According to [a] Reddit user … every tree between 1st Street and Wilshire Boulevard was cut down. However, a review of photos suggests a few remain standing.
Photos from Instagram show downed trees at the intersections of Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street, and Broadway and Cesar Chavez Avenue.
It was Easter weekend, so LA’s Urban Forestry Division didn’t answer calls from the media. LAPD also didn’t have any answers for the media. Apparently someone can cut down trees in the middle of America’s second-largest city without a single cop noticing.
Notorious spy John Walker died on Aug. 28, 2014. The following is a story outlining Walker’s spy ring from the June 2010 issue of U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History Magazine with the original title: The Navy’s Biggest Betrayal.
Twenty-five years ago the FBI finally shut off the biggest espionage leak in U.S. Navy history when it arrested former senior warrant officer John A. Walker.
To hear the United States’ most notorious naval spy tell it, were it not for his ex-wife, Barbara – the weak link his Soviet handlers had warned him about – his espionage might have continued. As it was, however, John Walker’s ferreting went on far too long. A few more years and, had he been employed in a conventional job, he could have retired on a pension. Indeed, he already enjoyed a U.S. Navy pension after retiring in 1976 as a senior warrant officer.
The Navy, in which John Walker served for 20 years, was enormously damaged by his espionage. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger concluded that the Soviet Union made significant gains in naval warfare that were attributable to Walker’s spying. His espionage provided Moscow “access to weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics,” according to Weinberger. A quarter-century after John Walker’s arrest, it is illuminating to revisit the story of his naval spy ring, both for what it reveals about espionage versus security and for how it highlights the ambitions and frailties at the heart of spying.
Building a Naval Career
John Walker in 1955. FBI Photo
John Anthony Walker Jr. was born in 1937, the middle son of a Warner Brothers film marketer and an Italian-American mother. Nicknamed “Smilin’ Jack,” he attended Catholic school and became an altar boy; however, his childhood was traumatic. His father descended into a hell of alcoholism and lost his job. Bankrupt, the family moved near the boy’s grandparents in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The entrepreneurial John Jr. secured a paper route, sold home products door to door, and worked as a movie usher, and on his 16th birthday bought a car with his savings.
In late 1955 Walker joined the Navy as a radioman and served on board a destroyer escort before joining the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59). While on shore leave in Boston during the winter of 1957, he met Barbara Crowley. They married soon afterward, and children followed, three daughters by 1960. After qualifying at submarine school, Walker was assigned to the Razorback (SS-394) for a Pacific deployment. While serving in her, Walker, then a petty officer, received his top secret cryptographic clearance and passed the Personnel Reliability Program, a psychological evaluation to ensure that only the most reliable personnel have access to nuclear weapons.
His submarine participated in surveillance missions off the Soviet port of Vladivostok and in the flotilla observing the July 1962 Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test. Walker’s efficiency reports were uniformly excellent, and he was assigned to the Blue Crew of the Polaris ballistic missile submarine Andrew Jackson (SSBN-619), then under construction at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. On board the boat, Walker impressed the executive officer enough that when he was named to command the Gold Crew of the Simon Bolivar (SSBN-641), he recruited the petty officer to lead his radio room. Walker first qualified on maintenance of cryptographic equipment in early 1963. Along the way, he passed his high school general education degree exams as well as Navy promotion tests, rising through grades to chief petty officer and warrant officer. These were the makings of a fine enlisted career. Ten years in, John Walker had served with some distinction on board half a dozen vessels, was a plank owner on a pair of “boomers,” had attained warrant officer rank, and had run the radio shop of a nuclear missile submarine.
Life, however, grated on Smilin’ Jack. Walker disliked the impersonal nature of his big ships, and his membership in the tight-knit crews of smaller vessels was long behind him. The lengthy underwater patrols in the ballistic missile subs, during which there were just a handful of brief communications with home, tried him.
Those cruises were also hard on his family, which by now included a son, Michael Lance. Meeting the kids all over again after a patrol was difficult for everyone, and according to Walker, he discovered Barbara philandering with family members, ignoring the household, and – shades of his father – drinking more and more. Walker seems to have despised the Navy for encouraging alcoholism among Sailors and their families. He invested his savings in land outside Charleston, South Carolina, planning to build a car park to give his wife a constructive outlet. He later opened a bar on the property instead, but the marginal venture left Warrant Officer Walker strapped for cash. Casting about for some means of righting his financial boat, he drove a cab and shuttled rental cars among cities, but it was not enough.
A Second Career
USS Pueblo at sea, 1967
Espionage became Walker’s way out, though in his telling political disaffection also played a role. He suspected John F. Kennedy’s assassination had been engineered by government and corporate leaders intent on preventing the President from toning down the Cold War. In his memoir, Walker recounted his intellectual evolution from 1950s John Bircher to Cold War denier. He said he began to realize the Soviets were not the aggressive adversary Americans feared. “The farce of the cold war and the absurd war machine it spawned,” he commented, “was an ever-growing pathetic joke to me.”
One bracing fall day in October 1967 Chief Warrant Officer Walker, then assigned as a watch officer at Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force headquarters in Norfolk, decided to correct the military balance – and balance his checkbook – by leaking top secret information to Moscow. Taking the first step, he photocopied a document at headquarters and slipped the copy in his pocket. The next day he hopped into his red 1964 MG sports car, drove to Washington, walked into the Soviet Embassy, and asked to see security personnel.
Yakov Lukasevics, an internal security specialist at the embassy, had no idea what to do with the American who came bearing documents and said he wanted to spy. The papers, however, needed to be evaluated, and so he telephoned the KGB rezident , or station chief, Boris A. Solomatin. KGB rezidenturas (stations) were wary of walk-ins, persons who spontaneously offered their services. The Soviets even used the term “well-wishers” to denote such persons. And the idea of an American striding right into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, which was under constant FBI surveillance, immediately suggested a trap.
“I have an interesting man here who walked in off the street,” Lukasevics told Solomatin. “Someone must come down who speaks better English.”
Another KGB man presently spoke to Walker, who identified himself and said he wanted to earn money and “make arrangements for cooperation.” The KGB officer then took the documents upstairs to Solomatin. As it happened, the 43-year old rezident was a naval buff, having grown up in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Solomatin recognized that some of Walker’s documents concerned U.S. submarines, vessels that particularly plagued the Soviet Fleet. Of greater importance, the National Security Agency (NSA) document Walker had purloined before leaving work listed the following month’s settings for the American KL-47 encryption machine. The Soviets had already received some NSA papers from a different spy, and after comparing markings and format realized Walker’s settings document, called a key list, was genuine.
On the spot Solomatin decided to take a chance. For a KGB station chief personally to meet a prospective agent was unprecedented, but Solomatin spent the next two hours talking privately with Walker. The American favorably impressed him by saying nothing about love for communism, which most phonies emphasized. This was strictly business. Walker received a few thousand dollars cash as a down payment and was smuggled off the embassy compound in a car. Thus began the Navy’s most damaging spy case.
Solomatin, who had not previously paid special attention to the U.S. Navy, now boned up on the subject.
He kept a very tight rein on the Walker operation, assigning Oleg Kalugin, his deputy for political intelligence (Line PR), as the American’s manager and Yuri Linkov, a naval spy, as his case officer. Kalugin spent weeks driving around the Washington area to identify and carefully record spots for “dead drops,” places Walker would deposit packages of intelligence and pick up cash and instructions. During a meeting outside a northern Virginia department store within a month of Walker’s embassy visit, the warrant officer handed over a bigger pile of Navy documents, and Linkov gave him the locations for his first few drops-offs plus more money. Those were the only face-to-face meetings the KGB had with John Walker for a decade. Some versions of the tale maintain that his espionage began in 1968; however, Solomatin, Kalugin, and Walker all agree that it began in October 1967 at the Soviet Embassy.
Only a handful of other KGB officials ever had anything to do with Walker. A stovepipe fed his material to the deputy chief of the First Directorate, the KGB’s foreign intelligence unit, and just a couple of assistants. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner for Walker’s recruitment, Solomatin was promoted to deputy chief of intelligence. In 1968, when the KGB created the Sixteenth Directorate, its counterpart to NSA, the Walker case passed from Line PR to the new agency, but the tight security surrounding it was preserved.
Whether the KGB had an immediate use for Walker’s KL-47 key list is still not clear. In early January 1968, however, the spy delivered to the Soviets a KW-7 encryption machine key list that would quickly prove useful. Later that month, North Korea captured the spy ship USS Pueblo (AGER-2) in international waters and with it a KW-7 device along with manuals and other documents. According to historian Mitchell B. Lerner, a leading authority on the affair, within two days of seizing the Pueblo , North Korea dispatched an aircraft to Moscow containing almost 800 pounds of cargo, presumably from the spy ship. The KGB quickly dispatched a team of intelligence experts to the port of Wonsan, North Korea, where the vessel had been taken. U.S. intelligence detected transmission of an enormous fax to Moscow, presumably the texts of manuals for cryptographic equipment on board the Pueblo .
Thereafter, Moscow had continued access to American naval communications until the U.S. system was entirely changed.
Life As a Spy
FBI Image
John Walker’s trickle of intelligence meanwhile became a flood. According to Walker’s account, he mostly supplied the Soviets with old key lists – much less zealously guarded – and the KGB never pressed him for current or future ones. In fact, the Soviets advised Walker to avoid future material as well as maintenance manuals. Also, their plan for clandestine drops provided for only two per year, and he claimed that the KGB never demanded more frequent exchanges, which means their take of current/future material had to be limited to a couple of months annually.
Walker also maintained that much of what he gave the Soviets concerned such obsolescent systems as the World War II – vintage KL-47, which featured a seven-rotor encryption machine similar to the German Enigma, and the KW-37, an early online, or automated, encryption system. As for the later-generation KW-7 system, Walker said he only provided the Soviets with its key lists for random future dates. Probably few commentators accept his version of what he handed over. If his claim that the KGB showed no desire for current or future keys is accurate, it puts an interesting light on Soviet gains from his espionage.
Walker nevertheless provided a huge array of other secret Navy and U.S. documents to America’s Cold War adversary. These included operational orders, war plans, technical manuals, and intelligence digests. The KGB devised and furnished its spy with an electronic device that could read the KL-47’s rotor wiring and gave him a miniature Minox camera. At Norfolk, he used his status as an armed forces courier to smuggle documents from headquarters to his bachelor officer quarters (BOQ) room, where he photographed them. There was such a stream of papers he had to be selective. Walker estimated that photographing just 20 of the hundreds of messages that crossed his desk during a watch would have required more than 100 rolls of film over six months, yet initially everything he left at a dead drop needed to fit inside a single soda can.
Later, while on training duty at San Diego, Walker had less access to top secret documents and had to rely on a classified library. Smuggling out material meant getting it past multiple checkpoints staffed by Marine guards. He also forged the papers required to show renewal of his security clearance. This spy enjoyed amazingly good fortune.
But John Walker’s luck ran out with his family. He sometimes spent nights at the BOQ instead of the family’s home. Barbara Walker had suspected her husband of sexual adventures – true, as it happened – and looked through his things. Family financial problems that had seemed insuperable were suddenly solved. Walker pointed to his moonlighting as the source of his money, but Barbara remained unconvinced. And then, within a year of her husband becoming a spy, she found a grocery bag in which Walker had secreted a pile of classified documents. Confronted with the discovery, he admitted to his espionage and took Barbara along to one of his dead drops in a dubious attempt to involve her in his crime. From the beginning, the KGB had warned Walker never to reveal anything to his wife or other family members. Though Barbara did nothing immediately, the seeds of John Walker’s downfall were planted.
On the West Coast and while assigned to the combat stores ship Niagara Falls (AFS-3), the spy’s journeys to drop his gleanings to the KGB became much more onerous. One 1972 drop required a flight from Vietnam to the United States, a brief cover visit home, and then rejoining his ship in Hong Kong. When Walker returned to Norfolk to work at Amphibious Force Atlantic headquarters in the summer of 1974, the problems were ameliorated, but the transfer conflicted with his desire to remain afloat and away from Barbara.
The naval spy’s solution was to retire from the Navy. He believed that he could then work more effectively as a network manager, delivering to the Soviets information gathered by others. By the time he separated from the service, Walker had already begun dabbling in private investigating. Later, he took a job at Wackenhut and then opened his own firm. He also divorced Barbara, but not before again bringing her along to one of his drop sites.
Building the Ring
John Walker’s network began with an old Navy friend, Senior Chief Petty Officer Jerry Whitworth, also a radioman, who had left the service but re-enlisted in the fall of 1974. He then volunteered for a billet at Diego Garcia, a previous duty station. Whitworth was active by the summer of 1975, when Walker put in for retirement. The more experienced spy forwarded many packets of Whitworth’s intelligence to the KGB. Possibly the best resulted from his tour on board the Niagara Falls in the same post Walker once held. When the ship went into dry dock, Whitworth was reassigned to Naval Communications Center Alameda. There, however, he found that clandestinely photographing documents was harder. Walker bought a van, for which the Soviets reimbursed him, in which Whitworth could do his camerawork while it sat in a parking lot near work.
With Walker free to travel after his retirement and Whitworth delivering the goods, the spymaster offered the Soviets more frequent intelligence deliveries. Again the KGB specifically refused, although it invited Walker to a face-to-face meeting in Casablanca in the summer of 1977 during which his Soviet contact denounced his recruitment of a new agent. Walker agreed to annual clandestine meetings in Vienna and not to bring in any more agents. He later claimed that during one of the sidewalk encounters in the Austrian capital he was secreted away and debriefed by a group of men who included KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. Others claim that Andropov personally oversaw Walker’s espionage, which was unlikely.
In late 1980, a visit to Alameda by a Naval Investigative Service (NIS) team to solve a rape case frightened Whitworth. He not only became skittish but also pecuniary, deliberately ruining a batch of his photographs in an attempt to get the KGB to pay twice. Whitworth carried off a foot-high stack of documents from his last post on board the Enterprise (CVN-65) with the intent to continue delivering his stream of classified information after leaving the Navy, which he did in October 1983. Among the materials the Soviets obtained from him were cable traffic plus photographs of, and some key lists for, the KW-7, KY-8, KG-14, KWR-37, and KL-47 cryptographic systems. Though older crypto setups predominated, the take included data on the newest U.S. secure phone system.
Aware of Whitworth’s increasing reluctance to spy and despite Walker’s promises to the KGB, in 1983 the spymaster solicited his son, Michael, a freshly minted yeoman on board the Nimitz (CVN-68) who worked in the ship’s administration office. (In 1979 he had attempted but failed to draw in his youngest daughter, Laura Walker Snyder, who was then in the Army but pregnant and planning to leave the service.) Michael copied more than 1,500 documents for the KGB, including material on weapon systems, nuclear weapons control, command procedures, hostile identification and stealth methods, and contingency target lists. He also included such ordinary items as copies of the Nimitz ship’s newspaper.
Owing money to the spymaster, Arthur L. Walker, John’s older brother who was a retired Navy lieutenant commander working for a defense contractor, played the game. He produced repair records on certain warships plus damage-control manuals for another. John Walker’s rationalizations aside, this “family of spies” approach to espionage was a security breach waiting to happen, since suspicion of any family member would likely result in questioning of others, and the master spy was perfectly aware that Barbara Walker harbored nothing but ill-will toward him.
End of Walker’s Espionage
John Walker
A most troubling aspect of the Walker affair is how it could have gone on for 18 years without authorities uncovering the leak. There is no indication that counterintelligence was even aware of, much less moving to combat, the Walker network. Norfolk FBI spy catcher Robert W. Hunter claimed he knew that an “elusive master spy . . . was out there,” but no attention focused on Walker until he was given away.
John Walker’s operational security finally cracked in 1984, and fissures opened at every seam. That May Jerry Whitworth, afflicted with guilt or anxious to make a deal, opened an anonymous correspondence with the FBI in San Francisco using the name “RUS” and offering dark secrets. Whitworth, however, could not bring himself to follow through, and the FBI special agents involved were unable to track him down. In the end the RUS letters would be connected to John Walker, but only after the fact.
Then Barbara Walker denounced her ex-husband to the FBI. In November, after daughter Laura convinced her to speak to authorities, Barbara told the FBI field office in Boston that she had important information, and on 29 November a special agent from Hyannis interviewed her. The spy’s ex-wife told him of her growing suspicion of her husband as far back as the 1960s, his admission to spying, and her accompanying Walker to dead drops near Washington. She described actions in those deliveries that dovetailed with KGB techniques.
The agent, however, noted in his report that Barbara appeared to have been drinking when she greeted him at her door and that during the interview she drank a large glass of vodka. She was also evasive when asked why she had not reported the spying earlier. He surmised that her allegations could be the result of her alcohol abuse and ill feelings toward her ex-husband, graded her information as meriting no follow-up, and sent the report to Boston, where it was filed away.
A month later, an FBI supervisor making a routine quarterly check of inactive files noted the Barbara Walker report and forwarded it to the bureau’s Norfolk office because the alleged espionage centered there. Joseph R. Wolfinger, special agent in charge at Norfolk, obtained headquarters’ approval to open an investigation. On 25 February he assigned the case to Robert Hunter, who had brought the Boston report to his attention.
The pieces then quickly fell into place. Laura Walker Snyder was interviewed about her father’s attempt to recruit her and added details to her mother’s account, though both Laura and Barbara were recognized as having personal problems that would make them not fully credible witnesses. In early March, headquarters authorized a full field investigation, code-named Windflyer, involving its foreign counterintelligence unit. The Naval Investigative Service also came into play since Michael Walker, a suspect by then, was an active-duty Sailor. Laura Snyder telephoned her father at the behest of the FBI, which recorded the conversation in which he evinced interest in her rejoining the military or perhaps the CIA. The FBI tapped Walker’s phones, and the NIS interviewed hundreds of persons who had known him and obtained a confession from Michael on board the Nimitz .
The end for John Walker finally came on 20 May when the FBI arrested him after confiscating 127 classified documents from the Nimitz that he had left at a dead drop. A search of his home turned up plentiful evidence of the spy ring, including records of payments to “D” (Jerry Whitworth), who turned himself in to authorities on 3 June. Brother Arthur was also arrested.
In exchange for limits to his charges, John Walker made a deal to discuss his espionage in detail and plead guilty, and Michael also copped a plea. Arthur Walker was tried in August and found guilty. Whitworth went before a court in the spring of 1986. At his trial John Walker retaliated for the RUS letters, which would have betrayed him, by painting his friend’s participation in the starkest terms. Found guilty, Whitworth was fined $410,000 and given 365 years in prison. As for the Walkers, Arthur was sentenced to three life terms plus a $250,000 fine, John received a life term, and Michael 25 years. In February 2000 Michael Walker was released for good behavior. John and Arthur Walker, meanwhile, will be eligible for parole in 2015.
Assessing the Damage
Many observers believe the Walker spy ring created the most damaging security breach of the Cold War. Director of Naval Intelligence Rear Admiral William O. Studeman declared that no sentence a court could impose would atone for its “unprecedented damage and treachery.” Secretary of the Navy John H. Lehman tried to overturn John Walker’s plea agreement but was restrained by Secretary Weinberger. Oleg Kalugin, the KGB officer who had first managed Walker, wrote that his was “by far the most spectacular spy case I handled in the United States.”
Walker and his colleagues compromised a huge array of secrets. Jonathan Pollard, another naval spy apprehended during 1985, the Year of the Spy, gave Israel a greater quantity of documents (estimated at 1.2 million pages), but the Walker material, with its cryptographic secrets, has to be judged as the worse loss.
Soviet spy chief Boris Solomatin offered a more nuanced perspective when author Pete Earley interviewed him in Moscow nearly ten years after Walker’s arrest. Refusing to compare the Walker case with that of former CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames, another high-profile spy for the Soviet Union, he observed that agents must be judged on the content of the information they deliver. Ames provided the names of Russians spying for the United States and thus affected the KGB-CIA espionage war. Ames’ information “would have been used to identify traitors,” he said. “That is a one-time event. But Walker’s information not only provided us with ongoing intelligence, but helped us over time to understand and study how your military actually thinks.” John Walker had been the Soviets’ key source on Navy submarine missile forces, which Solomatin viewed as the main component of the American nuclear triad. The KGB spymaster also noted that Walker helped both superpowers avoid nuclear war by enabling Moscow to appreciate true U.S. intentions – a goal the American articulated as one of his aims.
Among the still-murky aspects of the Walker affair is the question of what impact his intelligence had on the Vietnam War. While on board the Niagara Falls , Walker served in the combat theater, so he is believed to have compromised the Navy’s theater cipher settings. Oleg Kalugin maintained that the North Vietnamese benefited from the Walker intelligence. Observers claimed Moscow gave Hanoi data enabling North Vietnam to anticipate B-52 strikes and naval air operations. Solomatin, however, disputed that.
As deputy chief of the KGB’s First Directorate, Solomatin himself helped decide what intelligence went to Hanoi, as well as the Soviet Union’s other allies. He asserted that little was shared and it was given in the most general terms, precisely to avoid exposing the KGB’s prize agent. The logic is inescapable. A CIA operation would have been run the same way.
Even without the B-52 charge, the John Walker spy ring was enormously damaging to United States security. In the history of Cold War espionage only a handful of spies operated as long as Walker (British intelligence official Kim Philby and FBI agent Robert Hanssen are the obvious comparisons), and none had comparable access to military secrets.
No spy ring ever functioned as long as Walker’s without the other side becoming aware of a leak. While some specific secrets compromised during the Cold War, such as information about the atomic bomb, were intrinsically more valuable than Walker’s, no agent supplied such consistently high-grade intelligence over an equivalent time frame. As Boris Solomatin noted: “You Americans like to call him the ‘ spy of the decade.’ Perhaps you are right.”
Sources:
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 1999).
John Barron, Breaking the Ring: The Bizarre Case of the Walker Family Spy Ring (Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1987).
Howard Blum, I Pledge Allegience . . . The True Story of the Walkers: An American Spy Family (Simon & Schuster, 1987).
Peter Earley, Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (Bantam, 1988).
Peter Earley, “Boris Solomatin Interview,” Crime Library on truTV.com.
Robert W. Hunter and Lynn Dean Hunter, Spy Hunter: Inside the FBI Investigation of the Walker
Espionage Case (Naval Institute Press, 1999).
Oleg Kalugin, The First Directorate (St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
Mitchell B. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (University Press of Kansas, 2002).
Ronald J. Olive, Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice (Naval Institute Press, 2006).
John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces (Princeton University Press, 1986).
Frank J. Rafalko, ed. A Counterintelligence Reader: vol. 3, Post World War II to the Closing of the 20th Century (National Counterintelligence Center, 2004).
John A. Walker Jr., My Life as a Spy: One of America’s Most Notorious Spies Finally Tells His Story (Prometheus Books, 2008).
This is a still from the Roundhay Garden Scene, the world’s first motion picture. This tiny scrap of celluloid transformed entertainment in a way that profoundly shapes our culture today.
On October 14, 1888, Louis Le Prince released The Roundhay Garden Scene. With a run time of 2.11 seconds and starring Annie Hartley, Adolphe Le Prince, Joseph Whitley, and Sarah Whitley, this was the world’s first moving picture. The Roundhay Garden Scene changed the world. Here’s a link.
Dwayne Johnson is the most highly-paid actor in the world. This is The Rock celebrating Halloween with his family. Though I’ve never met him, Big Dwayne seems like a pretty cool guy.
Ours is a generation raised on movies. In 2020 the movie industry brought in $25.9 billion. That’s down from $35.3 billion the year before thanks to the Covid pandemic. The top four most successful actors in 2020 were Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg, and Ben Affleck. During that one year, The Rock pulled down a cool $87.5 million.
This is Christopher Markus. He co-wrote the screenplay for Avengers: End Game, Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain America: Civil War. His movies have grossed $9,367,535,948. My writing efforts have pulled in slightly less than that.
With those kinds of numbers, the movie industry can obviously afford top-grade talent. I am a professional writer. I bang out gun-related prose in exchange for ammo money. By contrast, the scriptwriters who drive these Hollywood blockbusters make some serious coin. For that kind of investment, Hollywood producers expect a quality product.
The villain makes the movie.
Everybody knows that a great movie turns on its villain. Vapid leading men are a dime a dozen, and hot girls with fake bosoms and a convincing scream are even cheaper. However, it takes talent to build a proper Bad Guy. Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, Agent Smith, the Joker, Voldemort, and Hans Gruber were some of the best.
Los Zetas is a militarized drug cartel renowned for their simply breathtaking appetite for violence.
Sometimes you trip over a story in the real world that is even more compelling than a Hollywood screenplay. As all good tales turn on their villains, that was what first caught my eye in this case. Today we will explore the short life and violent death of Z-1, Arturo Guzmán Decena. Guzmán Decena put the bloodthirsty in “bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel”. He was the founder and leader of Los Zetas, some of the most soulless butchers on the planet.
Origin Story
Arturo Guzmán Decena viewed a military uniform as his opportunity to better his sordid lot in life.
Arturo Guzmán Decena was born into abject poverty in January of 1976 in Puebla, Mexico. In a world where nobody had anything, Decena saw military service as his ticket out of hell. Once he joined the Army he found that he had a knack for the business. His natural talent and capacity for aggression landed him a billet with the elite Grupo Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales or GAFE. This Mexican Army Special Forces unit specialized in COIN or counter-insurgency operations.
Arturo Guzmán Decena was a promising young soldier who quickly took to military life.
Guzmán Decena and his unit were trained by US Special Forces advisors and IDF (Israel Defense Force) contractors. Their mission was to find, fix, and eliminate major personalities in Mexican drug trafficking organizations. GAFE operators were extremely good at what they did.
These motivated young studs ultimately provided fertile ground for recruitment into the armies of the drug cartels.
More than 3,000 Zapatista rebels seized a number of border communities in the southern state of Chiapas in 1994. The insurgents were trying to make a statement against crushing poverty and the PRI (Institutional Revolution Party), the sole political party ruling Mexico at the time. The GAFE broke the back of the uprising in short order, killing 34 rebels and capturing three. The bodies were subsequently discovered discarded on a remote riverbank. Their noses and ears had been sliced off.
Some folks view griping about the police as a full-time job in America today. I’d suggest they check out the cops in other countries for a little perspective.
For all the vociferous whining about American Law Enforcement shortcomings, corruption among American cops is thankfully fairly rare. By contrast, cops in many foreign lands see bribery, extortion, and sometimes murder as a routine part of the job. In some parts of Mexico, bribes are viewed as “benefits” to supplement their otherwise modest salaries. However, before Arturo Guzmán Decena the lines separating the Good Guys from the Bad were still fairly clear-cut. Decena changed all that.
Greener Pastures
When Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel, needed some muscle he just put a few of these guys on the payroll.
Arturo Guzmán Decena was one of the most effective GAFE operators. His star was rising. He was soon promoted to security chief and transferred to Miguel Aleman in the northern state of Tamaulipas. While there he met a proper villain named Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the leader of the thriving Gulf Cartel. In short order, Arturo Guzmán Decena, a highly-trained and ruthless member of the Mexican Army Special Forces, was in the drug lord’s employ.
The real problem is the money. With financing on the scale enjoyed by Mexican drug cartels pretty much anybody can be bought.
The man had some curious motivations. Mexican cops and soldiers at the time often turned a blind eye to drug shipments in exchange for a little folding cash. In this case, however, Guzmán Decena went full Dark Side. While the money was way better, this also meant the hard young warrior embraced life as a hunted fugitive.
The American thirst for illicit drugs is insatiable.
In retrospect, Mexico’s grinding slog toward democracy likely frightened him. With a true representative government came the real probability of accountability for all those sliced-off ears and noses. Guzmán Decena saw service with the cartels as the wave of the future.
It apparently wasn’t terribly difficult to find 38 Mexican SF operators willing to trade their GI fatigues in for the filthy-rich opulence of the thug life.
Once Guzmán Decena had tasted the good life he made a few phone calls. Not long after, he had recruited 38 fellow Special Forces operators to make up his happy troupe. Each man was assigned a unique Z-number. Guzmán Decena was Z-1 or Zeta 1. This cadre of trained killers became Los Zetas.
Scary-looking blokes like these changed the complexion of the Mexican drug wars.
It has been alleged that Guzmán Decena’s boss, Cárdenas Guillén, had the original idea. This is purportedly a transcript of a cell phone intercept made by the Mexican military that documents the birth of Los Zetas–
Cárdenas Guillén – “I want the best men. The best.”
Guzmán Decena – “What type of people do you need?”
Cárdenas Guillén – “The best-armed men that there are.”
Guzmán Decena – “These are only in the army.”
Cárdenas Guillén – “I want them.”
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Part of the success of Los Zetas stems from their willingness to do stuff like this.
Now that the Gulf Cartel had its own trained and equipped Specops unit, they exercised it. Z-1 and his troops collected outstanding debts, secured drug routes, and brutally exterminated the cartel’s enemies. They were fabulously successful. Cárdenas Guillén wielded his merry band of monsters to cement his grip on power.
This is Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. He would kill absolutely anybody he believed to be a threat to his power.
Ángel Salvador Gómez Herrera was a close friend of Cárdenas Guillén. He had even been named godfather of Cárdenas Guillén’s child. However, in this rarefied world of high-stakes professional criminals, the line between friend and rival can be thin. Cárdenas Guillén suspected that Gómez Herrera was becoming covetous of his empire. That warranted a phone call to Z-1.
Heed my advice and never accept the offer of a free ride from a Mexican drug lord. You’ll thank me later.
Immediately following the baptism of Cárdenas Guillén’s child, Gómez Herrera was invited to take a ride in the drug lord’s souped-up Dodge Durango. The newly-minted godfather sat in the passenger seat up front. Guzmán Decena had the seat behind him. The men exchanged laughs and basked in the moment following the infant’s baptism.
Then with little fanfare, Guzmán Decena drew his handgun and shot Gómez Herrera through the head. Mexican police later discovered his badly-decayed body discarded outside the town of Matamoros. In the aftermath of the execution, Guzmán Decena earned the nom de guerre “Mata Amigos” or “Friend Killer.” Apparently, he was good with that. The drug kingpin Cárdenas Guillén felt he had a buddy for life.
Eventually, Los Zetas felt that they didn’t really need the patronage of the Gulf Cartel any longer.
Eventually, Guzmán Decena and his fellow Special Forces operators came to appreciate that they really no longer needed the Gulf Cartel. They were accustomed to operating in hostile environments as a military unit and knew logistics, organization, and particularly extreme violence of action better than their soft decadent civilian bosses. As such Los Zetas took their show on the road.
These weapons were captured in an operation against Los Zetas. Notice at least four MG-42/MG-3 belt-fed machine guns. They didn’t pick those puppies up at an American gun show.
In short order, the military-regimented Zetas displaced the Sinaloans as the largest drug cartel in Mexico. However, as Putin is discovering to his detriment in Ukraine, the challenge is not seizing power, it is keeping it. As the original Zetas were captured or killed by rival drug organizations and the Mexican government, their replacements were not cut from the same hard stuff. Regardless, for a time, Los Zetas was the dominant drug cartel in Mexico.
All Good Things Come to an End
When Z-1 fell, he fell hard.
The life of a successful drug lord is both stressful and fraught with peril. On November 22, 2002, Guzmán Decena was taking a meal with a few of his soldiers at a restaurant in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
Feeling the need to unwind, he knocked back some Chivas and snorted a line of cocaine before heading over to the home of Ana Bertha González Lagunes, one of his several handy mistresses. She lived only a few blocks distant. Wishing his dalliance to be uninterrupted, Guzmán Decena had his troops seal off the roads leading into the area.
The Mexican Army came down on Guzmán Decena like the fist of God.
Guzmán Decena apparently got his quick roll in the hay, but the disruption to the community was substantial. A local denizen saw the commotion for what it was and notified the Mexican authorities. The cops notified the nearby Mexican Army quick reaction force who descended upon the woman’s house. They found Guzmán Decena duly distracted and gunned him down like a dog. He was 26 years old.
The Rest of the Story
Systematically disassembling the leadership of these cartels is a Gordian chore.
Los Zetas did not take the execution of their flamboyant commander well. In the immediate aftermath, Zetas hitters kidnapped and murdered four members of the Office of the General Prosecutor near Reynosa, Tamaulipas. Mexican troops arrested Cárdenas Guillén, the head of the Gulf Cartel, in March of 2003.
The following year they bagged Z-2, Rogelio González Pizaña. Z-3, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, duly took his place. He fell in a shootout with the Mexican Navy in 2012. Chasing the Zetas was like playing Whack-a-Mole.
Despite his best efforts to cling to power, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén was eventually captured, extradited to the US, and convicted. He currently takes his mail at the maximum security penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
The gory death of Arturo Guzmán Decena was the first real blow that the Mexican government landed against Los Zetas. While the organization came back like a hydra, Guzmán Decena’s killing made a serious dent. This story is ultimately a great tale of Good Guys beating Bad Guys, but there yet remain persistent rumors that the ruthless SF operator-turned-drug lord was actually murdered by his own troops on the orders of his former mentor Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. For a proper king, maintaining one’s kingdom can indeed be a full-time job.
Grandmother strapped to wheelchair was forced to watch grave being dug before ex killed her: cops
By
Olivia LandA Missouri man with an alleged history of domestic abuse is accused of strapping his ex into a wheelchair and forcing her to watch him and his new girlfriend dig her grave before killing her, investigators said.
Tony Charboneau, 36, was charged with the murder of his former girlfriend, Amy Hogue, 43, and other crimes related to her death after she vanished on June 20, Washington County Prosecuting Attorney John Jones announced last week.
Charboneau supposedly got into an argument with Hogue, which led to him punching and stomping on her as she was leaving his home on the day she went missing, according to the probable cause arrest affidavit.
Amy Hogue, 43, was murdered on June 20, 2024.GoFundMeTony Charboneau (left) had been accused of abusing Amy Hogue (right) at least twice in the past before allegedly killing her.Facebook / Tony Charboneau
Charboneau and his current girlfriend, Brandi Luffy, then allegedly forced Hogue into a manual wheelchair and tied her arms and feet using ratchet straps, police said.
Luffy, 40, and Charboneau left Hogue strapped in the wheelchair while they gathered “shovels, tarps, pickax [sic], and a firearm,” cops said.
With the items and Hogue in the back of Charboneau’s car, the couple then allegedly drove from Charboneau’s home in Sullivan to a wooded area.
Once the pair found an isolated spot, Hogue was forced to watch while Charboneau dug a shallow grave, authorities said.
Charboneau then allegedly took Hogue out of the wheelchair and shot and killed her.
He “spent the rest of the day burying [sic] her in the grave, covering her with large rocks and tree limbs,” the affidavit said.
Luffy supposedly stayed with the car and served as a lookout for any passersby.
After leaving Hogue’s body in the makeshift grave, Charboneau and Luffy then burned the ratchet straps and tarp.
Charboneau, 36, was arrested after police found Hogue’s purse.
They also disposed of the victim’s purse in a river in nearby Jefferson County, police said.
Hogue — who had three children unrelated to Charboneau — was reported missing by her family around the time of the attack.
She appeared to have been trying to leave Charnoneau’s residence when she was attacked, Washington County Sheriff Zach Jacobsen told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“She was just ready to leave the residence, and that’s when the brutal assault took place,” he explained.
Hogue’s purse was found by authorities in mid-July, which was when “we realized she was probably dead,” Jacobsen added.
Charboneau was immediately a suspect due to his history of allegedly abusing Hogue — including a May 2023 incident when he supposedly hit her so hard from behind that she passed out, Jacobsen said.
Another case from October 2023 was also pending at the time of Hogue’s disappearance, Law & Crime reported.
Brandi Luffy admitted to police that she and Charboneau killed Hogue and buried her body.
After police found Hogue’s purse, they requested an arrest warrant based on the May 2023 incident and took Charboneau into custody on suspicion of murder.
Despite having their prime suspect in custody, the investigation initially struggled to gain ground due to the limitations of the rural area, Jacobsen told the Post-Dispatch.
“We are trying to piece this together with no cell service, so it’s hard to ping phones,” Jacobsen said.
“So it’s old school police work, knocking on doors, interviewing everybody that we encounter, executing search warrants. They are literally boots on the ground. No technology in God’s country. And with no cell service, you’re not leaving a digital footprint.”
On Aug. 2, Luffy admitted to helping Charboneau kill Hogue and dispose of her remains, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Amy Hogue vanished just a few days after the birth of her first grandson.Facebook / Corbin Crider
Investigators dug up Hogue’s remains, which were “partially decomposed with an obvious bullet wound” to the head, the document added.
In addition to first-degree murder, Charboneau was charged with domestic assault, kidnapping, abandonment of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, prosecutors said.
Luffy was charged with second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, abandonment of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
Both remain behind bars on $1 million cash-only bond.
“That makes it even worse, the fact that she finally got enough and she was ready to leave and get away from this situation, and she was killed for it.”
The isolated area made it even harder for Hogue and other domestic violence victims to seek help, he added.
“There’s hardly any cell service here. So if you do need help, it’s pretty hard to get help. There’s a lot of things that could have changed in this situation,” he said.
Washington County Prosecuting Attorney John I. Jones IV said in a statement that his office would “not rest” until the suspects were brought to justice.
Hogue was remembered by her family as a loving mother and brand-new grandmother.
Hogue vanished just four days after her first grandson was born, her daughter-in-law wrote on the family’s GoFundMe page.
Because her son and his family live in Louisiana, Hogue never got to meet the baby before she was killed, the grieving relative added.
“She was a mother and my best friend. She did not deserve this,” Hogue’s son, Corbin Crider, wrote in a Facebook tribute.
“There are truly monsters in this world we live in,” he added.
Swiss army knife maker to produce range without a blade
Victorinox, producer of the celebrated pocket tool, responds to ‘plague of knife crime’ with new variations
For more than a century, the Swiss army knife has been an essential piece of kit for everyone from picnickers and equestrians, to golfers and astronauts.
But now the maker of the pocket-knife, with its red or blue shell and multiple tools, has bowed to what an English judge last week called the “plague of knife crime” by designing a new range without blades.
In response to an increasing number of countries imposing bans or restrictions on carrying knives, Victorinox, the Swiss firm that produces the pocket tools, is in the early stages of developing the first range of bladeless products designed specifically for activities where a blade would not be required.
“We’re concerned about the increasing regulation of knives due to the violence in the world,” said Carl Elsener, the fourth-generation CEO of the family-run company.
“In some markets, the blade creates an image of a weapon. I have in mind creating a tool that would be useful for cyclists. Cyclists have a need for specific tools but not necessarily a blade,” he said. “We already have a tool specifically for golfers.”
Last week, Mr Justice Saini blamed the “plague of knife crime” in Bristol and surrounding areas for the murder of 16-year-old Mikey Roynon, a talented teenage rapper stabbed in the neck at a house party in Bath.
The same week, a 15-year-old boy who stabbed another teenager in the heart in full view of pupils leaving a primary school in Leeds, was found guilty of murder.
It came amid reports of soaring demand for body armour for shopping centre security staff amid a 65% rise in violent and abusive incidents in the past two years.
Under UK law, a person can only carry a knife in public if it has a folding blade that is less than 3in (7.62cm) long.
For all other knives, it is illegal to carry them in public without a good reason, which can include needing the knife for work, wearing it as part of a national costume or for religious reasons, such as the curved kirpan knife carried by some Sikhs.
Elsener said Victorinox was responding to the tightening of regulations by developing blade-less tools for specific outdoor activities or sports.
Victorinox produces about 10m of the pocket tools each year. There are about 400 different types to choose from, including one that boasts 73 functions. They have even been carried into space by Nasa astronauts.
However, until now they have always had at least one blade.
The company has already had to adapt its products to tightened restrictions on carrying knives and in the aftermath of 9/11 the company’s sales fell by 30%.
Even in Switzerland, the home of the brand, there has been discussion about what people are permitted to carry. In 2016, there was a parliamentary debate about banning blades longer than 5cm. One MP even asked: “Will the famous Swiss army knife be forbidden?” The proposed amendment was dropped.
The Swiss army knife was first developed in Ibach, Switzerland, in 1891 and was orginally referred to as an Offiziersmesser, or officer’s knife, as the company had a contract to supply knives to the army.
The product was given the name Swiss army knife six years later.
The ATF’s new re-definition of “Engaged in the Business” of selling firearms is expected to go into effect on or about May 15th. The ATF’s Final Rulemaking was announced on April 8, 2024. Ignoring the weight of public comment, and ignoring logic, this new set of rules (see text at the ATF website) could make advertising and selling just one gun at a profit without a FFL a felony criminal offense. Even worse, it shifts the burden of proof from the government to individuals. In effect, you will be assumed to be guilty unless you can prove that you made no profit. Given the ongoing onslaught of currency inflation, just breaking even after allowing for inflation could be deemed a “profit”.
This new rule, which is 466-pages long, stems from the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which broadened the definition of when someone is considered “engaged in the business”. Creepy Joe Biden signed this law on June 25, 2022. By abusing Chevron deference, the ATF’s minions then created this 466-page monstrosity, to wildly extrapolate just 73 words from the 1968 Gun Control Act into this lengthy set of rules.
There are some vague exemptions in the rule that redefine the term “personal collection” to clarify when people are not “engaged in the business” because they make only occasional sales to enhance a personal collection or for a hobby. But the rule also calls out exceptions to those exemptions. Fo example, the new rule transforms “occasional” into just one sale at a profit, to qualify for prosecution under a Federal felony! The ATF has warned: Willfully engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license is subject to a term of imprisonment of up to five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. They want to make everyone fearful of prosecution, and bow to their will.
Again, the burden of proof will shift from the government to individuals, to establish if the modern firearms they “occasionally” sell are part of a personal collection, and whether those sales are not intended to make a profit, but rather just to improve a collection.
The government use vague and ambiguous definitions where it suits them (like refusing to assign any number or frequency to the term “occasional”), but elsewhere in their rules they come down hard, with strict and picky definitions, to their advantage.
Absurdly, the word “sale” is redefined by the new rule, to include bartering between residents of the same state.
Even more absurdly, the ruling fabricates from thin air several new standards of “evidence” of criminal intent, none of which were mentioned in congressional legislation, such as:
Repetitively selling guns “…that are of the same or similar kind (i.e., make/manufacturer, model, caliber/gauge, and action) and type…” — as proof of intent to be “engaged in the business”.
or,
Keeping a gun less than 30 days before reselling it — as proof of intent to be “engaged in the business”.
or,
including a factory box (“…persons who repetitively sell firearms in new condition or in like-new
condition in their original packaging…”) — as proof of intent to be “engaged in the business”.
or,
Keeping records of original cost versus sales price — as proof of intent to be “engaged in the business”.
The ATF rule includes this phrase: “…makes and maintains records to document, track, or calculate profits and losses from firearms repetitively purchased for resale.” It bears mention that keeping records is often needed for tax or insurance purposes, but the ATF sees this as further evidence of someone’s intent to be “engaged in the business”
Elsewhere in the same 466-page-long set of rules, we learn that a lack of original purchase cost records would make it almost impossible to prove that you didn’t later re-sell any particular gun at a higher price. Thus, it is a case of: “You are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” So, from a practical standpoint, what are we expected to do? A.) Not keep records, but then be unable to document that we weren’t seeking a profit, or B.) Hide our cost basis records, and only reveal them if we are later charged with being “engaged in the business” without a license, to prove our innocence? This all flies in the face of the time-honored “innocent until proven guilty” principle in American jurisprudence.
Sadly, the DOJ’s comment period for the proposed rulemaking has come and gone, and this new set of rules may stand, even if the Supreme Court does away with Chevron deference, with the upcoming Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case. We will simply have to live with it, most likely for several years.
INTRASTATE VERSUS INTERSTATE
By their very nature private party sales through local classified ads or at gun shows are intrastate (within a state) commerce. Buyers, sellers, and merchandise do not cross state lines. The Federal government only has constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. By effectively banning private party sales between residents of the same state, this new rule is a gross overreach of Federal authority. The ATF claims that they have authority because intrastate somehow magically “affect interstate commerce. I spelled out their illogical nonsense in a recent SurvivalBlog article, titled: Fencing In Federal Jurisdiction.
PRE-1899 GUNS ARE EXEMPT
Thankfully, pre-1899 antique guns and blackpowder replica guns are exempt from the new rules. Per the Gun Control Act of 1968, any gun with a frame or receiver made on or before December 31, 1898 is not considered a “firearm”, regardless of its chambering, ignition system, or configuration. With the exceptions of only short-barreled cartridge rifles or shotguns, or full-auto guns (per the National Firearms Act of 1934) all other “antiques” are outside of Federal jurisdiction. Note, however, that some state and local laws apply. Needless, to say, after this rule goes into effect I expect to see some brisk sales of my pre-1899 antiques and percussion black powder replicas, at Elk Creek Company. I invested in a big vault full of the right guns!
Some advice for those of you who live in any of the 34 “free” (private party sales) states: You now have less than a month to buy any private party guns or lowers that you want, to round out your collection. The clock is ticking. Do your purchasing while it is still legal, and while there are still some willing sellers. After the rule goes into effect, most people will be frightened into compliance, and nearly all sales of modern (post-1898) guns will be shifted to FFL channels — which means filling out an ATF Form 4473, and submitting to an FBI background check. Gun shows as we now know them in the 34 free states will become a thing of the past. The selection of guns offered privately will become pitifully small. There will be just a handful, and your chance of finding a particular model variant will become almost nonexistent, unless you submit to the Federal paperwork and background check.
Bottom line: Unless this rule is suspended or overthrown by the courts, by June of 2024, all gun shows will resemble California gun shows, where any modern guns get transferred only through Federally-licensed “transfer dealers.” This deeply saddens and troubles me. Another nail has been added to the coffin of American liberty.
P.S. : A reminder that there were 15 shameless U.S. Senators with a “(R)” after their names who voted for the BSCA bill. They knew that this bill would end private sales of used guns. They were:
And yes my family did NOT ride for Mr. Lincoln! Grumpy
*The Pottawatomie massacre occurred on the night of May 24–25, 1856, in the Kansas Territory. In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces on May 21, and the telegraphed news of the severe attack on May 22 on Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, for speaking out against slavery in Kansas (“The Crime Against Kansas”), John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers—some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles—made a violent reply. Just north of Pottawatomie Creek, in Franklin County, they killed five pro-slavery settlers, in front of their families. This soon became the most famous of the many violent episodes of the “Bleeding Kansas” period, during which a state-level civil war in the Kansas Territory was described as a “tragic prelude” to the American Civil War which soon followed. “Bleeding Kansas” involved conflicts between pro- and anti-slavery settlers over whether the Kansas Territory would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state. It is also John Brown’s most questionable act, both to his friends and his enemies. In the words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, it was “a terrible remedy for a terrible malady.”[1]: 371
John Brown was particularly affected by the sacking of Lawrence, in which the Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones on May 21st led a posse that destroyed the presses and type of the Kansas Free State and the Herald of Freedom, Kansas’s two abolitionist newspapers, the fortified Free State Hotel, and the house of Charles Robinson. He was the free-state militia commander-in-chief and leader of the “free state” government, established in opposition to the “bogus” pro-slavery territorial government, based in Lecompton.
A Douglas County grand jury had ordered the attack because the hotel “had been used as a fortress” and an “arsenal” the previous winter, and the “seditious” newspapers were indicted because “they had urged the people to resist the enactments passed” by the territorial governor.[2] The violence against abolitionists was accompanied by celebrations in the pro-slavery press, with writers such as Dr. John H Stringfellow of the Squatter Sovereign proclaiming that pro-slavery forces “are determined to repel this Northern invasion and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims and the carcasses of the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose.”[3]: 162
Brown was outraged by both the violence of pro-slavery forces and by what he saw as a weak and cowardly response by the anti-slavery partisans and the Free State settlers, whom he described as “cowards, or worse”.[3]: 163–166 In addition, two days before this massacre, Brown learned about the caning of abolitionist Charles Sumner by the pro-slavery Preston Brooks on the floor of Congress.[4][5][full citation needed]
A Free State company under the command of John Brown Jr. set out, and the Osawatomie company joined them. On the morning of May 22, 1856, they heard of the sack of Lawrence and the arrest of Deitzler, Brown, and Jenkins. However, they continued their march toward Lawrence, not knowing whether their assistance might still be needed, and encamped that night near the Ottawa Creek. They remained in the vicinity until the afternoon of May 23, at which time they decided to return home.
On May 23, John Sr. selected a party to go with him on a private expedition. John Jr. objected to their leaving his company, but seeing that his father was obdurate, acquiesced, telling him to “do nothing rash.” The company consisted of John Brown, four of his sons—Frederick, Owen, Salmon, and Oliver—Thomas Wiener, and James Townsley (who claimed later that he had been forced by Brown to participate in the incident), whom John had induced to carry the party in his wagon to their proposed field of operations.
Letter of Mahala Doyle to John Brown, when he was in jail awaiting execution, November 20, 1859: “Altho vengence is not mine, I confess, that I do feel gratified to hear that you ware stopt in your fiendish career at Harper’s Ferry, with the loss of your two sons, you can now appreciate my distress, in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing, you cant say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one, but has only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children while I feel for your folly. I do hope & trust that you will meet your just reward. O how it pained my Heart to hear the dying groans of my Husband and children if this scrawl give you any consolation you are welcome to it.
NB [postscript] my son John Doyle whose life I begged of (you) is now grown up and is very desirous to be at Charleston [Charles Town] on the day of your execution would certainly be there if his means would permit it, that he might adjust the rope around your neck if Gov. Wise would permit it.”[6]
They encamped that night between two deep ravines on the edge of the timber, some distance to the right of the main traveled road. There they remained unobserved until the following evening of May 24. Some time after dark, the party left their place of hiding and proceeded on their “secret expedition”. Late in the evening, they called at the house of James P. Doyle and ordered him and his two adult sons, William and Drury, to go with them as prisoners. (Doyle’s 16-year-old son, John, who was not a member of the pro-slavery Law and Order Party, was spared after his mother pleaded for his life.) The three men were escorted by their captors out into the darkness, where Owen Brown and his brother Frederick killed them with broadswords. John Brown Sr. did not participate in the stabbing but fired a shot into the head of the fallen James Doyle to ensure he was dead.
Brown and his band then went to the house of Allen Wilkinson and ordered him out. He was slashed and stabbed to death by Henry Thompson and Theodore Wiener, possibly with help from Brown’s sons.[3]: 172–173 From there, they crossed the Pottawatomie, and some time after midnight, forced their way into the cabin of James Harris at swordpoint. Harris had three house guests: John S. Wightman, Jerome Glanville, and William Sherman, the brother of Henry Sherman (“Dutch Henry”), a militant pro-slavery activist. Glanville and Harris were taken outside for interrogation and asked whether they had threatened Free State settlers, aided Border Ruffians from Missouri, or participated in the sack of Lawrence. Satisfied with their answers, Brown’s men let Glanville and Harris return to the cabin. William Sherman, however, was led to the edge of the creek and hacked to death with swords by Wiener, Thompson, and Brown’s sons.[3]: 177
Having learned at Harris’s cabin that “Dutch Henry”, their main target in the expedition, was away from home on the prairie, they ended the expedition and returned to the ravine where they had previously encamped. They rejoined the Osawatomie company on the night of May 25.[3][page needed]
In the two years prior to the massacre, there had been eight killings in Kansas Territory attributable to slavery politics, and none in the vicinity of the massacre. Brown killed five in a single night, and the massacre was the match to the powder keg that precipitated the bloodiest period in “Bleeding Kansas” history, a three-month period of retaliatory raids and battles in which 29 people died.[7]
The Potawattomie massacre was called by William G. Cutler, author of the History of the State of Kansas (1883), the “crowning horror” of the whole Bleeding Kansas period. “The news of the horrid affair spread rapidly over the Territory, carrying with it a thrill of horror, such as the people, used as they had become to deeds of murder, had not felt before. …The news of the event had a deeper significance than appeared in the abstract atrocity of the act itself. …It meant that the policy of extermination or abject submission, so blatantly promulgated by the Pro-slavery press, and proclaimed by Pro-slavery speakers, had been adopted by their enemies, and was about to be enforced with appalling earnestness. It meant that there was a power opposed to the Pro-slavery aggressors, as cruel and unrelenting as themselves. It meant henceforth, swift retaliation—robbery for robbery—murder for murder— that “he who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.”[8]
Kansas Senator John James Ingalls in 1884 quoted with approval the judgment of a Free State settler: “He was the only man who comprehended the situation, and saw the absolute necessity for some such blow, and had the nerve to strike it.” This a result of the men killed being leaders in a conspiracy to “drive out, bum and kill; and that Potawatomie Creek was to be cleared of every man, woman and child who was for Kansas being a free State.”[9]
According to Brown’s son Salmon, who participated, it was “the grandest thing that was ever done in Kansas”
Dwayne Johnson is the most highly-paid actor in the world. This is The Rock celebrating Halloween with his family. Though I’ve never met him, Big Dwayne seems like a pretty cool guy.
And yes my family did NOT ride for Mr. Lincoln! Grumpy