Four local young men are under arrest in connection with the violent stabbing death of a Mont Vernon mother and the vicious attack on her daughter.

Steven Spader, 18, Christopher Gribble, 19, both of Brookline, William Marks, 18 and Quinn Glover, 17, both of Amherst, will be arraigned late this morning in Milford District Court, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office.

Spader and Gribble are charged with first degree murder in the death of Kimberly Cates, 42, and attempted murder in the attack on her 11-year-old daughter. Marks and Glover are charged with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary and armed robbery.

Cates' body was found Oct. 4 inside her 4 Trow Road home. Her 11-year-old daughter was alive but severely injured when police arrived at the family's ranch-style home, one of four houses on a dirt road.

"She had a number of very serious injuries that required extensive surgery," Senior Assistant Attorney General N. William Delker said. He wouldn’t disclose the nature of the girl’s injuries, but said she was in stable condition in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Boston. He withheld her name because she is a minor.

Neighbors identified her as Jaime Cates, a sixth-grader, and one neighbor said she had a head wound, a throat cut and leg injury.

Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Jennifer Duval performed an autopsy Monday on the body of Kimberly Cates which determined the registered nurse, who worked part-time at area hospitals, died from multiple sharp injuries to the head, torso, left arm and left leg. Her death was ruled a homicide.


(The little girl feigned death after the attack when the monsters kicked her to see if she was alive. She managed to get outside and I believe call 911.)

I have included a link to the following website to light a virtual candle for the family
http://wearebetterthanthis.com

Current Mood: infuriated

There was a public meeting today about whether the law should be changed back to the governor appointing an interim senator. Senator Kennedy was the one who urged the Mass legislature in 2004 to change the law so Mitt Romney couldn't appoint a senator if Kerry had won the White House. And in a letter sent by the late senator a few weeks before his death, he asked that the law be changed. So at this meeting, Kerry was pontificating about how Mass. needed two voices in Washington. Someone asked him when he paused (pols never really stop) "Senator, when you were running for President, you missed 90% of the votes. We didn't have two voices then, why can't we wait until the special election now?" Kerry paused for a long time and mumbled something about that this was Kennedy's wish, a lame answer even for him.

I knew this was going to happen so I wrote to my state reps a week and a half ago asking them not to support this hypocritical law. Not surprisingly, I haven't heard back from either of them.

Current Mood: amused

Sunday we went to the beach. It was too cold and windy to go swimming but we played in the sand and fed the semi-tame seagulls. We threw a few crackers out and within a few minutes, there were about 70-80 seagulls all around us. Jack was chasing them around trying to give them the cracker he had in his hand and mimicking their cries, pretty accurately I must say. Some of the seagulls could catch the crackers while hovering (it's really the only word that describes what they were doing).
Later we went home and did the diet coke mentos thing. I wasn't sure how many mentos per 2 liter bottle to use and it turns out that 3 or 4 work very well.
The kids all enjoyed it and we sprayed them (and me) down with a hose before going in the house. It was a good time.

Now we come to the title. Walking the dog, yesterday now, we found a dead kitten in the street. I happened to see the animal control officer and she said she would call it in. As we were coming back 15 minutes later the kitten was still in the street and since it was street sweeping day in the neighborhood, the street sweeper was half a block away. I have a strong hunch that the driver wouldn't stop and I could easily visualize the end result, I picked the kitten up in a trash bag and put it in a trash barrel. I feel bad that some family lost their kitten but there was no way I was going to leave it out there.

Current Mood: contemplative

Last Sunday we went to the Moving Wall before it left for its next stop which I believe I heard was in Minnesota. If you don't know, the Wall is a 1/2 scale model of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Wasnhington D.C. I knwo 58,000 +
is a large number of dead or missing but until I saw the wall it was just an abstract number. Seeing the names personalized it for me. I felt myself tearing up as I read through the names. These men and women were someone's children, someone's uncle or aunt, some family member that never got to come home. Some of the names could have been people I went to high school with (we were too young ) I look forward to seeing the real wall in Washington and when I do i fully expect to have lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

Luke started third grade yesterday. Looking back it's been a blur how fast time has gone. Both the boys are so good. They are both eager to help (most of the time). Jack will help me feed the animals and will put dishes in the sink if we ask him to, sometimes even if we don't. Gregg has become arrogant since he came home. He was always self confident but now he seems to only do things for himself. If we ask him about his truck registration because there is a letter from the registry, he calls us manipulative. He flares up over the slightest things.

One of Barb's friends, who she's known for around 20 years, has a brain tumor. To be honest, I doubt she will last a year. I know that you can't control disease but a positive mental attitude goes a long way. She lacks that. I hate to say it but she is an emotional vampire. She just brings people down. When Luke was little, we let her watch him so Barb and I could go out. I felt uneasy about leaving her there with him but we went out and got about a mile away before a sense of forboding made me turn around. She would never hurt Luke but I knew something was wrong. I found out later that she was suicidal. She is a genuinely nice person who has had some nasty things happen in her life and I hope she beats it.

Finally I would like to wish my friend a very Happy Birthday

Current Mood: drained

I'm just starting to wake up to get ready for the night shift and I hear my wife say "Wait until your father sees your head". All sleep is gone at that point and I jump out of bed and get dressed. I go out to the kitchen and Jack has a good size bump right in the middle of his forehead with scratches. He fell when he got out of the car and was running for the front steps. He's okay but it's still not one of those things you want or expect to hear when you're just waking up.

Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still
Followed closely by Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet

Tags: robots, writer's block

I meant to add this when I wrote the other day. I believe President Obama loves this country and his family but I think his solutions are detrimental.

I compare him to an air traffic controller who has to 100% correct, 100% of the time. And in my humble estimation, it seems like he is directing 3 planes into mountains.
And with all due respect, it seems hypocritical to have a secretary of the treasury who cheated on his taxes. This gets back to my comments on the media. The media trashed Joe the Plumber because he was a potential bump in the road to president when he had a $1282 lien, but Geithner who knowingly didn't pay taxes but took the money meant to cover the taxes and pocketed it.
Wasn't it greedy selfish men who got us into this mess? (Purely rhetorical)
I'm not an economic expert, but it seems to me that the stimulus will give slight boost for a couple of months, then the numbers will come out that it didn't do enough and the economy will crash even harder.

I'm going to be praying for the president. He doesn't have the luxury of failure. Going by his (sparse) record on amnesty, taxes, the second ammendment, and his virtual surrender on terrorism, I am not confident though.

This is going to be a political rant that I plan to look at in a year to see if my feelings right now differ from what I feel then. I have a geat many thoughts swirling in my head and I expect this will be a fairly long post. I'm going to try to keep my thoughts in order but I may ramble. I beg your forgiveness in advance for the coherency but not the content.

Let me start by saying that today I feel less safe for myself and my family than I did yesterday at this time. I'll get to the reasons why shortly.
I'm proud that the Obamas did not have to deal with the vandalism of the White House when the Bushes left that the Bushes had when the Clinton staff left. "W"'s missing from keyboards, pornograghy in the copy machines, over 30 grand in damages. I hope that everyone of them had their security clearances pulled, considering if a tourist had done that much they would be in jail.

I think that future generations will see the Clinton presidency as the root of the current economic mess we're in right now. His housing policies, which rewarded banks for loaning money to people that couldn't pay it back and penalizing banks that didn't was ill advised even in boom times as much as it is today. But banks are being told to give loans are to people that are already delinquent. I also believe that the Clinton administration will be judged as the most corrupt in the last century.

I will give very little praise to George Bush. While he was incompetent, some good did come from his administration. The No Child Left Behind act, while flawed was a good start. And there were no attacks on American soil after Sept. 11,01. And consider this, every day after, was a metaphorical Sept 12 up until the end of his term. He had to make some hard choices, some of which we may never know about.

Two days ago, Barack Obama became president. It's an amazing time. I think Martin Luther King Jr. might have mixed feelings. First pride that 40 years after his death, a black man would be president but some slight dismay that color and not merit determined that election. (If there is any political honesty, if his name had been Sean Cunningham and he'd been from Southie with the same experience and views he wouldn't have been elected.) I hope his inaugaration doesn't set the tone for his presidency. Even if it is paid for by private donors, spending more than four times as much as the next most expensive inaugaration in a recession seems excessive. I hope some of his policies aren't as ostentatious and overblown.

Today, he signed an executive order calling for the closing of Gitmo in a year but couldn't tell where the prisoners would be going. He also said we will not be torturing any longer. In my opinion, no torture ocurred. Just because something is demeaming and humiliating does not make it torture. But now just making prisoners uncomfortable won't be allowed. The far reaching effects could be that American troops will think twice about taking prisoners and more deaths from could ocurr.

I worry about freedom of speech. With the Biden interview in Florida where because the interviewer asked a reasonable question, the station was not allowed any more interviews until after the election to a reporter being kicked off the plane because their editor wrote something unflattering to Obama saying "I don't want you to waste your question"
People with differing opinions being shouted down.

I think journalists should try to keep the politicians honest and the people informed. In this I think the media as a whole would be graded 'D'. (The National Enquirer shouldn't be the ones breaking major political stories.)

If you've read to here, I thank you for your patience. Feel free to comment or not.

Current Mood: anxious

In a flash my newest has grown to 4 months old. He can do a pseudo-crawl
across his crib. He moves like an inch worm and gets where he wants to go.
He prefers to sleep on his stomach and has no problem holding his head up
and turning over.
In a flash I have a six year old playing football and baseball. I think
he'll be reading in a year, just because he'll decide that it's time. He's
swimming well at lessons and the lifeguards say next year he should be
ready for sailing lessons. I don't know if I will be though.
In a flash, I celebrate my 9th anniversary of being married in just a
few months. I have my 10 year anniversary at work this month. It's the longest I've ever been at one job. Before that the longest were 8 and 6,
well I had the paper route for close to nine years as well.
In a flash, I've been out of high school for 25 years.

I wonder what will happen in the next flash?

Current Mood: contemplative