Mendenhall, Benoit, and the Media

Yes, this may be a venture into the more serious for this blog, but seeing as Mendenhall is a local of my area who I have actually met in the past and know the daughters of (the oldest daughter is actually one of the people that was with us when we saw the van full of Mexicans lose a wheel on 57), I figured I should take a look at how the media is handling this story. The way the mainstream media handled the Benoit case really gave some insight into how completely incompetent the media really is. From getting facts wrong and jumping on wild guesses like they are the gospel to just making up their own news altogether, the media has sickened me with their ineptitude. The question was: could they get the Mendenhall story right?

For those of you unfamiliar with the Benoit case, he was the pro wrestler who allegedly killed his son and wife before committing suicide last month. The day the story broke, the police stated that the theory they were running on at that time was a double murder suicide. The media then reported it had been ruled a double murder suicide, thus making the conviction themselves. Of course, a double murder suicide doesn't leave you anybody to punish. Therefore, upon finding steroids on his premises, the media immediately reported that he did this in a fit of roid rage, and then worked to attack the company he worked for, WWE. Geraldo began making up his own news when he tried to connect the death of Sherri Martel to the whole thing, despite the fact that it happened over a week earlier and had completely different circumstances. Add Bill O'Reilly's slanderous statement that every pro wrestler is on steroids and cocaine, stir, let simmer, and you have a big ol' pot of piss poor journalism.

The Mendenhall case is very different. Bruce Mendenhall is a trucker from Albion, IL. He is accused of killing hookers... a lot of hookers. The cases the police believe him to be guilty of involve hookers shot and left dead (I'm going to officially dub him the "Prostishooter"), mostly at truck stops, over the last seven months. However, that doesn't stop certain news outlets from trying to attach him to random murders dating as far back as 1992 with no better founding than he drives a truck and he killed some hookers in 2007.

The cases currently being attributed to him are as follows:

On January 29th, Deborah Ann Glover, 43, an Atlanta prostitute, was found shot to death beside the parking lot of a Motel 6 in Sewanee, GA, just off Interstate 85.

On February 22nd, Sherry Drinkard, 43, a Gary, IN prostitute with a lengthy arrest record, was found stripped naked, shot once in the head and dumped in a snow bank at a TA truck stop in Lake Station, IN.

On June 6th, Symantha Winters O’Neal, 48, yet another prostitute, was found shot and dumped in a trash can (remember kids, when you're done with your hooker, be sure to place them in the proper receptacle) at a Pilot in Lebanon, TN.

On June 26th, Sara Hulbert, 25, was found shot to death at a TA truck stop in Nashville, TN. I've not found any mention of if she was a prostitute or not, but I'm going to guess that she was, seeing as they have a lovely file mug shot of her, looking the part. This is the one he was arrested for.

On July 1st... well, to do it justice, you have to read this description from The Tennessean:

On the afternoon of July 1, a semi with a mustard-yellow cab and white trailer was parked at a small local truck stop in Birmingham, Ala. According to police, several local prostitutes climbed onto the truck, trying to coax out the driver. But the cab's curtains remained tightly shut. Eventually, the truck stop owner came out, shooed the women away and banged on the truck door and ordered the driver to leave.

The truck pulled out. Ten minutes later, a passer-by spotted the body of Michelle Carter, 43, of Birmingham, splayed on the pavement next to the spot where the truck had been parked.

"She'd been shot and killed and thrown to the side of the road with a bag over her head," said Birmingham Police Detective Mike Allison.

There's no word on if Carter was a prostitute, but my guess is that she was, seeing as the other prostitutes were swarming his truck before they were "shooed" away (yes, you shoo away hookers, just like you shoo away mosquitoes or stray dogs) by the truck stop owner. I figure the hookers smelled one of their own in trouble and were trying to rescue her.

Finally, Bruce confessed to killing a woman on July 11th and leaving her in a car at a Flying J near a Hardee's on the south end of Interstate 465. They have not found this body yet.

Have you noticed a pattern in these cases? He shot hookers. Well, we can't let that get in the way of people making up their own news, Geraldo style. Dana Kozlov from CBS 2 out of Chicago reports that authorities are trying to connect Mendenhall to the murder of 21 year old Tammy Zywicki in August of 1992. I have no problem with people trying to find leads, but the CBS 2 story seems to be doing its best to act as if this is all but confirmed, and as was learned from the Benoit case, reporting like this only makes the gullible public believe it actually is confirmed. Here's the case the story pleads:

Fifteen years ago next month, 21-year-old Tammy Zywicki's parents tearfully pleaded for her return after she was abducted along I-80. Her body was found a week later near Springfield, Mo., stabbed eight times and wrapped in a blanket. Witnesses told police they'd seen a semi-truck near her disabled car the day she disappeared.

Already, this does not fit the pattern. She was a stranded motorist, not a hooker. She was stabbed repeatedly, not shot. It continues:

Witnesses described a tall, brown-haired man, 35 to 40 years old, standing near Zywicki and her car. Later, investigators released a sketch of the suspected truck - white with brown and yellow stripes on the cab and trailer. Mendenhall's cab is yellow; his trailer is white with a horizontal brown stripe along the side.

Police say Mendenhall confessed to shooting Sara Hulbert. It is not clear how he says he killed his other victims.

First off, the last sentence is odd in its phrasing. Simply put, they want to lead you to think that since he has not come out and claimed "yep, shot all of 'em" that he likely used other means to murder each one. In actuality, all that have been found so far have been shot.

Secondly, the article seemingly purposely paraphrased the official FBI's Most Wanted record to suit their purposes. The FBI says:

The driver of the tractor/trailer is described as a white male between 35 and 40 years of age, over six feet tall, with dark, bushy hair.

Mendenhall is 5'11" (as printed on his driver's license... which was copied and posted on the internet unaltered, complete with home address and license number) and his hair is not in the least bushy. By claiming tall with brown hair instead of over six feet with bushy dark hair, they are attempting to change the facts to fit the guy who is currently in the news.

Thirdly, they describe the truck in the Zywicki case and attempt to liken it to the truck Mendenhall was driving when he got arrested. This comparison is completely ridiculous as Bruce has only been driving for Danny Davis for around a year, and thus would not have been driving that truck (is the truck even 15 years old?) in 1992.

There is also the case of Dusty Shuck, 24, who was found dead in Maryland in May 2006. She was reportedly found with a slit throat near a truck stop. She was a schizophrenic who had left Silver City, NM in April 2006 and headed east. There's absolutely no indication that she was a hooker. As with the Zywicki case, this does not fit Mendenhall's pattern. Pamela Rigaux of The Frederick News Post out of Frederick, MD seems to be doing similar work to CBS 2. They first reach for the reader's sympathy by writing the completely uneducated opinion of the victim's mother:

"There's a very good possibility he is the one," she said. "He's confessed to six murders."

The victims were killed in different ways, but many of the bodies were found at truck stops, Atwood said. Shuck's killer slashed her throat, but a lack of evidence at the crime scene led police to believe she was not killed where her body was found.

The logic applied here is appalling. You can't just say "He killed six people, so he's probably the one that killed her too." Wouldn't the more apt logic be that if he's confessed to six murders, he's likely not going to be hiding anything anymore (What's he got to lose? When you're likely up for death or six life sentences, what's a few more going to hurt?), so he'd probably tell you if he killed this one as well. This isn't great logic, but it's better than theirs.

Later in the article, they attempt to tie everything together by saying:

The route out of Silver City is I-10, Atwood said. It runs east into Alabama, five hours south of Birmingham. The death of the girl found at a truck stop in Birmingham occurred on July 1, 2007, more than a year after Shuck's death. I-70, a highway truckers use to and from Indianapolis, goes through Breezewood, Pa. where witnesses say they saw Shuck on May 3, 2006, the night before her death.

Well, what a lovely exploration of the US Interstate system. They are attempting to make a case on the fact that I-70 runs through Indy and the town in PA where Shuck was seen the night before she died as well as the fact that I-10 runs a mere five hours south of Birmingham? Do they realize how far an extra five hours is out of someone's way? Also, if she was seen alive May 3rd in PA, why does I-10's proximity to Birmingham, AL matter? Furthermore, Mendenhall's route they are trying to connect this to is not even relevant. Since he's only been driving for Danny Davis for around a year, he most likely did not have that route in May 2006.

Both of these cases seem to be completely unrelated, and insisting that they are connected to Mendenhall only impedes the search for the actual culprits, barring the very slim chance that he may be involved.

The media needs to learn that not everything ties up into a nice neat little bow. You can't attribute every unsolved murder over the last decade and a half to one guy and you can't attribute every wrestling death to steroids. Before you start trying to do the investigator's work for them in major publications, perhaps you should at least make sure you've done enough research on the subject to make an educated guess. When you come upon things that disprove your case, don't try to mask them as you continue in your argument. Admit that your argument has a flaw and change your argument to one that heads in the right direction. As members of the media, you have far more influence over the public than you think (and than you should). Quit abusing this influence and misinforming the public. America's stupid enough.

--
Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

Sources:
http://crimeblog.us/?p=503
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20070713&Category=NEWS03&ArtNo=707130430&SectionCat=NEWS&Template=printart
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070714/NEWS03/707140349/1017/NEWS
http://www.theolympian.com/national/story/162168.html
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_194232052.html
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=62499
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seekinfo/zywicki.htm