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ABOUT KILLING KILLERS' BLOGGER: Eponymous Rox covers cops, curs and killers and has been featured in Crime Magazine and on NBC. The author is also a regular paid-contributor to CrimeMagazine.com, the Gather News agency and Yahoo's Associated Content. JUMP IN: The majority of cases presented on this site are unsolved so your opinion counts -- you don't need permission to start or join discussions, vote in crime polls or submit tips on Killing Killers, and can even do so anonymously if you prefer.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Korkki Sisters Double Death Solved, But Not the Mystery

A coroner announced today that the Korkki sisters died of symptoms related to high altitude sickness, solving part of their double death mystery, but not all of it.
Korkki sisters double death solved, but not the mystery

Autopsies revealed that affluent American tourists Annie Korkki, 37, and her sister Robin, 42, succumbed more than a week ago to “acute” pulmonary and cerebral edema while vacationing at an island luxury resort off the east African coast.

Their bodies were discovered prone on the same bed in their shared hotel suite on September 22, 2016, with “no visible signs of injury.”

The condition that appears to have simultaneously killed them involves the buildup of fluid in the heart, lungs and brain, producing dangerous swelling and even death if not immediately treated.

It commonly afflicts mountain climbers who rapidly ascend high peaks without first acclimating to the thinner atmosphere, but concussions, infectious diseases, tumors and strokes are also possible contributing factors.

Both of the Korkki siblings, however, were healthy and athletic, a family member informed reporters for CNN.

He said they had always been “inseparable” and that each worked in the financial industry; one in Chicago, the other in Denver.

How could the Korrki sisters die simultaneously of high-altitude sickness while vactioning on an island?

The “adventurous” twosome had extended their joint vacation in the Seychelles archipelago by a few days -- perhaps due to being sickened -- although no particular reason for a departure change was given in any of their social media updates.

According to WebMD and Emedicine.Medscape, the onset of symptoms of ‘mountain sickness’ can present in only a matter of hours after the initial neurologic insult.

These include dizziness, nausea, vision loss, impaired memory, seizure, stupor and unconsciousness. Any of which could explain why the sisters had to be physically “helped” by hotel staff to their room in the hours before they passed away together.

Still, their postmortem reports don't solve the Korkki case entirely, since how they could have fallen so gravely ill, side by side, with such a weird illness, still remains unknown today.


Warrants Issued for 'Missing' Boater Found Adrift After Fishy 'Mishap'

Warrants regarding formerly “missing” boater Nathan Carman have been issued, after he was found adrift last weekend in the Atlantic and the only other crew member -- his mom -- remains “lost at sea.”

It’s not the first time the young man has fallen under suspicion of the authorities. Carman, who lives in Vermont but was born in Connecticut, became “a suspect” in his wealthy grandfather’s shooting death three years ago.

No one has yet been charged for that murder, but, now that one of the dead man’s heirs has vanished and is presumed deceased too, police have renewed their interest in the unsolved homicide and in the one person who seems to link both cases: 22-year-old Nathan Carman.

The Hartford Courant examined all the related court documents this week and reported that young Carman had been suspected in the murder of 87-year-old widower John Chakalos on December 20, 2013. In part because he was the last person to see the victim alive.

Records show, in fact, that the then-teenaged and troubled youth was nearly taken into custody for his grandfather's brutal killing several months later, before a warrant for his arrest was vacated on unspecified grounds.

In a brief interview with the Associated Press this week, Nathan Carman denied responsibility for either his elderly relative’s slaying or his mother’s recent disappearance.

Linda Carman, 54, was one of four daughters to inherit the slain Chakalos’ vast estate, estimated at the time to have been worth in excess of $40-million.

The missing middle-aged heiress and her “autistic” grown son embarked together on one of their “routine” fishing trips from Rhode Island on September 17th. 

It’s unclear what happened to their boat, the Chicken Pox, or to Mrs. Carman, but sole survivor Nathan Carman was found “in a four-person life-raft” over the weekend and the Coast Guard questioned him in detail about the “accident” he claims sank the vessel.

The young man told CG investigators that, prior to the craft suddenly “falling out from under” him as it was rapidly taking on water, he’d heard the engine make “a funny sound.”

State and federal officials are indicating they think Carman’s story likewise sounds a bit “funny” and are continuing to probe the fishy incident.

Meanwhile, they'll continue to search for his missing mom as well; although, if Linda Carman wasn't murdered onboard, then, in all probability, she has drowned.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The Drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley

The drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley off the Italian coast two-centuries ago is still the subject of skepticism and conspiracy theories today.

Sailing novice Shelley and his two experienced shipmates “accidentally” perished at sea on July 8, 1822, when their small vessel, The Ariel, was caught in a sudden “fierce” storm and “sunk.”

At the time of his premature death, the celebrated British poet and notorious atheist was just shy of his thirtieth birthday.

His corpse washed ashore soon after the “boating accident,” having been submerged long enough that “the face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by dress, were fleshless.”

Curiously, Percy Shelley died in the exact same manner as his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, the woman whom he’d scandalously abandoned for another while she was pregnant with his child.

"No more let Life divide what Death can join together"

https://www.amazon.com/author/eponymousOn December 10, 1816, the body of Mrs. Harriet Westbrook Shelley was fished out of a chilly London waterway near Hyde Park, in an “advanced” state of decomposition and pregnancy.

The drowning death of Shelley’s wife of five years was not ruled suspicious, however, since she allegedly had a history of melancholia and was particularly “despondent” in the months leading up to her “suicide.”

A few short weeks later, though, Harriet’s illustrious widower-husband married the paramour he had left her for -- the “brilliant” 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of the gothic-horror bestseller Frankenstein.

But the newlyweds’ bliss would also be short lived…

Shelley shipwrecked, or slain?

Despite initial reports that the deceased poet’s “unseaworthy” craft had dramatically “capsized” in the summer of 1822, searchers eventually located the sunken shipwreck upright about ten miles offshore, in the area where it was believed to have gone down.

It’s at this point in time when people started openly speculating about “foul play” as opposed to foul weather, because the hull of the boat was said to be “damaged” in such a way as would suggest it had been intentionally “rammed” by a much bigger ship.

Pirates, or worse players, who could have mistaken Shelley’s recently renamed vessel as belonging to his wealthier colleague Byron, were pinned with the blame; and many years later a deathbed confession by an Italian sailor of ill repute helped to solidify the theory.

On the other hand, disinherited Shelley was frequently in debt, and, with his flagrantly atheistic and adulterer ways, not loved and admired by all of his god-fearing countrymen. Consequently, it doesn’t seem too farfetched even these days to suspect that a public figure steeped in so much controversy was either killed by a vengeful creditor or the victim of an elaborate assassination plot.

Indeed, several years prior to dying at sea, cotenant-in-arrears Percy Shelley had skipped out of town without paying his share of overdue rent. Shelley’s abrupt departure, by the way, reportedly coincided with a “surprise attack” at the estate which he and his deadbeat housemates were letting in 1813.

Shelley’s midnight assailant that year, and the man’s motive for wanting to harm the young poet, remains a mystery to this day, but many continue to believe that the unidentified intruder was a “secret” government operative.

Percy Shelley’s Heartless Demise

Regardless of popular theories about Percy Bysshe Shelley being cruelly slain in the prime of his life and his death made to *appear* an accidental drowning, there were other theorists adamantly asserting that the 29-year-old had somehow deliberately brought about his own doom.

Some claimed a haunted Shelley was always “depressed” and finally managed to kill himself while seafaring; implying that, by 1822, those suicidal impulses were so strong he had no regard for the fate of his unwitting crew.

Others, like Mary Shelley, dismissed suicide altogether, insisting instead that The Ariel rolled over in rough waters due to "inferior" construction, and/or that the three men aboard it lacked both the “skill” and “navigational expertise” to weather a terrible storm.

According to the Shelley post-death myth, it was Mary herself who, in taking possession of her husband’s ashes following a rushed seaside cremation, made off "with his heart" as well. Purportedly after the organ was secretly removed from the funeral pyre by a grief-stricken friend of the couple.

Of course, just as in modern times, it’s critics who really excel at murder and the art of killing somebody twice -- upon learning of Percy Shelley’s tragic death off the shores of Italy, the heartless publisher of the British newspaper The Courier blared this shocking announcement:

"Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned. Now he knows whether there is God or not."


Eponymous Rox
author of THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN

Monday, September 26, 2016

Jacob Wetterling Cold Case: Confession But No Charges for Killer Pedo

The heartbroken parents of missing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling have at last learned the sad fate of their abducted son: He was molested and murdered over two and half decades ago, then buried in a Minnesota cow pasture.

Jacob had been kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man in October 1989 while biking home on a country road with his brother and a friend. The armed assailant ordered the two other terrified boys to run and “not look back” or he’d shoot them.

Jacob Wetterling Cold Case: Confession But No Charges for Killer Pedo
They both fled on foot together, and Jacob Wetterling was never seen again.

In September 2016, however, the Associated Press reported that a longtime “person of interest” who, 27 years ago lived fairly close to the Wetterling residence in St. Joseph MN, “led FBI investigators” to Jacob’s skeletal remains.

A spokesman for the Bureau, speaking on condition of anonymity, also tipped off reporters for the St. Cloud Times and KSTP TV that 53-year-old Daniel Heinrich would soon be appearing in Federal Court on charges loosely connected to Wetterling’s missing-persons case.

And it was during those subsequent legal proceedings when Heinrich confessed to cuffing and driving Wetterling to a wooded area some 30 miles from his abduction site. There, the defendant said, he raped the boy and shot him to death, after “panicking” when he overheard on a police scanner that a patrol car was in the vicinity.

The killer pedophile then hastily buried Wetterling’s body at the crime scene; reburying it a year later in another remote location nearby when a “visit” to the first gravesite revealed that Jacob’s jacket had partially emerged.

Heinrich, who is reportedly a victim of child molestation himself, was taken into custody over a year ago for possessing and distributing child pornography. He previously entered innocent pleas to more than two-dozen such criminal counts, but those pleadings have drastically changed now.

Heinrich had come to the immediate attention of authorities during the earliest days of the Jacob Wetterling investigation, albeit there was never any substantial evidence in 1989 or the ensuing years to charge him for anything.

At that time, deviant ‘Danny’ Heinrich lived in Paynesville Minnesota and matched the description of an unknown man who had been stalking and sexually assaulting neighborhood boys.

In fact, in the years just before and after young Wetterling’s horrific abduction, at least eight juvenile males are believed to have suffered similar attacks and survived.

‘Nuclear’ DNA tests conducted in 2015 on one of these victims’ clothing implicated Heinrich as the perpetrator, but prosecuting him for the decades-old crime spree is no longer possible because statutes of limitation have since expired.

Court papers in connection to Wetterling’s now-solved cold case showed police strongly casting suspicion on Daniel Heinrich a year before the slain boy’s shallow grave was actually unearthed, with the aid of his killer.

According to Fox News, the "volatile" child-exploiter begrudgingly "cooperated" with FBI agents in this manner in exchange for lighter sentencing on the bevy of kiddie porn charges he couldn't otherwise hope to defend.

Consequently, because of his extraordinary plea deal, Heinrich can't be charged now for kidnapping and murdering Jacob Wetterling in 1989, nor for abusing his corpse -- twice.

But his belated admission of guilt puts to rest one of the most disturbing disappearances on record, and was all that was needed to finally tie it to unsolved assaults on other boys who were likewise targeted by a dangerous sexual predator in the 80s and 90s, but lived to tell about it.

Eponymous Rox

Sunday, September 25, 2016

"Zombie" Mall Shooter Nabbed in Massive Manhunt

Washington police said they nabbed their "zombie like" mall shooter during Saturday night's surprise takedown and arrest.

Two patrolmen in the Oak Harbor district already engaged in a statewide manhunt for 20-year-old Arcan Cetin unexpectedly spotted a youth who very much resembled the suspect and "hit" their brakes.

"We both jumped out with our guns and he just froze," one of Cetin's arresting officers told the Associated Press.

Officials were alerted that the Turkish-born gunman was still at large in the area of the Cascade Mall where, just a day earlier, he had gunned down a handful of customers standing at Macy's makeup counter.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting at this hour that all of those victims have now succumbed to their injuries.

A motive for the carnage Arcan Cetin coolly staged inside the busy shopping center in Burlington Washington on Friday evening is still "under investigation."

However, according to the Seattle Times, the accused mass murderer has a history of domestic violence and at least one arrest for drunk driving.

Witnesses of this weekend's latest public shooting incident said Cetin walked into the crowded Macy's store "dressed in black" and wielding a long rifle slightly before 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

He then exited the shopping complex, heading on foot for the nearby interstate, still armed and leaving behind five people in pools of their own blood.

Four female victims of the massacre -- one a veteran parole officer -- were found dead at the scene of multiple gunshot wounds. The fifth, an unidentified man, died in hospital several hours later.

The zombie mall shooter has not been charged yet, but is expected to appear in court for that purpose as early as tomorrow morning.

Eponymous Rox

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Will diggers find missing student Kristin Smart this time?

The stunning blonde in the poster below is Kristin Smart. The 19-year-old freshman vanished from a campus beer party at Cal Poly in May 1996 and was declared deceased in 2002, although her remains were never found.

Will diggers find missing student Kristin Smart this time?

This month, however, “excavation” of the college grounds has begun at various locations which, according to a report by the Washington Post, cadaver dogs have hit upon.

The FBI also revealed that a new lead had “developed” during the past couple of years that prompted them to target those “high visibility” sites in September.

The renewed effort to solve Smart’s mysterious missing-persons case follows two decades of sporadic inquiries which resulted in only one individual being labeled a ‘person of interest’ -- a male student who escorted the inebriated undergrad to her dorm room that spring night.

He wasn’t identified in the Post’s article this week, but police say the man had been repeatedly questioned when Kristin "Roxy" Smart first disappeared and, while he’s back on their radar again in 2016, still hasn’t been named a suspect in her puzzling cold case.

And he may never be, due to the amount of time that has passed and lost evidence.

A barely conscious and barely dressed Smart was last seen alive in the young man’s company wearing only “running shorts” and a “short cropped” tee shirt.

A female classmate of Smart’s told the Associated Press that she’d attempted to alert university officials about her friend’s subsequent unexplained disappearance and that they declined to take any action, insisting “she’ll be back” after the Memorial Day break had ended.

But Kristin Smart was never seen or heard from again.



Monday, September 5, 2016

Chicago, The Dixmoor Five, and a 1991 Homicide

As the city of Chicago continues to grapple with its biggest homicide spike in decades, a notorious one committed there decades ago has finally been resolved.

Illinois police initially charged five innocent teenage boys for the brutal abduction, rape and murder of 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews in November of 1991.

The girl was snatched in a Dixmoor neighborhood while she was waiting to take a bus home from her grandmother’s house. Her body wasn’t found until weeks later -- she had died from a single gunshot wound in the mouth.

All of the ‘Dixmoor Five’ black youths framed for Matthews’ shocking death served a minimum of ten years in prison before DNA tests exonerated them in 2011, implicating, instead, violent career-felon and registered sex-offender, Willie Randolph.

Now 58 and serving time on yet another drug-related offense, Randolph was a parolee in his early thirties 25 years ago when he is believed to have forcibly kidnapped Cateresa Matthews and driven her to a secluded place off Interstate-57.

Here, according to boasts Randolph has allegedly made to fellow inmates, he sexually assaulted the teen then shot her to death as she begged him not to kill her.

Cateresa’s corpse, together with a casing from the 25-caliber bullet that claimed her life, was spotted in a overgrown area near the highway on December 8, 1991; the gruesome discovery triggering a heavy-handed police inquiry that many have since compared to the infamous ‘Central Park Jogger’ arrests.

Illinois State Police assisted the Dixmoor Police Department with their 1990s investigation of the controversial case. Both agencies now stand accused of suppressing evidence and coercing false confessions from at least two of the five juvenile suspects which Chicago prosecutors later used to convict the entire group.

With help from the Innocence Project, the wrongful convictions of Robert Taylor, James Harden, Jonathan Barr, Robert Veal and Shainne Sharp were thrown out in 2011, resulting in 2014’s record-breaking settlement of $40-million by the State of Illinois for their unlawful imprisonments.

That same year the Cook County Sheriff’s Department launched its own probe of the Matthews kidnapping, rape and murder, but, despite DNA evidence already proving beyond a doubt that lifelong criminal Willie Randolph was the actual perpetrator, his arrest was still not forthcoming.

In fact, it wouldn’t be till September 1, 2016, a full two and a half decades after Cateresa Matthews was viciously attacked and slain by him, that Chicago authorities finally did charge Randolph for the crime. They also belatedly issued a public apology to each of the Dixmoor Five for victimizing them “in a way that can never possibly be repaired.”

Eponymous Rox

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Message from Eponymous Rox

Smiley Face Killers blogger, Eponymous Rox, isn't missing, hiding, dead or drowned:

Thanks for the emails and private messages. As many visitors to Killing Killers have recently learned, a great deal of my SFK content, published here and elsewhere over the past six years, was illegally republished by a notorious Kindle self-publisher based in London, and I am still pursuing the matter.

Of course, I'm not the only one who serial plagiarist 'Tessy Rawlins' (alias 'Stephen Young' and 'Steph Young') has robbed over the years -- she's also pinched content from Websleuths, Reddit, Wikipedia, the Humanoid Database and the popular 'Missing 411' series, just to name a few -- but I do intend to be the last. Which is why I've reported her long-running cut-and-paste scam to both US and UK authorities.

Because the Rawlins/Young scheme is still semi-active on Amazon and depends on fresh or freshened uploads to remain profitable, I am rethinking how my Smiley Face Murders work will be offered online now, if at all. In the meantime, below is a screen-grab of the first death threat that 'Stephen Young' emailed after I initially complained about her cyber crime spree in June; and beneath her email, you'll find the facts of this case as it stands today.

Stephen Young <stephenyoungauthor@hotmail.com> wrote to Eponymous Rox: "you should probably watch your back from now on"
(click image above to enlarge, print and share)

Steph Young: "I'm a breed of serial criminal you have never met before!"TO CATCH A THIEF [OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY]: Whether by cutting-and-pasting blog posts, eBook chapters and news articles into Word docs and fraudulently self-publishing these via Amazon, Smashwords and fake sites, or through pirating complete digital editions so they can be illegally downloaded by the thousands for free, such flagrant thefts of intellectual property have become an epidemic in recent years. Indeed, law enforcement agencies now warn that piracy has become the most frequent and fastest growing white-collar crime in the universe, and that they're literally swamped with complaints about it. Like the ones I filed against Amazon Kindle self-publisher 'Steph Young' this year.

'Steph Young' opened her own copy-paste operation on Amazon's self-publishing platform as 'Tessy Rawlins' in 2013. Through "cut and paste" thievery and sockpuppetry, ripping off countless readers, writers and websites for a full year, until folks began flagging her "blatant" scheme and her sales petered out.

In 2014, she altogether abandoned self-publishing under her infamous Rawlins moniker, reincarnating herself instead as 'Stephen Young' and upping her con job a notch:  Now she was not only falsely claiming to have "written" all of the content she was heisting, splicing and dicing, but approaching fringe talk shows for interviews as a guest "expert."

From 2014 through 2015, an American crime phenomena that shyster Steph Young often feigned to have expertise about in these interviews was The Case of the Drowning Men: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory. In reality, though, she'd never penned a single article or even once blogged about Smiley or Smiley's victims before. In fact, to this very day, neither 'Steph Young' nor 'Stephen Young' nor 'Tessy Rawlins' has any writing credentials or bibliographies other than *their* self-published Kindle catalog of plagiarized works, for the simple reason that none of *them* can write:

"Writing is terrible. Another self-published book with no much-needed editing. The writer lacks the most basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills. I wish Amazon had a minimum quality requirement or at least a separate "Amateur" category to weed out books like this from professional offerings, so buyers could at least know what to expect when they spend their money." - June 23, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Is this a high school paper, or what? ... badly written: Sentences have subjects and verbs. They are not a series of dependent clauses joined by semi-colons. Long rambling sentences are not a sign of scholastic achievement. They are distracting. Adjectives are not verbs. Words do not bleed, you can cut them ... Well, the author did follow one prime rule of writing. 'Write crappy first drafts'..." - November 30, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Why so many 5 star reviews? This book is laughably bad. I got about 25% done and gave up. There appears to be no research. All the stories are anecdotal. The narrative bounces around from topic to topic. Worst of all..the book is just dull. Many paragraphs and thoughts are repeated. And repeated. The cases are interesting, but the writing and content is very poor."  - August 31, 2016 Format: Paperback

"Poorly written, and full of grammatical errors ... it needs some very heavy editing. The book is rife with typographical and grammatical errors, awkward and confusing word choices, and immense logical leaps. It's an intriguing enough a premise, but the execution is a failure" - July 29, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

As to her claims that she's a Smiley Face Killers expert, poor blundering Young doesn't even know where Boston Massachusetts is, a major SFK kill zone, let alone the difference between a 'Harvard Man' and a man from Harvard:

“False, misinformed fact checking. I am 14% through on my kindle and have seen so many factual errors that really bother me. I was surprised at how up to date this was published, including the disappearance of Zachary Marr (who has since been found, also in the water). The problem is Young kept referring to him as a Harvard University student when he was in fact from the TOWN of Harvard - a very different place, far from the university. He was a student at Mount Wachusett Community College near his town. Young also refers to UMass Dartmouth as being 4 hours from Boston - UMass Dartmouth is 1 hour south of Boston, perhaps Young is confusing Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (which is still only 2 hours from Boston). I'm not sure if I will continue reading this book, at this point I'm just not sure what facts will be true and what will be sloppy, false information? I do think the premise of this book is great. I'm quite interested in why these young men are vanishing and do definitely agree there is some strange connection. I'd like to read more into these but I'm afraid this isn't the book for me.” (9 people found this helpful.) - March 19, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

Even worse, Britain's self-appointed *expert* on America's unsolved Smiley-Face disappearances and murders exhibits no better understanding of crime cases that occur on her native soils and shores either:

"Young refers to three people who, she claims, went missing in Clapham Wood, Sussex, in southern England, between 1972 and 1981 ... This is a case that I’ve personally researched, and I’m not aware of any convincing evidence that the people in question were in the wood when they went missing. All three bodies were eventually discovered, none being found in the wood itself."  NOT TO MENTION THAT: "there are numerous typos and grammatical errors. Even the semicolon in the title seems wrong – shouldn't it be a colon that separates the main title from the subtitle? The book lacks an index, and there’s no bibliography. There are relatively few specific references for the cases cited. In places, there are unexplained acronyms/abbreviations. And some of what Young quotes from other people strikes me as being more or less incomprehensible. In places, material is repeated. There are no maps or photographs." AND REGARDING THE MANCHESTER UK DROWNINGS: "Young refers to a psychologist who has taken an interest in the case. She names him as “Professor Gary Jackson” of the “University of Birmingham” (p. 91). In fact, though, his first name appears to be Craig, not Gary, and he’s based at Birmingham City University, not the University of Birmingham!" - July 14, 2016, Format: Paperback

So, perhaps Rawlins/Young should study up more before "hastily" self-publishing the content she's "copied and thrown together, with many editing errors." - March 7, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

But the inability to compose coherent and structurally-complete sentences of her own, or to even conjugate verb tenses and punctuate properly, isn't the reason that Steph Young launched her plagiarizing career. In fact, this illiterate young Brit really doesn't have any interest in writing books at all, which, on the average, takes an experienced writer about a year to finish just one. No, Young is only interested in selling books as an "Amazon business," she confessed in one of her recent menacing emails. Accordingly, she's hastily cobbled together about ten such copy-and-paste Kindle editions annually, for a grand total of 30 so far, in only three years.

Toward the close of 2015, however, with absolutely no published Drowning Men work nor books of her own to speak of, Young realized that, to continue her talk-show hoax regarding the complex and ever-evolving Smiley Face Murders, she'd have to finally *produce* something on the subject. And that's when she asked me if she could "use" my extensively published SFK content.

Prior to receiving that email request, I was unacquainted with this imposter -- obviously, she was NOT granted any right to use any of my work in any form whatsoever.

see 2016's revised and expanded edition of THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN
NEW, Expanded and Revised
INVESTIGATING THE THEFT OF THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN - AND ALL OF MY SMILEY FACE KILLER WORK & MISSING/DROWNED DATABASE: Frequent visitors to this site probably recognize my nonfiction title (left), The Case of the Drowning Men: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory as having been released in both print and digital first-editions in 2012.

You can now also recognize my Drowning Men work -- plus all my facts, phrasing, forensics, findings, victim interviews and missing found-drowned caseload -- in two of Young's 2016 plagiarized versions of it, which she deceptively titled "The Case of the Smiley Face Killers..." and "Dead in the Water ... Investigating the Smiley Face Killers" (the latter incorporating my 2013 Crime Magazine piece 'Dead in the Water', one of many SFK feature articles I wrote for CM since 2011.)

In June 2016, upon discovery of the illegal use, reuse and misuse of my work, 'Stephen Young' was sent a takedown/reimburse demand, to which she replied contritely, stating, "i would also like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere apologies with regards to this matter, and would like to think that this could be settled amicably."

In good faith I undertook to do just that, but on Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 6:11 AM, I received a starkly different message from her via a 'James Howarth' of howespercival.com in Milton Keynes UK in which he baldly asserts, among many things, that his client "Stephen Young" had "amended 'Dead In The Water' so to remove" from this one illegal republication "all" the work stolen from Killing Killers and other publications which, if not thus expunged, clearly identified me as the true creator of most of the book's content.

To wit, “our client has (without prejudice to our client’s position) amended ‘Dead In The Water’ so to remove all quotations from the Interviews and all references to the Blog or the (presumably) nom de plume 'Eponymous Rox' … rest assured, of her own volition, our client has no intention of ever quoting from, referencing or even recommending your work or mentioning your name in future. I trust that this will represent an end of the matter.”

I politely wrote back to ask attorney Howarth if drag-n-drop diva Tessy Rawlins, who claims in her Amazon bio she's also Stephen Young, was his "client" too ... and never heard from him again. 

NO END TO THE 'STEPHEN YOUNG' & 'TESSY RAWLINS' AMAZON SCAM, UNLESS 'STEPH YOUNG' IS STOPPED:  Do you blog? Did you finally publish that manuscript you slaved over for years? Have you ever posted on sites like Websleuths or Reddit or Killing Killers, or shared your heartfelt opinions via Twitter or Facebook? Well, long before Steph Young self-published her illegal knockoffs of my Smiley Face Killers work for exclusive sale via Amazon's $10 'unlimited free download' subscription plan, her ignominious aliases 'Tessy Rawlins' and 'Stephen Young' had been busily robbing other content creators just like me and you, and making out like a bandit.

It's terrific that, from the very start, conscientious customers were flagging Rawlins/Young as a fraud on Amazon so to warn off others from unwittingly enriching her. But simply posting scathingly-honest reviews won't ensure that Amazon execs take swift action to stop such scammers. That's what all the various 'report abuse' buttons on each of Amazon's webpages are for. And it only takes a minute or less to click these and send Amazon the kind of valuable feedback consistently expressed by real reviewers of scammer Young's phony books:

"Abridging of story significantly changes meaning -- integrity of author in doubt.  I did not finish the book because I had good reason to doubt it's completeness and accuracy. Upon reading the story of  Lloyd Glenn and his son Brian, I recalled that I had read this story before, several years ago, but it seemed like part of it was missing. I found the file I had saved on my computer, and sure enough, the story had been heavily abridged. Although it might simply have been edited for length, it seemed very suspicious because the edits significantly changed the story that was told and the meaning of the experience. I do not mean that the parts that were included were altered, for the most part, but it appears that Tessy Rawlins has edited out several parts of sentences, sentences, and whole paragraphs in order to change the message of the story to one that she is presumably more comfortable with. It makes me wonder, also, if she  actually got permission from the authors of these stories to republish  them, or if she simply copied and pasted from the Internet, and then  edited them to her preferences. (10 people found this helpful.)" - July 27, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Acknowledgement is needed. Author needs to give credit where credit is due.....he uses a lot of material from Albert Rosales' Humanoid Database, without giving credit or mentioning the database." - October 5, 2015, Format Kindle Edition

"Another take on the killings detailed by Eponymous Rex."
- June 7, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Nothing new here. Derivative. Just repeats previously published material from other authors." - April 30, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"The Banal Meets Boring. Just..awful. For the reviews to be legit, I have to assume that people doing the reviews have never read another book before on this subject. Or..perhaps never read any other book before..on anything..Or, the reviewers are family and friends of the author..When you remove the  truism`s/cliches.. and the quotes from other books..there is nothing here." - January 1, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition  

"She ripped off Missing 411- How about you quit ripping people off and tell them you stole the idea from David? Pretty spineless." - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Plagiarism at its finest! This work, and I have a hard time calling it 'work', is a complete ripoff of the very successful Missing 411 series by David Paulides" - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Somebody in the cyber-woods wants your money. Predators in the Woods is an eclectic collection of short eye witness accounts about encounters with paranormal creatures. Exactly half of the e-book consists of excerpts from other e-books...There is no attempt at a synthesis or explanation." - January 2, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition

"Summaries. rather than telling a unique story, this short booklet is a compilation of other people's stories." - August 11, 2013, Format: Kindle Edition

"Cut and paste? No sense of direction and explanations. Disappointed. Cut and paste. Shouldn't Amazon have a minimal standard for kindle books? Can anybody cut and paste and call it a book and have a milking cow?" - November 24, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Book of lists. This really wasn't so much a book as a group of bits and pieces of information stuck together. No introduction or explanation to the chapters at all so you really don't what you are supposed to be reading. I see why it was a free download." - March 6, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"The stories are great, but I feel like they're copied and pasted from other sources. Was an editor involved in this at all?" - March 1, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"This book seemed to be hastily written-stories copied and thrown together - with many editing errors..." - March 7, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"A lot of repeated stories found in the other book by him." - September 12, 2015 Format:  Kindle Edition

"I think all of the stories could be found via a Google search..." - July 17, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Choppy. This book is a waste of time and effort. There are copious numbers of missing or duplicated pages, not to mention tons of typos. The missing pages would cut short stories or pick them up halfway through. Very, very frustrating. Please fix or pull this work!!!!!" - May 9, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Terrible Book! This is one of the worst, most ridiculous books I have ever read. It's now quite obvious that all of these five-star reviews were written by the same person — the author himself." - March 25,2016 Format: Kindle Edition

"Seems a bit cut and pasty. This book was a mish mash of news stories everyone has read..." - April 26, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Poorly written, and full of grammatical errors … The book is rife with typographical and grammatical errors, awkward and confusing word choices, and immense logical leaps…the execution is a failure" - July 29, 2015 Format: Kindle Edition

"Where to begin? This book has so many problems that I just can't even begin to list them all! If you can get past the poor writing, bad grammar, poor spelling and improper word usage, the punctuation will put you over the top. This guy has no business writing books!" - Format: Kindle Edition

"Glad I only 'borrowed' it" By Thomas Byrne on "…This entire book seems as though it was lifted from anecdotes on the web." - August 7, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition

"Scammy. This 'book' is short chapters that read and sound like a second-rate wikipedia entry. One could easily read all of this on your own, for free if you hang out on WebSleuths or similar forums." - July 17, 2016, Format: KindleEdition

"Interesting subject matter, writing is terrible. Another self-published book with no much-needed editing. The writer lacks the most basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills. I wish Amazon had a minimum quality requirement or at least a separate "Amateur" category to weed out books like this from professional offerings, so buyers could at least know what to expect when they spend their money." - June 23, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Cheep ripoff of missing 411. This whole book has a corny uncredited feel to it..." - March 9, 2016, Format: Kindle Edition

"Blatant rip off of David Paulides' work" - August 2016, Format: Kindle Edition 

"Give it a pass. Do not be fooled with the 'well researched' comments in some of the other reviews. This is nothing more than a chaotic and poorly organized collection of folk story's and conspiracy theories. Not very informative and written (poorly I may add) along the same lines as "what ifs." - March 19, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Not Nearly the Deep Investigative Journalism Suggested ~ not even close. I only downloaded a sample, but what I read was disappointing. For each case, the information was appoximately a page in length. The information was so sparse, I did not understand what the mystery was so I went on the web and looked up the individual's name to get more on the disappearance. Once I looked it up, I saw that important pieces of info were left out of the incredibly short articles I read and, in fact, there really was no mystery." - November 27, 2015, Format: Kindle Edition

"Is this a high school paper, or what? Badly written: Sentences have subjects and verbs. They are not a series of dependent clauses joined by semi-colons. Long rambling sentences are not a sign of scholastic achievement. They are distracting. Adjectives are not verbs. Words do not bleed, you can cut them. The reader wants to be shown, not told. Well, the author did follow one prime rule of writing. 'Write crappy first drafts....'" - November 30, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

"Do NOT waste your money! This book is a total rip-off...." - August 20, 2014, Format: Kindle Edition

(per Amazon biography: "Tessy Rawlins ...Also writes as under pen name Stephen Young")

https://www.killingkillers.blogspot.com

SCAMAZON AND THE DIGITAL DOLDRUMS: Parasites like Rawlins/Young have plagued Amazon's Kindle self-publishing platform [KDP] ever since its inception roughly a decade ago, and Amazon's only gotten more lax about policing these rogues in the past few years because of the steady decline in eBook sales.

In recent times, we've all heard about just how bad a 'corporate citizen' this behemoth web-retailer really is anyway, especially with respect to its employees. But Amazon's failure to modernize its outmoded KDP platform by at least utilizing plagiarism-detection apps, as most other responsible online publishing sources are finally doing, is a deliberate invitation for fraudsters like Steph Young to come and hawk their illicit wares.

And, now, because Rawlins/Young herself has been operating with impunity on Amazon's under-policed site for three (known) years, she and her ilk has been allowed to spread like a cancer there, which, at this late stage, would be quite painful to excise. Yet excise them Amazon must do, because it's false advertising for  the "most customer-centric company in the world" to make a claim like that while knowing for a fact that its KDP customers and content creators are being "ripped off."

Pursuant to American penal code, it's also called 'aiding and abetting.'
  

to be continued...