Andrew Vachss wrote about Columbine in 1977. "I didn't predict anything," he told the New York Post. "But I had talked to plenty of kids who, that was their dream."

Since that time, there have been numerous items that hit the news after they appeared in Andrew Vachss' books, article, or interviews. Here are some samples:

Excerpted from Another Life (pg. 40)
Published 2008

Malaria kills millions of Africans every year, but not half as many as it would if the indigenous people hadn't developed some genetic resistance over the centuries.

Excerpted from "Malaria deaths hugely underestimated — Lancet study"
Published 02/02/2012 by BBC News

Worldwide malaria deaths may be almost twice as high as previously estimated, a study reports.

The research, published in the British medical journal the Lancet, suggests 1.24 million people died from the mosquito-borne disease in 2010.

This compares to a World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate for 2010 of 655,000 deaths.

Excerpted from Only Child (pg. 271)
Published 2002

"Now, who was acting in that one?" he asked, eyes on Rejji, who he'd spotted sneaking peeks at the screen.

"It can't have been the one doing the paddling," I said. "Why would the others have just gone along and—?"

"This is the final stage," he said. "Or nearly it, anyway. Because they were all acting. But only one of them knew the script."

"I don't . . ."

"Okay, look," he said, leaning forward, intense. "They all thought they were acting. In a movie. The script was this sorority thing . . . like you saw for yourself. But the girl doing the paddling, she was told that this was a different movie. And the plot of that movie was a girl who wants to get even with another girl, so she makes up this whole ‘movie' thing."

"Unreal!" I said.

"Completely real," he corrected. "The concept is that everyone knows they're on camera, but only some of them know that the script isn't really the script. But even the ones who think they know, they don't understand that their role is another role. One that only the director knows. And when it all comes together, at that perfect moment, it's totally real. And totally under my direction."

"Oh my God!" Michelle said.

"Noir vérité," he said proudly. "That's why it's always done with a single camera. The last thing I want is a Rashomon effect. Here, each of the actors has his or her own reality, but the only truth is what goes into the camera. And there can be only one truth. That," he said, pausing, the way he'd rehearsed this moment before his mirror so many times, "was my vision."

"That's . . . amazing," I said. "So, in each movie you make, the star—"

"The catalyst," he said. "Not the star. In noir vérité, there are no stars. Because there are no limits, do you see?"

"Not . . . really."

"The ultimate control is the director's. In noir vérité, the director directs. Not just the lines, or the sets. He directs reality. The catalyst—there can be more than one—their job is to create the opportunity for conduct. But the conduct itself is real."

"So if you let the . . . person think they're the catalyst, but they're really playing the role of catalyst . . . ?"

"Exactly," he said.

"Everything I heard about you was gospel," I told him, admiringly.

"This is a new concept. Nobody's got this one. And it truly has no limits. You could do . . . anything with it."

"No limits," he agreed.

"Couldn't it ever get . . . I don't know, out of hand?"

"Even if it did," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "whatever happened, it wouldn't be real. It would be something else entirely. My creation. Noir vérité."

Excerpted from "Report: Teens Behind Florida YouTube Attack to Be Charged as Adults"
Published 04/10/2008 by Fox News

The seven Florida teens accused in the "animalistic attack" filmed for YouTube are to be tried as adults, WFTV.com reported Thursday.

Excerpted from "Transit police looking for girls behind vicious YouTube attack on Portland TriMet train"
Published 01/10/2012 by The Oregonian

Police are trying to identify a group of girls who were filmed relentlessly slapping and punching a middle schooler on a TriMet train on Dec. 26.

The violent video of what appears to be a random attack has been posted on YouTube and has been circulated among students at Southeast Portland's Centennial Middle School, officials said.

Excerpted from "Dad of one of teens charged in YouTube beating says attack was a 'retaliation'"
Published 01/18/2012 by the Chicago Tribune

[17-year-old son Raymond Palamino] has been charged as an adult with robbery and aggravated battery for the attack that has gone viral on YouTube. Judge Israel Desierto set bail for Palomino at $100,000 over the strenuous arguments of the teen's attorney.

<snip>

The other teens — two 16-year-old boys, three 15-year-old boys and a 15-year-old girl — were all cited in juvenile delinquency petitions on the same charges, police said. Their identities were not made public because they are juveniles. ... Prosecutors said Palomino and the other boys persuaded the girl to lure the victim into an alley in the 2700 block of South Shields, where the others were waiting to beat him. When Palomino saw the victim walking through the alley, he yelled "get him!" to the others, according to Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antonietti.

The video was shot via cell phone.

The image of Chicago in this case has been reflective in similar incident in other cities, where youths go on "sprees," videotape them and post them on YouTube, [Chicago Police Superintendent Garry] McCarthy said.

"This is a national epidemic. It's not something that's particular to Chicago," he said.

Excerpted from Terminal (pg. 54)
Published 2007

"I’m dying,” he said. "Doctors told me I got a year, maybe a year and a half."

I watched him, waiting.

"I'm not just rolling over for it. I spent what I had, used up a lot of favors. There's a place over in Switzerland where they're supposed to have been doing stuff with stem cells for a long time. Years and years before that asshole we got running this country said it was illegal. Anyway, supposedly, supposedly, they've got a way to beat this . . . thing I got."

Excerpted from "First U.S. Patient Gets Stem Cell Trachea Transplant"
Published 01/13/2011 by ABC World News

Christopher Lyles, 30, of Abingdon, Md, exhausted the limited treatment options available in the U.S. for his tracheal cancer. But Lyles read about an experimental tracheal transplant procedure surgeons performed in Europe using adult stem cells.

"Every surgeon told me it was inoperable," said Lyles. "It was hard to hear that."

Lyles reached out to Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, director of the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who was the head surgeon in previous transplant cases.

After a 12-hour procedure in Sweden, Lyles was breathing through a lab-grown windpipe that doctors fashioned from his own stem cells.

Excerpted from Two Trains Running (pg. 134)
Published 2005

"Ah," the bulky man sighed, "will you give me a listen, Mickey Shalare? Our cause, we say it's for a united Ireland, do we not? But we don't mean a word of it, no more than the tribes in Nigeria really want to live together. There's plenty that could call themselves 'Irish,' yes? But how many of us are there in that big stew?"

Excerpted from "Nigeria Arrests 2 in Blast That Killed 26 in Church"
Published 12/26/2011 by the New York Times

While Boko Haram has long struck at the police — and more recently at the United Nations — the attacks during the Christmas holiday raised fears that the group was trying to exploit Nigeria's religious differences to incite violence between Christians and Muslims, a persistent problem for the country.

Excerpted from Another Life (pg. 133)
Published 2008

As soon as he dropped a couple of fights, they dropped the coverage, but the same deal still works, even today. When the women's junior-flyweight world title became vacant, the match to determine the championship was held inside a Thai prison. After the Thai won the fight, the government immediately announced she was going to be freed. After all, she could be stripped of her title if she didn't defend it within six months. Such injustice cannot be tolerated in a democracy, even one where making fun of the King is a double-digit crime.

Excerpted from "US troubled by court rulings in Thailand"
Published 12/06/2011 by the Associated Press

[A] Thai court sentenced 61-year-old grandfather Amphon Tangnoppakul to 20 years in prison for sending four text messages deemed offensive to the Thai queen.

Excerpted from "American sentenced to prison for insulting Thai royals"
Published 12/08/2011 by the Washington Times

An American who translated a banned biography of Thailand's king and posted the content online while living in Colorado was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in a Thai prison Thursday for defaming the country's royal family.

Excerpted from Blossom (pg. 29)
Published 1990

I used the Exact Change lane on the Triboro, grabbed the first exit, and ran parallel to Bruckner Boulevard through the South Bronx to Hunts Point. Turned off at Tiffany, motored past the mini-Attica they call a juvenile detention facility at the corner of Spofford, and turned left, heading for the network of juke joints, topless bars, and salvage yards that make up half the economy of the neighborhood.

Excerpted from "Bronx's notorious Spofford, aka Bridges Juvenile Center, finally shut down"
Published 03/31/2011 by the Daily News

Until last month, the vermin-infested detention center on Spofford Ave. held about 100 youth in dark cells with no air conditioning.

John Mattingly, commissioner of the city Administration for Children's Services, which absorbed the city Department of Juvenile Justice last year, called the closure "a red letter day for . . . the city" and referred to Bridges as a "Dickensian building" desperately in need of closure.

"It's finally closed - I'm ecstatic," said Darryl Briggs, 21, who began to "feel like a number" when detained there four years ago.

Excerpted from Choice of Evil (pg. 257)
Published 1999

When I finally got cable here, I learned that there's an all-news TV show too, just like the radio. I clicked it on. Another dead baby. Beaten to death. ACS wasn't giving out any explanations, although it admitted the family was "known" to them. ACS: that's "Administration for Children's Services." When I was a kid, they called it BCW. They've changed the name half a dozen times since then, usually after a bunch of babies die.

Even when they die, it doesn't amount to much. I remember the last big media-play murder. Kid doesn't show up for school for a whole year. Nobody even checks. Finally, they come around looking. Little girl's not there. Turns out the mother's boyfriend strangled her to death while the mother held the kid's hands so she couldn't struggle. Then they wrapped the body in plastic and duct tape and trucked it through the snow in a laundry cart to a Dumpster near a vacant lot. The DA offers the mother probation for her testimony, and she gets on the stand and tells it like it happened. The jury's so full of hate for the DA letting her walk away, they convict the guy only of manslaughter, not murder, trying to divide the blame by sending a message. Same way the jury did with Lisa Steinberg's killer—his girlfriend got a free pass from the DA too. Wolfe had that kind of case once. Only she took them both down, not going for the sure-thing conviction of the man by free-passing the woman.

I remembered the "social worker" I had when I was a kid. One of them, anyway. A young girl . . . although I guess she looked pretty old to me then. All I remember about her was her mouth. Her lying mouth. I never looked at her eyes.

Excerpted from "Murder charges filed against mother of slain 4-year-old boy"
Published 11/29/2011 by the Chicago Sun-Times

A mom accused of teaming up with her boyfriend to beat her 4-year-old son to death on the boy's birthday last week had tearfully admitted this summer to punching the child so hard that he had to be hospitalized, court records show.

The records offer an eerie foreshadowing of Friday's murder of little Christopher Valdez and raise serious questions about the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services' handling of the case.

Crystal Valdez told investigators at Oak Lawn's Advocate Christ Hospital in July that she had used make-up to cover her son's bruises after she beat him for crying, the records show.

Though she told them "I punched him — I have anger issues," and was in October convicted of domestic battery against her son, DCFS in August found that allegations of abuse were unsubstantiated, allowing her to keep the boy and his 5-year-old sister.

The 28-year-old and her lover Cesar Ruiz, 34, killed Christopher on Friday then covered his bruises with make-up, just 34 days after Judge James Murphy found her guilty and sentenced her to a conditional discharge and parenting classes, prosecutors alleged in court Monday.

As a sobbing Crystal Valdez protested her innocence in court next to an impassive Ruiz on Monday, DCFS spokesman Jimmy Whitlow refused to comment further on social workers' handling of the case.

It remains unclear how DCFS investigators concluded that there was not "credible evidence to support an allegation of abuse" in the earlier attack when Judge Murphy found evidence to meet the far higher legal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." DCFS did find evidence of neglect, spokesman Kendall Marlowe said Sunday.

<snip>

Outside court, Ruiz's sister Maria Castillo said she did not understand why her brother's bail was higher than Valdez's, given her history of violence against Christopher, or why Valdez was allowed to continue to raise the boy.

"Why the children were given back to her I have no idea — it's beyond me," Castillo said Monday. "It's a tragedy."

Excerpted from Flood (pg. 62-63)
Published 1985

The proper way (and the way I fixed up my computer-junkie friend) is simply to find someone who died soon after birth with an age and race similar to the person you want to fix up. Then you apply for a duplicate birth certificate in that person's name, which becomes your name when it's issued. This perfectly legitimate piece of paper opens the door to all the rest—driver's license, social security card, you name it. And that paper is perfectly good. To get a passport, for example, all they want is a birth certificate, which you can get certified at the Health Department for a couple of bucks, and a driver's license or something similar.

The finishing touch is to hire some local lawyer and tell him you want to change your name for professional reasons, like you want to be an actor or something equally useful. Then you put an ad in the paper announcing to the world, including your creditors, that you want to change your name. Most dead people don't have too many creditors, especially those who have been in such a state for a couple of decades or so. When nobody comes forward to object to the change of name, the court will give you a certified order so you can change your name legally on all the other documents. This adds another layer of smog to what was phony to begin with, and it's more than enough to keep a step ahead. The whole package costs less than $500 from start to finish. It's a bargain—you'd pay more than twice that just for a phony passport.

The next thing you do is run up some credit accounts. It doesn't take much—most of the charge card companies will issue one of their pieces of magic plastic to someone on welfare. Then you pay the bills, not exactly on time but close enough. When a cop stops you, there's nothing like the American Express Gold to make him think you're a solid citizen, especially if you're outside New York.

Excerpted from "Senators try to block ID theft of the deceased"
Published 11/25/2011 by the Chicago Sun-Times

ID thieves would have a harder time trying to profit off the deaths of children and others under a House bill introduced last week to limit access to Social Security numbers available online.

When Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) unveiled the "Keeping IDs Safe Act of 2011," he criticized Social Security's publicly released Death Master File, which has been used for at least a decade [key phrase being "at least"] by thieves to access Social Security numbers, file bogus tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service and collect refunds.

Johnson's "KIDS Act" would effectively end public access to the death file, which now can be searched for a small fee or even for free on genealogy and other online sites. The files contain the Social Security numbers and other personal information that can easily be used by identity thieves.

<snip>

The Chicago Sun-Times early this month featured Benny Watters of Lake Forest, who had his identity stolen after he died at age 5 in September 2010, and the struggles his family has had with the Internal Revenue Service.

When Benny's family filed a tax return in August 2011, it was rejected, apparently because someone else had stolen the boy's identity and already had claimed him as a dependent.

Benny's mother, Lisa, blames genealogy websites — Benny's number is readily available on FamilySearch.org. "I can't understand why it's necessary to display a whole Social Security number," she said.

The introduction of Johnson's bill came two weeks after a Scripps Howard News Service investigation documented similar cases across the country.

Johnson also blamed the administration of the death file for making life miserable for 14,000 still-living Americans a year who are erroneously listed as dead, which can place them in an Orwellian nightmare where it's difficult to get jobs or open bank accounts, the Scripps investigation found in July.

The legislation would allow only law enforcement, tax administrators and government researchers to have access to the death file.

Excerpted from Terminal (pg. 206)
Published 2007

The murderers who run Burma decided Suu Kyi, the woman who won the election the generals had voided with bullets, needed to stay under "house arrest." She won a Nobel Peace Prize more than fifteen years ago, so their decision was sure to spark some heavy discussions in the UN.

Yeah, what a scary thought. There's already four million slaughtered in the Congo, and blue helmets on the ground are about as effective as Tom Cruise working a suicide hotline.

Excerpted from "Congo Elections: Violence Feared Ahead Of Elections"
Published 11/21/2011 by the Huffington Post

One leading opposition candidate already has proclaimed himself president. Police have fired live bullets into the air at protests. And rebels in the country's violence-wracked east have been burning voter cards to keep people from going to the polls.

The outcome of Congo's Nov. 28 presidential election is almost certain to keep President Joseph Kabila in power, but so too is the likelihood it will bring more chaos to sub-Saharan Africa's largest nation. ...

"There are too many mosquitoes in the living room. Now is the time to apply insecticide," Gabriel Kyungu, a Kabila ally, was quoted as saying. Kyungu, who is president of the Katanga provincial assembly, has denied the accusation. ...

Kabila became president after his father's 2001 assassination and won a landmark 2006 vote that was largely run by the United Nations, which still has some 19,000 peacekeepers here nearly a decade after civil war ended.

Excerpted from an interview between Andrew Vachss and Richard Layman, published in Current Issues, Volume 1: Child Abuse, 1990

I want to be very, very clear about this. Are [court-appointed advocates, such as guardians ad litem] useful? The answer is, they can be. Are they ever a substitute for actual representation by lawyers? No. Underline no. Repeat, NO. I think that concept represents one of the most pernicious trends in child protective work in this country today. There are states—and Florida is an excellent example—where a child who is the victim of abuse will not be represented by a lawyer but will be represented by a "court-appointed special advocate" [CASA]. These people are not lawyers. Because they're not lawyers, they can't represent a child in terms of the totality of that child's needs. They can't file a motion. They can't argue before a court with any kind of force. I'll give you some concrete examples. If a child tells a secret to a court-appointed special advocate there is no attorney-client privilege. That child is not guaranteed the confidentiality that he would have in speaking to an attorney. We have a standard in American justice called effective assistance of counsel. Under that standard, if you're accused of a crime and your lawyer is incompetent, your case could be reversed, because you're entitled to minimal effectiveness. No non-lawyer can meet that standard. The whole Court Appointed Special Advocate concept gets its power from the idea that it's cheap; it's cost-effective. That's utter nonsense. You look at a state like Florida that could provide a stream of attorneys for a Ted Bundy and can't provide one attorney for an abused child. I think there's such a moral difficulty with that, that it's unresolvable.

Excerpted from "Colorado Supreme Court: Neglected and abused kids shouldn't trust their lawyers"
Published 10/26/2011 by the Denver Westword

One of the most basic principles of the American legal system is the guarantee that what you tell the attorney representing you is confidential and can't be disclosed without your permission. That's an absolute. Unless, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled this week, you happen to be a vulnerable child in a dependency and neglect proceeding -- for example, the alleged victim of a sexual assault by your own stepfather.

Excerpted from Choice of Evil (pg. 269)
Published 1999

I love it. Disney cleans up Times Square, but they hire a convicted child molester to direct one of their movies. People protested, but the studio ranted on about giving people another chance. Sure, once it came down to money, all of a sudden, Disney's got more faith in "rehabilitation" than an NCAA recruiter.

Excerpted from "Joe Paterno's shame shadows his success"
Published 11/09/2011 by the Vancouver Sun

Maybe Penn State football coach Joe Paterno will ... be honest with us and tell us how much he knew about the allegations of sexual abuse of boys against his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky. And maybe he will tell us when he knew about those allegations.

Maybe he will explain why he didn't immediately call the police in 2002 when then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary said he told Paterno he had witnessed Sandusky having sex in the shower with a boy who was about 10 years old. Paterno needs to tell us why there was no follow-up.

And maybe he will explain why he didn't ban Sandusky from the university's athletic facilities after McQueary presented this damning evidence to him.

Joe Paterno needs to explain himself.

Excerpted from Pain Management (pg. 67)
Published 2001

"And you hunt teachers?"

"You know, I did hunt one, once," I told him, keeping my tone conversational. "I knew he was a freak. I knew what he liked. I knew where he'd been, so I figured out where he'd be going."

"I'm not sure I'm following . . ."

"This teacher, he never had a single complaint lodged against him in thirty years. But he quit three jobs. Pretty good jobs, near as I could tell. And moved on. Nobody at any of his old jobs had a bad word to say about him. So I took a look. My kind of look: a hard one. And what all the schools he left had in common was this: each one had banned corporal punishment. You understand what I'm saying, Mr. Powell?"

"I believe so."

"Yeah? Well, let me spell it out for you, just in case. This guy was a child molester, but he never had sex with any of the kids. No, what he did was ‘punish' them. That's how he got his rocks off, paddling kids. Nothing illegal about it, in some schools. And every time one of the schools changed their policy, he'd just go someplace else. Where he could have his fun."

"That's sick."

"I'm sure that's what the teachers' union would have said, if he'd ever gotten busted for what he was doing."

"You don't like teachers much, Mr. . . . Grange?"

"I like teachers fine. I don't like freaks who hide behind authority to fuck with kids. Do you?"

Excerpted from "Schoolteacher Accused Of Physically Abusing Child"
Published 06/19/2002 by the Sun-Sentinel

A suburban West Palm Beach elementary schoolteacher faces a child-abuse charge after co-workers complained she slapped and shook students in her special education class.

Carol Suhr, 56, of Lake Worth, was arrested last week after a two-month investigation into how she treated her 13 students at Berkshire Elementary School, 1060 S. Kirk Road. The students -- ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade -- all have mental disabilities, according to court records.

Suhr, a 30-year teaching veteran, is charged with physically abusing one of her students but could face additional counts of child abuse, said Lanna Belohlavek, assistant state attorney. If convicted of the single abuse charge, she could face up to five years in prison.

Suhr has been on administrative duty with pay since April 16 -- the day four co-workers complained to the school's principal about her behavior, said Nat Harrington, spokesman for the Palm Beach County School District.

A school district committee is evaluating the allegations against Suhr, Harrington said. That committee will make a recommendation to the school board later this month on whether to discipline Suhr.

Suhr had been reprimanded by her school principal in February 2000 for grabbing a student by his shirt and poking his shoulders, according to court records.

In addition, school officials received complaints in May 2001 that she slapped a student and pushed another student's nose, court documents state. However, there was insufficient evidence to support those allegations, police said.

During the past school year, Suhr's co-workers said she repeatedly yelled at her students, smacking their heads or chins if they angered her. One of the co-workers reported that she once watched as Suhr repeatedly smacked a deaf child's mouth shut, causing the boy to bite his tongue.

Police said Suhr denied being abusive, saying she would tap the children with her fingers to get their attention.

Suhr's attorney, Chris Jette, said the teacher will plead not guilty to the charge.

She posted bond and was released from the Palm Beach County Jail immediately after her arrest, Jette said.

Excerpted from Dead & Gone (pg. 326)
Published 2000

"Any businessman understands it's not enough to know your product; you also have to know your market. And I have been successfully marketing information to pedophiles for years. There are states where sex with a child under eleven can get you twenty-five years in prison. . . unless it's your own child. Then, if the DA can be persuaded to charge 'incest' instead of 'sexual assault of a child,' the offender can expect probation. Do you know which states have the loosest requirements for running a day-care center? Which organizations don't do background checks for those who volunteer to work with kids? Which jurisdictions make it easiest to get a foster child? Which won't prosecute polygamy?"

Excerpted from "State paid sex offenders as baby sitters"
Published 08/28/2011 by the Chicago Tribune

Cornelius Osborne ... was convicted of raping two women. A succession of felonies, from robbery to failing to register as a sex offender, repeatedly sent him to prison, state records show. But over more than two years, the state paid Osborne nearly $5,000 to baby-sit two children, before his latest conviction — for dealing drugs — put him back behind bars.

The [Illinois] state Department of Human Services poorly vetted baby sitters for years — and when a 2009 law forced better checks, it took nearly 18 months to start them ... .

Also, despite the reforms, the Tribune found that even now the state lacks safeguards to weed out baby sitters who watch children while living in the homes of sex offenders and other felons deemed too dangerous for the program.

Excerpted from Terminal (pg. 23)
Published 2007

Hobbyists troll the Internet pretending to be children to attract pedophiles. Some pathetic first-timers actually show up at the "girl's" house, looking for the hot underage action they've been promised. Naturally, the camera crews are waiting. Nobody ever goes to jail, but it makes for nice low-budget TV. Another public service, brought to you by the network.

Excerpted from "Accused pedophile sailor kicked out of Navy after 'To Catch A Predator' sting has case tossed out"
Published 08/18/2011 by The Fresno Bee

A California judge tossed out a case against a former Navy man caught in a sting orchestrated by the NBC program in part because the show's producers engage in entrapment. ...

"The axiom, 'Actions speak louder than words,' clearly does not apply in this case," Judge Arthur Wick said as he threw out the case Tuesday, saying prosecutors could not prove Roisman had "specific intent" to commit a crime.

Excerpted from Dead and Gone
Published 2000

Down the road a piece, I saw the signs for Jemez Springs. After we passed through the town, the road started to get steep. The Indian nodded his head in the direction of a church. There was a row of rooms behind it, like some motel out of the fifties, but very neat and well maintained. "Servants of the Paraclete," he said.

I'd never been near the place, but I'd heard about it for years. A safehouse for pedophile priests, where they could hole up for a while ... and then go back into a new parish, all "cured." The church doesn't call them child molesters, or baby-rapers, or anything so terribly stigmatizing. No, predatory priests were "ephebophiles," part of the church's PR campaign to "dimensionalize" its own degenerates.

They know exactly how to play it. First, you make up some "syndrome" or "disorder" that covers the crime. Then you give it some fancy-sounding name, and count on the whores and fools to spread the word. You don't have to prove anything, just repeat it often enough, preferably through a good media machine. Doesn't matter if the entire scientific community sneers at it. What counts is that it gives defense attorneys an argument for a "non-incarcerative alternative." And black-robed collaborators all the excuse they need.

I could see why they wouldn't have a sign out front. But I didn't know if the Indian was offering to educate me, or trying another test to see if I was who I claimed to be. So I just said: "Oh yeah. The recycling center."

Transcribed from that brilliant insight into the vital role FBI "profilers" play in stopping all serial killers, "Criminal Minds," from the 2009 episode, "Omnivore"

David Rossi: I believe our killer has another interest that may give us the best opportunity to catch him. The Reaper's last victim was an older woman. He killed her quickly, with a single shot. The prior, younger victim he spent more time with. Stabbed 46 times.

Cop 1: Why?

Aaron Hotchner: He paid special attention to his younger, female victims, and his weapon of choice with them is the knife. A ... substitute instrument for bodily penetration.

Rossie: And the younger the victim, the more time and effort he spends. I think our guy is a ephebophile.

Cop 1: Ephebophile?

Cop 2: Someone who's attracted to adolescent, post-pubescent children. Teenagers?

Hotchner: Look for men with access and authority. High school teachers, councilors, coaches, and anyone who's been charged with sex crimes against teenage girls in the last ten years. That's all for now. Thank you.

Excerpted from "National sex offender registry among goals sought by Vachss," by Craig McDonald
Published 07/14/2005 by ThisWeek

"There's a danger to registries. The danger of all registries is a false sense of security. Because if you're going to follow the logic, what's going to happen, my friend, is people are going to start saying, 'Well, I looked him up on the Internet and he wasn't registered.' This is like a seal of approval, now."

Excerpted from The Weight
Published 2010

"You know what that means, being a Registered Sex Offender? I maxed out, but I still got to keep an address, let them know when I move, stuff like that."

"Cramps your style, does it?"

"No, that's not it. They don't actually do anything. It's just a stupid Web site. And you know who uses it the most?"

"Uses what the most?"

"This 'registry' thing. The people who use it most are those . . . 'pedophiles,' they call them. See, what they do, when they're trying to worm their way in someplace, like with a single mother who's living with her little daughter, they tell her to check them out. On this Web site, I mean. When that comes up empty, it's like the government is saying, 'This guy, he's all right,' see?"

Excerpted from "Match.com to begin checking for sex offenders in wake of lawsuit"
Published 04/18/2011 by CNN

The statement from Match.com's president cautioned that despite the background checks, the website could not guarantee "the actions of all its members."

"We want to stress that while these checks may help in certain instances, they remain highly flawed, and it is critical that this effort does not provide a false sense of security to our members," Ginsberg's statement said.

Excerpted from That's How I Roll
Pantheon, 03/20/2012
(manuscript completed, 2010)

When you're birthed out of your own sister—when her father is your father, too—you know you're not going to come out right.

Turns out, I had drawn the shortest straw. When the vertebrae don't form correctly, a little sac filled with fluid extends through an opening in the spine. That's called "myelomeningocele." It can hit just about anywhere along your spine, so I guess it was lucky for me that it happened at the lowest point—because anything below that point is never going to work the way it should.

Excerpted from "Health Buzz: DNA Test Exposes Undisclosed Incest"
Published 02/11/2011 by US News & World Report

About half of children born from incestuous relationships will be afflicted by a developmental disability.

Excerpted from "Success of Spina Bifida Study Opens Fetal Surgery Door"
Published 02/09/2011 by the New York Times

Now, for the first time, a rigorous clinical trial shows that fetal surgery can help babies with a condition that is not usually life-threatening. Babies with a form of spina bifida, a debilitating spinal abnormality, were more likely to walk and experience fewer neurological problems if operated on before being born rather than afterward.
[snip]
The spina bifida study involved the most severe form, myelomeningocele (MY-ell-oh-men-NING-guh-seal), in which the spine does not close properly and the spinal cord protrudes.

Excerpted from Terminal, page 23
Published 2007

It's just a matter of time before some marketing degenerate wires up a halfway house for sex offenders and makes a reality-TV show out of it.

Excerpted from " 'Our America' launches on Oprah's OWN network "
Published 02/14/2011 by The Fresno Bee

Question: What exactly will you be doing with the series?

Answer: We set out to try and understand or explore what it really means to be an American. And sometimes the answer to that is a very moving answer. Sometimes it's very challenging.

Were there times when you felt like you were in danger?

I think when I was with heroin addicts about to go on a drug run or when my team and I -- a team of all women -- were in the middle of a sex offender colony in the middle of the woods of Florida. Those moments made me a little nervous.

How do you remain objective about a sex offender?

Our intention was, in a certain way, to take ownership of the fact that these are Americans, just like you and me. And by shunning them, and by kind of watching on the periphery, is that making the situation any better? We, in every episode, try and pose those kinds of questions.

Excerpted from Two Trains Running
Published 2005

"Al Capone had syphilis, all right. But he didn't get it when he was a kid—he got it in the federal penitentiary."

"How? If he was—"

"When he first got busted for taxes, he made some kind of a deal to plead guilty. According to him—and I mean him, not some rumor; that's what he said—he was supposed to draw a deuce in the pen, and cover all the charges with that. But he bragged to the papers about it, and the judge—a federal judge, remember—said he wouldn't go along. Hell, with all that press, he couldn't go along, or it would look like he was on the mob's payroll, too. Get himself investigated. So Capone went to trial. And he ended up with eleven years."

"You think, if he had kept his mouth shut—?"

"We'll never know. Anyway, they put him in the Cook County Jail while he was waiting to see how his appeals came out. And, kid, let me tell you, he ran the place. Had three private cells to himself, fixed up like a hotel suite. He ate steak and lobster, drank the best bonded booze, had all the 'visitors' he wanted, too.

"When he lost his appeals, he was sent to the federal pen in Atlanta. And he ran that place just like he ran Cook County. The man was a king inside those walls. And that's when it happened."

"The syphilis."

"Yep. Girl named Noreen Tisdale. Most gorgeous blonde you ever saw in your life. Face like a schoolgirl, and a body like Candy Barr—never mind, trust me, she was a real stunner. Visited that scar-faced greaseball five times, just to make sure."

"Wait! You're saying she knew—"

"Knew? That's what she was paid for, kid. First, she had to fuck a guy who had the syph—early stage. Then she had to be checked by a doctor, make sure she had it. And then she goes and lets Capone fuck her, any way he wanted it. By the time she was done with him, that was it."

"But couldn't a doctor—?"

"What? Fix him? Maybe . . . maybe . . . if he'd gotten to one in time. But, soon as they were sure they had him infected, they boxed him up and shipped him to Alcatraz. That's when Big Al stopped running the show. No more special treatment. No privileges, no nothing. And the only thing the doctors they had in there ever treated was stab wounds."

"Why would any woman do . . . all that?" Dave said.

"Her husband was sitting in the Death House at the Georgia State Pen. Bank robbery, and a guard got killed. He got a pardon from the governor when another guy confessed to the crime. Turned out her husband was innocent all along."

"Jesus Lord!"

"Yeah. She was some kind of woman."

"Her? I meant . . . an innocent man on Death Row. It's so . . ."

"He was guilty as sin, Davy."

"But you just said—"

Mack drew a long, deep breath. Let it out slowly. Turned to the younger man and said, "It was a business deal, son. All the way around. Noreen did the job, and she got paid what she wanted for it. And what we got, we got Capone."

"We? You don't mean—?"

"Yeah, I do. That was just an experiment, at the time. And it worked. Nobody knew exactly what would happen if a man got syphilis and never got any treatment at all. Not for sure, anyway. Can you imagine what you could do with something like that? A disease you get from sex? The Krauts had their mustard gas in World War I. This, this could be bigger than that by a thousand, a million times. If you knew how to keep it under control, use it only when you wanted to use it, you could own the whole damn world."

Excerpted from "Horrific US Medical Experiments Come to Light"
Published 02/27/2011 by AOL News

Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.

Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.

[snip]

In the 1946-48 study, American scientists infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis, apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.

The Guatemala study nauseated ethicists on multiple levels. Beyond infecting patients with a terrible illness, it was clear that people in the study did not understand what was being done to them or were not able to give their consent. Indeed, though it happened at a time when scientists were quick to publish research that showed frank disinterest in the rights of study participants, this study was buried in file drawers.

"It was unusually unethical, even at the time," said Stark, the Wesleyan researcher.

Excerpted from New York Times
Published 01/05/1993

Chronic sexual predators have crossed an osmotic membrane. They can't step back to the other side—our side. And they don't want to. If we don't kill or release them, we have but one choice: Call them monsters and isolate them.

When it comes to the sexual sadist, psychiatric diagnoses won't protect us. Appeasement endangers us. Rehabilitation is a joke.

I've spoken to many predators over the years. They always exhibit amazement that we do not hunt them. And that when we capture them, we eventually let them go. Our attitude is a deliberate interference with Darwinism—an endangerment of our species.

A proper experiment produces answers. Experiments with sexual sadists have produced only victims. Washington State's sexual predator law will surely be challenged in the courts and it may take years before constitutional and criminological criteria are established to incarcerate a criminal beyond his or her sentence.

Excerpted from The Court's 41-page opinion
Issued 01/27/2011

Last week, on January 27, the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Sixth Appellate District, issued its decision in the case of People v. Gonzales.

Here's how the Court summarized the situation:

[begin excerpt]

In 2007, the Santa Clara County District Attorney filed a petition to commit defendant Ramiro Gonzales as a sexually violent predator (SVP) under the SVP Act. (Welf. & Inst. Code, 6600 et seq.)

A jury found the defendant qualified as an SVP, and the court ordered defendant committed to the custody of the Department of Mental Health (DMH) for an indeterminate term.

On appeal from the commitment order, defendant claims the trial court erred in releasing psychological records to the prosecution and admitting the testimony of a former therapist.

He claims there is insufficient evidence that his circumstances had materially changed since a previous determination that he did not qualify as an SVP.

He claims the court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that mental retardation could not be considered a mental disorder in determining whether he qualified as an SVP.

He claims the indeterminate commitment violates his constitutional rights to equal protection and due process and also the constitutional protections against ex post facto legislation and double jeopardy.

Finally, he claims the SVP law, as amended, violates his First Amendment rights.

[end excerpt]

Here is part of the Court's decision:

[begin excerpt]

Defendant contends that the trial court erred in finding that the "dangerous patient" exception applied.

We agree.

Our Supreme Court has consistently recognized " "the public interest in supporting effective treatment of mental illness and . . . the consequent public importance of safeguarding the confidential character of psychotherapeutic communication." [Citations.]" (People v. Wharton (1991) 53 Cal.3d 522, 555 (Wharton), quoting Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (1976) 17 Cal.3d 425, 440.) By its terms the psychotherapist-patient privilege protects " "confidential communication between patient and psychotherapist." " (Evid.Code, 1012, 1014.)

"The privilege can cover a communication that was never, in fact, "confidential"--so long as it was made in confidence.

The communication need only comprise "information . . . transmitted between a patient and his psychotherapist in the course of that relationship and in confidence by a means which, so far as the patient is aware, discloses the information" to no "outside" third person. [Citation.] [] Similarly, the privilege can cover a communication that has lost its "confidential" status. []

"[T]he patient . . . has a privilege to refuse to disclose, and to prevent another from disclosing, a confidential communication between patient and psychotherapist . . . " [Citation.]"

[end excerpt]

A final excerpt: "We conclude that the court committed reversible error in releasing privileged psychotherapeutic records and admitting testimony concerning privileged information. Accordingly, we reverse the commitment order."

Excerpted from Only Child, page 148
Published 2002

"You want these kids to give it up, right? Listen, they'll do anything—to anybody—if you whisper 'movies' at them. We saw that when we were out on the coast, virgins blowing Great Danes because some greaseball tells them that's the way Monroe got started. But they'd have to believe you could make it happen. And a screenwriter can't make anything happen."

"What if I was a—?"

"Casting director!" Cyn blurted out. "That is just awesomely
perfect. Right, Rej? Nobody knows their names, and they may not get the final say, but they thin the herd. If you don't get past them, the director never gets to see your tape."

"You're a genius, Cyn," Rej said. "Makes me want to crawl over there and kiss your ass."

"Don't pay any attention to her, Burke," the blonde said.
"This one's our ticket, I know it."

Excerpted from The (NY) Daily News
Published 01/09/2011

An aspiring actress from Queens was charged with abduction after snatching a baby in Toronto on Dec. 30 while pretending to be a movie casting director, cops said.

Michelle Gopaul, 24, allegedly placed an advertisement on craigslist in Canada offering $15,000 for an infant to act in a Bollywood-style film, police and media reports said.

To read the full story, click here.

Excerpted from Mask Market, page 13
Published 2006

The same year my car had been born, the mayor had been a guy named Lindsay. He was the ideal politician, a tall, good-looking, Yale-graduate, war-veteran, "fusion" Republican who ran on the Liberal ticket. He got a lot of credit for New York not going the way of Newark or Detroit or Los Angeles during the riots the year before. But when the big blizzard hit in February of '69 and paralyzed the city, Lindsay took the heat for the Sanitation Department being caught napping, and that was the end of his career.

Every mayor that followed him got the message. New Yorkers will tolerate just about anything on their streets, from projectile-vomiting drunks to mumbling lunatics, but snow is un-fucking-acceptable.

Excerpted from Reuters
Published 12/29/2010

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a political independent whose reputation was built on competence, may have been defeated this time by a blizzard.

To read the full story, click here.

Excerpted from Terminal, page 177
Published 2007

Henricks was in Europe somewhere. Not relocated; on business. I only knew that because The Wall Street Journal had a little squib about him meeting with some big players in the Netherlands—neutral territory?—about putting together a consortium to run a natural-gas pipeline from the Russian icelands all the way down to a Y pipe. One channel to go to countries where they paid in euros, the other to one that paid in anything you wanted, from warplanes to harvested organs.

Excerpted from The (NY) Daily News
Published 12/15/2010

The prime minister of Kosovo is the capo of a shady underworld organization responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and even human organs across Eastern Europe, according to a European inquiry on organized crime reviewed by The Guardian.

To read the full story, click here.

Excerpted from Blossom, page 45
Published 1990

I got up to go. He didn't offer to shake hands. I'd see him again someday. The senator wasn't cut out for crime. He was the kind of man who'd use vanity plates on a getaway car.

Excerpted from Boston's WCVB-TV
Published 11/14/2010

A Hooksett woman was arrested and charged with robbing a pharmacy after a witness jotted down the vanity plate on her car as she left the area, police said.

To read the full story, click here.

Excerpted from The Weight, page 45
Published 11/09/2010 (and written a year earlier)

That's the first thing that hit me. I hadn't been away that long, but now it seemed like nobody cared about going for the wall anymore. The guys with real juice, they could get anything they wanted right there. They didn't care about soft money. Or even pistols. What they really wanted was cell phones.

A cell phone, that's super-bling now. The ultimate. Perfect for a shot-caller who's never getting out of Ad-Seg. With a cell, he can reach out anytime he wants.

I thought that was amazing, but a guy who'd done time in Mexico told me the narco kingpins always had cell phones. Carried them around, nobody said a thing. We were just slow catching up here.

Excerpted from FoxNews.com
Published 12/04/2010

Notorious cult leader Charles Manson was caught with a cell phone in his jail cell.

Manson was caught with an LG flip phone under his mattress and had used it several times before officers discovered it, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections told Fox 8 News.

To read the full story, click here.

Then ask yourself, how does a cell phone make its way into the Security Housing Unit of a prison? That phone wasn't smuggled in by any "visitor."