HS NOIR Print Final

I Home of the Memoir NoirI Home of the Memoir NoirH Heliotrope Books
“Shameless, elegant,
obscene.”
—Leopoldine Core
“Fearlessly intimate.”
—The Daily Beast
“A hip, hilarious, and heartbreaking
story of love gone wrong.”
—Susan Shapiro
“From the raquetball that blackened
her eye to the overﬂowing toilet, the
embezzling ofﬁcial...if you want to
know NewYork and its classrooms...”
—Jeffrey Burke
www.heliotropebooks.com
Find us on Amazon, in paper or Kindle
Look for more NOIR in 2016...

Publisher: Ronit Pinto
Editor: Royal Young
Managing Editor: James Clark
Comic Narration: Ronit Pinto
Layout & Design: Matt Mellon
Photography:
Sam Long
Ross Miller
Artwork/Illustrations:
Royal Young
Jacq the Stripper
Matt Mellon
honey@honeysucklemag.com
(646) 632-7711
www.honeysucklemag.com
NY, NY
Copyright ©2016 Honeysuckle Magazine, LLC.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
HONEYSUCKLE
NOIR

One night, Little Sweet Marie was on a
payphone dialin in one of her tricks.
He was a sweet one, she thought she
mighta loved him. But there was no answa.
Oh Johnny,
where are ya!?
Where did you go!?
Down in town Honeysuckle. Where the dames
are sweet but the nights are bitta.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pulp, Crime and the Headlines of the New York Post Dorri Olds
Going Viral Sharisse Tracey
Summer Noir Chris Yates
Comic Jacqueline Frances
Grindhouse Cinema: Now Playing on Your Laptop Lux Sommers
“The Pit” Seth Kanor
The Portrait of Maxim Jakubowski Michael Demyan
My Grandma Was A Serial Killer: The Story of Clomer Jermstead James Clark
Christian Benner: The Man Behind the Destruction Lux Sommers
Detroit Mystic: Deborah the Psychic Rachel Fritz
The House of All Boogeymen Shane Cashman
Now and 19 Lauren Mooney
The Miskatonik Institute of Horror Film Studies Moxie Mc Murder
Barcelona, Spain, 2007 Paige McGreevy
Publisher’s
letter
NOIR – is it a sentiment, a film
genre, a color…? To us Noir is
anything underneath the head-
lights, “beneath the shadows.”
In our third issue, Honeysuckle
takes to the streets of Detroit,
LA, Hong Kong and New York;
from peoples’ darkest secrets to
the pulpiest of headlines. Run the
shadowed streets with us, and ex-
plore NOIR in all of its vacillat-
ing shades.
Ronit Pinto

By Dorri Olds
Honeysuckle Magazine can’t get enough of the New York Post
crime section. We’re lured in by the gallows humor and titillated by
their tasty recipe of bloody, punny headlines and a fascination with
the noir side of life. Our journalist Dorri Olds took a long, strange trip
inside the Post’s scene of scribes who pen the trademark headlines
and those who tell the dark tales of killers, liars and nutsos.
Jamie Schram has worked for the Post for 22 years. He began
as a copy boy fetching coffee for editors but worked his way up.
When the paper was short-staffed he was sent out to cover stories. He
was assigned to the police bureau in lower Manhattan inside police
headquarters where he shared space with journos from other outlets
including Daily News, New York Times and Associated Press. Sch-
ram was promoted to police bureau chief and spent years at that gig,
before moving to his current position, covering federal law enforce-
ment in New York and Washington, DC.
Dorri Olds: Do you have direct contact with criminals?
Jamie Schram: Sure. I’ve spent many years interviewing serial
killers—David Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez and I spent two years
talking with Charles Manson over the phone. I’ve spoken to plenty
of high profile and low profile serial killers.
Have you become desensitized to crime or do you have night-
mares?
I’ve been doing this for sixteen years, and prior to that I was a
crime reporter on the streets. Over time, you become desensitized,
particularly here in New York, because, back in the day, there were
a lot more murders, and crime. I’m originally from Jersey but came
to New York in 1989. From ’89 to ’93, we had so many homicides.
We’re not going through a crack epidemic like we did back then. In
1990, we had 2,245 homicides. This past year, we had 350, so you’re
talking about a lot less murders, and overall, crime in general is down.
Assaults and rapes and grand larcenies, everything is down.
Why do you think that is?
There are three factors: better police enforcement these days; a lot
of bad guys from the ’80s and ’90s are dead or in prison; and New
York is so expensive to live in now that lower income people have
been pushed out of the city.
During your time off, do you read true crime books and watch
cop shows?
I do. My favorite book is “Helter Skelter.” I read it as a kid, and
that put the hook in me. I just finished a true crime book “Monster of
CONTINUED
Honeysucklemag.com • III 1
Pulp, Crime and the Headlines
of the New York Post

Florence.” A very interesting read.
I love Ann Rule books. My favorite is “The Stranger Beside
Me.”
Oh right, about Ted Bundy. Rule has a lot of fans and she’s done
very well in her career.
What is your favorite part of the job?
I really enjoy the reporting aspect, especially when there’s a big
story that involves a prominent individual who’s run afoul of the law,
or has overdosed on drugs, in a nice section of Manhattan. I know
that the paper is going to want every little detail about that crime or
O.D. It pushes you to really tap into your sources and report the story
better than your competitors. That has always been the inspiration.
Do you negotiate exclusives with the police department?
No, it’s mainly who you know. If you cover a beat for years, you’re
going to know a lot of people. As you get to know them, they begin
to trust you and give you the stories.
Deb Pines is an award-winning New York Post headline writer on
the mostly-men’s team called the Copy Desk, where headlines for all
sections are written. She’s also the author of a mystery series begin-
ning with “In the Shadow of Death: A Chautauqua Murder Mys-
tery.” Post Copy Chief Barry Gross assigns headlines to Pines and
her coworkers. Writers are given specs of a story—length, dimen-
sions and headline width. Then, at breakneck speed, they’re tasked
with writing brilliant headers, making the stories fit and handing it
all in on time to Gross.
Dorri Olds: Are there parameters for how far you can go with a
racy title?
Deb Pines: We walk a fine line between humor and bad taste. With
the tragic crime stories we try to be respectful but we make light of
stupid criminal stories. You know, the guy who can’t shoot straight,
or leaves his credit card behind, or snaps a selfie on a stolen phone,
steals a car and gets caught.
Can you name some of your favorite headlines?
My best headline was about the Jet Blue pilot who had a mental
breakdown. The concerned copilot locked him out of the cockpit and
the passengers restrained him.Apicture of him restrained was sent to
the Post and I wrote for the front page, “This is Your Captain Freak-
ing.”
In Times Square people are dressed as characters from Sesame
street or Disney movies, and some are really just there to aggressive-
ly panhandle the tourists. When somebody dressed in a Cookie Mon-
ster costume menaced tourists and was accused of hitting a woman,
I called him the “Crooky Monster.” In another I called Joan Rivers
the “Joan of Snark.” I called supermodel Naomi Campbell “Striking
Beauty” because she hits people. She has a pattern of striking her
staff, throwing cell phones at them, knocking them around.
Then there was a controversy about a hotel on the Highline. Sup-
posedly the hotel was encouraging people to take off their clothes
and perform sex acts in front of the windows. Tourists were hanging
out under the windows trying to catch pictures so I called it the “Eye-
ful Tower.”
Do you enjoy the dark humor?
Yes, being a tabloid we’re different from a more buttoned down
broadsheet newspaper that treats things more soberly. We like to
make light of things and give attitude because that’s who we are.
When a terrorist was killed we wrote, “Rest in Pieces.” And we’re
famous for, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”
I like the whimsical headlines. The harsher or sexist ones maybe
I’m less involved with because I’m the woman on staff. I did like
“Deleter of the Free World” for Hillary’s email controversy and I
loved when Pope Benedict stepped aside and we wrote, “Pope Gives
God Two Weeks’Notice.”
The Post is briefed when we’ve pushed the envelope. For example,
Chinese groups picketed us when we wrote “Wok This Way.”
Those are hilarious.
This will probably get me in trouble, quoting me on this. But I
didn’t think the “Wok This Way” was a major offense. We make light
of all kinds of people, the same as late night television does. All the
Anthony Wiener stuff we probably overdid, I guess, but people ex-
pected us to. If we don’t have a crude headline for the New York
Post, people are disappointed. Readers expect that. We’ve had some
very funny Wiener stuff and some very, you know, well, we’ve sort
of gone a little too far. We got some pushback when we ran the cover,
“Enjoy a Foot Long in Jail.” You can look at that as making light of
prison rape or think it’s hilarious because Jared Fogle, the Subway
spokesperson who pleaded guilty to paying for sex with minors, is a
pedophile, the lowest of criminals.
2 Honeysucklemag.com • III
Over time, you become
desensitized, particularly here in
New York...
(CONTINUED From Page 1)

By Sharisse Tracey
When my piece, My Father Raped Me…Then Walked Me Down
The Aisle, went viral two years ago I wasn’t aware of it. The awe-
somely talented Lady Gaga hadn’t recorded her powerful song Til It
Happens To You that feels like a wrap around hug for all of us sur-
vivors of sexual assault nor had recording artist Kesha been handed
another slap in the face by New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley
Kornreich who ruled against an injunction that would have allowed
the pop star to record new music separate from her alleged rapist pro-
ducer.As strange as that may sound I’m not certain I was familiar with
the term, viral, yet in the way we hear it every day now although I was
quite sure of what it meant to become known by way of the Internet.
I’d written, edited and rewritten the piece so I was thrilled when it
was accepted in a major publications online magazine, one that I’d
read in print since my teen years. The publication date couldn’t arrive
fast enough, and as soon as it did I instantly shared my essay with
everyone in my network.
The title of the piece was difficult for my family. As soon as I
shared the name of the piece with my mother she made a face like
she just sipped sour milk. I realize people may think she has no right
to an opinion and that’s a fair position to have but she’s supported me
writing my story from the beginning. I told her to not read this essay
and she didn’t. She still hasn’t and I doubt she will. My husband read
it but we weren’t on the best terms at the time it was published. He’s
since said it was hard to read although he’s read the material in my
memoir. My oldest son never mentioned it. He was away at college
studying for finals. He knows what my father did to me but avoids
talking about that part of my writing and my twenty-one year will
champion any publication I have instead of commenting specifically
on the piece. I touch on some deep subjects in my work. I understand
it’s not easy to read. It wasn’t easy to live through. My younger chil-
dren don’t know yet but they will. They have to.
ThecommentsIreceivedwereverysupportive.Iwasoverwhelmed
by the outpour of empathy and sympathy. In my excitement, I emailed
the editor to share the news. “I’m pleased that you’re happy the way
the piece turned out, Sharisse,” she said. “Have you been on the site
recently?” “No,” I said, “not in a little while.” “Well, we decided to
shut down the comment thread,” she said. “Oh,” I said. Of course,
that made me wonder what comments had been there. But eventu-
ally learning more about the Internet and trolls I’m thankful the editor
thought more of my feelings in those moments than she did of clicks.
Ayear later while I attended a weeklong workshop, I found myself
seated next to a renowned writer at breakfast. She introduced herself
and that essay came up in the conversation. I was startled that she not
only knew my name but also had read my words. “Sharisse,” she said,
“I think everyone saw that piece,” she said. “It was a great essay.” I
was so flattered I couldn’t finish my Fruit Loops. It was then that go-
ing viral made more sense to me. Not because someone on television
announced it (although that
would be awesome) but the
news arrived from a person
in my world that mattered to
me. That was a true moment
for me and it truly touched
my heart. Thank you for
sharing in the two-year anni-
versary of the essay that has
reshaped my life. I appreci-
ate you.
I was only a child when
my fixation of creating the
perfect picture began. I
would watch as my father,
a freelance photographer,
created works of art out of people through still photos. At thirteen,
I’d wanted to have my own portraits taken. One Saturday, while my
mother was at work, my father set up the photo shoot in our dining
room, took a few pictures of me and called it a success. Then he said
extra shots were needed in his bedroom. That’s when he raped me.
Aweek later, I told my mother what my father had done to me and
she confronted him. He denied it at first but later confessed. The three
of us went to see a therapist together and she concluded that my father
was sorry, he would not hurt me again and that keeping our household
“stable” was the best way for us to heal. We continued to live together
as one of the few nuclear African American families in our neighbor-
hood – a “pretty picture”.
I soon became obsessed with capturing beautiful images on film—
never scenery, just people. Good times with friends weren’t real un-
less I had a photo to prove it. I took rolls and rolls of pictures, devel-
oped them, assembled them and put them on permanent display in a
photo album by month, year and occasion, with their corresponding
negatives in plastic sleeves. Things were normal. I had the proof.
I was sixteen when my father tried again. All of my friends were
getting their driver’s licenses and I wanted one too, so when he caught
me in my towel on the way to the bathroom, he bargained with me.
“Just leave the door cracked when you shower. I want to watch you
while you lather up. Then I’ll let you practice driving in my pickup
truck.”
I charged at him with the intent to kill, but my towel fell down.
Afraid of him seeing me, I ran to my room hysterically crying, locked
the door and called a friend to come get me. When my mother re-
turned from work and asked me what happened, my friend said, “He
tried it again and she’s leaving with me.” I left home for three months,
only returning for clothes every couple of weeks.
Six years after my father raped me, I asked him to walk me down
the aisle. My twenty-four year old fiancé had proposed to me on my
nineteenth birthday. Finally, I had a way to escape living in my fa-
ther’s house. Instead, I’d be a wife. Still, all I could think about was
how incomplete my wedding pictures would look without my father
in them. I had no brother, no uncle who could stand in. It had to be
him.
When my father agreed to give me away at the ceremony, my
mother and soon-to-be husband both looked at me, then each other.
For a moment, I’d hoped my fiancé would knock my father to the
CONTINUED
One Side of
The Personal Essay
Going Viral

ground, but he just shook my father’s hand and said, “Thank you.” I
was hurt but not surprised. No man had ever saved me; why should
my fiancé be any different?
But this only intensified my rush to escape and I moved the wed-
ding up to Las Vegas. I picked a chapel with the best picture deal:
Five-hundred dollars for thirty-six portraits, a special frame, a small
cake, a bridal bouquet and a limo ride.
The day before we said “I do,” my mother, my father and I jammed
into my groom’s compact car. My parents were crushed in the back
seat, forced to listen to me play Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” on re-
peat.
Heartbeat, real strong but not for long / Better watch your step, or
you’re gonna die
I loved it.
After a while, I began to fear the song might be unfortunately
prophetic. Though my father had been ill prior to the trip, he looked
sicker than usual. Was he going to have a sickle cell crisis? Die on the
way up or in his sleep the night before my wedding? Then who would
walk me down the aisle? What about my pictures? I’d never asked
him for anything.All I wanted was a few steps and a smile. I thought,
he would have the nerve to die now.
He didn’t.
On my wedding day, my father and I took turns snapping shots of
each other in the limo on the way to the chapel. He took pictures of
me alone in my gown while I took ones of my mother and him. My
mothertriedtotakeafewofmebutwhenthepicturesweredeveloped,
my face had been smudged out by her fingers covering the lens.
In the chapel, the minister cued up “Here and Now” by Luther Van-
dross, our wedding song, and I started sobbing.
“Why are you crying?” My mother asked. “Is it because of your
father or because you know you’re making a mistake?”
The minister held my hand and said, “Just nerves.”
My mother had to remind me to take my father’s arm. Did I have
to touch him? He smelled of smoke, that disgustingly familiar, sooth-
ing smell. My crying became ugly and uncontrollable. A camera was
flashing. I was remembering.
“You’re such a naturally pretty girl, but a lot of girls are pretty,”
my father had told me while he was setting up the photo shoot in his
bedroom. “You will need more than that to make it as a model.” I told
him I was uncomfortable wearing just the bra and panty set he put
me in. “Real models wear much less. You need at least a few shots in
something revealing,” he said between short drags from his cigarette.
I shrugged off the memory, gathered my strength and walked down
the aisle.The day will be only twenty-four hours, I told myself, but the
picture will last forever.
After the quick “I dos,” our song came to an abrupt stop. A chapel
staff member escorted us to the photo room.
“Father and daughter look so much alike,” the photographer said.
“Daddy’s little girl, right?”
“Cheese!”
After our honeymoon in Hawaii, I spent hours arranging all of our
photos perfectly in a wedding album. Finding no satisfaction in it, I
never looked at it again. Six months later, just before my father died,
I gave him the pretty picture he wanted, my forgiveness, but I didn’t
mean it and I still don’t. I cheated on my husband within months of
our marriage and divorced him by our second anniversary. But years
afterward, my mother still refused to take the wedding photos down
off of her mantle. “They’re such beautiful pictures,” she would say.
Beautiful, perfect and utterly meaningless.
Sharisse Tracey’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review
and online at The New York Times, The Washington Post, ELLE, Ebo-
ny, Salon, Essence, Yahoo, Babble, DAME and online publications.An
off-Broadway play NOT SOMEONE LIKE ME directed by Christo-
pher Sarandon that features 5 rape monologues-- one about Sharisse’s
life was last shown at The New York Theatre Workshop with her role
read by actress Adrienne C. Moore—Black Cindy from Orange Is The
New Black. While living in the Seattle area Sharisse caught the acting
bug after landing a small role in an independent film, a few commer-
cials and modeling jobs but her first love is writing. Sharisse Tracey
lives in New York with her family where she is working on her memoir.
Follow her @SharisseTracey.
Suddenly, a big, black old caddy drives up.
The kind that looks angry, looks mean.

By Chris Yates
I
n six days I would turn thirteen and don’t know what an ideal
childhood is but I know that until that Wednesday, one hot yel-
low day of 1982, I believed I was living it. Believed my parents
were happy, that I was growing up in the best place on earth,
probably still believed in ghosts, UFOs, tarot cards and the purity of
major league baseball.
I remember our time in those mountains all bleached like old pho-
tos, the sky more bright than blue, rocks with a hazy glare and our
bicycles two different shades of baked orange. We would ride them
up there, three panting miles, the whole summer long.
There were pitch pines and blueberry bushes and turkey vultures
overhead.And sometimes you might get a hiker come by, but mostly
you wouldn’t see anyone, not on weekdays at least. Those were the
dog days of summer vacation, heat stippling the air, incessant shrill
of insects. That Wednesday had brought the harshest of the seasonal
heat and I kept to the shadows the best I could.
By the time I got back from reconnaissance, he had her tied up
pretty well with all sorts of knots. I think he must have been inspired
to use so much rope, more than was necessary, by one of those silent
black-and-white movies, the victim mouthing screams as she lays on
the railroad tracks already cocooned by the caped villain.
But she wasn’t tied to railway tracks, she was tied to a tree. Prob-
ably one of those pitch pines I mentioned, although the precise genus
of tree he had used was not top of my list of things to be taking note
of right then.
He shot her just once to begin with, wincing as he pulled the trig-
ger. We had never fired the gun at real flesh. Mostly at soda cans,
garter snakes, chipmunks, secret forts, wild turkey and white-tailed
deer. Which is not to say we had no experience at all in the conjunc-
tions of human flesh and certain other projectiles.
One time we crafted a spear from a piece of bamboo we took from
Mrs Granger’s yard, the tomato plant collapsing under the weight of
green fruit. We used rubber bands and a big nail we foraged from the
derelict house near the airport. We took everything up into the moun-
tains to put it together, then spent a lot of time making small adjust-
ments to the thing, weighting it with stones inside for the right sort of
balance, ensuring that the nail held tight enough to the bamboo that it
wouldn’t deflect when it met its target. We wanted to be sure that the
point of the spear would embed. It took us an hour or more and then
the conclusion of the whole episode was over in just a few seconds.
He had hold of the spear when we agreed it was ready and he told
me to run. Just that single word barked out like I’d made him angry
for no particular reason.
What?
Run! he repeated, higher-pitched this time.
He had started to get a sense of the spear’s weight, holding it lightly
at his shoulder and feeling for the right sort of grip, fingers fluttering
as if playing the flute.
I find it hard now to believe his intention took me so long to dis-
cern. I stood there awkwardly, unsure what to do. He closed one eye
and started to line me up along the shaft of the spear, this spear we
had made together. I really do think it took me that long before ev-
erything finally clicked.
And I ran.
I ran, not looking back until I heard the sound it made pushing its
knuckled length through the air, turning just in time to glimpse the
spear before it sunk its nose into my calf. And when it dug in, it dug
in far enough that it stayed there for seven or eight paces as I started
to slow, its tail rattling on the stony ground.
Here comes the hardest part of the story for me to relate to in adult-
hood but I really did do this—I turned and picked up the spear, which
had disengaged from my leg a few yards behind me, and I took the
thing back to him. Like some kind of bird dog.
He looked immensely proud, reaching out for our weapon with
both hands, palms facing skyward. Closing his fists around its shaft,
he flexed the spear, gave it a slight and single shake. It was a good
spear, it had flown true, twenty, thirty yards.
Leaning our weapon against a tree, he gripped me by the shoulders
and turned me around. Whistled. Cool wound, he said.
I looked over at the spear. The nail at its tip was pretty rusty. And
I don’t even remember if I knew about tetanus back then but I knew
I should probably tell someone what happened. But instead I wore
long pants for a week and fretted over how I would answer the ques-
tion if somebody asked me why. Although why anyone would have
asked me why I was wearing long pants, I have no idea.
Another time he fired a rock from a slingshot that hit me right be-
tween the eyes. An inch or two to the left, to the right… Oh God.
But maybe this doesn’t say anything meaningful about what hap-
pened that Wednesday. Because honestly, I don’t think he had any
idea it was even possible to hit me. I was in our secret fort and it
was his turn to bombard and we’d made one side of the fort from an
old fence scavenged from the abandoned blueberry pickers huts and
the rock came straight through this really narrow space between two
pickets.
I told Mom I ran into a low branch turning a corner too fast.
Anyway, after he shot her the first time it was a good amount of
time before he shot her again. And what with his initial wincing, the
scrunched eyes, the turned head, maybe he wasn’t even sure if he’d
hit her. Probably she would have been screaming just as much either
way. And he didn’t want to go near her while she was making so
much noise, so he waited until she was just crying, which was maybe
as long as two or three minutes.
It was her arm, almost up at her shoulder, where she had in fact
been hit. He walked forward and stopped a few paces back, peering
in at her like she was darkness in a cave. Shut up, it’s only a dumb BB
gun, he said, cracking the lever, which didn’t exactly help matters.
She screamed some more.
He must’ve told her we were going up into the mountains to shoot
deer with a real gun. Or maybe he hadn’t used the exact words real
gun but I’m guessing that’s what she must have assumed. I mean,
it’s not like she was the kind of twelve year old girl who would have
known a BB gun from an assault rifle. And none of this is to say that
he wouldn’t have used a real gun if we could’ve gotten our hands on
one. But the BB gun was all we had, a Red Ryder, named after that
Summer Noir
CONTINUED

comic strip cowboy, looks just like a Winchester rifle. Same kind of
gun Ralphie dreams about in A Christmas Story (You’ll shoot your
eye out, kid), only mine didn’t have a compass in the stock or a thing
to tell the time.
Let me say for the record that I thought we’d probably just show
her the normal spots and we wouldn’t even see any deer, so we’d
plunk some soda cans instead and then he’d try to make out with her.
(I believed the last thought had been confirmed when we got to our
secret spot and he sent me immediately away on reconnaissance.)
And although we were almost the same age, he was a country mile
further along that snaky path toward manhood than me. I suppose
we’d never really spoken about girls in any sort of making out sense.
But even so, I’d seen him looking at them in a way that would even-
tually become familiar to me. And I probably resented that if I’m
honest about the whole thing.
Anyway, when she stopped crying, or the crying had died down
to a whimper, he pointed at the mark the pellet had left near the pink
strap of her tank. She might not have known about guns but she had
to know the difference between a gaping flesh wound and the little
cherrystone mark the BB had left on her skin. It was like a bullseye,
only the other way round, white in the center with a red ring around
it. Like the flesh that was hit was in shock and only the gathering
crowd was in uproar.
Look, he said, it doesn’t even break skin.
I bet you could’ve loaded up that old Red Ryder of mine with may-
be five or six hundred little BBs. He cracked the lever on the gun. I
promise I’ll stay away from your face, he said.
And I honestly believe he intended to stick to that promise.

By Lux Sommers
This year, Playboy Magazine ceased featuring women in the buff. It’s
a shocking move for a publication that built its empire on unclothed
damsels flashing pink. But due to the growing prevalence of free internet
lasciviousness, nakedness is no longer drawing subscriptions. This fol-
lowing news of Penthouse Magazine’s parent company going bankrupt,
it seems the smut industry is at a critical crossroads. With cuckolds and
triple-penetration scenes available gratis, it seems people won’t even
pay to see kinky sex, let alone boring nudity.
As a young single lady living in NewYork, most pornography isn’t for
me, though I consider myself open-minded. So I was fascinated when I
stumbled across Something Weird Video. It’s a truly magical corner of
the inter-webs, where consumers are still willing to shell out for salac-
ity. The site offers the kind of enjoyment the oversexed modern market
doesn’t. With its vintage spin on the taboo, these celluloid treasures har-
ken back to a more innocent time, when “gore galore” still had shock
value, and “nude but not lewd” was a draw instead of a drawback.
For $9.99 a flick, patrons seem willing to pay to see less. These days,
“Peepshow” isn’t the first fantasy I would Google. But Something
Weird’s Nudie Cutie section is both laugh-out-loud funny and surpris-
ingly sensual, especially the flick Nude On The Moon, where topless la-
dies in beehive hairdos and sprouted alien antenna frolic in outer-space.
In a culture jaded by overexposure, viewers now seem willing to pony
up for a coyer take on the adult motion picture.
This wide-eyed earnestness is not to be confused with today’s rotating
roster of girl-next-door stars—webcam scouted, early twenties— get-
ting fucked senseless by seasoned male actors in LA studios. Rather,
Now Playing on Your Laptop
Grindhouse
Cinema
CONTINUED

these retro reels reveal a shared innocence on the part of the whole
crew andAmerican culture. Historically, these movies were ground-
breaking for their time. The excitement over making or viewing
something so shockingly transgressive is palpable. It’s got that oh-
yes-we-did wink. Something Weird’s offerings may be sick, but
they’re never, ever jaded.
The films available on the site belong to the “exploitation genre,”
a category of movie popular from 1930-1970, when the US govern-
ment banned all lurid content from Hollywood. In these pre-internet
decades, consumers had to journey to seedy establishments called
grindhouses in order to glimpse the depravity they craved. The pro-
prietors of the site have preserved the old-timey feel in the digital
experience, with garish poster-art and overly-theatrical trailers hint-
ing at the sordid melodrama. Lurid titles like, “All Men Are Apes”
and “The Bushwhacker” boom, step off Main Street USA and into
the grindhouse! It’s a dank theater, in desperate need of a vacuum-
ing, projector lights illuminating dust and humankind’s darkest fan-
tasies.
Today the adult video industry is worth 13 million dollars, run pre-
dominantly by rich men feeding off disposable young women. For
most adult actresses, the average stint lasts three years. Consumers
like to see fresh faces, a new cast of teens, MILFs, cheerleaders, and
nurses to whack off to. Other than being well hung, it doesn’t really
matter what the men look like. For this reason, guys in the business
enjoy significantly longer careers.
As enjoyable as the output may be to some, the field is undeni-
ably scummy. Conversely, I found that renting a flick from Some-
thing Weird was like buying into the anti-establishment. Something
Weird Video was started by Seattle scenester and comic book collec-
tor Mike Vrany. As a teen, Vraney worked in a drive in theater and
later managed famous bands including The Dead Kennedy’s, TSOL,
and TheAccused. Vraney incorporated this punk-rock DIY aesthetic
into his collections, personally cutting together 370 two-hour install-
ments of Nudie Cuties and frequenting the swap meet to search for
vintage ephemera. When Vraney died tragically young of lung can-
cer in 2014, his wife— the artist and archivist Lisa Petrucci— took
over operations.
With its associations to punk-rock and the arts, Something Weird
Video is refreshingly anti-coorporate, though Comcast’s On demand
now offers several titles, including “Campy Classroom Classics.”
Vraney wasn’t only seeking profits, when he endeavored to save
“sinema” from dusty film vaults and defunct theaters. “Something
Weird was his heart and soul, he was obsessive in his pursuit of
tracking down the weirdest, wildest movies out there,” a close friend
wrote after his death. Even the most offensive material has an under-
ground allure, a joyful irreverence. Remember, these were the filmed
banned from Hollywood by the same puritanical government that
banned booze in the 1920’s.They feel authentic, like grainy glimpses
into the gloriously twisted imaginations of our jello-fed forebears.
There are no Hollywood storylines or flashy productions here, but
that’s part of the appeal. “Seemingly written by a group of Swedish
school kids just learning English and edited by a bread slicer,” is how
Something Weird Video introduces one feature. “Unintentionally
campy, this amateur production will leave you shaking your head
and asking yourself, “Why, oh why?!” reads another. Hit play on that
one and you’ll find a young boy in gold lamé short-shorts perform-
ing dance routines with massive helium-filled creatures. This ab-
surdist, self aware wink is refreshing. Something Weird wants your
money, sure, but the proprietors aren’t trying to oversell these works.
They’re just inviting you to join in the cooky fun.
With tens of thousands of hours of footage, it’s hard to know
where to direct your bulging eyeballs. As a young feminist, I was
particularly interested in the films of Doris Wishman, a prolific sex-
ploitation filmmaker, whose mostly soft-core films are prominently
featured on the site. Wishman began her career in moviemaking as
an unusual way of coping with the death of her Advertising Execu-
tive husband. She famously declared filmmaking “better than sex,
though few of her flicks contain the explicit act, favoring nudity, girl-
on-girl romance, and outlandishly steamy storylines. According to
Wishman’s biographer, “She was actually rather sexually naïve…
She personally thought someone’s hand caressing your face was
more erotic than sex itself.”
What intrigued me about Wishman’s films is that they represent a
different sensibility within the male-dominated genre of sexploita-
tion. Film expert Fred Beldin writes that Wishman’s films depict-
ing rape, stalking and degradation, “had a different flavor than the
“roughies” made by her male counterparts,” and calls these movies,
“her most interesting work.”
Despite the anti-female content, Wishman’s films are feminist, be-
cause her wild and elaborate tales cater to her unique sexuality and
kinks common among women. One such plot unspools in Indecent
Desires (1967) wherein “creepy weirdo-nerd” Zed molests a plastic
doll that is linked voodoo style to Anne, a buxom blonde secretary
who feels Zed’s hands all over her from across town. When Zed
spots Anne with her boyfriend, the nightly feel ups turn violent. Zed
singes the doll with a lit cigarette leaving Anne with a massive burn
mark she struggles to explain at work the next day.
While most XXX plots are a thinly veiled tool to get from A to
banging, the doll serves as a stand in for actual human contact. Per-
haps the “sexual nativity” that Wishman’s male biographer notes, is
not a hang-up or lack of experience as the word implies, but rather
a preference. Wishman delights in leaving more carnal aspects to
the imagination. For women like me, the unseen is most erotic. The
mind’s eye is a pulsing organ, suggestion is sexy.
Today two thirds of pornography viewers today are men, and an
even larger majority of that content seems geared towards the main-
stream male fantasy. The focus is on the heavily-made-up woman,
approximately age 22, performing “slutty” acts like deep throating or
getting fucked by multiple men at once. The men are unseen, except
their their oversized pulsating members, a stand in for the viewer’s
own.
As I mentioned, most onscreen carnality doesn’t do it for me, in
fact, it grosses me out. This feeling is separate from my feminist
CONTINUED
It’s this tension between purity
of heart and sick fantasies that
makes the content at once utterly
offensive and weirdly endearing.

stance on the x-rated; it’s an immediate, visceral reaction to watching
random actors getting it on. I find the clips too graphic, too much, too
fast. I’m culturally conditioned and biologically wired to like things
slowed down. At a recent sleepover, my female friend and I viewed
Deep Throat, fast forwarding through all the graphic sex scenes. We
didn’t question whether the content was morally offensive, just had
no interest in watching a woman having her windpipe screwed.
I get more pleasure from racy network shows like True Blood and
Game of Thrones, where I can watch soft-core trysts between char-
acters I have developed attractions to. I’m excited by the dynamics
and the tension that builds gradually over time. Scruffy faced Game
of Thrones star Jon Snow (RIP) actually turns me on, as opposed to
creep-o middle-aged porn actors. To me, Wishman’s films feel more
prototypical to this salacious TV entertainment as opposed to the
modern adult film. Both Wishman and the current shows mentioned
do suspense expertly. Both also depict rape and other offensive acts
in ways that are sure to rile many feminists. Yet placed within the
construct of a storyline and characters and shown in a soft-core sen-
sibility, I actually enjoy these scenes.
Statistically, modern viewers visit porn sites for ten minutes. This
ready, set, orgasm model doesn’t work for many women. By con-
trast, Doris Wishman’s film The Amazing Transplant (about a male
genital surgery gone awry) runs 77 minutes. Game of Thrones has
been running for 50 episodes and counting—True Blood ended af-
ter 80—, long enough that these characters can begin to feel like
long lost friends and lovers. This isn’t just about it taking longer for
women to orgasm, but more aptly, the inextricable need for foreplay
and intimacy in order for sex acts to be satisfying.
“I want to pass a newsstand and see erotica, real erotica, which has
to do with love and free choice, not pornography,” feminist and anti-
porn advocate Gloria Steinem recently said in in interview. I don’t
agree with Steinem’s insistence that equity needs to be eroticized,
because I don’t agree with applying moral standards to smut. The in-
convenient fact is that politically correct doesn’t always equate with
sexy. Pornography isn’t supposed to be a public service announce-
ment for moral behavior, it’s made to get the viewer off.
What I find problematic is the pervasive lack of consideration for
a woman’s pleasure in the modern industry. Power dynamics can
be erotic for men and women alike, however not if the scenes are
shot in a way that only guys find titillating. The attitude that a man’s
enjoyment comes first makes spectacle less enjoyable for women
and carries over into bedrooms across America. When lady-kind is
endlessly degraded for man’s enjoyment, the industry becomes de-
spicable.
Something Weird embraces camp as its main sensibility, which is
to say, the site has a perspective. The celluloid wonders delight in the
artifice of fake blood, the joy of self-parody. The content is way too
much, so outlandish it’s funny.According to camp expert Susan Son-
tag, the style “discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it.”
It’s this tension between purity of heart and sick fantasies that makes
the content at once utterly offensive and weirdly endearing.
The plot of Wishman’s The Amazing Transplant is a prime ex-
ample of camp. In it, formerly dorkyArthur blackmails a doctor into
hacking off Arthur’s “little-used cocktail weenie” and replacing it
with “the virile, babe-magnet member of dead Felix.” Somehow the
transplant turns Arthur into a sex-crazed rapist, compelled to defile
any young woman who happens to be wearing gold earrings. The
concept is overwrought and ambitious; it flops beautifully.
With their definitive aesthetic, Something Weird’s flicks are ar-
tistic as well as vulgar. Most modern adult film, by contrast, is just
bad. The flicks aren’t artfully shot or acted but they also don’t go far
enough to be camp. It doesn’t take much imagination to capture the
maximum cum drip in the creampuff shot.
So often in our culture, sex sells art. A prime example is singers
who get publicity because they look like models. Look at the women
who grace the covers of Rolling Stone Magazine, their talent always
placed second to their sexuality. But rarely in modern pornography
does art sell sex. Wishman did it so badly, she did it expertly.
Wishman died a cult hero in 2012. Her films are revered for a nar-
rative techniques of ridiculous plots, sick twists and random jumps
of logic. This approach is complimented with goofy visual style of
non-sequitur closeups (feet, household objects, etc.) and a handheld
camera feel. In other words, Wishman is ultra-camp.
But her films aren’t for everyone. They’re not even for most wom-
en. That’s exactly why we need more filmmakers catering to a diver-
sity of tastes. So there can again be “something weird for everyone.”
I would be willing to pay to see that.
www.somethingweird.com

I
t was called the Pit. To get to it you had to push past the double
doors of the boy’s locker room and wind your way through a cat-
acomb of green, rusted lockers. Then, at the end of the last row,
there was a linoleum-floored room lit by rusted tracks of fluo-
rescent lighting, and in the far corner, under a pocked sheet of square
metal stamped like a sewer cover, there was a hole five feet wide, five
feet long, and five feet deep. One of the janitors said it was a crawl
space, but it led nowhere, offered no access to pipes or electric, and had
never been used for storage. Like an appendix, its function had long
been forgotten. Until the wrestlers decided that they would use it to cut
weight before their matches.
Jude had seen them. In winter, they would walk en masse into the
shower room—each wearing a heavy, hooded sweat suit; each car-
rying a small chair, or stool—and they would turn the taps until the
hottest possible water was flowing from each of the twelve shower-
heads. There they would sit, meditating like monks in their tiled mon-
astery, emerging only at long intervals from the great clouds of steam
to make their pilgrimage to the mechanical scale. And if the water
weight wasn’t coming off fast enough they resorted to other methods.
They pissed, they spit, and they shat. They consumed diuretics, they
took large quantities of laxatives, they forced their fingers down their
throats. And at some point, nobody knows when, these teenage ascet-
ics began by silent consensus to spit, piss, and shit into that five-by-
five-by-five hole in the corner of the locker room. If they were cut,
they would bleed into it; if they had phlegm in their throats, they would
spit into it; if their immune systems had broken down from the rapid
weight loss and they’d developed abscesses, they’d squeeze their puss
into it; if they were horny they would masturbate into it, sometimes
while the rest of the team cheered them on. In short: the Pit contained
every imaginable fluid that a teenage boy could produce.
The jocks—especially the basketball team—knew about it. So
did the freaks. So did the bookworms. Everyone had heard about
it, everyone feared it. It was a place you didn’t want to end up. No,
thought Jude.You definitely didn’t want to be trapped down there with
a bunch of kids standing on that cover and depriving you of air and
light, drowning you in a fetid quagmire of creeping mold, and rotting
food, and human waste. It was surprising nobody had died there; and
it seemed possible you could. The Pit was the center of underworld of
the jocks. It was their Hades, and Karl Wolf was its ruler. In the locker
room, Jude saw. It was late in the afternoon. The coaches had gone
home. So had most of the kids. Wolf, Krolikowski, Defino and some
other guys who weren’t on the team were there. Earlier that afternoon
they’d all taken Martin Waisburd to the weight room. He’d done the
bench press, pull-ups, curls and dips. Afterwards, they’d fed him a
pound of roast beef and two raw eggs. They’d said he needed to the
protein to get bigger and stronger. Then they’d brought him back to
the locker room so they could weigh him. “Take off theT-shirt, Farty,”
Wolf demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. “ C’mon, Farty, you
fucking rebo,” said Krolikowski. Defino was smiling, but didn’t look
happy. Waisburd took of the t-shirt. “ And the sneakers,” said Wolf.
“ So we get an accurate read.” Waisburd bent his long frame down to
the floor and untied the shoelaces. Jude watched from his locker as the
shoes were sullenly kicked off. “And the pants,” said Wolf. “ Not the
pants. Okay, Karl?” Waisburd pleaded. “ Farty. Take off the fucking
pants.” From the shadows, Jude found himself examining the boy’s
body. Waisburd’s skin was olive, almost green, under the fluorescent
lights, and his chest and belly were covered in thick, black, matted
hair. He looked like a sweating, hairy animal. And then there was the
Semitic prominence of the nose and lips. Was Waisburd Jewish? Jude
wasn’t sure. The knees were comically knobby. The white underwear
was stained front and back.
Krolikowski made a gagging motion. Wolf spoke. “ Farty Gay-
turd,” he said. “ We take you to the gym; we show you how to use the
universal; we spend time on you showing you how to bulk up, how to
be a better ballplayer; and you show up with shit and fucking piss on
your underwear?” “ Sorry, Karl.” “Take that grubby shit off, you fuck-
ing dingleberry.” Waisburd’s hands went instinctively to his genitals.
“ Please Karl...” Wolf—arms still crossed, biceps bulging—stood like
Wotan and deliberated. “ Okay, Farty, if you won’t take that shit off,
we’ll fucking hang you by it.”And then with a nod fromWolf, the kids
from the wall—Kraus and Kluczynsky—moved towards Waisburd
and lifted him in the air.And Jude watched silently while they took him
toahookonthewallandhunghimbyhisunderwear.Itseemedimpos-
sible that it would hold, but it did. Waisburd was flipping around like a
fish on the bottom of a boat. Jude could see the outline of the crushed
testicles and penis. The boy’s contorted face was turning blue, his
hands were outstretched, like some idiot-Christ, and he was crying out
to Wolf to take him down, crying for mercy.And Wolf was telling him
to be a man. To stop being a fucking baby. And Waisburd said he was
trying. And Jude stepped from the shadows toward Wolf. “ Take him
down,” he said. “ Jewd,” said Wolf, turning. “ How are Jew, Jewd?”
He walked calmly toward Jude’s locker. He smelled of Right Guard.
While Jude stood frozen, he opened the locker and sniffed. “ When
was the last time you washed these, stinky?” “ I don’t remember,” said
Jude. “ Because you fucking stink, Jewd. Krolikowski! Defino! Come
over and smell this stinky-fucking Jew.” Defino was smiling even
wider, all teeth now. Then Krolikowski pushed Jude against the metal
locker. “ Fucking Slinky,” he said, echoing Wolf.
And just at that moment, Bobby the janitor walked in with his cigar
stuck in his mouth and his bucket and his mop in hand and the jocks
and the greasers sauntered out, leaving Jude to take Martin Waisburd
down from his hook.
Seth Kanor’s debut novel Indian Leap was published by Helio-
trope Books in March, 2015.
The Pit
(An excerpt from Seth Kanor’s next novel, Everyone Knows This is Nowhere)
They pissed, they spit, and they
shat. They consumed diuretics,
they took large quantities of
laxatives, they forced their fingers
down their throats.

Poetry
Excerpt &
Illustrations
by Royal Young
“…She was blonde
She was young
She was Hitchcock in the sun
Grace Kelly and Vertigo rolled into one
Now I cover my walls with posters
Of dead movie stars in
Black and white
Their signatures still hold star power
Scrawled across my dreams...”

By Michael Demyan
It should be noted that while the quotes accredited to MJ are
accurate, there is an obvious element of fiction at work here. Lib-
erties have been taken.
The bus rolled along from the airport to where it left me. Some-
where on the East Bank. It was a bleak November day. The rain
was sporadic from the moment I landed until the moment he van-
ished. I thumbed through my notes and mulled over the ques-
tions I had planned. I was interested to speak with the man who
has taken on the name as “The King of Erotic Thriller”. An au-
thor known for his unparalleled work in the genre. As well as in
crime/noir. He’s a disturbing and controversial voice in contem-
porary fiction. Writer, editor, publisher, with a resume a mile long,
though still so mysterious to me.
The rain was steady at this sky was dark. It was early afternoon
but it could have been midnight. I cut onto Charing Cross Road in
a hurry. I was set to meet him at his bookshop; Murder One. Only
it didn’t exist. It was coffee shop with a young blonde dame work-
ing the counter. I told her I was confused. That I was supposed to
be meeting someone in a bookstore. A bookstore that isn’t where
he said it was. She smiled like she possessed some secret knowl-
edge, her name was Cornelia. As I dried my hair and she led me
to a staircase behind a door in the back of the café.
At the top of the staircase was a room. That’s when I first laid
eyes on him. Clad in black with his hands firing rapidly into his
keyboard. A man that never misses a deadline. The girl made eyes
at him. He stayed focused. Silent. He needs a modicum of silence
when working on a piece of journalism. One of his articles for
The Guardian perhaps. The place was minimally dressed. It was
clear that this wasn’t his usual meeting place. The girl cleared her
throat. Her eyes burned into him. Love or lust, I thought to my-
self. He gave nothing. She girl tore off, her skirt sweeping across
the floor. It was the slamming of the door that finally broke him
from his work. He looked up at me. Outwardly misanthropic. In-
ternally, a cauldron of emotion. I was convinced he hadn’t been
aware of my existence in the room until that very moment. Rising
from his desk he suggested we get a drink. He pulled on a long
black topcoat and removed what I took to be a small notebook
from his desk drawer. Stuffing it quickly into his pocket.
By the time we walked back down into the café, it was com-
pletely dark. I thought 3pm was an odd time to close up shop but
so it goes. Maxim was
unnerved and so I was
unnerved. We used
the back door which
led to a cab parked
outside, ostensibly
waiting for us. I took
us into Whitechapel
where we sat in the
back booth of some
wreck of a dive bar.
The Artful Dodger. It
was drab, stark; full
of regulars and if you
weren’t one they let
you know it quick.
The first drink went
down easy, too easy.
He doesn’t drink. He
says it’s a matter of
taste. I took it slow on
the second beer and
felt ready to dig into a conversation with him. He sits rather still
with the occasional hand gesture when figuring out his way to the
point. And when he speaks, it is in short crisp sentences reminis-
cent of his writing.
“Writing fiction is something I find terribly painful.”
He said he has cried while writing. When the reality that in-
spired the story is too much to bear. It was eerily similar so I had
to ask. Many characters resemble him but they are never autobio-
graphical, he swears. He uses the writer as a source. Him being
my source, I began to feel like I was inside one of his novels.
That’s when I realized we were being watched.
Being watched by a beautiful blonde woman at the opposite
end of the bar. She was pulling olives off of a martini toothpick
with her teeth. She wore a long black dress and a leather jacket to
match. She was too familiar, or seemed to be. Was she eyeing me?
Maxim? A rush of sex and loneliness filled the room. I was in the
haze of the alcohol coming on faster than it should have. I reset
myself and was able to brush it all off long enough to continue
our conversation. I laid out all the questions. Was he really the
“King of Erotic Thriller” was he responsible for over 125 books
did he close Murder One due to a lack of challenge why do his
characters lack true happiness did he really identify more with his
female than his male characters and was that due to him being
raised in France?
“My whole life and the purpose of my writing, I think, is to
understand women, their beauty, their soul.”
It was if he said it for her. She came from the far end of the
The Portrait of
Maxim Jakubowski:
An Odyssey
Sex and death…they are the only
two things worth writing about.
CONTINUED

bar. She made her way towards us stoically intense. Maybe just a
crazed fan I thought. I couldn’t drink anymore and pushed away
the last glass Maxim brought me. I saw a look in his eye as she
was close enough to touch. A look of knowing, a lost love. She
said nothing but crossed into the restroom. It was time to go.
Maxim was abrupt and rushed us to the door. Opening it, waved
me out with his pocketed hand as the wind rushed in.
Had I been sober, I would have gotten myself out of this situ-
ation. It was too much now. Something was off. I tried to hail a
cab to my hotel but Maxim pulled me off the street and around a
corner.
“One feels a strong sense of loneliness being alone in a hotel
room when night begins to fall and memories come racing back
through one’s mind” he said, convincing me to follow him on
what became a Jack the Ripper tour. He took us along all five ca-
nonical ripper locations. Spouting out answers to questions I was
not asking. He said BDSM was more than whips and chains. A
complex set of emotions and actions. I said nothing. He went on.
“I believe orgasm is the closest we can get to death.” “Sex and
death…they are the only two things worth writing about.”
We stopped outside of a row home. We were so twisted around
in the tiny Whitechapel roads. The rain brought a fog with it. A
notorious London fog circled us. There was no way I could find
my way back to the bar. He pointed towards the building and re-
cited in graphic detail the history of the prostitute who was found
mutilated inside in November 1888.
A clicking of heels approached. I had a rush of clarity and made
an all too-late realization. Out of the fog there she stood, gun in
hand. The blonde from the café. The blonde from the bar. They
were the same. She was a hit-woman and she loved him. Maxim
knew exactly what was happening. His hands were deep in his
pockets. I was frozen. She gave him the clichéd opportunity for
last words.
“Killing and death are a narrative requirement.”
With the sound of a gunshot, she was sprawled across the side-
walk. Maxim pulled his hand from his coat and brandished a
small pistol. He had fired it from his pocket. It was a classic lose-
lose noir moment. All of the usual tropes of his writing were here;
lust, madness, a writer down on his luck, and with placing the
still warm pistol in my hand he said, “Please tread carefully and
keep away from the shadows; you are about to enter the abyss.”
When I looked up from the gun, all that could be seen was Maxim
Jakubowski disappearing into the foggy night. I guess you could
say I got my interview: A first-hand experience even. Sirens were
in the air. I hurried away, oddly satisfied.
Maxim Jakubowski is a best-selling author; an editor and pub-
lisher who has been associated with for over 125 books. Born in
England, raised in France, he began writing at the age of four-
teen. He is known for his erotic thriller, crime and noir, as well
as science fiction. He formerly owned and operated Murder One
bookshop in London for over 20 years and has a publishing im-
print called MaxCrime. He lives and works full time in London.
She gasps, drops the phone.
Headlights flash in her dialated eyes.
In her high heels and fishnets she tears through
the streets. She passes Peaches, Dawn and
Little Old Anne. They stop what they’re doin,
reach out to her, but Sweet Marie just flies by.

By James Clark
Clomer Jermstead laid next to her lover. The two had blossomed
a 2-yearlong love affair, and he would do anything to make Clomer
his own.
“I want my husband dead,” she said.
“You got it,” he replied.
Clomer though beautiful, had started to age. Her marriage wasn’t
easy; her husband was an abusive man. Out of rage he would hit
Clomer and her eldest daughter. The worry of safety started to send
Clomer into a downward spiral.
She had met Ross, her lover, at the café where she waitressed. He
was the stereo typical southern gentleman. He was tall, tan, and had
light brown hair that was combed out of his face. He was certainly
more attractive than Clomer’s husband. More importantly, Clomer
confided in him a sense of safety and security. He listened to her, and
during her destructive marriage she needed him more than anything.
I happen to be Clomer Jermstead’s step-great-grandson, and her
story has intrigued me since my grandma first told me a few years
ago. I’ve since had the dying urge to turn her story into a novel, and
by researching and sorting through old documents I am starting to
piece together a story that was left untold for 70+ years.
“How should we do it,” she asked.
“Discreetly,” whispered Ross. “If we do this we have to make it
come across as self defense.”
Clomer rose from the bed and lit a cigarette. She slowly put on her
slip. She was tiny framed woman, no more than 5 feet tall, she had
dark brown curly hair pinned back to keep it out of her large brown
eyes. She only wore makeup on special occasions, and Ross was one
of them. She started to put on her dress, and then her shoes.
“I’m assuming this means you love me,” she said to Ross.
“I’m assuming this means you trust me,” Ross said back.
The two chuckled, and Clomer headed out the door.
The walk home was the hardest thing for Clomer to do. She was
trapped in the thought of her abusive marriage, the pain of being in
love with another man, and feared the thought of God punishing her
for having an affair.
She left her daughters at Maude’s house across the street. She
knocked on the door and was greeted by Maude’s kind and wrinkly
face; she was a widowed woman in her late sixties, and would watch
Clomer’s children for whatever price Clomer could afford which was
normally just a couple of cents. Clomer lifted up her sleeve to reach
in her purse revealing a bruise.
“Did your husband give that to you,” asked Maude.
Clomer stayed silent.
“Come in and lets have a talk,”
She quickly escorted Clomer inside, and had her sit down on the
chair in the living room.
“My husband was abusive,” said Maude. “Oh yes, he hit me almost
everyday for 20 years, and one night I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“What did you do,” asked Clomer.
“When he went to bed drunk as usual, I took the pillow and held
it over his face until I couldn’t hear him breath anymore,” Maude
replied. “That’s when I knew…”
“Knew what?”
“I just saved myself from my own death,”
Clomer was a thoughtful woman, and wouldn’t dare think about
leaving someone as passionate as Maude out of her killing.
“Listen, Ross and I were talking about it this morning, and I think
I am going to do it. I can’t live another year with him.”
“Self defense isn’t talked about the same way it was when I killed
my husband,” said Maude. “If the court finds out you had an affair
before his murder, they will sentence you to death.”
“Guess that means I have to be discreet,” Clomer replied. “Where’s
my girls?”
Maude opened the door to a small room where the girls laid taking
a nap. Clomer picked the two of them up in her arms, and thanked
Maude for watching them again.
“Ross McKellen?” asked Maude.
“Yes.”
“Watch out, he spent some time in the county jail for hitting his
own wife,” warned Maude.
Clomer looked shocked, and told Maude thank you again. She
started back towards her house, and thought to herself if she did mur-
der her husband would she be obligated to marry Ross? If she did
marry Ross would he abuse her the way he did his first wife? Is the
allegation true? She opened the door, and found her husband waiting
for her, drunk, and as usual out of his right mind. He walked toward
her, and slapped her across the face.
“I told you to be home before dark,” he said.
Clomer laid her daughters in bed, and sat next to them. She silently
whispered, “How does mommy kill daddy?”
The next day Clomer woke up next to her daughters’beds. She had
to rush to get ready for work.
After working a few hours a woman with short blonde hair and a
wide frame walked into the café. Her name was Ollie.
“Are you Clomer?”
Clomer stood there with a bit of confusion.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Maude saw me walking downtown this morning, she sent me in
here,” said Ollie. “I used to be married to Ross.”
The two sat down and had a talk. Ollie explained to Clomer that
3-years ago she was married to Ross. He used to hit her after he’d
been drinking.
“One night he completely knocked me out,” said Ollie. “A friend
found me and called the cops, he spent a few months in jail, and I
My Grandma Was A
serial Killer
CONTINUED
The Story of Clomer Jermstead

divorced him.”
This revelation shocked Clomer, she was in love with a man just as
abusive as her own husband.
“Maude said you were going to murder your husband. I wish I
would’ve been that brave,” said Ollie. “Here, I brought you some-
thing to help.
She handed Clomer a sack, inside was rat poison.
“Mix that in with his coffee, then the murder will be discreet.”
Clomer smiled at Ollie. “Come over tomorrow morning for the
results,” she said.
On her way home from work Clomer stopped by to see Ross.
“I’m killing him tomorrow morning,” she explained. “Come over
before noon for the results.”
“You got it,” he said.
It was a breezy Saturday morning. Clomer woke up early to make
breakfast for her husband. She reached in the counter and pulled out
the sugar canister, the one her husband would use to sweeten his cof-
fee and grits. Inside she mixed the rat poison. She closed the lid and
sat it on the table.
Her husband sat down still drowsy from waking up. Within perfect
rhythm of his daily routine put a spoonful of sugar in his coffee and
two in his grits.
She stood behind him rubbing his shoulders.
Her husbandleanedbackinhischairtoenjoytheaffection.“Some-
thing seems strange,” he said.
“Nothing is out of the ordinary, just wanted to show my husband I
love him,” Clomer said with a smile.
He got up, and left the dishes on the table for Clomer to clean.
He laid on the couch, to take a Saturday morning nap.
“I’m not feeling well,” he whimpered.
She waited for him to fall asleep, and then sat their until the poison
kicked in. She lit cigarette after cigarette, and all that seemed to hap-
pen was a small cough.
An hour past, and there was a knock on the door. Outside stood
Maude and Ollie anxiously waiting for the results.
“Has it happened,” asked Maude.
“All it has done is caused him to sleep,” Clomer answered.
“Just be patient,” said Ollie. “This could take a while.”
The three waited on the couch for another 30-minutes when all of
the sudden a loud cough burst out of the husband’s lungs followed by
vomiting, then a crash to the floor.
Maude ran over to him to check and see the results.
“Dead,” she said.
The three started to clean up the crime scene before the ambulance
and coroner arrived. There was another knock on the door.
“Who is that,” asked Olllie.
“Ross, I invited him over,” Clomer answered. “I’ll be there in a
second,” she yelled towards the door.
She reached her hand to her waist, and pulled a pistol out of skirt.
She walked over to the door and aimed the gun to where it would
meet Ross at eye level.
“What are you doing,” yelled Maude.
“Teaching men a lesson,” Clomer yelled.
She opened the door, and before Ross could even speak a word she
shot him 3 times.
Clomer lowered the gun, and looked at Ollie and Maude, “He
should’ve known better.”
I was fortunate enough to get find these documents that helped
me piece together Clomer’s story. Of course because of the lost time
I fabricated the quotes, based off the information I received. The
story has always intrigued me. You see I was molested when I was
13-years-old, and developed a burning hate toward my attacker. A
type of hate that somewhere deep inside me wants to see him die.
I can only wonder: If Clomer was alive today what would she have
encouraged me to do?
She reaches the end of her line at a chain link
fence. She’s trapped. The driver gets out, he
pulls out his pistol. Sweet Marie knows it’s
over, one tear drips down her face.
The man walks closer to
her, pistol in hand.
But wait, I told ya
I told ya,
he would come!

B&W Photography
Ross Miller

For more on
Death Wish Coffee
visit
www.honeysucklemag.com
Suddenly, like a bat in the night Johnny
swoops down, picks her up. In his long black
trenchcoat, he’s easily recognizable.
Johnny lifts her up onto the rooftops.
“Oh Johnny!?
Johnny, is it you?
Johnny!!”

18 III • Honeysucklemag.com
By Lux Sommers
S
crolling through Christian Benner’s site the night before my
interview with the designer, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to
afford one of the designer’s exquisitely torn t-shirts, embla-
zoned in faded stencil lettering with the phrase, “Rock And
Roll Saved My Soul,” $125. Right now I can’t even afford to replace
my canvass chucks, which the New York City pavements have ripped
into totally gratis. It occurs to me that if they didn’t also reek, I might be
able to sell them on Esty.
This disparity between the average creative type’s budget and the cost
of Benner’s couture is why you’re more likely to see his designs on ce-
lebrities like Carrie Underwood, Lady Gaga, and Demi Lovato, and
Kate Moss as opposed to creative types toiling in obscurity. But
as I covet a bleach spattered Rolling Stones T, it’s also apparent
why Benner’s designs are in such demand. Christian Benner’s
designs don’t so much resemble clothing as rebel yells Jackson
Pollucked onto cotton and leather-jacket-canvasses. In a culture
where canned, prepackaged styles flood the racks of H&M and
Urban Outfitters, Benner’s creations howl with rare, raw emo-
tion.
******
ImeetBennerathisFrontStreetshop,locat-
ed way downtown by the waterfront. Disem-
barking the subway at Fulton, I surface on an
office-lined street. This corporate vibe melts
away upon entering Benner’s shop. Vintage
guitars and custom shredded, paint spattered
masterpieces hang. The exposed brick walls
look like they’ve been deluged in peroxide
rain. Benner greets me, mancessoried out
in rose colored shades and a braided cap.
Black tattoos peak out from his shirt,
covering his fingers and chest.
“I’mgladyoucamehere,”hetellsme.
“Like actually came here to talk face to
face. People never do that anymore.”We
chat for several minutes about the plight
of modern communication. “What’s Lux
short for? Like Luxury,” he asks. We dis-
cuss my name. Then he asks me where I
live. He praises my neighborhood.
Christian
Benner:
The Man Behind
the Destruction
CONTINUED

I’m getting the sense that Benner is more into conversa-
tions than interviews. Later he tells me he prefers watching
movies at home to going to red carpet events and announc-
es proudly that he’s a “celebrity” at his local flee market. In
other words, Benner acts like a regular guy, despite also be-
ing a designer to the stars. Together, we commiserate about
looking for apartments in New York City.
“I told the realtor my budget was $1500 and he laughed
at me,” Benner says. “Do you know any good realtors?”As
I answer, he gets up to change the record.
“You like Pink Floyd?” he asks. I do. I have a long list
of questions for him, but Q&A doesn’t really seem like
Benner’s pace so I set my notebook aside and we hang out.

******
As we talk, I notice Benner describes many things as
“bullshit”: trends, fame, conformity. Corporations get
sloshed into this bucket. His first jobs out of fashion school
were at Abercrombie and Fitch and later Victoria’s Secret.
Benner hated working for the man.To distract himself from
his shitty 9-5’s, he went out at night, partying with bands
like the Strokes, Interpol, and The Ramones. Cocaine be-
came another escape.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t go out without an 8 ball in my
pocket,” he says. “I’d wake up crying the next day…tears.” Eventu-
ally Benner had to get sober from drugs and booze. Victoria’s Secret
gave him a three week leave of absence, during which he laid on a
couch in his Jersey hometown and detoxed.
“I started to fall in love with who I am as a person,” he tells me. “I
started to see who I was.And I knew it wasn’t working for a corpora-
tion.”
He quit his job at the underwear store and went to work for What
Goes Around Comes Around, a local chain of consignment shops.
Awakened, he had the idea to bury a Kinks shirt in the backyard and
leave it there for a month. Benner dug it up to find the cotton full of
holes. He threw some bleach on it, cut the sleeves off and wore it
to work. His superiors were impressed and asked if he’d make some
shirts to sell. The store paid Benner $20 per article and sold them to
customers for $200 a piece. One day, Donatella Versace came in and
bought his entire collection for $4,000. Several months later, the thrift
store fired Benner.
“They thought I only cared about my shirts,” he explains. Benner’s
been fired from a lot of jobs. The way he tells it, most of his artistic
development took place while collecting unemployment from various
retailers who gave him the boot.These checks acted as a sort of artist’s
stipend, while he crafted his signature style.
“Have you ever collected unemployment?” he asks me. “It’s great!
I got like 500 bucks a week.” Admiring the vintage leather jackets
in a tony St Mark’s shop, Benner decided to try making his own. He
painted a Misfits skull onto a coat purchased on the cheap from a thrift
shop. He learned to stud it from a Youtube video.
“All the pain and depression went away when I was working,” he
tells me. “It became like therapy.” He posted his designs on Instagram,
and people expressed interest in buying them.
“I was so mind-baffled that people were into it,” Benner says. In
order to seem somewhat “legit,” he created a fake email, answered in
the third person. Flash forward to today, Universal Records has bought
into 35-year-old Benner’s company and he has a real life personal as-
sistant answering his emails for him.
“I forgot my phone password, and she knew it,” he tells me
stunned.
******
A papazzi photo shows pop-sensation Lady Gaga in shades and a
periwinkle jumpsuit, one of Benner’s iconic jackets flung casually
over her shoulder.
“A lot of jackets are mistakes,” he tells me. “A lot of the jackets
have things under them. It’s either me fucking up, not liking it after a
while or just didn’t have money to buy another jacket.”
That’s exactly what happened when Benner made the Gaga piece.
He bought a stencil of a perfect circle and began painting white polka
dots onto the black leather canvass.
“I’ddoneliketwentyofthemandthenIaccidentallywentlikethis,”
he said. Benner shows me with a jerk of his hand how a single rogue
stroke ruined the entire concept.After trying to will the mistake away
“I started to fall in love with who I
am as a person, ... I started to see
who I was. And I knew it wasn’t
working for a corporation.”
CONTINUED

with voodoo, Benner went outside and painted the entire jacket white,
let it dry, and painted the fresh surface with black dots.
Benner shows me several jackets in the shop, including yellow
painted jacket, scrawled with unreadable black squiggles.
“I was listening to Dark Side of the Moon and I just started writ-
ing the lyrics on the jacket,” he explains. Another is stroked with the
words from Dante’s Inferno.

******
Buying clothing that comes pre-distressed is an interesting concept
and a hotly debated one too. SonicYouth front-woman Kim Gordon’s
writes, “the radical is most interesting when it looks benign and ordi-
nary on the outside,” explaining why she didn’t choose to dress in a
way that was subversive, even though the fashion was happening all
around her in 1970’s New York City. Even rockers who adopted the
style of that era like Lydia Lunch studded their own jackets and cut
their own clothing. Spending $1,200 on a custom work of countercul-
ture art won’t make the wearer punk, but does give a vicarious thrill of
the rebellious. It can make the owner of the piece feel closer to iconic
iconoclasts like David Gilmour and Lou Reed and even modern day
punks like Christian Benner.
Benner tells me he has some big clients in finance. I imagine how it
must feel, after a long day at Goldman Sachs, to slip off suit and tie and
slip on one of Benner’s a custom creations. Perhaps the wearer once
dreamed he’d have a thrasher band of his own, but traded that vision
for private school educated children and a house in the Hampton’s.
Some artists wear Benner’s designs too, though it’s less common for
someone in that field to be able to afford them. Lenny Kravitz shops at
Benner’s store, and recently played an impromptu acoustic set there.
Brandon from Incubus is another fan.
Benner’s designs are wistful, evoking a bygone era of safty-pins, fe-
tishware and great music. CBGB is closed. The taboo is mainstream.
“No one talks to each other anymore,” Benner himself observed more
than once during our conversation. The show is over. The band has
broken up, our ears have long ceased ringing.
And yet faded, torn, and bleach spattered, the concert lives on, a
memory emblazoned into Benner’s designs. You didn’t have to be at
the gig to remember it. Benner renders it for you. In truth, the concert
never occurred save for in the designer’s imagination. But he’s telling
you about it with ever rip. He’s describing it in such visceral detail it’s
like you were there. Somehow the whole thing is more potent, because
you never were there, because it is all just a fantasy.
Memory renders the great legendary, it rivets our eyes with the
magical hues that Instagram filters are designed to emulate. With each
incision, Benner is replicating that nostalgia. Throwing paint, he’s
imbuing an inanimate object with the suggestion of good times past.
He’s speeding up the clock, heightening our collective yearning to a
feverish intensity.
The night after our interview, I fall asleep wearing the shirt Benner
gave to me when I left his store. In cracked lettering it reads, “Rock
and Roll Saved my Soul.” The fabric is soft and worn, like a thousand
thousand memories of rock concerts. I’m transported, if only in my
dreams.
www.christianbennercustom.com

By Rachel Fritz
At 3 years old, Deborah knew something about her was different.
She slept with her eyes open and could see shadow people when she
was awake.When she was 11, she saw her brother standing behind
the door of her mother’s house, but after she went to wash her hands,
he’s disappeared. She’d seen her first dead body.
Deborah J. Smith, a result of the streets of Detroit, Michigan, dis-
covered her psychic-medium gift when she was young, but wouldn’t
really embrace it until after she left her legal career. “I grew up strict-
ly Catholic on my mother’s side, and on my father’s side, they owned
one of the large churches in Detroit,” Smith said. “So for me it’s
always been a kind of hush-hush thing; it was either you’re a prophet
or you work for the Devil.”
Later, she went through what she thought was a meditation class
which turned out to be an intuitive development class where she met
her mentor, and then she studied the Shamanic way to hone her gift
and intuitions. “I went through the process, and my gift just hit the
roof,” Smith said.
At 36, Smith perused her gift as a psychic medium full time, read-
ing people’s souls along with the occasional animal. “I’ve read cats,”
she mentions casually. “But in order for me to read animals, they
have to be reincarnated. Sometimes they’ll tell me what their owner
does, and I’ve had a pet help me with autistic children before.”
Smith started her business in 2010 and said not even she could
have guessed she’d be as successful as she is. “I tell people that I
want my money back from college,” she said. “If I knew I was going
to do this, I would have been fine. When I started reading, my clien-
tele went through the roof.”
As a psychic, Smith can predict and read souls and has a diverse
clientele she built in as little as five years. She’s read people in Rus-
sia, China, India, Guam and Australia and reads for businessmen
and people all over the U.S. “I’m a nitty gritty reader, but I’m very
gentle.”
What makes Smith special, though, is that she is a medium and can
communicate with the dead, too. “I’ve dealt with a lot of death; I’ve
lost three brothers,” she said. “Everyone died really young. Techni-
cally, I should have been dead before 25, because on my father’s
side, our money was through the streets in trying to deal drugs. My
grandfather was a pimp back then.”
After her grandmother got heavily involved in the Catholic church,
everything changed. Smith stopped hanging out in the streets, but
some of her family still deals in drugs and violence. “As far as the
street life, my nephews still do that, and I’ve had a couple of nephews
killed,” she said. “It’s really ironic how I’m a medium and I’ve had
so much death growing up. Now I know why I was able to get out of
so many different situations and see so much horrible stuff, because
now I’m on this path.”
Now, she uses past experiences to humble herself and help peo-
ple find faith and realign souls, despite how scary it can be at times.
“To me it’s a double-edged sword, because if you asked me what I
wanted to do, I’d say go back to being a paralegal,” she said. “For
me to have someone’s life in the middle of my hands, it gets scary
sometimes. My mother would tell me ‘You’re like the scariest person
in the world, I can’t believe you do this,’and I’m like I know.”
But she loves what she does and said she is fulfilling her life’s pur-
pose. “I watched my family and me do a lot of bad sh*t in the past,
and I think I’m paying it back,” Smith said. “I have such a diverse
look and people can’t tell whether I’m black or Indian or whatever,
so I’m able to reach the world basically. I was supposed to be dead
before 25, and I think I went into a second life.”
Smith still lives in Detroit and works with Lori Lipten and a slew
of lovely Jewish women at Sacred Balance in Bloomfield Hills.
www.deborahpsychicmedium.com
Detroit Mystic
“Technically, I should have
been dead before 25,
because on my father’s side,
our money was through
the streets in trying to deal
drugs. My grandfather was a
pimp back then.”

The House of All Boogeymen
CONTINUED
BY SHANE CASHMAN
I
I fell in with a crowd trying to solve the Long Island serial killer case.
They are not the cops or the FBI. They are stay-at-home moms, taxi
drivers, part-time psychics, people on bed rest, bankers, and haunted house
employees who’ve spent years turning the Internet inside out, looking for
anything the authorities have yet to find, anything that could lead to the
capture of a killer who’s been operating for twenty years undetected.
I told myself I wouldn’t become a desktop detective – an amateur
investigating murders with a computer – I just wanted to know who these
people were attaching themselves to a cold case – but here I am, early
January, walking up the shoulder of Ocean Parkway, this desolate barrier
island on the south shore, following a map I found on Youtube, tracing
the steps of a supposed serial killer. The map shows where the killer is
believed to have carried his victims’bodies from the car and dumped them
only feet beyond the side of the road. Where he placed them on top of the
sand, wrapped in burlap, by a beach some surfers call the Surf Capitol of
the East.
No one knew there was a killer leaving bodies on the south shore until
Shannan Gilbert went missing on the night of May 1, 2010. Shannan, a
24-year-old escort, advertised her services on Craigslist. She was last seen
at her client Joseph Brewer’s house in Oak Beach, a small residential
community off Ocean Parkway. Something inside Brewer’s house freaked
her out. She called 911. Although police have not released her 911 tape,
her mother, Mari Gilbert, has heard portions. She says her daughter was
screaming,“they’retryingtokillme.”ThetheycouldrefertoJosephBrewer
or her driver Michael Pak – but the Suffolk County Police Department has
clearedbothmeninanywrongdoing.Thepolicesayshesoundedpsychotic
– what they believe could be the result of a drug-induced episode. She ran
from the house, away from Brewer and Pak, banged on neighbors’ doors,
and then vanished.
After months of nothing the search parties slowed. Shannan’s family
called out the police for not trying hard enough because she was just a
hooker.
Half a year later, on December 11, 2010, officer John Mallia and his
cadaver dog, Blue were training on Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach, just
minutes from where Shannan was last seen, when Blue found the skeletal
remains of a woman. What they thought were the remains of Shannan,
turned out to be that of Melissa Barthelemy, another escort who advertised
on Craigslist, who had gone missing a year earlier. Officer Mallia and Blue
would return to Gilgo Beach to find the bodies of three more young women
placed hundreds of feet apart. Each of the women were strangled and
decomposed at another location, something some serial killers are known
to do when they engage in necrophilia. Like Melissa, they were each found
wrapped in burlap. None were Shannan. They wereAmber Lynn Costello,
27, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, and Megan Waterman, 22.
With a party of cadaver dogs, divers and helicopters, the Suffolk County
Police would find at least six more bodies or body parts scattered along
Ocean Parkway. Some of the remains discovered at Gilgo Beach would
match body parts found twenty years earlier on other parts of Long
Island. There was a pair of hands and a skull at the beach that matched a
mutilated torso in Manorville. There was a skull that matched a pair of legs
that washed ashore on Fire Island in 1996. There was an Asian male, still
unidentified, found in woman’s clothes. There was the corpse of a toddler
wrapped in a blanket whose DNAmatched that of another corpse, possibly
the mother, found a mile from one another. Currently, there are more
unidentified victims than there are identified. After the latest discoveries,
the Suffolk County PD struggled internally with this being the work of one
killer or multiple killers. A single killer theory was easy to back when all
the victims seemed like a similar type – petite escorts.
They found Shannan a year later, in the nearby wetlands, further back
from the road and badly decomposed. Her death was ruled an accidental
drowning–overexposuretotheelements.Stillconvincedshewasinadrug-
induced episode, police believe she ran through the swamps, disoriented,
collapsed, and drowned. The Suffolk County PD does not include her as
one of the victims of the serial killer – something that her family struggles
with – on one hand they hope she wasn’t strangled to death – on the other
hand how could it be a coincidence that a fifth woman, also a sex worker
who advertised online, would wind up dead in the same swamps off
Ocean Parkway that in the year since her disappearance had turned into
a graveyard?
When asked if the police were taking the case seriously enough
because most of the victims were escorts, former Suffolk County Police
Commissioner Richard Dormer, who worked the case until he retired,
made a point of saying he hung the photos of the young women in his
office. “They look like your neighbors. Nobody deserves to have their life
snuffed out. Police departments everywhere take murder very seriously.
Doesn’t matter the occupation of the victim – if you were murdered we’re
obligated to represent that person.” Then he gives his most honest answer,
“What police officer, or detective, or police commissioner would not like
to bring in a serial killer during their career?”
Lorraine Ela, mother of Megan Waterman, tells me she’s convinced the
cops have put her daughter’s case on the back burner. “This is too big a case
for Suffolk County to handle.” She rarely hears from police anymore. Even
with a new Commissioner and the FBI now assisting, she hasn’t received
any phone calls. Eventually, Lorraine and many of the other family
members turned to websites dedicated to the case to find support.
The first place I found well-researched information regarding the case
was the Youtube channel of Gray Hughes. He made the video-map that
I used on Ocean Parkway. When Gray reads about a crime scene he
logs into Google Earth and drops a pin. He replicates crime scenes with
programs like 3D Studio Max and posts them to Youtube. He lets you
know at the beginning of his videos that he’s not a medical examiner or
a blood splatter expert. It started with the Jodi Arias case, when he got
into a war on Facebook over his theory that Arias shot her boyfriend first
then stabbed him thirty times then slit his throat. So he made a video to
prove his point using actual crime scene photos that were made public.
The video simulates Jodi standing over her boyfriend in the shower and
shooting – the bullet enters the victim’s right brow, moves left through
the lobe then downwards, where it lodged into the left cheek. You see the
bullet move through the skull from all angles – the victim’s face removed
to see the exact trajectory of the bullet. Gray studied the incident report, the
autopsy report, and photos of the corpse to get it right. He’s since replicated
other crime scenes at the request of prosecutors and private investigators.
Most recently, he simulated a scene where a woman’s leg was caught in an
elevator as it went up seven flights shattering her bones.
Gray’s not so much trying to solve the Long Island case, but perhaps his
video will help people visualize the scene. For all he knows, it could trigger
a memory in someone who knows the area, or visits the beaches, someone
who might’ve seen anything suspicious.
“I feel like it really gives the viewer a better feel of the area,” he says.
It does. His Google Earth video’s point-of-view is that of someone
standing in the shoulder. Same view the killer could’ve had when he pulled
over with a body in the car. The video pans slowly left to right, scanning

CONTINUED
the empty, alien land. The shadow of the Google Street View car with its
camera fixed to the roof reaches out past the road giving his video the
same extraterrestrial lifelessness as the videos sent back to Earth from the
Mars Curiosity Rover. In the winter, when the beaches are deserted, Ocean
Parkway is so isolated that it’s not unbelievable for a killer to dispose of a
body there even in the daylight.
II
Zero was suspicious of me from the start.
“I’m a little curious about you,” he told me. “Your questions are so
specific. I’m wondering if there is more to why you are looking into all
this.”
I tell him he can Google me. Or check my Facebook. I swear I’m a real
person.
“I say that to everyone,” he tells me. “Let them know that if they are
playing games it’s best to just be up front with me.And if you are a troll…
I don’t care. I’ll talk to ya anyway. But your Facebook seems real…”
To Zero, the odds of me being a troll were pretty great. Ever since he
started blogging about the Long Island serial killer, he’s become a target of
Internet trolls. His blog, liskdotcom.wordpress.com, is as much a museum
of evidence as it is a zoo for the paranoid.
Liskdotcom is not the easiest site to navigate. Zero says it mimics the
waytheconspiracieshavesplinteredacrosstheweb.Frompolicecover-ups
to demon worshippers to death orgies on the south shore. It’s all there, in an
almoststream-of-consciousnarrative.Hisemailstomearethesame.Giant,
paragraph-less blocks of information. He unpacks this chaos of truth and
conspiracy on me. His collection of everything LISK ranges from hundreds
of emails between him and persons of interest, possible witnesses, other
desktop detectives, the families of the victims, to screenshots of almost
everywhere on the Internet that mentions LISK.
His blog is based on another website… LongIslandSerialKiller.com, a
now defunct website that went live in the days after the first bodies were
found at Gilgo Beach. The website became popular amongst people
worried about the case. Its chat room, however, became a place of slander.
Therewasnomoderation.Peoplestartedaccusingotherpeopleofbeingthe
killer. Everyone I’ve spoke to about LongIslandSerialKiller.com believes
the serial killer not onlyobservedthewebsite,butmight’veactivelyposted.
Of course, no one knows for sure. The fear grew as certain commenters
banded together and started to think the killer was stalking them – even if
they lived in different states across the country.
The creator of LongIslandSerialKiller.com was overwhelmed and
eventually had to shut the site down. New blogs popped up to replace it.
Like the blog, Catching LISK, created by MysteryMom7, where her saga
of paranoia is on full display.At some point she thought the killer had sent
a drone to spy on her. She claims it crash-landed in her backyard.
Before LongIslandSerialKiller.com shut down for good, Zero took
screen shots of entire sections of the website. He thought the information
shouldn’t go to waste. Even with all the name-calling that became a staple
of the site – there seemed to be some solid theories discussed by people
who genuinely wanted to help solve the case.
Twocampsfrequentliskdotcom.Therearethoseconcernedwithsolving
the case – people like Linda, who after a bad accident spent a year holed-up
in a cast, surfing the Internet for the first time in her adult life. She became
engrossed with the complexities of the case. Then there are those who visit
theblogwhocomewieldingconspiracies.ZeroandLindahavemadeittheir
goal to keep the latter group from spreading misinformation to the victims’
families – something that started early on at LongIslandSerialKiller.com.
Zero has spoken with Mari Gilbert and offered her his time to make sure
certain people aren’t “in her ear.” He’s the keeper of the trolls – trying to vet
and debunk them before their theories give anyone hope.
Zero has picked through five years’ worth of comments on multiple
websites trying to make sense of the case. “Comments are the most
important things to read,” he says.
According to comments across the Internet the Long Island Serial Killer
is a clean-cut scumbag, first-class shoe freak with a nice car, family and
kids. He is local, religious, bi-sexual, and well spoken. A doctor and a
periodicdrunk.Heisabaldnarcissist.Corporateandcharming.Autilitarian
monster. A sociopathic fisherman with a truck. A cop who keeps corpses
for sex.Atransient, blue collar, fifty-year-old white male.Apsychosexual,
sadomasochist who summers on the south shore.
The Internet has various persons of interest. There’s Joseph Brewer, the
johnwhosolicitedShannanGilbert.There’sMichaelPak,Shannan’sdriver
the night she disappeared. There’s someone known as “the drifter” – who
claims to have partied with Brewer and even self-published a “fictionalized
auto-biography” about the supposed drug and hooker parties at Brewer’s
house.
A possible police cover-up is a theory rooted deep in the blogs. This
theory started with the fact that the killer used Melissa Barthelemy’s cell
phone to call and taunt her little sister. Her sister received phone calls from
a calm-sounding man telling her that her sister was a whore and that he was
watching her rot. He called several times. Police tried to trace the number.
People believe he is somehow connected with law enforcement because
he’d hang up in less than three minutes each time, just before the calls
could be traced. When police were able to ping the general location of the
phone, it turned out the killer had made the calls from crowded places like
Times Square or Madison Square Garden. Former Commissioner Dormer
dismisses this theory. He says anyone who’s seen any cop show knows
that protocol.
Another reason people subscribe to the police cover-up theory is that
the former Suffolk County Chief of Police, James Burke, is now in jail
for beating up a young man who stole pornography and sex toys from his
SUV. Burke’s past doesn’t help the conspiracy theorists that want to pin
him for mishandling the case – or for even being the killer. When Burke
was a sergeant, he was caught having sex with a known drug dealer and
prostitute.Evenstill,herosetobecomeChief.Whatalsomakesthefamilies
and Internet suspicious is the fact that when Burke was a boy he testified
in court against his friends, whom he watched beat a boy to death in the
woods and stuff rocks down the corpse’s mouth.
The theory that took hold the most on the blogs is that of Dr. Charles
Peter Hackett being the serial killer. He was an Oak Beach resident. He is a
middle aged, overweight man with a prosthetic leg. The loudest groups of
commenters have worked hard to prove that Hackett is at least responsible
for the death of Shannan Gilbert.
Hackett became the Internet’s #1 person of interest because Mari Gilbert
said he called her after Shannan went missing. She said that he told her he
ran a “home for wayward girls.” He had given Shannan shelter. However,
he denied that he ever called Mari or hosted Shannan. But when phone
records were released, it was confirmed that Hackett did in fact call.
Mari Gilbert has since filed a wrongful death suit against Hackett.
Zero believes the suit is the result of the slander that started on
LongIslandSerialKiller.com. “They made him pay for sticking his nose
in,” he says.
With the help of MysteryMom, Mari created her own website,
OfficialShannanGilbert.wordpress.com. The homepage features a quiz,
asking Who Killed Shannan? Suspects listed are Michael Pak, The Drifter,
Joseph Brewer, and Dr. Hackett and unknown. 44% of visitors believe it’s
Hackett.
Although Zero disagrees with the Hackett theory, he doesn’t blame Mari
for grabbing at any theory that seems rooted in even a little truth.

HS NOIR Print Final

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (18)

HS NOIR Print Final