Name Game: Voorhees

The name "Voorhees" is the anglicised form of "van voor Hees" which means from "before" or "in front of" Hees, a small village of about 9 houses and 50 inhabitants 1.25 miles (2 km) south of Ruinen. Hees (North German) = brush. Hees (Northern French; from old French, haisi) = brushy place. Voorhees = in front of a brushy place.

The most famous early "Voorhees" was Steven Van Voorhees (1600 – February 16, 1684), a farmer and brewer, born in 1600 in Hees, a village in Drenthe, The Netherlands. In 1664, he was a magistrate of what is now Flatlands and founder of the Dutch Reformed Church in present-day Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Steven van Voorhees is considered the patriarch of a "pioneer family of Bergen County," and is considered the "founder," as well as the first American representative of the well-known Voorhees family line.

Among his namesakes is Voorhies Avenue in Brooklyn.

John Wayne Gacy's first known victim was named Donald Voorhees.

In August 1967, Gacy committed his first known sexual assault upon a teenage boy. The victim was a 15-year-old named Donald Voorhees, the son of a fellow Jaycee. Gacy lured the youth to his house with the promise of showing Donald pornographic films. Gacy plied Voorhees with alcohol and persuaded the youth to perform oral sex upon him. Over the following months, several other youths were sexually abused in a similar manner, including one whom Gacy encouraged to have sex with his own wife before blackmailing the youth into performing oral sex upon him. Several teenagers were tricked into believing Gacy was commissioned with carrying out homosexual experiments in the interests of "scientific research," for which the youths were each paid up to $50.
In March 1968, Voorhees reported to his father that Gacy had sexually assaulted him. Voorhees Sr. immediately informed the police and Gacy was arrested and subsequently charged with oral sodomy in relation to Voorhees and the attempted assault of a 16-year-old named Edward Lynch. Gacy vehemently denied the charges and demanded to take a polygraph test. This request was granted, although the results indicated Gacy was nervous when he denied any wrongdoing in relation to either Voorhees or Lynch.
Gacy publicly denied any wrongdoing and insisted the charges against him were politically motivated – Voorhees Sr. had opposed Gacy's nomination for appointment as president of the Iowa Jaycees. Several fellow Jaycees found Gacy's story credible and rallied to his support. However, on May 10, 1968, Gacy was indicted on the sodomy charge.
On August 30, 1968, Gacy persuaded one of his employees, an 18-year-old named Russell Schroeder, to physically assault Voorhees in an effort to discourage the boy from testifying against him at his upcoming trial. The youth agreed to lure Voorhees to a secluded spot, spray Mace in his face and beat the youth with the promise that if he did so, he would be paid $300. In early September, Schroeder lured Voorhees to an isolated county park, sprayed the Mace supplied by Gacy into the youth's eyes, then beat him, all the while shouting that he was not to testify against Gacy at his upcoming trial.
Voorhees managed to escape, and immediately reported the assault to the police, identifying Schroeder as his attacker. Schroeder was arrested the following day. Despite initially denying any involvement, he soon confessed to having assaulted Voorhees, indicating that he had done so at Gacy's request. Gacy was arrested and additionally charged in relation to hiring Schroeder to assault and intimidate Voorhees. On September 12, Gacy was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the Psychiatric Hospital of the State University of Iowa. Two doctors had examined Gacy over a period of 17 days before concluding he had an antisocial personality disorder (a disorder which incorporates constructs such as sociopathy and psychopathy), was unlikely to benefit from any therapy or medical treatment, and that his behavior pattern was likely to bring him into repeated conflict with society. The doctors also concluded he was mentally competent to stand trial.

The Voorhies Castle is a Victorian home located in Voorhies, a small community 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Bement in Piatt County, Illinois. The "castle" has been the source of many tales of ghost appearances and hauntings. In the 1960s, I skeptically visited the site, investigated the location, experienced unusual audio activity, and felt a column of cold air in an upstairs internal room.

The name "Voorhies" has the following spelling variations: Voorhees, Voorhout, Voorhoeve, Vorhout, Vorhauser, Verheul, Verhoeff, Verhooch, Verhooft, Verhoog and many more.

Jason Voorhees and his mother Pamela Voorhees, are the fictional killers in the Friday the 13th movies.

Toronto's Alleged Serial Killer Was Mall Santa

Bruce McArthur, who is charged with five counts of murder and is alleged to have hidden some victims' remains in planters around Toronto, served as Santa Claus at Agincourt Mall in the Scarborough, Ontario neighborhood of the city. 

Arrested in January, Toronto police said on February 8, 2018, they’ve recovered the remains of at least six people from planters on a property connected to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur.

The remains found on property McArthur used as storage in exchange for doing the landscaping, included some from one of the five men McArthur is already charged with killing, Andrew Kinsman.

McArthur was arrested Jan. 18 and charged with two counts of murder in connection with the disappearances of Kinsman and Selim Esen, two men last seen in what the media terms the “Gay Village” district of Toronto. Not long after that, he was charged with the murders of three more men and police said they were on a wide search for other possible victims. The suspected serial killer was a mall Santa. 

The news of McArthur's time as a "mall Santa" brought forth memories of John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994).

McArthur "was hired through an event management company who provides various forms of entertainers including Santa to many events throughout the (Greater Toronto area)," a statement from the mall said.

Thomas Donald Bruce McArthur (b. October 8, 1951) is an alleged Canadian serial killer. As of February 2018 the self-employed landscaper is charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of missing men from Church and Wellesley, Toronto's gay village.

Police have found human remains of several men in private gardens, where McArthur has worked as a landscape gardener. So far, the investigation has shown that he found many of his alleged victims through online dating apps for men who have sex with men, stating that he wanted to meet submissive men. His alleged victims were predominantly gay men of South Asian or Middle Eastern origin. 

McArthur was first charged on 18 January 2018 with the murder of 49-year-old Andrew Kinsman and presumed death of 44-year-old Selim Esen. Both men went missing in 2017. On 29 January 2018, Toronto police laid three more first-degree murder charges against McArthur related to the disappearances of Majeed Kayhan, 58, and Soroush Mahmudi, 50, as well as the death of Dean Lisowick, 43-44, who had never been reported missing.

On February 8, 2018, the Toronto police recovered the remains of at least six people at a home on Mallory Crescent, where McArthur stored some of his landscaping equipment. At least some of the remains have been identified as belonging to Andrew Kinsman. Human remains were also found in planters at a Leaside home. Police believe there are more victims. Police said they were combing through five properties, four in Toronto, one in Madoc, all related to McArthur. Source.

The name McArthur is Scottish. It is an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Artair, a patronymic from the Gaelic form of the personal name Arthur. The name Arthur is an English name, from the Roman clan name Artorius, meaning "noble, courageous."

Artorius is thought by some to have a purely Latin derivation, translating the name as "plowman." Such an etymology seems unlikely as the Latin word for "plowman" was arātor, not *artor (in fact a gentilic name potentially derived from arātor, Arātrius [also an epithet of Jupiter], is attested in inscriptions from Aquileia, Altinum, Pola, and Montefalcone; compare, too the word arātōrius "fit for ploughing," used of oxen and fields).

"Gay Village's" Unsolved Serial Killer Cases

There is some speculation that Bruce McArthur alleged serial killing activity could have started in the 1970s, and old cases are being investigated. The following was published as an overview of those unsolved files, as they are similar to Toronto's current killings.

Feb. 18, 1975: Police attended the apartment of Arthur Harold Walkley, 52, in response to a 911 call at 3:50 a.m. that day. His roommate discovered his naked body, stabbed several times in the back and chest, though no knife was ever recovered by police. His wallets and credit cards were stolen during the attack on Borden St. near Bloor St. W. Walkley, a part-time University of Toronto lecturer, died shortly after arriving in hospital. Dec. 20, 1975: Frederick John Fontaine was 32 when he died. Fontaine was found in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern, a former bar with a landmark clock tower, popular in the early days of Toronto’s Gay Village. Officers attended the scene about 9 p.m., and found the CBC technician suffering from blunt force trauma. He died several months later in hospital, on July 15, 1976. Feb. 11, 1976: Forty-two-year-old painter and decorator James Douglas Taylor was found beaten with a baseball bat in his North York apartment near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. He was also robbed. Neighbours told police at the time that a pickup truck was seen at the house, where he lived alone. Sept. 20, 1976: Police discovered the body of James Stewart Kennedy, a federal income tax employee, at 8 a.m. on a Monday. The 59-year-old was strangled with a bath towel and suffering from blunt force trauma in his Jarvis St. apartment. He was dead by the time police arrived. Jan. 25, 1977: Described in some media coverage as “shy and new on the gay scene,” 25-year-old Brian Dana Latocki, a financial bank analyst, was found tied to a bed in his apartment, strangled, and stabbed to death. Police responded to the scene on Erskine Ave., near Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E., at 9:40 a.m. that day. The night before he was killed, he was last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern. Sept. 20, 1978: Perhaps one of the most high-profile deaths was of club owner Alexander “Sandy” Romeo LeBlanc, 29. He was found at 7:20 p.m., stabbed more than 100 times from head to foot. “As police walked around the body, the carpet squished from the sound of absorbed blood, and bloody footprints led to an open window,” Robin Hardy wrote in 1979. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, LeBlanc was pronounced dead in his apartment on St. Joseph St.Nov. 28, 1978: Just after 2 p.m. that day, police responded to a “check address” call for a resident near Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. Inside an apartment, they found William Duncan Robinson, 25, dead from stab wounds. His sister made the call to police after he didn’t show up to work for two days. At the time, police believed he may have gone to a gay bar in the Yonge and College Sts. area, and returned home with the killer. A neighbour reported hearing a “strange hollow sound” coming from his apartment. Source.

h/t T.M. 

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.)

Wayne Name Game

Followers of the Dark Knight/Batman might think of "Bruce Wayne," but other associations come to mind when the name "Wayne" is heard.

Within the "weird news" field, it has been a well-known truism that if a criminal has a middle name of "Wayne," no one in the newsroom is surprised he is being charged with murder. The examples are multiple. The most famous case, of course, is John Wayne Gacy.

My old buddy, correspondent Chuck Shepherd, has been a student of this "name game" for years. Here's what Chuck says about it, in an introduction to the topic:

The Classic Middle Name

It only occurred to me in the early 1990s that "Wayne" was a popular middle name among a few of the most heinous murderers of our time, e.g., the clown John Wayne Gacy (who killed almost three dozen boys and young men in the late 1970s and buried most of them beneath the floorboards of his Des Plaines, Ill., home) and Elmer Wayne Henley (sentenced to six consecutive life terms in 1974 in Houston for his role, with ringleader Dean Allen Corll, in the murders of 27 young men). I began to publish periodic lists in 1996, and soon readers made sure I never missed a one that made the news. Source, plus his impressively long list of names.

Now, today, Mother's Day, May 12, 2013, there is a breaking story out of Waynesville, Indiana, in Bartholomew County.

Police are reporting that Saturday night, four dead bodies were discovered in a residence there. The three deceased men (in the front room) and one dead woman (in the bedroom) had been shot.

The victims have been identified as 53-year-old Katherine Burton, 39-year-old Thomas Smith, 41-year-old Aaron Cross and 41-year old Shawn Burton. No suspect is in custody.

Authorities identified the others who were killed as Katheryn Burton's longtime boyfriend, 39-year-old Thomas Smith, who also lived at the home, and two 41-year-old Columbus men, Aaron Cross and Shawn Burton. The coroner said the Columbus men were friends of the couple, but were not related to them. Waynesville is a few miles south of Columbus. Source.

Wayne is an Old English name that means "wagon-wright," "wagon builder," and/or "wagon-driver."

Bartholomew was one of the 12 apostles, sometimes called Nathanael (Mark 3:18). It is a male name, from the Hebrew, meaning "son of Talmai."

Bartholomew County was formed on February 12, 1821 and was named for Lt. Col. Joseph Bartholomew, wounded at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Bartholomew joined the Revolutionary War at the age of 10, and he served as a scout for General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.  Bartholomew married Christiana Pickenpaugh in 1788. His daughter Martha and several of his grandchildren were some of the earliest converts to Mormonism and several were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Of course, it is only a coincidence to note that the town directly south of Waynesville, Indiana, only 11 miles away, is Seymour, Indiana. Fifty-seven miles west of Seymour is Aurora, Indiana.