anthony Allen Shore moved, the bodies of murdered young women were sure to follow.

There is a caveat to my work. I'm not sure where Anthony Allen Shore lived immediately after he moved to the Houston area. A public records search shows that he moved into a house on Tallulah Lane in 1985. That would be the westernmost house. We know he moved from the Tallulah Lane house to the 18th Street House (the northernmost of the three) sometime before he murdered Diana Robellar in August of 1994.

Prior to 1985, Anthony Allen Shore was seemingly staying at some place maintained in another person's name. I'm assuming that person was Anthony's father, Robert Shore. Robert Shore lived in League City. I'm trying to find out exactly where in League City. For now, I've put his house, the southeastern most of the three, in the middle of League City.

I predict that when I learn the specific address of his house, that it will be slightly north and slightly left of where it is shown above. I predict that it will move closer to the center of the predicted hot spot.

If this is merely a temporal and geographical coincidence, then it is one hell of a coincidence. Instead, I think the map I have just presented herein provides good cause to suspect that Anthony Allen Shore has killed many more people than he has admitted to.

I still think Melissa Trotter is one of those people, though she is not on the map. I still wonder whether Shandra Charles and Marcell Taylor are two of those people.

Stay tuned.

The Victims of Anthony Shore: Introduction

Anthony Allen Shore is a confessed serial killer. I detailed his five acknowledged victims (four murders and one rape) in my series Who Killed Melissa Trotter. I concluded that series by arguing that Shore may have murdered Melissa Trotter. This could be a significant, life-or-death observation since Larry Swearingen (The Most Innocent Man on Death Row) is scheduled to be executed on 27 February for the murder of Melissa Trotter. (Note: Swearingen's execution has been stayed for the 4th time since I began writing this post.)

I came to learn of Anthony Shore as I continued to investigate the case of Preston Hughes after his wrongful execution. I learned then that Anthony Shore lived but one mile from where Shandra Charles and Marcell Taylor were murdered. I learned also that Anthony Shore's first acknowledged victim was murdered two years to the day before the double murder for which Preston Hughes was executed. The two coincidences are troubling.

Because Charles and Taylor were black and Shore's acknowledged victims were either white or Hispanic, and because Charles and Taylor were stabbed in the throat rather than strangled, I am not yet prepared to argue that Shore murdered them. That may change by the end of this series. However, as I studied the acknowledged victims of Anthony Shore, it occurred to me that Melissa Trotter may have been an unacknowledged victim. 

In this series, I intend to raise the possibility that Melissa Trotter was but one of many unacknowledged victims of Anthony Allen Shore.

I'll introduce the series with an overview of serial killers, their characteristics, and their behavior. The overview will help you understand where Shore falls within the spectrum of serial killers. That will be helpful when deciding whether or not various unsolved murders in the Houston area belong to Shore.

I restrict the discussion in this post to serial killers in the United States. Much, but certainly not all, of the information presented in this overview is from a set of student notes by Dr. Mike Aamodt of Radford University. 

Number of Serial Killers

John Douglas, a former Chief of the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit and author of Mind Hunter says, "A very conservative estimate is that there are between 35-50 active serial killers in the United States" at any given time.

Dr. Aamodt provides the following chart.

Dr. Aamodt seems to have taken his data from a database of known serial killers. The chart would then reflect primarily serial killers who have been captured or at least identified. My interpretation is that the Aamodt chart reflects the number of serial killers no longer active, and John Douglas' number reflects the number of serial killers active at any time.

Let's do a little math to estimate the number of serial killers that might be operating in the Houston metropolitan. We'll divide the current population of Houston metro (6,051,363) by the current population of the United States (and I mean current, at 315,253,444) to learn that 2% of the U.S population resides in the Houston metro area.

Now, assuming serial killers are evenly distributed among the population, and assuming 50 serial killers are operating nationwide, we can calculate that one serial killer is operating in the Houston area. (50 x 2% = 50 x 0.02 = 1) That's an average. Given that it's statistically unlikely one serial killer would always stop just as another begins, it's much more likely that there will be zero, one, or two (perhaps three) serial killers operating the area at any time.

Definition of a Serial Killer

A serial killer is a type of multiple murderer. The other types of multiple murderers are spree killers and mass murderers.

A mass murderer, according to the FBI, is someone who kills 3 or more people in the same attack at a single site. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are mass murderers. Together, they killed 12 students and one teacher during the Columbine High School massacre.

A serial killer is someone who kills 2 or more people with a "cooling off" period in between the killings. Anthony Shore is a serial killer, having killed at least 4 people in events separated by months or years.

A spree killer is someone who kills 2 or more people in different geographic locations without a "cooling off" period. By this definition, Anders Behring Brejvik of Sweden is a spree killer. On the same day, he killed 8 people by bombing government buildings, and 69 people at a Worker's Youth League camp.

I assume in their estimates, Dr. Aamodt and John Carpenter are using the definition of a serial killer as described above.

Age at Which a Serial Killer Begins to Kill
Based on his database of 1,739 serial killers, Dr. Aamodt calculates the mean age for the first kill at 29 years old. He references two other researchers who put the age at 28.5 and 31 years old. Aamodt adds that the youngest was Robert Dale Segee (9 years old when he first killed) and the oldest was Ray Copeland (72 years old when he first killed).

I'm dissatisfied with Aamodt's summary. Here's why. I now suspect Anthony Allen Shore killed young women soon after he returned to the Houston area in January, 1981. His first possible victim may have been Susan Eads. (I'll explain more as this series continues.) She was killed on August 31, 1983. Shore was born on June 25, 1962. He would have been 21 years old at the time of her murder. I want to know how likely or unlikely it would have been for him to start killing at age 21. I can't get that information from Dr. Aamodt's student notes.

Fortunately, Dr. Aamodt comes through in another presentation. There he gives the median age at first kill as 28.8 years old and provides a standard deviation of 9.27 years. That's great. That allows me to build a binomial distribution and get some sense of how likely or unlikely it would be for a serial killer to begin killing as young as 21.

I'll be back in a moment.

[Assume free online music playing while you wait.]

Okay, I'm back. Here we go. Click to enlarge.

No need to try to read specific numbers off the chart. I can now give you the specific number for any given age. Assuming a normal distribution, and assuming a mean age at first kill of 28.8 years, and assuming a standard deviation of 9.27 years, and assuming a normal distribution, there is a 21% chance that a serial killer will make his first kill when he is 21 years of age or younger. (It is mere coincidence that each number is 21 in magnitude.)

Shore's first acknowledged killing was Laura Tremblay. That occurred on September 26, 1986. (I never have to look that date up. It was two years to the day before someone other than Preston Hughes killed Shandra Charles and Marcell Taylor.) Shore was three months past his 24th birthday. Using similar assumptions and math as above, there is a 32% chance that a serial killer will make his first kill when he is 24 years or younger.

No matter how you cut it, Anthony Shore started at a younger age than most serial killers.

Classification of Serial Killers
There is a surprisingly large range of serial killers. Once again, Dr. Aamodt summarizes the issue nicely, in a single chart. I've added the ellipse to show into which category Anthony Shore falls. Because Shore searches for a specific type of victim (young girls with long hair in need of a ride), and because he is motivated by sexual impulses, he is classified as an organized lust killer.

I turn to Wikipedia for the distinction between organized and disorganized serial killers.

Organized nonsocial offenders usually have above average intelligence, with a mean IQ of 113. They often plan their crimes quite methodically, usually abducting victims, killing them in one place and disposing of them in another. They often lure the victims with ploys appealing to their sense of sympathy. For example, Ted Bundy would put his arm in a fake plaster cast and ask women to help him carry something to his car, where he would beat them unconscious with a tire iron, and carry them away. Others specifically target prostitutes, who are likely to go voluntarily with a stranger. They maintain a high degree of control over the crime scene, and usually have a solid knowledge of forensic science that enables them to cover their tracks, such as burying the body or weighing it down and sinking it in a river. They follow their crimes in the news media carefully and often take pride in their actions, as if it were all a grand project. The organized killer is usually socially adequate, has friends and lovers, and sometimes even a spouse and children. They are the type who, when/if captured, are most likely to be described by acquaintances as kind and unlikely to hurt anyone. Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are examples of organized serial killers. 

Disorganized serial killers, on the other hand, often have average to below average intelligence, with a mean IQ of 92.5. They are usually far more impulsive, the murders are often done with a random weapon available at the time, and usually no attempt is made to hide the body. They are likely to be unemployed, a loner, or both, with very few friends. They often turn out to have a history of mental illness, and their modus operandi (M.O.) or lack thereof is often marked by excessive violence and sometimes necrophilia and/or sexual violence.

I've recreated a few tables from Dr. Aamodt's notes that nicely summarize the differences between organized and disorganized serial killers. I've highlighted those characteristics that fit Shore in yellow. Two items jump out immediately.

First, Shore did not apparently collect totems from his crimes. That's an unusual characteristic for someone who has so many "organized" characteristics. I understand, however, that the police discovered that Shore kept a stash of pornographic magazines in a rented storage locker. Perhaps Shore did keep totems from his crimes, including totems from his unacknowledged crimes, but the police failed to recognize them as such. It would be interesting to compare the items found in that storage locker against the possessions of all of Shore's possible victims.

Second, Shore selected his acknowledged victims close to home. That's also an unusual characteristic for an "organized" serial killer such as Shore. Perhaps though, he killed others further from home. We'll consider that possibility as we continue to explore the many possible victims of Anthony Allen Shore.

Spectacular News in the Swearingen Case

Larry Swearingen's death warrant has been withdrawn and comprehensive DNA testing has been ordered by recently elected State District Judge Kelly Case. From Brandi Grissom's article in the Texas Tribune:

Update, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 5 p.m.: Montgomery County state district court Judge Kelly Case on Wednesday withdrew an order that had set the execution of condemned murderer Larry Swearingen for Feb. 27. The judge's decision came after a hearing in which Swearingen's lawyers argued that more time was required to accomplish DNA testing they believe will prove his innocence in the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter. 

Montgomery County assistant district attorney Bill Delmore said he was disappointed with the decision, the first ruling in the case from the newly elected judge. Delmore said that prosecutors had offered to conduct the testing at the state's expense in an expedited manner that would allow the execution to proceed as scheduled. Swearingen's lawyers, however, declined. 

"Their refusal to negotiate on the timing of doing the testing between now and the execution date suggests their motion was primarily for the purpose of delay," Delmore said. 

Bryce Benjet, a lawyer for the New York-based Innocence Project who is representing Swearingen said that more time is needed to conduct the complicated testing that is necessary in the case. 

"We hope the district attorney will agree to conduct testing within the law so that Larry Swearingen can finally get the testing that can dispostively prove his innocence," Benjet said.

Previously, Assistant District Attorney Bill Delmore had said he hadn't read Swearingen's latest motion for DNA testing but would probably oppose it. Then District Attorney Brett Ligon agreed to DNA testing but insisted it be done expeditiously so as not to delay the execution. Now Judge Case has put an end to that nonsense and ordered both the testing and the time necessary to do the testing properly.

Last November, Judge Case defeated State Court District Judge Fred Edwards the general elections. Judge Edwards is the judge who recently ignored the science that proves Swearingen innocent by denying a new trial. (See The Most Innocent Man on Death Row)

If Preston Hughes had James Rytting as his attorney or had Judge Case ruling on his Motion of DNA Testing, Hughes would be alive today. It is due to such vagaries that one innocent man on death row is granted DNA testing while another is given the needle.

UPDATE: January 31, 2013
According to the Houston Chronicle, Judge Case did not order that DNA testing be conducted. Instead, he gave the prosecutor 60 days to respond to Swearingen's motion for DNA testing. The article does make clear that Swearingen's execution has been stayed. The article suggests that it could be three to four months before there is a hearing on Swearingen's Chapter 64 motion for DNA testing.  This is still really good news.

HOLY (Anonymous) COW! -- Tewksbury

This is Part 2 in a series of unknown length. In Part 1, I explained that the hacktivist group Anonymous took over one federal government website in retaliation for the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, and threatened much more serious action against the internet unless our judicial system is reformed.

This second post may seem entirely unrelated to the first. It is not. I'll explain why before I click "Publish". For now, I'll simply describe the case of United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

This post is my Reader's Digest version of the Institute for Justice article Fighting Civil Forfeiture Abuse. Follow the link for a more thorough, more professional telling of this tragic tale.

Civil forfeiture law allows the government to take and sell your property without charging you with a crime. Law enforcement agencies like civil forfeiture laws since the funds from the forfeitures frequently go directly to the law enforcement agencies. Local police now frequently turn to the Feds to prosecute civil forfeiture cases. The Feds are eager to help, for a 20% cut.

Civil forfeiture cases are against the property, not the owner of the property. If the State can show probable cause that the property was used in a crime, it can seize the property. If the owner cannot prove that the property was not involved in a crime, the State gets to keep the property. Here's a picture of the defendant in United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts

That's a sinister looking defendant, to be sure. It's the Motel Caswell, owned free and clear by Russell and Pat Caswell. It's valued around $1,000,000. That's why it was so attractive to the Tewksbury PD. The cops are looking at $800,000 worth of paychecks and sundry goodies, once the Feds take their $200,000. It's a big score for everyone involved, except for the owner and our Constitution.

If the fine folks at the Tewksbury PD were enforcing the laws in an even-handed fashion, they would have also pursued civil forfeiture cases against the local Motel 6, the local Fairfield Inn, local Wal-Mart parking lot, and the local Home Depot parking lot. According to their own police logs, all those properties have also been involved in crimes. Those properties, however, aren't necessarily owned free and clear. There's no value in seizing a property that is heavily mortgaged. More significantly, though, the owners of those properties have the resources to put up a fight, and are likely to do so. Most Joe and Jane Q. Citizens don't have the money or the juice to withstand the onslaught that awaits them at the hands of the State. Most simply can't fight back.

So how serious was the crime at Motel Caswell? I'll tell you: fifteen drug related crimes in fourteen years. During those years, the Caswell's rented out their rooms 196,000 times.

The use of civil forfeiture has expanded dramatically since we declared war on drugs. Prior 1985, federal forfeiture proceeds did not go automatically to the seizing agency. The funds went instead to the general revenue fund of the United States. Before 1985, forfeiture revenue was therefore modest.

After 1985, when the police kickback scam was enacted into law, forfeiture revenue exploded. In 1986, the Feds took in "just" $93.7 million. Today the Feds hold more than $1.6 billion in civil forfeitures. I don't have numbers on the total amount kicked back to the police since the Feds began protecting us via their 80% kickback to the cops scam. It seems as if it's going to be many times $1.6 billion.

Now, finally, I reveal what this has to do with Aaron Swartz hanging himself and Anonymous attempting to hold the internet hostage.

The prosecutor in the Tewksbury case is this woman, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

Just two days ago, on 25 January, a federal judge rejected her effort to seize the Caswell's property.

In a sometimes scathing ruling, which for now halts the civil action brought by the federal government, U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein said the federal government "had not met its burden of proving a substantial connection between the Motel Caswell and the forfeitable crimes, and, therefore, has not met its burden of proving that the Property is forfeitable." ... 

The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement that it respected the opinion, but added that the case "was strictly a law-enforcement effort to crack down on what was seen as a pattern of using the motel to further the commission of drug crimes for nearly three decades. We are weighing our options with respect to appeal." 

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz is the same person who aggressively pursued Aaron Swartz after the State of Massachusetts decided not do so.

State prosecutors who investigated the late Aaron Swartz had planned to let him off with a stern warning, but federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz took over and chose to make an example of the Internet activist, according to a report in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. 

Middlesex County's district attorney had planned no jail time, "with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner," the report said. "Tragedy intervened when Ortiz's office took over the case to send 'a message.'"

I have previously expressed my concern about the power exercised by prosecutors, and I will now tend to make that point more frequently and more forcefully. I believe I will make Linda Carty the subject of my next series regarding people on death row in Texas. You will see in that case how prosecutors decide who will live and who will die.

As for the next post in this series of unknown length, I think I'll detail more fully the crime committed by Aaron Swartz.