Archive for June 17th, 2021

Murder was the case.

Thursday, June 17th, 2021

I’ve been reading the NYPost more recently, which is where I picked up on these two cases. However, I’m trying to use local sources when I can.

I don’t want to seem like I’m posting these to be exploitative. But both of these two crimes happened recently, and both have interesting elements to them.

1. The Murdaugh family in South Carolina is prominent in local legal circles.

…several members held the elected position of solicitor for the 14th Judicial Circuit, which serves Beaufort, Hampton, Jasper, Allendale and Colleton counties, from 1920 until 2006. Multiple members of the Murdaughs still work at the Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth & Detrick law firm in Hampton.

In 2019, Paul Murdaugh, who was 20 years old, was charged with three felony counts of boating while intoxicated. He was involved in a boat crash that killed a 19 year old woman.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in May 2019 and had not spent time in jail. There hadn’t been any movement on the criminal case since July 2019, when his bond was modified to allow him to travel.

Last Monday, Paul Murdaugh and his mother, Maggie, were found shot to death on their property.

According to reports, both were shot with different weapons: Paul was apparently killed with a shotgun, while an “assault rifle” (I know, I know) was used to kill his mother.

There’s pretty extensive coverage on “The State” website. I do want to highlight this editorial, “Another Murdaugh tragedy. Another reason to lose faith in the criminal justice system“, which pretty clearly implies that the state was doing a lousy job of prosecuting Paul Murdaugh.

2. Ashley Henley was a Mississippi state representative from 2016 to 2020.

On December 26th last year, Ms. Henley’s sister-in-law, Kristina Michelle Jones, was found dead in her trailer home after a fire.

Henley was frustrated with her sister-in-law’s case, she posted on social media recently, according to the publication.

On Sunday night, Ms. Henley was found dead outside her sister-in-law’s trailer.

…she had been shot, but did not disclose many details because “we are in the earliest stages of an investigation” and that the gunshot was “non-accidental.”

It isn’t clear to me, from what I’ve read, if the fire was ruled accidental or purposeful, or if there even was a ruling. (Law enforcement now says they are re-investigating it.)

I feel like I should have something more here, but the only thing I can come up with is irresponsible speculation. There’s an obvious theory of the crime in the Murdaugh case (and the Post is reporting the family received threats prior to the shooting) but the obvious isn’t always true.

As for the Henley case, there’s an obvious theory for that, too, if you’ve ever watched any legal show on television. But life isn’t like “Perry Mason”: people generally don’t get murdered because they “got too close to the truth”. I don’t think it is even clear that there was a crime involved before the murder, let alone that Ms. Henley was killed for that reason.

But, as is frequently the case, somebody’s going to get a true crime book out of one or both of these cases.

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Obit watch: June 17, 2021.

Thursday, June 17th, 2021

Brigitte Gerney passed away a few days ago. She was 85.

You probably never heard of her, but this is a great story. On May 30, 1985, she was pinned under a collapsed crane in New York City.

Mrs. Gerney was walking home to United Nations Plaza from her dentist’s office on East 69th Street, past the foundation for a 42-story apartment building on Third Avenue between 64th and 63rd Streets, when the 35-ton base of the crane tipped over onto the sidewalk, trapping her at the edge of the excavation.
“It was like an earthquake,” she testified a year later. “The pavement cracked up under me. I remember my bag flying out of my hands. I heard the noise of all the bones cracking in my legs. I’m sure I screamed, ‘Help me, help me, get me out!’ But I was alone.”
She continued: “I said, ‘Can’t you cut my legs off and take me out? I have two children. I have to live.’ But they said they couldn’t do that, that I would bleed to death.”
“I never believed I would get out,” she said. “I thought I was dying.”
She was asked if she wanted a priest, she added, “and I said yes.”
Three cranes were dispatched to help stabilize the toppled one while rescue workers extricated Mrs. Gerney, who remained conscious the entire time.

She was pinned for six hours.

James Essig of the 19th Precinct, among the first on the scene, was awarded a medal for valor. Paul Ragonese of the Emergency Service Unit was elevated to detective, retired from the bomb squad in 1988 and now handles security for the Durst Organization.
“What kept me alive is that he held my hand,” Mrs. Gerney said of Detective Ragonese.
He said at the time, “She is the most courageous man or woman I ever met.”

It took 13 operations (including skin grafts and microsurgery) but the doctors were able to save her legs, and she was able to walk again.

The accident and its aftermath were front-page news for more than a year. The contracting company and the construction foreman were convicted of assault and endangerment. The foreman was fined $5,000 and placed on five years’ probation. The crane operator, who was unlicensed and who had been ordered by the foreman to take over after the regular operator had left for the day, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault. He was spared a prison sentence after Mrs. Gerney urged compassion.
In 1988, she was awarded $10 million in damages, to be paid in monthly installments.

…

Mrs. Gerney’s first son drowned when he was a toddler. She was seriously injured in 1982 when the cable car she was riding at a Swiss ski resort disengaged and plunged to the ground. She survived lung cancer in 1980. Her husband died of colon cancer in 1983. After the crane accident, a doctor who had treated her, and whom she planned to marry, was shot dead by a retired fireman who had been awaiting a decision on his medical disability claim.
“Her reaction to this horrible litany of misfortune?” her son said. “She would say: ‘On the one hand, only in a place like New York does a crane fall on you when you are walking home from the dentist. On the other hand, only in New York would they shut down half the city, have these crazy, brave people crawl under a teetering crane to save you, and then have the best doctors in the world somehow rebuild your smashed legs.’”

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