I want to add a warning here that this is not a news blog and some of these details are unsubstantiated. And you have to ask why the Jane Bashara murder, which took place on Middlesex, the street made famous in the Jeffrey Eugenides book of that title, gets so many local, state and national headlines when Detroit, not a mile away has murders every day and gets none. Maybe because only a Charles Willeford, Elmore Leonard or Joe Lansdale could write this.
Interesting details include: Bashara had an S & M club in the basement of a local bar; he is also featured on various S & M websites; he took a very large insurance policy out on his wife just months ago; the hitman (Bashara's handyman) who confessed to the crime appears to be of limited intelligence and has been picked up by surveillance cameras taking a bus home after the murder; the deserted Mercedes has her handbag still in it-wallet too; Bashara is reported to have signed autographs as a local greasy spoon yesterday; Bashara had a long-term mistress and was making plans to introduce another woman to their relationship.
There is more, much more. Any good murders in your neck of the woods lately?
16 comments:
Amazing how few local stories, no matter how big, make it to the national level. It may have made national headlines but I have never heard a word about the Bashara case while people like Casey Anthony are on the news 24/7, seemingly.
Jeff M.
His daughter was on Good Morning America this week defending him. Also the story was picked up by other papers.
Sounds ripe for a Nancy Grace style expose. Can't imagine why she hasn't picked it up yet. Probably still has a lot of Powell murder-suicide stuff left to air. (I don't mean to make light of tragedy, but Nancy Grace really beats these things into the ground.)
Don't know about "good" murder, but our community (where murders are rare and always make local news) recently had a double-homicide where a 26-year-old man killed his parents (in a very grizzly way--I think he stabbed them multiple times), ditched his clothes and the murder weapon in a drainage ditch, went out partying with his buddies, then had a buddy come home with him to provide an alibi for when they "found" the bodies. Police quickly put two-and-two together and the son was arrested. His reason for killing his parents: They kept bugging him to get a job.
Patti - What a story!!! Yeah it would be very hard to pull that off in fiction. Nothing quite like that where I live lately...
Down here the big story is John Goodman, not the actor but the Wellington polo club owner. Last year when we were down here (or was it two years ago?) he was driving drunk in his Bentley convertible, ran a stop sign and smashed into a 23 year old's car, knocking it into a canal.
Rather than call for help he let the kid drown and wandered around for an hour before calling the police.
His civil and criminal trials are finally about to start and in an attempt to shield as much of his money from the kid's family as possible this 48 year old just 'adopted' his 42 year old girlfriend!
This has created a major uproar in Palm Beach County.
Jeff M.
Incredible how many sociopaths are walking amongst us. And wealthy families seem to produce more than their share.
I'm sure I'll see this on the True crime network at some point. Wow.
We don't have any high-profile murders right now, just the usual weekly drive-bys. But two summers ago we had a guy crash a party at a downtown restaurant and he ended up shooting eight people (four died).
A trial finished recently in Ontario for a multiple murder that's been called an honour killing. A man and his wife (and their son) were convicted of killing three of their daughters and the man's first wife (he was still married to her as well as to the second wife).
Was on Nancy Grace Thursday night
They were upholding the family honor by killing their daughters. Whoa.
Should have guessed it, Jeff.
The Josh Powell murder/suicide happened in my area. And the judge who was hearing his custody case married my brother-in-law about six weeks ago.
A couple of years a husband who had just gotten out of jail violated a restraining order and shot and killed his wife on the front porch three doors down. Then he ran down the street and killed himself in a the driveway of the house across from us.
About the same time, a woman a few streets over was found to have the bodies of two young girls in her freezer.
Going back a while, we lived in Manassas, Virginia, which had all sorts of great stuff happening -- including a minister who had put out a contract on his wife and the FBI agent who started shooting at his FBI agent wife and her minister over a love affair with Patricia Cornwell. And Manassas was the scene of the famous John Bobbitt incident; my daughter worked with the man who had retrieved the dismembered member from the bushes by the local 7-11.
We are a savage society, aren't we?
The strange thing is that I would guess the majority of us live in what we would call "quiet suburban neighborhoods," and yet all of us can recall recent murders in our areas.
Yep. We had one just a few years ago.
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