Sunday, April 28, 2013

All Shook Up

I admit that people in Boston were a little too wrapped up in our own business last week to pay much attention to the news that letters containing the substance ricin had been sent to the offices of President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and a local Mississippi judge. Ricin is a very powerful poison and inhaling it can be fatal, so coming on the heels of the Marathon bombing a lot of people were concerned this signaled a second wave of attacks were coming, but relieved at least this one had been detected before anyone got hurt. Fortunately the letters had also been signed and featured a local postmark, so it was only a matter of time before the FBI was able to track down and apprehend the suspect. It was a scary situation but the entire thing seemed like it had been wrapped up very quickly and was unrelated to the terror in Boston, which is another reason the story didn't get too much traction. All that was left to do was find out why this man sent the letters, if there were any more on the way and why he would be so stupid as to actually sign these mailings with his own name. But as it turned out, getting answers only lead to a new round of questions.

It only took a couple day for the media to tear the first suspect's life apart, though I admit there was a lot to work with. The first man arrested was Christopher Curtis, an Elvis Presley impersonator and aspiring author (he wrote a book about black-market organ sales) whose wife once called the police claiming Curtis had gone off the deep end and believed the government was spying on him with drones. However, being a conspiracy theorist isn't actually a crime and further investigations have revealed the entire thing has been some kind of giant frame-job, done by a disgruntled former business part of Curtis's brother named J. Everett Dutschke. Apparently, Dutschke was recently accused of child molestation and thought Curtis was the one who convinced people to come forward. I have to say, if you are trying to discredit a witness, framing him for trying to mail poison to the President is a pretty solid way to do so. Now Dutschke can add some serious federal charges to his other legal worries and Curtis can go back to singing like Elvis and shopping his book. I guess the lesson in this is that no matter how crazy a person may appear at first glance we should not judge them until we know there ins't someone even more crazy behind them.

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