A Mexican Savior or a Sitting Duck?

by Diane DimondRemember the name Marisol Valles Garcia. She’ll either go down in history as a selfless heroine or she’ll soon be dead. Maybe both.Twenty-year-old Marisol lives in the small and violent Mexican border village of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerro, population 9,149. Marisol is a criminal justice graduate student, married, and the mother of a little boy. The baby calls her Mama. The rest of her village now calls her Chief, their Chief of Police....

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The Darkest Crimes

by Katherine Ramsland Over the summer, a production team for the Investigation Discovery (ID) channel filmed my commentary as the recurring expert for American Occult, a proposed series on extreme crimes with supernatural associations. I have written a number of articles and books about vampires, ghosts, satanic activities, forensics, and serial killers, as well as interviewing occult practitioners firsthand and watching certain rituals. All...

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Extreme Measures

by Gina Simmons, Ph.D.Walking about the tree-lined, red-brick covered campus of San Diego City College, you can feel a hopeful energy. This multi-cultural, inner-city campus attracts bright teenagers, middle-aged professionals, recovering addicts and suburban housewives all seeking some sort of growth and advancement. As former adjunct psychology faculty at City College, I feel a deep sadness about the recent campus murder of 19-year-old student...

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Fact v. Fiction

By Kathryn CaseyA while back when my latest true crime book, Shattered, debuted, I wrote a post on a writer's life, talking about my experiences as a working author. I hope I didn't dissuade any of you from trying it. A couple of my friends have told me that I'm a bit disillusioning on the subject, but I've always believed that people need to hear the truth, and writing is a pretty tough way to make a living. There are those authors who write one...

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Television Shows for Armchair Detectives

by Andrea CampbellWe have a guest editor today, Jay Smith and the folks at the Criminal Justice University. I love lists, and this is a particularly good one. I might add some of my own at the end.10 Shows for the Criminal Mind There are many television shows airing that follow the lives of detectives and investigators that are assigned various crime cases. While some of the shows are summaries of real-life events and others are fiction they...

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On Land or on Water

by Pat BrownWomen in Crime Ink contributor Dr. Lillian Glass recently wrote a post concerning her belief that Tiffany Hartley, the wife of missing jet skier, David Hartley, has not been telling the truth concerning his disappearance on Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border. Peter Hyatt, a statement analyst, also came out early on with his dissection of Hartley's comments and has said she is being deceptive. Many people have noted something...

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How to Make a Heart-Stopping Salad

by Deborah BlumOne evening, in the early summer of 2008, a Colorado sheriff's deputy named Jonathan Allen came home to find that his wife had made him a "special" dinner. Waiting on the table was his favorite spicy spaghetti dish and a big leafy bowl of salad.As he told investigators later, some of those leaves in the salad were startling bitter. But his wife told him it was just a spring mix. He assumed it contained another of those trendy herbs...

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Thomas? Not Anita Hill

by Cathy ScottWhat is up with Virginia Thomas? On a recent weekend, Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, called Anita Hill’s voice mail and made a bizarre request.In her message, Mrs. Thomas, seemingly out of the blue, asked for an apology from Hill for accusing the future Supreme Court associate justice of sexual harassment back in 1991 during his confirmation hearings--this, nearly two decades later. She won't get an apology.Anita...

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Bullying: A Product of Our Times?

by Katherine ScardinoNowadays, we raise children in a New World. For most of us, we did not reach maturity after spending our days (and nights) playing video games, sending e-mails, texts and instant messages on our computers, iPads, PCs, smartphones. We picked up our telephone and talked to our friends for hours on end with a parent telling us to “Hang up the phone!” Or, we had actual one-on-one conversations with people. We actually took the...

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Oksana Needs Reputation Rehab!

by Robin SaxLess than four months ago, Oksana Grigorieva was the “poster child” of the domestic violence victim. She garnered much support and even sympathy after the details of the January 6, 2010 domestic abuse detail surfaced. Mel Gibson’s taped rant and tirade sent chills down the spines of even the most hardened of people. No one thought Mel would survive this one. It seemed clear, to all, he was going down this time. To make sure I wasn't missing...

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