With Bill’s story in mind I thought I was prepared for George’s narrative. George gave me a little about himself before he began chronicling the events of his story . George told me he was a retired teacher and his tale was the one with a beginning but no ending. I was dubious that his story could top Bill’s but I was willing to listen. He swallowed a few gulps of beer and began. I again took notes and later wrote out his story. I promised I would make my decision before we got to Klamath Falls. The following is George’s story.

George’s Story
Max

The school population of our district had been increasing steadily and five teachers would be hired. As a department chair I had been selected to be on the screening committee. Our job was to pick the best prospects. Several aspiring teachers came in on cue, answered our questions, and left. One young man seemed ill at ease and fumbled his answers so much that my friend, an administrator, had to leave the room to keep from laughing out loud.
But after Max finished his interview and left the room, our woman principal, Barbara, announced Max had the job. We protested, but to no avail, and Max was hired. Max was not friendly. He kept to himself, and disappeared for long periods of time. He didn’t care what we thought. He said he did care if he was liked or disliked.
With students he was mean spirited and we sometimes objected to the punishments he meted out. Usually he could be found somewhere close to the principal and we gossiped that he stayed with her for protection. Although Max was single and the principal was married, they were very friendly away from school despite the differences of their ages. He was 24 and she was 54. Max became aggressive when drinking and verbally abusive towards women. After two or three drinks all women were his enemies, out to use and abuse him, and to destroy him. That was a repeating theme.
One Friday evening the teachers were invited to the Barbara’s house for a party. She supplied the drinks and soon several of the teachers were talkative and mellow. Max, however, began spouting off about children and women, and his bitter tirades were driving people away. He grew tired of people deserting him. He staggered towards the door, intending to drive home. Barbara noticed Max leaving and asked me to talk to him. She thought he should sober up before leaving.
I stepped in front of Max and asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee. He rudely replied, “Get out of my way.” I tried to talk to him and that’s when he pushed me through the living room’s large picture window. At that moment everyone realized that Max indeed had had too much to drink and began coaxing him to stay. He became even more agitated by their efforts.
Another teacher told me he would talk to Max but when Max took a swing at him all talking was over. I grabbed Max’s arms from behind and he swung an elbow back and caught me just below the eye. I could have pummeled him but I released him and he staggered onward towards his car. We watched as he drove out of sight and weaved down the road.
On Monday Max looked sheepishly at my black eye and smiled, but said nothing. It soon became a subject no one would talk about. Only those who were there knew the story, but they were warned to forget everything. Barbara did not want anyone on the outside hearing negative things about any activities involving her or Max.
I believed Max was evil, not because of his behavior at the party, his views about women, or because of his meanness towards children. Instead, I believed Max was the notorious East Side Rapist well-known in the Sacramento area. The East Side Rapist’s profile proclaimed he had gone to college at either U.C. Davis or Sacramento State College. In addition, it was thought he had spent a lot of time in the East Side. Detectives believed they would catch him before the year was out.
Because I had been on the interview team when Max was hired, I knew some of his background. He had gone to a nearby college, had grown up on the east side of Sacramento, and his parents still lived in the area. He often went to visit and stayed with his parents. In addition, Max rented a house just thirty miles from the east side.
There were clues left at the crime scenes that I found interesting. Somewhere I read the rapist tied his knots in a style described as Chinese. My attention was drawn to the case because I remembered helping my class with macramé projects. One student, Max’s former stepson, tied knots in a strange fashion. The knots looked very much like Chinese knots I had seen in a magazine.
I did note there was a difference in how the victims described the intruder’s height. The rapist was thought to be several inches taller. However, I thought that could be explained by several facts. Max wore boots to make himself appear taller. In addition, the rapist was standing and his victims were lying down. The last reason was more psychological. The rapist carried a gun, which would make the victims in their confusion and fear to misrepresent his height.
I watched the news with interest, wondering if the East Side Rapist would ever get caught. The police set traps, trying to catch him but the rapes continued, getting more violent all the time. Once, on a foggy day the police thought they had him trapped on a levee. But the suspect ditched his silent mode of transportation, a bicycle, and escaped into the fog.
A few days later I happened to drop by Max’s house. Max had been an avid bicycle rider and I noticed his treasured bicycle was missing. “What happened to your bicycle?” I queried. “I had an accident and decided to give it up,” he replied. I never saw him ride a bicycle again.
Over the next few years the police continued their search but to no avail. The terror had eased and some people suspected the rapist had moved to other areas and experts came up with new theories about who the rapist might be or where he might be and what new terrors he was doing. In the meantime I had moved from my school and away from Sacramento.
I never forgot about the East Side Rapist and one day offered my suspicions to a friend who had risen through the ranks from patrolman to detective to police chief. He listened to my theory but had his own theory of the rapist. He believed the rapist had been in his town, raped a young college student, and killed her father, who had been trying to protect her. I thought this suspect had no connection to the East Side Rapist because the modus operandi was totally different. My friend dismissed my theory also and I forgot about the East Side Rapist for awhile.
Several years later, after reading about the B.T.K. murders in Wichita, Kansas, my curiosity was peaked again. How had the B.T.K. killer stayed below the police radar for so long? Why had he not been checked out? It was the killer’s desire to prove he was smarter than the police that finally revealed his identity. Hidden by his job he could walk openly within the community. His cloak of respectability was enhanced by his position in a church. If he had remained silent he could have gone undetected forever.
I researched the East Side Rapist to see if he had been caught somewhere else in the state. To my shock it was reported he had traveled to several locations beyond Sacramento and had increased his violence from rapes to murders. DNA testing and fingerprints proved he had been in several areas. He, like the B.T.K. killer, had eluded police for years. Was there a reason the East Side Rapist had never been caught? Could the reason be similar to why the B.T.K. had not been caught?
Police procedures usually are based on repeat crimes. Little crimes put the perpetrator into the system and are compared later to bigger crimes. The more often the crimes, the more likely the capture. However, if there are no little crimes by a perp in the system, then the bigger crimes often slip by until the perpetrator makes a mistake, such as B.T.K. sending a message on a church computer.
That’s what I thought happened with Max. He had no small crimes. He did not quite fit the description of the rapist. He was not as tall as the rapist had been described. As a teacher he was expected to be gentle and kind. Later he was able to assume a quiet role in society. I suspected he was fingerprinted as mandated early in his career, as all those who enter the education field are. He would always be just above the law, therefore not a suspect. He could attend conventions and move about the state freely, his cloak of invisibility being his lack of arrests. He would be free to observe potential victims and bring his desires to fruition and slip away again unnoticed.
I tried once again. Through the internet I contacted a detective who was still connected to the case. I presented my suspicions and theories. He responded back by saying, “Do you have any hard evidence?” Of course, if I had, the story would have ended long ago. Has the East Side Rapist of Sacramento ever been caught? No. I suspect he never will until some shred of DNA or some fingerprints from one of the many crime scenes provides the hard evidence the law requires.
In the meantime I wait and watch and never forget. Perhaps this cold case will someday be solved, and my story might be proved right. In the meantime it has no ending.”

George took another gulp of beer. “What do you think? Is my story better than Bill’s?”

Wow! My head was hurting already. Were both stories fabricated or were they true? How could I decide? “Give me some time to decide,” I said. “Both of these stories need to be told. I’ll do my best.”

I did not sleep until both stories were written. I still had not decided which story was best. That would come later. Also later I would discover that things were changing on the train. While my attention had been diverted by the two stories I had not been paying attention to matters at hand. Martha was changing suitcases again.

I can honestly say “we’ve got the bastard”. Read this article from The Weekly Standard. We’ve got all the evidence we need on what Obama actually believes in and it is both better and worse than I could have expected.
He’s soft on crime, fiscally irresponsible, addicted to racial politics, associates with postmodern thinkers whose ideas on dealing with youth crime is naive at best and he subscribes to theories rather than emperical data. We’ve got him!

i bought the CSI PC game last week entitled “Hard Evidence” and for 5 glorious cases, i was a top CSI.

however, i only got it because i was a CSI fan, but i think game experts will not like it.

main reason is that it’s really easy. i was a master in 4 cases (as i’m not yet done with the last), and for someone who only played this and the first ever CSI PC game, mastering all levels only means that the games are a piece of cake.

and the characters… oh man. i know these are just computer graphics, but i think they could’ve done better.

nick looked like a ken doll, jim looked like a bum, catherine looked like a female wrestler, sara looked like she OD’d on botox, warrick’s face looked flat, greg looked like a druggie and gil… oh gil… he seemed young, and thin. maybe bill petersen had something to do with this.

but again, i don’t mind, i liked playing the game because woohoo! i became a csi for a few days.

LGF destroys, in only a couple sentences, an argument that must have been nearly impossible to write due to the logical gymnastics required.

A Kos Kid gives it his best effort to be as blind and stupid as possible: Daily Kos: Is Islam Really Stuck in the 12th Century on Women’s Rights?

After denying that there’s any problem for women in Islamic countries, Joshua Holland writes in the first comment:

Who Knows?

Hell, maybe women do fare a lot worse in Islamic culture than they do in other faiths. I’ve just never seen any hard evidence to support that claim.

You haven’t seen any “hard evidence,” Joshua, because you haven’t looked.

Ten worst countries for women.

It’s a constant source of amazement to me that self-defined “liberals” like this will make excuses for the most illiberal societies, in complete self-satisfied ignorance, and look the other way as women are ruthlessly oppressed by a belief system from the Dark Ages.

I know an American couple who lived in Kuwait for a number of years around the time of the Gulf War. They have some incredible stories, not least of which are about the times they played witness to a Muslim man caning a random woman in the street because her ankles weren’t completely covered. I kid you not.

And let’s not forget about female genital mutilation, something that runs rampant in most Muslim cultures.

If Christians mandated the beating of wives, excused rape in pretty much every situation, and killed their daughters for not wearing enough clothing, would the Daily Kos still miss the “hard evidence”?