Killer Clowns: 2017 Half Year Report

A frequently heard question, after last year's massive number of sightings and reports of Phantom Clowns and other forms of creepy clowns, is: What happened to all the Clown encounters?

As I noted late in 2016, after Donald Trump's election shortly after Halloween, the media's attention shifted to Trump and that melodrama. That sucked the life out of the clown stories that had evolved from Phantoms, to Stalkers, to Killers. 

The year of 2016 ended with the Creepy Clown jumping the Atlantic Ocean, and being reported, in a more violent mode, as Killer Clowns in the U.K.

During the first half of 2017, the few and far between clown stories are again these more violent type, the actual, real Killer Clowns.

Specific authentic "Killer Clown" news came via three incidents in the USA, all clustering in May 2017.

(1) May 17, 2017 - Glendale, Arizona - Clown With Ax

A group of children walking home from school in Arizona were terrified when they were chased by a miscreant wielding an ax and clad in a creepy clown mask.
The bizarre incident occurred earlier this week in the city of Glendale when the group of youngsters were walking back to their neighborhood.Suddenly, the boys spotted a menacing individual wearing a clown mask and holding an ax coming towards them. According to one of the kids, the ne'er-do-well yelled at them, "you better run because we are coming after you." The frightened boys heeded the clown's advice and ran away from the scene until they got home. "I thought I was going to die today," one traumatized youngster told TV station ABC 15 in Arizona. Although the boys' tale may sound like something they could have conjured up on the way home in a fit of boredom, an investigation by authorities suggests that the encounter was all too real. Cops say that they found both the clown mask and the ax seemingly left behind by the person who harassed the children. With no suspects at this time, police hope that photos of the recovered items from the crime scene may catch someone's attention and lead to a break in the case.Much like warm weather seems to usher in crop circle season every year, one wonders if the same can be said of creepy clowns. Source.

 (2) May 23, 2017 - Denver, Colorado - Killer Clown Kills With Blades

A Killer Clown at Torchy's?

Man in clown makeup with bladed gloves accused of killing man near Torchy’s Tacos.
Suspect tells cops dead man may have fallen on one of the spiked bracelets he was wearing.
Man in clown makeup with bladed gloves accused of killing man near Torchy’s Tacos.
Denver police have arrested a man who was wearing clown makeup when he allegedly stabbed and slashed a 29-year-old man to death with a glove that had blades attached to the end of each finger.
Christian Lee Gulzow, 36, allegedly attacked the victim at 12:49 a.m. Tuesday following an argument near Torchy’s Tacos at West 11th Avenue and Broadway, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
The Denver coroner’s office identified the victim as Brian Lucero, 29. The cause of death was a stab wound, according to a coroner’s office news release.
Witnesses told police that the suspect, wearing white clown makeup accented with black streaks on the face, suddenly began threatening the victim with a glove with blades that were 2- to 3-inches long. They were near the Corner Store at West 10th Avenue and Broadway.
Gulzow began pummeling the victim, who tried to dodge the blows, the police report says. The victim eventually punched the suspect, who then yelled at the victim and followed him to Torchy’s. The two were the only ones in the restaurant parking lot.
“The victim collapsed in the north east parking lot of the Torchy’s business,” the report says.
Gulzow allegedly fled on a scooter, the police report says.
Police spotted a man on a Denver Public School’s HALO camera riding a scooter matching the suspect’s appearance in the 900 block of Galapago Street.
They saw the man throw an object in the bushes. Police went to the building and found a knife in the bushes, the police report says.
Police found the man at West Alameda Avenue and Lipan Street. His clothes were covered in blood, the report says.
When interviewed at police headquarters Gulzow said a man threatened him and yelled at him “to get out of my alley.” He claimed the victim attacked him and stole his scooter, the court records say.
Gulzow said he may have hurt the victim when he tackled the victim while he was riding away on Gulzow’s scooter. The victim may have fallen on one of Gulzow’s spiked wrist bracelets, Gulzow told police. The suspect also acknowledged that he may have cut the victim while he jabbed him with his “clawed glove.”
Gulzow’s account was different from those offered by witnesses, the report says.
Gulzow’s jail nickname is Diablo. He has an extensive criminal history with multiple domestic violence, assault and weapons convictions. In 2012, he was convicted of felony menacing with a deadly weapon, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. Source.

(3) May 23, 2017 - Miami, Florida - Clown With A Gun

A man with green hair and “Joker” tattoos on his face was arrested for pointing a loaded gun at drivers in the Miami area.
Miami-Dade police arrested 29-year-old Lawrence Sullivan on Tuesday, WSVN reported.
Sullivan has “Joker” written across half his forehead and “F*** Batman” on the other half.
According to the Miami Herald, Sullivan had a loaded Smith & Wesson handgun with six live rounds in his pocket when officers confronted him.
Sullivan lives with his mother and listed his occupation as “tattoo model,” the paper reported.
Sullivan was charged with carrying a concealed firearm. On Wednesday, his bond was set at $5,000. Source.

Part two of the year may have ripples from IT the movie being released into theaters on September 8, 2017.

++++

As a footnote for 2017, if should be mentioned that political clown, Trump advisor Robert J. Stone Jr., attempted to resurrect his career as The Joker in June.

Phantom Clowns: Pied Piper of Hamelin

As I mentioned previously, one of the benefits of all the current media interest in the Phantom Clowns this time around are the historic overviews that are being revealed.

An old article that is being revisited is one by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand.  Brunvand had just published a new collection, Curses! Broiled Again, and then wrote the following review of 1981 and 1985 cases, plus taking a then-contemporary look at some new 1991 Phantom Clowns encounters. While the article is important as it did review past recent events, it also reminded people that these stories go back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin folktales, dating from 1300 A.D.

Killer-clown rumors surfaced briefly again in 1985, then faded until this June [1991] - exactly 10 years after the first cycle of similar stories [in 1981].
This time the setting is New Jersey. My first report of the return of the phantom clowns came in a letter from West Orange, N.J., postmarked June 12 [1991]. I haven't been able to decipher the signature, but I did manage to make out the message:
"My mom teaches school in South Orange, N.J., and the kids at school are all terrified by the rumor that there is someone dressed as a clown driving around kidnapping children. The story has grown to the point where the clown has a name, Homey, and now they are saying that there are a whole bunch of clowns riding around in a van."
The next day I got a note from Joseph Zarra of Belleville, N.J., enclosing a clipping from the Newark Star-Ledger of an article headlined "Child-abducting 'clown' rumor persists in plaguing Essex towns." It's the same old story.
First-, second- and third-grade children in several communities were claiming that a van containing a clown, or several clowns, was cruising the streets looking for young victims to kill or abduct. The name "Homey" came from a character who frequently appears on the Fox network series In Living Color.
An East Orange police officer commented, "It just spread, from one kid to another, and continued until there was a kind of a hysteria."
One child, who later retracted his story, told police that a clown holding a machete in one hand and an Uzi machine gun in the other fired five shots at him before he drove him off with his bookbag.
New Jersey police questioned 700 schoolchildren, many of them "petrified" by the rumors, but concluded, "We couldn't substantiate the existence of a clown. We have no sightings, no assaults, no homicides."
Mysterious America, a 1983 book by Loren Coleman, gives a good account of the 1981 phantom-clown scares. In May, reports of clowns riding in vans and threatening children surfaced in Boston and some of the surrounding communities. Shortly afterward the same story showed up in Providence, R.I.; Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas City, Kan.; Omaha, Neb.; Denver; and Pittsburgh.
Many of the children's stories included specific details: They said that the vans were black, green, blue or yellow, and that the clowns were armed with swords, knives or guns.
The only other clown scare I'm aware of since that time occurred in late March 1985, when the Phoenix area experienced a brief period during which similar stories spread among local schoolchildren.
Although no police authorities anywhere have verified the existence of the phantom clowns, some people take the threat seriously. A warning circulated in a 1986 newsletter claimed that clowns were responsible for children being "spirited away to join the throngs of missing children whose pathetic faces peer at us from milk cartons, shopping bags and telephone bills."
If child-abductors disguised as clowns exist, why do they cease their nefarious activities for such long periods of time? Who is sending in these clowns, and why don't the police ever catch them?
Probably the source of the stories lies more in folklore than in actual crimes. Loren Coleman suggests a connection to the Pied Piper of Hamelin who, according to legend, lured away all the children of the German town, never to be seen again. ~ Jan Harold Brunvand, "Someone Keeps Sending in the Phantom Clowns," Deseret News, August 9, 1991.

For more on the Pied Piper of Hamelin, see also here.

"Pied" refers to clothing "having two or more different colors," the attire of a clown.

As has been noted by some comment makers, it is intriguing that a concentration of the recent reports have been in the Piedmont Triad in North Carolina. (See here and here.)

Phantom Clowns: Classified

In March of 1982, in Fate magazine, and then in 1983, in my book Mysterious America, I first used the term "Phantom Clowns" to talk of May 1981's Boston, Massachusetts accounts of individuals wearing multicolored clothes who reportedly were trying to entice school children into coming along with them. The eyewitness accounts of clowns in vans bothering children were discussed for the first time comprehensively in a work of Fortean wonders.

"The story of the phantom clowns went unnoticed on a national scale until I began getting a hint we were in the midst of a major flap of a new phenomenon. Slowly, after contacting fellow researchers by phone and mail, I discovered the phantom clown enigma went beyond Boston, Kansas City, and Omaha," I wrote in Mysterious America.

Fate found my piece such a popular article they featured it in Fate Editors’ The World’s Strangest Stories, “Phantom Clowns,” (Chicago: Clark Publishing, 1983).

While the chapter on "Phantom Clowns" appeared in the 1983 edition of Mysterious America from Faber and Faber, it was seen as too scary to include in their 1989 edition (Boston & London).  The "Phantom Clowns" chapter was actually left out.

But my examination of "Phantom Clowns" was back in Mysterious America, as a chapter in the 2001 revised edition from Paraview, and the new edition of 2007, from Simon and Schuster. In 2007's Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, Chapter 21's "Phantom Clowns" was massively updated with all the new cases that occurred through the release date.

I've continued writing about Phantom Clowns since then, most frequently in this blog, Twilight Language, of course, and on some radio programs.

What I have noticed, during this flap of 2016, is that the definition of what is a "Phantom Clown" is being diluted by the media.

I have always strictly defined a "Phantom Clown" episode as one involving a clown-costumed individual attempting to entice or lure a child into a van, the woods, or other isolated situations. But then when the police or parents get involved, no clown can be found or captured. The apparent "vanishings" of these clowns are the "phantom" part of the Phantom Clowns scenarios.

Most of the Carolinas incidents, therefore, are classic Phantom Clowns incidents.

In Benjamin Radford's new book, Bad Clowns (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016), he reinforces this definition.

In Radford's Chapter 12, "Phantom Clowns," he writes:

Most evil clowns are fictional and as such reside only in our entertainment and imaginations, leaving only a handful of real flesh-and-blood monsters that stalk our streets. We know, for example, that Stephen King's Pennywise wasn't real, though John Wayne Gacy's Pogo was.
Yet there is another category of bad clowns, one that seems to exist somewhere in the twilight between the cold, clear reality of daylight and the slumbered stuff of nightmares. These bad clowns are reported to roam streets and parks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere looking for innocent children to lure and abduct - yet seem to vanish just before police can apprehend them. Some say they are real, while others claim they are figments of imagination. They are known as phantom clowns.
Researcher Loren Coleman coined the term and described them in the pages of Fate magazine and in his book Mysterious America. ~ Benjamin Redford, Bad Clowns, page 151.

Radford is to be congratulated for clearly understanding there are different types of clown appearances. I propose a classification system so the media writing about this 2016 clown flap can begin to realize there are definitely two entirely separate variants in the clowns being reported. One kind, luckily, has not surfaced this year.

Phantom Clowns: These are the uncaught clowns who are "luring" children into the woods, vans, and cars in the reports. These are routinely unseen by parents and police. No photographs of them are presented for examination. (Coined by Loren Coleman, 1981; see Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, Chapter 21's "Phantom Clowns.")

Killer Clowns: These are the real pedophiles who end up killing children, and murderers who kill people who use clown outfits as disguises. As Benjamin Radford mentions in his new book, John Wayne Gacy (active from 1972-1978) is the clown who performed throughout Chicago, and is his prime example. Also within Radford's book (pages 111-126), there are other recent instances, including the West Palm Beach Killer Clown of 1990; Aurora's Joker, James Holmes of 2012; and Las Vegas Jokers Wild, Jerad and Amanda Miller of 2014.

Stalking Clowns: A new phenomenon in recent years has been clowns "appearing in public," without any apparent intent other than to be seen, to startle, to shock, or to surprise folks. As Radford begins his discussion about this group of clowns (pages 99-108), "there is no law against anyone dressed in a costume, jesters or otherwise, walking down the street or visiting a public public. Several of the most famous stalking clowns have appeared in Northampton, England; New York; California; and France," (Benjamin Redford, Bad Clowns, page 99).

What I have observed is that the media, during the late summer of 2016, are confusing the "clown types." They are mixing up their classifications of clowns. Some Stalking Clowns are being mislabeled as Phantom Clowns, or being mentioned in the same discussions of the strictly Phantom variety, to end a story.

Often, these stalking clowns carry balloons. It is almost part of their motif.

On August 2, 2016, a balloon-carrying clown stirred up people in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was photographed but apparently left to go his merry way. It was a Stalking Clown.

During the current clown flap, there has been a Stalking Clown seen in Yuma, Arizona, on Monday, September 6, 2016. This is not a Phantom Clown, either. The clown-costumed individual was seen riding a bike and photographed.

There is even a nicely placed location sign in the photograph so the clown can be located correctly in time and space. The story is being run in the context of the Carolinas clown wave, of course. Source.

It is time for "Clown Classifications" to inform future analyses of this phenomenon. 

(I appreciate Ben Radford's book for reminding me to mention this in conjunction with this year's flap.)

Two In One Day

Consider this. Copycats are so routine, nowadays, that the media, the public, and law enforcement agencies take it for granted that after a major violent event, more will follow. Following the community college shooting in Roseburg, Oregon on October 1, 2015 (http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2015/10/Umpqua.html), it seemed only a matter of time before more college or university shootings would occur. Despite calmer heads have now largely debunked the almost folkloric "Christians were targeted" part of the story (see here http://news.discovery.com/history/us-history/were-christians-targeted-in-oregon-shooting-151006.htm), the ripples from that event continue having an impact.

The fatal part of the Copycat Effect happened on Friday, October 9, 2015. But this time, two shootings were discussed as if they were the same kind as the Oregon one. On closer examination, they really do not seem to be. First off, in each case, one fatality each (needless to say awful) but it was not ten. In both cases, there are hints that the shootings were specifically targeted.

As the New York Times observed, "Unlike the attack in Oregon and other mass shootings at colleges and schools in recent years, the two on Friday were not so-called active-shooter episodes, but instead appeared to stem from ordinary disputes and altercations that quickly turned violent."

First up was the 1:20 a.m. PDT Friday incident at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. 

One person was killed and three injured.

The shooting occurred in a parking lot outside Mountainview Hall dormitory at the northeast side of the Flagstaff campus.

Colin Brough (above) was allegedly killed by Steven Jones (below).

A freshman, Steven Jones, 18, pulled a gun and shot four male students, killing one. The slain student has been identified as Colin Brough, according to the university’s website.  The injured are Nicholas Prato, Kyle Zientek and Nicholas Piring. The victims were shot multiple times. The victims were all members of the Delta Chi fraternity, the organization said Friday. The suspected gunman was not, the fraternity told CNN.

Later in the day, tragedy hit Texas, outside an apartment complex on the campus of Texas Southern University, police confirm. The site was the Courtyard Apartments on Blodgett at Canfield, and the time around 11:30 a.m. Friday. After the shooting, the three suspects ran inside the building, up to the fourth floor.

Two suspects are in custody, according to HPD. A third suspect remains at large. HPD has not yet released a description.

One shooting victim was taken to the hospital in critical condition, where the person later died. The other person was hit in the upper torso and in the back. They are listed in stable condition at the hospital, media reported.

Meanwhile, the number could have been higher. "Also in the news today, two eerily similar stories about planned school shootings which were thwarted by police or friends of the aspiring mass murderer. One involves a high school in Great Falls, Montana. Another report out of Denver, Colorado also involved a single male gunman on a high school campus," noted Boing Boing.  http://t.co/001D6Zm3he http://t.co/FYmhdnsXnZ

In Montana, The court document said Brock Doty, 17, texted friends he was going to carry out a school shooting. He then next sent a picture of a rifle leaning against the wall and under the picture, it said: "I hide my gun from my family." Great Falls Police detective and school resource officer Cory Reeves testified that he arrested Doty after receiving information of the text conversation. Four rifles were found in his room.

Shootings like these do happened frequently, but the media feels in the contagion factor linked to such incident. 

Were they gang-related? Group violence?

In general, even with the slight facts we do have, these do not seem to be random acts committed on student bodies without regard to the targeted individuals.

Jim Brandon's highlighting of the name "Nicholas" certainly jumps out in the Arizona scenario. 

Likewise, in going over recent violence on the Flagstaff campus, the New York Times noted another "Nicholas/Nichols" name game, for "in late August [2015], two people were shot after a man fired into a crowd near where the shooting on Friday took place. In that case, a university officer responding to a disturbance in the student-housing parking lot saw the man fire and told him to drop the gun, but the man turned toward the officer, the authorities said. The officer fired but missed, and the suspect, identified by the police as Darrius T. Nichols, 20, surrendered. Mr. Nichols was charged with murder after one of the two victims, LaKeytrick Quinn, 24, died. The second victim, a woman, was treated and released." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/us/campus-shootings-texas-arizona.html

Brough is an "interesting surname, of Anglo-Saxon origin, is a locational name from any of the various places so called, of which there are several in Yorkshire, and Derbyshire, as well as elsewhere, deriving from the Olde English pre 7th Century "burh" meaning "fortress". In most cases these are the sites of Roman fortifications. The name is widely distributed, but mainly found in Staffordshire, where the pronunciation is usually "braf". The surname dates back to the early 13th Century (see below). Further recordings include one William de Brugh (1275) in the Hundred Rolls of Norfolk. Variations in the idiom of the spelling include Broghe, Broughe, Brouf, Bruff, and Broffe." Source: https://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Brough

One wonders what names will pop up in the Texas case?

Phoenix Shooting: 3 Dead & the Other James Holmes

Phoenix police confirmed that Steve Singer died from his injuries in the shooting. Singer owned Fusion Contact Centers, LLC, a local call center business.

The Aurora shooting suspect is named James Holmes.

But there is another James Holmes.

For several months before the July 20, 2012 theater event, a Phoenix police officer played the sync in his several media appearances. 

His name game name is James Holmes.

I wrote the paragraph above on December 22, 2012, and put it away in a draft on this blog. It seemed unnecessary to bring attention to this man, doing his duty, just because he happened to share two parts of the name of the Aurora suspect. 

"They're all around the high schools, and don't think that it's just south and west, because it's happening up north," Phoenix police Officer James Holmes 

said about teen fight clubs in June 2012 .

On January 30, 2013, events conspired to bring Officer James Holmes to the fore of another mass shooting. One person was dead and 70-year-old William Arthur Harmon III was declared the suspect. The person bringing this information to the media? James Holmes.

Phoenix Police Media Relations Officer James Holmes is shown on the scene of another local crime event over two years ago.

Today, headlines shouted out, "Six people injured in Phoenix, Arizona mass shooting."

The shooting occurred around 10:30 a.m. MST (12:30 p.m. EST) at an office building in Phoenix, Arizona. Police believe that the shooter is a white male in his 60s, who was seen fleeing the scene in a white SUV.... After being questioned by reporters, Officer James Holmes said the shooter appears to have been working alone and that the reason behind the attack remains unknown. Source.

In a breaking report, Yahoo News posted this early:

Phoenix Police spokesman James Holmes said the people who were shot were taken from the scene to a local hospital, and there was no immediate word on their condition.

Changing their story later to delete Holmes' first name entirely, and leaving this awful reference, it appeared in their later article:

Police said they were searching for a white man in his sixties with gray hair. "Some say he left the building in a vehicle, and some say that he was still inside, so that's kind of where we are at," police spokesman Holmes said.

The gunfire occurred at an office complex on 16th Street north of Glendale Avenue.

The Arizona Republic reported that Mark Hummels, a partner with Osborn Maledon and president of the Phoenix chapter of the Federal Bar Association, is among the wounded. He was shot after leaving a mediation session, and was reported to have a strong pulse after surgery.

2nd Victim Dies: Mark Hummels (Source: omlaw.com)

+++++
UPDATE:

Mark Hummels, the attorney gravely wounded in a downtown office shooting Wednesday, died Thursday night after being taken off life support, according to his colleagues at the law firm of Osborn Maledon.

Hummels, 43, was one of three people police said were shot by Arthur Douglas Harmon, 70, apparently over a long-running financial dispute.

Steven Singer, 48, a call-center company CEO, died from his wounds Wednesday; Harmon’s body was found Thursday in Mesa, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; a third victim shot in the hand, Nicole Hampton, 32, is expected to be released from hospital Friday.

Doctors declared Hummels to be brain-dead as a result of his injuries, according to the Arizona Republic on February 1, 2013.



+++

Steve Martos, also of the Phoenix Police Department, said officers staged outside a home in the area of 14600 block of North 28th Street in Phoenix in connection to the shooting. Police have said they believe the home is connected in some way to the office shooting.

The timing was another one of those "coincidences," for the Phoenix shooting was mentioned during today's first day of congressional hearings about gun violence by victims from the Tuscon, Arizona shooting. Mark Kelly (a twin), the former shuttle astronaut and husband of former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, told the Senate panel that there had been "what seems to be a shooting with multiple victims with multiple shots fired."

Season of Suicides: Of Phoenix, Fox and Paradoxes

On September 27, 2001, the Zug massacre "happened." In Zug, Switzerland, Friedrich Leibacher shot 18 citizens, killing 14 and then took his own life. Eleven years later, during the same week, things didn't look much better on the evening news.

Phoenix. 

Fox. 

Suicides.

Signs. 

Balaclava.

Lewis.

Scientology.

Anarchy.

Aurora.

James Holmes.

James Holmes.

Phoenix.

The live Fox News broadcast of the suicidal end of a car chase on September 28, 2012, perhaps was to be expected. In an autumn of atrocities following a summer of the gun, should we have seen this coming?

TVNewser carried the beginning of this news at 3:48 PM, with these words:

A man committed suicide live on Fox News a few minutes ago. FNC had been carrying a car chase in the Phoenix area and when the suspect pulled over, he ran down a dirt road, then stopped, put a gun to his head, and fell to the ground. No other national networks were carrying the chase.

Wall-to-wall coverage of car chases in California, for years, with some mainstreaming of them nationally, has always toyed with the possible tragic end of the scenarios. Car chases are a result of the copycat effect, and the danger is that televised suicide copycats could follow too.

The last two days have been especially violent, bizarre, and suicidal/parasuicidal.

On September 27, 2012, at the Stillwater (Oklahoma) Junior High School, there was the suicide of Cade Poulos, who had dressed like Two Face/Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight and the Batman comics. 

Then in the afternoon, at 4:35 PM Thursday, at Accent Signage Systems in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an employee who was fired a few hours earlier, killed 5 [revised] people and then took his own life.

July 2012 photo shows Andrew Engeldinger. Photo: Bill Klotz.

Andrew J. Engeldinger ( = Warrior Angel Striker), 36, killed the company’s owner Reuven Rahamim, Accent’s Director of Operations John Souter, production manager Eric Rivers, and two others whose identities have not been released. Three others were hospitalized, two critically. (Update on September 29th: Death toll has risen to six; one other individual was identified, Keith Basinski, a UPS driver.)

The company is revolutionary, and the founder Reuven Rahamim (above) actually was profiled as the "Mad Scientist of Signs."

Earlier on Thursday September 27, 2012, a tragedy visited New Fairfield, Connecticut: 

A small Connecticut town was sent reeling in grief and confusion Friday after a popular fifth-grade teacher shot and killed a knife-wielding prowler in a black ski mask, only to discover it was his 15-year-old son.
No immediate charges were brought against the father, Jeffrey Giuliano, in the slaying of his son, Tyler, who was gunned down in his aunt’s driveway next door to his own home around 1 a.m. Thursday.
“It’s something out of a Hollywood script,” said John Hodge, the first selectman, or top elected official, in the town of nearly 14,000 people about 50 miles from New York city. He said he couldn’t recall another killing in his eight years on the job. (See rest of article here.)

Thursday's and Friday's incidents followed the bizarre falling (suicidal) death of Sons of Anarchy star Johnny Lewis:

Johnny Lewis' gruesome demise left many questions unanswered when the Sons of Anarchy star plummeted to his death Wednesday after allegedly killing his 81-year-old landlady.
But as more information continues to surface about Lewis—his criminal past, his custody battle over his young daughter—one particular revelation sheds an intriguing light on the troubled star: his deep ties to Scientology.
A Church of Scientology source exclusively tells E! News that the actor's father, Michael Lewis, was a high-level Scientologist and that the star was "born into the church."

Johnny Lewis, July 2010. Photo: Jerry Avenaim.

Jonathan Kendrick "Johnny" Lewis (October 29, 1983 – September 26, 2012), also credited as Johnny K. Lewis, was an American actor, best known for playing Kip "Half-Sack" Epps in the first two seasons of the FX original series Sons of Anarchy. Lewis also appeared in supporting roles in the films Underclassman, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem and The Runaways. Lewis jumped from a roof into the driveway at a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.

We began in Phoenix (and are reminded of the "flashlight bombs" in May in Phoenix too); we shall end in Phoenix, with a developing news story:

Most of the people who saw a masked teenager wearing a sheet and armed with a grenade launcher told authorities they assumed the weapon was a fake as he pointed it at passing cars in northwest Phoenix, according to 911 calls released Thursday [September 27, 2012].
All of the callers calmly told 911 operators that a "small man" or a "kid" was pointing what looked like a bazooka, torpedo, rocket launcher, grenade launcher or a "long gun with a point at the end" at passing cars on July 28.
"I assume it's a fake. I hope so," one man told a 911 operator. "I think you guys should check it out."
"I don't know if it's real or not, but it's kind of bizarre," another male caller said. "He's wearing a dress with a torpedo on his shoulder and pointing it left and right."
"He had it pointed at me," another man said. "I got kind of freaked out."
A Phoenix man has been accused of filming his 16-year-old nephew to see how fast police would react to a mock terrorist act.
Michael D. Turley, 39, was arrested Monday [September 24, 2012], nearly two months after the bizarre film was posted to Google Inc.'s YouTube site.
In the film, the narrator whom police identified as Turley, said he wanted to see how long it took authorities to respond. The introduction to the video mentions the July 20 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12.
"Given this event, I wanted to run a little test here in Phoenix, Arizona," Turley said on the film in a disguised voice. "I want to find out how safe I really am, and I want to know the response time of the Phoenix police department."
The police response took just over three minutes from the first call, and a helicopter and SWAT team was dispatched as backup, according to Phoenix police spokesman James Holmes.
The YouTube clip showed the teen marching back and forth at an intersection with the camouflage-colored rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. He was wearing a light-blue bedsheet and black head covering with black pants and black sneakers. The 911 callers' descriptions varied, with some saying it was a shawl, gown or dress.
"It looks like there's another kid with him videotaping him," one man told the operator. "They probably think it's funny. It's not really funny."
The first officer found Turley and the teen standing in Turley's driveway. The officer calmly told the boy to put down the weapon and Turley to put down the camera. Holmes said Turley told the officer they were just filming a movie, and the officer took down their names and left. (See rest of article, here).

Colorado = red. Aurora = dawn. Suspect shooter James Eagan (= fiery) Holmes.
Arizona = arid zone, small oak. Phoenix = fire bird. Police spokesman James Holmes.
Amazing.

The Phoenix has long been presented as a symbol of rebirth, immortality, and renewal. Is it also a symbol of the copycat effect, repeating patterns, and behavior contagion?

It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young Phoenix or Phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.... The Phoenix's ability to be reborn from its own ashes implies that it is immortal, though in some stories the new Phoenix is merely the offspring of the older one....In the course of the colonization of Northern America a number of cities have received the name of Phoenix or have been associated with its symbolism. Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, was so named as it was built on the ruins of the Hohokam civilization that had existed on the site centuries before. The Phoenix became the official symbol of Atlanta, Georgia in 1888 because it was "reborn" from the ashes after it was burned down in the American Civil War. ~ Wikipedia

Two other cities that use the Phoenix as their symbol: Detroit, Michigan and Portland, Maine (where I have lived since 1983).

Locations associated with the "Phoenix" symbolism are said to have had "new dawns" (auroras) occur after terrible fires destroyed large parts of their cities.

Thanks DJ, SM, MB, AWG, AM, CS, and others.

Aurora Copycats: Prepare Now

Aurora's red dawn event is a wakeup call. I expect more to occur between now and the coming weekend.

The Dark Knight Rises played last Friday on 4404 screens, including in 332 IMAX theaters. Most of the country felt rocked by the Colorado incident. But why? Was it because it can happen in your neighborhood? In my case, this notion hit home, literally.

Maine State Police Trooper Philip Alexander (above) seized several guns from Timothy Courtois of Biddeford following Courtois's arrest on a criminal speeding charge Sunday, July 22, 2012, on the Maine Turnpike. When arrested, the Maine man said he took a gun to the IMAX where I watched The Dark Knight Rises premiere the day before. What?

 Photo Credits: John Ewing / Portland Press Herald Staff Photographer

It is chilling when a national news story decides to exhibit its first media-discussed copycat so near the doorstep of the author of The Copycat Effect. But, with regard to the Aurora shooting story, that became my rapid reality in the last 24 hours.

As I mentioned earlier on this blog, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) with my 22-year-old son on the afternoon of Friday, July 20, 2012, at the only IMAX in southern Maine, the Cinemagic in Saco. Yesterday, the Maine State Police announced that the first Aurora copycat said he went armed to a showing of TDKR at "my" movie theater (for that's how we all feel about our local cinema).

The Maine State Police booking photograph of Timothy Courtois.

My local newspaper, the Portland Press Herald carried more details yesterday and today:

Timothy Courtois was driving a brand new Mustang [like those driven by the Maine State Police] when he was stopped by a state trooper going 112 mph south on the turnpike, police said. Inside the car, police found an assault rifle and several handguns. They also found newspaper clippings about the theater shooting in Colorado Friday in which 12 people were killed during an airing of the new Batman movie.
...
[Maine State Trooper Philip] Alexander said he was already thinking about the potential for the Colorado shootings to trigger other incidents, and he took note of the types of weapons and other similarities. He noticed, for example, that Courtois bought the new Mustang on Friday, not long after the Colorado shootings.
...
[Courtois] told investigators he was speeding to New Hampshire to shoot a former employer.
...
Police followed up the traffic stop by searching Courtois' apartment at 344 Elm St., [in Biddeford, Maine] where they found boxes of ammunition and a larger arsenal of guns, including a fully automatic FN .308-caliber machine gun with a scope and tripod. It is illegal to own a fully automatic weapon without a federal firearms license. All of the other guns were legal to own, as long as they were not concealed.
...
Courtois, 49, has not threatened people in the past or been violent, but has had a few psychotic episodes when he stops taking his medication, said his brother Cory Courtois.
...
"He has a diagnosed mental condition," said Cory Courtois, who said he believes his brother suffers from bipolar disorder and manic depression. "When he was on medication, he had a normal life."

Courtois is an ironic French name specifically translated as a "refined, courteous, polite, or accomplished person," but is understood as the contrary of what it means.

"Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety."

 ~ Rene Daumal

The other stories I began to hear were disturbing. My 26-year-old son went to TDKR in the Boston area where he lives. He told me that his theater's audience was upset to have a huge man start to leave the movie near its end, stop in mid-aisle, and begin searching through his backpack. Nothing happened, but people are tense.

A Fortean correspondent related that he was tossing and turning to learn that his niece only recently worked with James Holmes at a lab.

Meanwhile, the copycat hints and events have begun, in earnest. By this, of course, I mean bizarrely, with small signs, that tell of the gathering clouds. For those who don't feel the wind, they don't know a storm is coming.

Clark Tabor

Michael William Borboa

After the Maine arrest, two other incidents (in California and Arizona) were reported by the national media:

In Southern California, a man at a Sunday afternoon showing of [The Dark Knight Rises] was arrested after witnesses said he made threats and alluded to the Aurora shooting when the movie didn't start.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies were called to a cinema complex in Norwalk after moviegoers said 52-year-old Clark Tabor shouted: "I should go off like in Colorado." They said he then asked: "Does anybody have a gun?"
A security guard saw Tabor with a backpack on his knees in the second row, but deputies who searched the bag, the theater and its surrounding area did not find any weapon.
Separately, moviegoers in Sierra Visa, Arizona, panicked when a man who appeared intoxicated was confronted during a showing of the movie. The Cochise County Sheriff's office said it caused "mass hysteria" and about 50 people fled the theater.
Off-duty Border Patrol agents tackled Michael William Borboa, 27, who had a backpack with him, according to The Arizona Daily Star. Authorities said it contained an empty alcohol container and a half-empty moonshine bottle.
Borboa was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct, and threatening and intimidating.

The Tabor incident happened about 5:15 p.m. Sunday, July 22, 2012, at AMC Norwalk 20 Theaters.

The sound of the name Tabor rang a bell.  A historical copycat. One week after Columbine, on April 28, 1999, one student, Jason Lang, 17, was killed, and another wounded at W. R. Myers High School in Taber, Alberta, Canada. This marked the first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years.

Copycats follow patterns, as you have heard me say often on this blog and in my book. I predicted what might happen on July 20th, because of subtle, but obvious human behaviors. Joker copycats have existed in the wake of The Dark Knight and already exist in the aftermath of The Dark Knight Rises.

Surprisingly, a Joker copycat did strike at a theater in the past.

Michigan police officers were sent to a theater early Sunday, on July 27, 2008, to arrest Spencer Taylor, 20, (above) of Three Rivers, Michigan. At the theater the officers found employees restraining a man wearing a purple suit, a green wig and face paint in the style of Batman's nemesis Joker in the just opened The Dark Knight. He was caught trying to steal a large Batman movie poster. The next month, in court, Taylor was sentenced to one day in jail, 16 hours of community service and fined $685. Other charges were dropped.

Some anniversaries for July 27th include the defeat of Macbeth, King of Scotland, by the Earl of Northumbria on July 27, 1054. In 1890, Vincent van Gogh shot himself and died two days later. The Korean War ended in 1953 on this day. The horror of the Adam Walsh kidnapping and beheading occurred in 1981, at Hollywood, Florida.

Considering the London Summer Olympics are opening on Friday, July 27th, we might wish to pay close attention to this being the anniversary of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. On July 27, 1996, during Atlanta's 1996 Summer Olympics, a pipe bomb exploded in the Centennial Olympic Park.

Eric Roberts Rudolph, the person who was eventually convicted of the bombing, put forth his political justification for the bombings in this April 13, 2005 statement:

In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games. Under the protection and auspices of the regime in Washington millions of people came to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best of all games. Even though the conception and purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song Imagine by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 Games even though the purpose of the Olympics is to promote these despicable ideals, the purpose of the attack on July 27 was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.The plan was to force the cancellation of the Games, or at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested.

One woman, Alice Hawthorne, was killed. Turkish cameraman Melih Uzunyol died from a heart attack he suffered while running to cover the blast. In the Centennial Olympic Park, 111 were injured. The Games went on.

Coincidentally, the alleged shooter at the Aurora theater, James Holmes, is being held in the Centennial, Colorado, jailhouse, and appeared in the Centennial courthouse.

Colorado (Spanish for "red") is nicknamed "The Centennial State." Aurora is Spanish/Latin for "dawn." This is why I term the earthshaking incident of July 20, 2012, a "red dawn event," a milestone manifestation of unfathomable future dimensions.

Will Mexico's PRI red shirts stir, in the wake of this red dawn? As my Mexico City correspondent Red Pill Junkie notes in an email to me, "Next Friday is the day TDKR opens in Mexico!"

While not on the exact date, several people are pointing out that the upcoming London Summer Olympics is the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacre at the 1972 XX Olympiad, in which eleven Israeli athletes and coaches, a West German police officer, and five terrorists were killed.

On one of the London Olympics' posters, I must point out an odd, orange-haired figure, which I have enlarged for you below.

Just a coincidence.

The London Olympics may not have a UFO land during the opening ceremony, like happened at the closing of the Los Angeles event in 1984. But it is going to be grand and mysterious. After all, this isn't 1984, is it?

The 2012 Olympics ceremony's theme is "Isles of Wonder," inspired by William Shakespeare's play about shipwrecked castaways, The Tempest. Amsterdam correspondent Theo Paijmans writes me: "It is commonly held that William Shakespeare may have modeled the character of Prospero in The Tempest on John Dee." (John Dee signed his letters  007, shown above.) Is there a storm coming?

The sound of a 27-ton bell — the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world — forged at London's 442-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which made London's Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, will open the ceremony at 9 PM London time. Remember Whitechapel is the old haunts of Jack the Ripper?

Rumors are floating about that as a promotion for the new 007 movie, Skyfall, a James Bond double will "fall" into the Olympics stadium. The opening will imitate a "green and pleasant land" described in William Blake's poem Jerusalem, which has been set to music and is regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. The underlying symbolism of "Jerusalem" would fill volumes.

Other threads seem to indicate the involvement of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, plus Vangelis' theme from Chariots of Fire. Of late here, we've mentioned the soundtrack composed by Vangelis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. Now that would be a novel twist, but a very Mayan 2012 eureka moment from these Olympics, won't it?

What surprises will occur at the XXX Olympiad opening in London this Friday, July 27, 2012? I called it predictive preparatory planning to understand how past copycat patterns paint our futures. Will something violent happen at another showing of The Dark Knight Rises this Friday? Let's hope not. But let's not be too astonished by what happens. We have been washed over by an ocean of media waves coming from Aurora.

"The nearer the dawn the darker the night."

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow