The Question is: WHY?

By Chuck Hustmyre

Pinned to a cork board above my desk I have an index card on which is written a single word in black marker. The word is: WHY?

The card is there to remind me that as a journalist that single word represents the most important aspect of any story. Why people do the things they do is crucial to understanding them. If action reveals character, then motivation explains action.

A couple weeks ago, President Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that he was transferring the cases of five captured terrorists, including self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to federal court in Lower Manhattan, just blocks from Ground Zero.

Interestingly enough, Eric Holder's Washington, D.C. law firm donated 3,000 hours of legal work to terrorists detained in Gitmo. My guess is, when the Gitmo terrorists are shopping around for lawyers to plead their cases in Manhattan, they will likely use some of Holder's ex-law partners.

Can you spell CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

My question is, why did Obama do this? Why take these terrorists out of the Congressionally-approved military tribunal system and dump them in U.S. District Court in New York?

Is it because the military system is fundamentally unfair? Not likely, since Obama has left some terror suspects to face justice in the military system.

Is it, as Holder said, so that the rest of the world will see that our justice system treats everyone equally? That sounds nice, but that can't be true either because if it were then surely the Obama administration would end the military tribunal system and transfer all of the terrorists to federal court.

Also, the world already knows that in our criminal justice system we bend over backwards to protect the rights of criminal defendants, to the point that we frequently release them to rob, maim, and murder more innocent Americans.

Could the reason be that Obama wants other terrorists to like us? Possibly, but even Obama, as narcissistic as he is, probably realizes that Muslim fanatics aren't ever going to accept our rich and powerful Judeo-Christian culture.

So what is Obama's motivation for sending the 9/11 mastermind and his terrorist buddies to New York, this time on a government plane?

Because it's payback time. Payback to George Bush and his administration. Payback for all the things the left wing loons hated about President Bush: his aggressive use of U.S. military might, his tax cuts, his environmental policies, gay rights, gay marriage, global warming, and on and on and on.

President Obama has built a stage, much like he did in Denver, onto which he intends to put some of the most America-hating murderous scum alive on the planet, and he intends to give them a forum to bash our country, our culture, and most of all our foreign policy.

Unwittingly, New York has signed up to host the I HATE AMERICA GAMES.

Because President Obama hates America as it is and wants to reshape it to fit his own vision of how America should be.

ISLAM: The Elephant in the Room

By Chuck Hustmyre

Imagine for just a moment that the mass murderer who killed 13 people and wounded 30 last week at Ft. Hood had been a Caucasian neo-Nazi and a member of the Christian Identity Church. For those of you not familiar with it, the Christian Identity Church preaches a theology based on white supremacy.

Imagine that just before unleashing his murderous rampage, the killer had shouted, "God is a white man!"

Would the media and the pundits be working overtime trying to concoct a reason for the murders that did not involve the killer's religious and political beliefs? Would the president have cautioned us not to jump to any conclusions about the killer's motive?

Of course not.

The media would be producing damning profiles of neo-Nazi and skinhead leaders. They would have analysts, professors, and authors explaining the ideology of racial and ethnic hatred and the warped theology of a religion that teaches such things. They would demand that government officials explain why a man who declared such feelings was allowed to remain in the U.S. Army. In essence, the media would skewer those who believed in the inherent superiority of one race over another.

They would be doing their job.

But if we move from the hypothetical to the actual, from the abstract to the concrete, the situation looks quite different. Army Major Nidal Hasan is not a neo-Nazi, nor is he a member of the Christian Identity movement.

Hasan is a Muslim who believes that the United States is an imperialistic power engaged in a war against Islam. According to those who know him, Hasan described himself as "Muslim first and American second."

Six years ago, Hasan reportedly told fellow doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph. Non-Muslims, Hasan said, are infidels, condemned to hell, and should be set on fire.

A white soldier who advocated beheading black people and pouring boiling oil down their throats would have, at the very least, found himself dishonorably discharged from the Army, and rightly so.

So why did a Muslim soldier who spouted equally insane rhetoric not merit similar treatment?

The reason is that as Americans we are terrified of offending anyone, and we are particularly terrified of offending Muslims. In fact, many of us would rather let our fellow countrymen die rather than risk offending a Muslim.

We have learned that offending the sensibilities of Muslims often results in a torrent of violence--bombings, burnings, and beheadings--so we do everything we can to maintain "peace" with the so-called religion of peace. U.S. publishers have cancelled the release of books because they might be offensive to Muslims, gyms have restricted the hours available to men so Muslim women would not have to exercise with them, at least one public university has installed footbaths so Muslims can wash their feet before prayers, and the government and media have agreed to hide the truth about Islamic-inspired violence in this country, all in the name of political correctness.

Last week, we sacrificed 13 American soldiers on the altar of political correctness.

To be fair to Major Hasan, he provided the Army with ample warning of his intentions. Although he was born in Virginia, Hasan listed his nationality as Palestinian. He told fellow soldiers of his dislike for America. He worshipped at the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers, and at the feet of a radical U.S.-born imam who has since fled to Yemen, where he preaches hatred for America.

Monday, that same imam declared Nidal Hasan a hero, writing "Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?"

Given that Hasan frequently harangued fellow soldiers with what one Army doctor described as "anti-American rants," why didn't the Army seek to shut him up? Why didn't senior officers kick Hasan out of the Army? Why wasn't Hasan nailed to the cross of intolerance, like our hypothetical neo-Nazi, Christian Identity soldier would have been?

Because Hasan is Muslim.

According to the Telegraph, "One Army doctor who knew (Hasan) said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints."

Make no mistake, Major Nidal Hasan is a terrorist. The difference between a crazed lone gunman and a terrorist is that a crazed gunman is fighting against something, whether that something is his family, his employer, or society. A terrorist fights for something--animal rights, political ideology, or a medieval religion that preaches hatred and seeks to dominate the world.

America needs to acknowledge that there is an elephant in the room. And that elephant is Islam.

A study by the Pew Research Institute found that 26 percent of young American Muslims say that suicide bombings are justified in at least some circumstances. The same study found that half of all U.S. Muslims think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second, and that only 68 percent of American Muslims had an "unfavorable" view of al Qaeda.

(For those of you who have forgotten, al Qaeda is the Islamic terror group headed by Osama bin Laden that attacked the United States on 9/11 and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent Americans.)

Major Nidal Hasan attacked soldiers at Ft. Hood because in his twisted view, the U.S. Army is the enemy of Islam and therefore his enemy. Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is Great) as he gunned down dozens of his fellow soldiers, proclaiming his motive in crystal clear terms.

Despite that, the media, the Army, and the White House have been engaged in a campaign since last week to obscure Hasan's motivation for the killings. They've blamed everything but his religious convictions.

They've even come up with a new syndrome--Pre-traumatic Stress Disorder. Following that line of reasoning, Hasan was so upset about being deployed to Afghanistan that he didn't even have to see any of the horrors of war to be traumatized by them. Just thinking about them was enough to damage his psyche.

Soon the blame will fall on the pharmaceutical companies and a lack of adequate mental health counseling, despite the fact that Hasan is a psychiatrist who specialized in counseling soldiers and who worked with other mental health professionals specializing in the same field.

What the media will not blame is Hasan's devotion to a religion that seeks to destroy everything that does not adhere to its theology of hatred and global conquest.

###

Chuck Hustmyre is an award winning crime reporter and the author of the Penguin true crime books Killer with a Badge and An Act of Kindness, and the novel House of the Rising Sun. For more information, visit his Web site www.chuckhustmyre.com.

MOVIE REVIEW: Lies and Illusions

By Chuck Hustmyre

Lies and Illusions, 2009.

This movie was terrible.

I had high hopes for this movie, because it starred Christian Slater and Cuba Gooding Jr., both of whom have done great work in the past. I'm also an aficionado of the crime genre.

But this movie was really bad. It got stuck between genres, on one hand trying hard to be a crime thriller, but also shooting for dark comedy. In the end, it was nothing but a very cheap knockoff of a Quentin Tarantino flick--less the good story, dialogue, and acting.

The movie was so cliched it was close to being a farce. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a merciless criminal mastermind who has his own private jet. Interestingly, his pilot also drives his car and his jet has no co-pilot, something Mr. Gooding will regret at the end of the film.

But it's the logic, or lack thereof, behind the characters' actions that made this move so bad.

For example. There's a long foot-chase through a crowded shopping mall, with two of Gooding's goons chasing our hapless but wisecracking hero, Christian Slater. My question was, what are the goons going to do when they catch him? Drag him hundreds of yards to the car outside while he's kicking and screaming? Might not that attract attention from the cops?

There's a shootout in the hallway of a hotel, yet immediately afterward, two of the characters take time to talk and kiss in a room with a deadman before fleeing. Once again, the cops pay no attention.

Then there's the ridiculous use of coincidence. In the world of this movie, no matter where you flee, you will run smack into the carload of bad guys chasing you.

The plot was bad, the acting was bad, and the dialogue was bad.

Stay away from this movie. It is horrible.

On a 10-point scale, I'd rate it a 2. I only scored it that high because I have to leave room for something even worse, if that exists.

President Obama's new "Czar" picks

President Obama has just announced his new "Czar" picks. They will help set policy on a number of important issues, including law enforcement. Although the new "Czars" are not subject to Senate confirmation, the White House released their official photos today.

FOOTBALL - America's slowest pastime

By Chuck Hustmyre

I used to love NFL football. When I was a kid, my hero was Larry Csonka. I used to watch Monday Night Football with my dad, and I followed the Miami Dolphins through their incredible undefeated season. As an adult, I watched the Saints every weekend. When I couldn't see them play, I listened to Archie Manning call the game on WWL.

Now, I can barely watch the NFL. I've seen two games this season.

NFL football has become a slow-moving, awkward parody of its former self. From the field to the press booth, the goal seems to be to pack as many non-players into the game as possible.

How many clowns in black and white stripped shirts are there calling penalties now? Six, seven, eight? And how many announcers can you fit into the booth? Does it really take four guys to call the game, five more to talk about it at halftime, and two blondes on the sidelines to ask the coaches dumb questions as they're heading to the locker room?

And exactly how many rules are there now for what used to be a fairly simple game? Illegal shifting, false starts, offsides, hitting with the top of the helmet, roughing the passer, roughing the kicker ...

At least one out of every three or four plays gets called back, often for some minor technical foul. Every time there's a good play -- a long pass reception, a great run, a touchdown -- we have to hold our breath to find out if a referee has thrown his yellow hankie because some lineman moved two knuckles off the turf.

It now takes three and a half hours to play a 60-minute game.

The NFL has turned the game of football into a bloated, boring sport that is overrun with ceaseless, inane chatter from a host of ex-players and jock-sniffing commentators. Watching the NFL is like watching paint dry. The games are so slow they make baseball look like a 50-yard dash.

Rage against the Republicans

By Chuck Hustmyre

I don't think there has ever been a less qualified man elected to the Office of President of the United States than Barack Obama, yet you have to give him some credit. He won an impressive electoral victory against a technically much more qualified candidate.

Barack Obama won because "our" candidate was weak on nearly every conservative issue, save one, national security. John McCain was strong on protecting this country.

Barack Obama also won because he is black.

That is not as surprising or shocking as it might sound. In the interest of diversity, many institutions and organizations, both government and private, hire some people primarily because of the their race, ethnicity, or sex. Legal scholars like recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have said that hiring a minority applicant based on his or her race is legal. It's racial justice.

The U.S. government has had special race-based hiring programs in place for decades to fill government jobs with under- or unqualified minority applicants. Similar systems have also long been in place in state and local governments across the country.

So it should not come as much of a surprise that white Americans, who make up about 70 percent of this country, and who have for more than a century been living under the yoke of the sins of their great, great, great grandfathers, elected a black man as president.

Nor should it come as much of a surprise that after nine months in office, Barack Obama, our first affirmative action president, has proven to be incompetent. After all, he has no experience that would qualify him to be president. He has done very little in his life and accomplished even less.

(NOTE: Graduating from law school and working part-time as an adjunct professor; writing books about yourself and working as a street organizer for a radical group currently under investigation in more than a dozen states does not qualify you to be president.)

President Obama has also proven to be a buffoon. He gave the Queen of England an IPod loaded with his speeches. He gave the Prime Minister of Great Britain a Wal-Mart or Target movie collection that was formatted for U.S. DVD players, not European players.

Barack Obama is ashamed of America. During visits to several foreign countries, he has apologized repeatedly for what he perceives as America's loathsome history. In his overseas speeches, he never talks positively about America, except in the context of its future, under his leadership.

He never speaks with pride about the tens of millions of people America has liberated around the world from tyrants, despots, and dictators; or of the leaps in science, technology, and medicine we have made that eased suffering, saved lives, and made the world a better place.

In Obama's view, America has long been a dark force in the world, spreading nothing but imperialism and dominion, until its enlightenment last November when we elected him as president.

The damage Obama has already done to our economy by his out-of-control spending and nearly incalculable deficit increases is unprecedented in our history. His kowtowing to Islam, the ideological force behind the global scourge of terrorism that leaves thousands murdered each year and seeks to literally dominate the world, has endangered this country, our troops overseas, and our citizens at home. His and his minion's efforts to stifle free speech and dissent in America are shredding the Constitution.

Yet what stands in Barack Obama's way? The Republican Party?

Nothing is standing in his way. The Republican Party, to which I have belonged my entire adult life, is nothing more than a mirage. It looks real, but it's not. The Republican leadership is composed of weak-kneed, lilly-livered cowards, to afraid of their own shadows to fight for this country's future.

We got a taste of that during last year's presidential campaign when "our" candidate, John McCain, spent most of his time attacking grass roots Republican organizations that were trying to shed light on Barack Obama by pointing out his lack of candor about his own background, his paper-thin resume, and his associations with militant black racists, communists, and terrorists.

McCain thought he was in a "fair" fight, under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, and he got mauled by a bare-knuckle Chicago street fighter.

Now, all of Obama's friends, those militant black racists, communists, and terrorists, are either in the White House or advising Obama in private.

And what are the Republicans doing? Still running for cover, still hiding, still trying to dodge the label of "racist," still stabbing in the back the few of their fellow Republicans with the courage to stand up to Obama. Remember Congressman Joe Wilson?

I can guarantee that if the Republicans are able to take advantage of Obama's failing popularity--the buyer's remorse many so-called moderate Americans feel at electing such a left-wing radical--and retake the Congress in 2010, the first thing they will want to do is create an atmosphere of "bipartisanship." The new Republicans, just like the old, will trip over themselves to "reach across the aisle."

Just as President Obama loves to shake hands with terrorists and dictators who want to destroy America, the Republicans want to shake hands and welcome into their "big tent" the very people who want to crush them.

They make me sick.

The Haleigh Cummings Case: Liars, Scumbags, and Nancy Grace

By Chuck Hustmyre

The friends and family of missing 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings would make the subject of a great farce if the situation weren't so tragic.

Rarely outside of an episode of Jerry Springer can you find a more pathetic group of white trash trailer dwellers. Their personal stories and intertwined relationships would provide perfect grist for any comedy writer's efforts to create purposely exaggerated characterizations and ludicrous, improbable situations in order to satirize or poke fun at the uneducated southern redneck subculture.

I could see this as part of the routine on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour or as a skit on Saturday Night Live. Or maybe a Will Ferrell movie.

For a movie, we have a great cast. The hero of this farce would be Ronald Cummings, the 25-year-old father of the missing child and a petty criminal, also a gun-toting, goateed, tattooed, earring-wearing former crane operator, who drives a pickup truck and recently got in a fight with guy whom he claims stole his gun.

As the villain, you've got 17-year-old Misty Croslin-Cummings, soon to be just plain Misty Croslin again. Before the opening credits she's the babysitter for Ronald's two young children, but soon she realizes that Ronald's doublewide is a socio-economic step up, so she starts working full time around Ronald's house and in his bed. Soon she's not just the live-in nanny, she's the live-in girlfriend.

Shortly after the opening scene in which Haleigh disappears, Misty marries her prince charming and becomes Mrs. Cummings. But now, just past the midpoint of the plot, Ronald says he plans to dump his wife of seven months and start dating again.

(As a brief aside, I've seen several pictures of Misty and I swear she looks like the product of at least a couple generations of brothers and sisters mating.)

A third main character could be "White Boy Greg," a local drug dealer who says that the weekend before Haleigh disappeared he was using drugs, drinking, partying, and doing the nasty with Misty Croslin-soon-to-be-Cummings.

Then there's the supporting cast of step siblings, half-siblings (possibly even quarter siblings), cousins, step parents, biological parents (a.k.a. sperm donors and birth mothers), friends, lawyers, PR people, and even a bounty hunter or two, most of whom look and act as inbred as Misty, and all of whom have a standing invitation to appear on the Nancy Grace show.

What gets lost in the tale of who in the cast slept with whom, who used drugs with whom, who's related to whom, and who had a threesome with his sister and his second cousin once removed, is the fact that Haleigh Cummings, who certainly didn't choose to be born into this family of miscreants, is still missing and very likely dead.

Haleigh Cummings deserves justice.

Misty Croslin-Cummings-Croslin (a.k.a. Ima Scumbag) knows what happened to that little girl. Her story about the circumstances of Haleigh's disappearance has been proven to be a lie.

Her own brother, Hank Croslin, (who was recently in jail for grand theft auto) says he went to Ronald and Misty's trailer the night Haleigh disappeared and banged on the door but got no answer. That's because Misty wasn't home watching the kids like she told the police and Nancy Grace a hundred times.

Cell phone records show that Ronald called Misty several times that night but couldn't reach her. Then he called Hank Croslin and asked him to go to the trailer and check on Misty and his kids. But no one was there.

With just that piece of information now available to the detectives investigating Haleigh's disappearance, why Misty is not sitting in jail is something I just can't fathom. She has given numerous statements to the police that contain provable lies. Those lies led investigators in the wrong direction. That is illegal.

Misty needs to be in jail.

The most recent story, from a jailhouse snitch (probably another Cummings or Croslin relative), is that Misty took the kids to a party and that Haleigh got her little hands on some Oxycontin and died from an overdose. White Boy Greg is alleged to have dumped the 5-year-old's body somewhere.

That story has the ring of truth. Except that I doubt Haleigh accidentally took Oxycontin. It seems more likely that Misty gave Haleigh and her little brother, Ronald Jr., something to knock them out.

After all, Misty was supposed to be home watching the kids while Ronald worked the night shift. Haleigh, at 5, might have mentioned to her daddy that Misty took them to a party at someone else's house (trailer, RV, or camper, wherever these white trash dirtbags go to party), so Misty probably had to knock them out first to make sure they slept through the party and couldn't later tell dear old dad about their nocturnal adventures.

For dramatic effect, I'll say it again: Given that Putnam County Sheriff's officials now admit they know for a fact that Misty's story about what happened the night Haleigh disappeared is a flat out lie, Misty needs to be in jail.

So why isn't she?

Chuck Hustmyre is an award winning crime reporter and the author of the Penguin true crime books Killer with a Badge and An Act of Kindness, and the novel House of the Rising Sun. For more information, visit his Web site www.chuckhustmyre.com.

Democrats and their siren song of RACISM!

By Chuck Hustmyre

All last week the drumbeat from the left was the incessant pounding of a single word -- RACISM!

Maureen Dowd, an administration press agent masquerading as a journalist, started it by writing in her Sept. 12 New York Times column that South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson's now twice apologized for outburst "You lie" was a racist attack on the president.

"What I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!" Dowd wrote. She added that representative Wilson clearly did not like being lectured to by our "brainy black president."

Dowd then tried to smear Wilson with this, although perhaps tar and feather would be a more appropriate metaphor: " The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans (and) led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol ... "

My great-great grandfather fought with the 2nd Louisiana Infantry during the Civil War. I guess I should be branded with a scarlet letter. Perhaps Ms. Dowd would choose a big "R" as my appropriate punishment.

Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia took his rhetoric a step further, saying Wilson's comment had to be formerly rebuked or the Klan would ride again. "I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people,” Johnson said.

The only current member of the United States Congress I know of who ever wore the white sheet and pointy hat of the KKK is West Virginia's senior senator, and former Democratic leader, Robert Byrd, who held the ridiculous Klan titles of kleagle (recruiter) and grand cyclops.

In 1942, at the start of the U.S. involvement in World War II, when millions of young men his age were signing up to join the military, Robert Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1944, the bloodiest year of the war, Byrd wrote, "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."

Was Hank Johnson worried that Joe Wilson's outburst might drive Robert Byrd to dust off his white sheet and hood?

Also, let's take a brief time out for historical perspective. The Democratic Party was the party of the Ku Klux Klan. Almost without exception, kluckers were Democrats and served as the armed wing of the party.

In 1875, in East Feliciana Parish, an armed mob of white Democrats, led by Dr. J.W. Saunders, stormed the town square in Clinton and drove all of the black elected officials out of town. The mob threatened the officials with death if they ever returned. One black official who initially refused to leave was Sheriff Henry Smith. He was shot and forced to resign.

A nearby newspaper, The Amite City Democrat, declared its support for the coup against the black elected officials, proclaiming, "The insolent, ignorant, negro Sheriff Smith of East Feliciana has at last resigned." The newspaper made no mention of the details surrounding the sheriff's "resignation."

In the Florida Parishes, the Whitecaps were another armed band of miscreants that terrorized black people on behalf of the Democratic Party. In his book Pistols and Politics, Samuel C. Hyde Jr. wrote: "Whitecaps ... typically functioned as racial regulators, keeping the blacks down and assaulting the interests of economic competition."

So before we start tossing around the legacy of the KKK, let's be clear on where it started.

Speaking of racism, which is all the left likes to talk about so I will indulge them, during the most recent presidential election, I didn't see any white hooded Klan-types hanging around polling places. Did you?

What I did see, though, was uniformed, club-wielding members of the New Black Panther Party providing "security" at the polls.

Imagine the hue and cry from the left had the Klan been providing that same type of "security."

The hypocrisy from the left would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high.

Last week, every one of the network and cable news anchors was reading from the same script: Town hall meetings are filled with racists and Nazis. The September 12 protest at the U.S. Capitol was a covert Klan rally. Any criticism of President Obama is a racist rant.

Why are conservative protesters vilified and liberal protesters glorified?

In 1995, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam sponsored the so-called Million Man March -- for black men only. I don't recall any of the network anchors or Democrat leaders calling that gathering racist. Do you?

Imagine if David Duke organized a march for a million white men only? Would the reaction be the same?

Of course not. Duke is a racist loon, but so is Farrakhan. Yet the legacy media handles one with kid gloves and beats the other with a nail-studded club. (Personally, I think both deserve the latter treatment.)

The left is losing the argument on healthcare and voter confidence in President Obama is tanking. Every serious poll shows that the vast majority of Americans are satisfied with their medical insurance. So the Democrats are doing what they always do, attempting to portray as racist anyone who opposes massive healthcare reform and huge spending increases on a host of other needless government programs.

I'm not buying into their argument. President Obama's policies are the problem, not his race.

What do you say?

Chuck out.

Racist Blues

I hear the race police a coming. They're rolling 'round the bend, and I won't see the sunshine 'till I don't know when. I'm stuck in racist re-education camp, and time keeps draggin' on.

Is south Louisiana serial killer central?

By Chuck Hustmyre

from 225 Magazine

Is there something in the water here that breeds serial killers? Maybe it's the Spanish moss. Maybe it's the scent of magnolias hanging in the air.

I'm not sure what it is, but something is going on. In recent years we've had more serial killers per square mile than even California. And they don't call that state the land of fruits and nuts for nothing.

Since I moved back to Baton Rouge in late 2002, we had Derrick Todd Lee, who murdered at least seven women. We had Sean Vincent Gillis, who admitted to killing eight women. Gillis even kept track of Lee through newspaper reports, and I think after the cops nabbed Lee, Gillis went out and notched one more victim just to beat Lee's record.

For a while it seemed like Baton Rouge was hosting the serial killer Olympics.

An hour and a half south, in Houma, Ronald Dominique killed as many as 23 men, most of them by tying them up and strangling them.

And those are just the ones who've been caught. In a 2007 story for 225 called Baton Rouge's other serial killer I describe an as-yet-uncaught serial murder who operated in and around North Street Park and was likely responsible for the deaths of at least 11 women and as many as 20, according to a homicide detective who worked many of the cases.

Unless he's dead, I suspect he will strike again.

There have been others who got away. Detectives say that in the 80s there was a serial killer working near LSU who killed several women, but he was never caught.

Now we have an active serial murderer in Jennings, 30 minutes on the other side of Lafayette. Less than a month ago, the body of 26-year-old Necole Guillory was found dumped beside the road. She was the eighth woman found murdered in Jennings since 2005. The sheriff has formed a task force, though law enforcement officials in Jennings still refuse to use the term "serial killer."

One of the most ridiculous lines I read after the eighth body was discovered was this one from the Alexandria Town Talk: "Although all the dead women used drugs -- most commonly crack cocaine -- and sometimes traded sex for drugs, spent time in jail, knew each other and were disposed of in similar ways, authorities hesitate to say a serial killer is responsible for their deaths."

Hesitate to say a serial killer is responsible ...

What? Are the "authorities" smoking crack too? Eight dead women, all involved in drugs and at least part-time prostitution, all in and out of jail, all of whom knew each other, and ALL DEAD.

Just how many women does this guy need to kill before he picks up his own serial killer sobriquet?

To be fair, Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards is treating the cases as linked and as a serial killer investigation. He's just not saying it.

But that brings me back to my original point. Why do we have so many serial killer cases in south Louisiana? Is it the food, the cayenne, Tiger football ...

What do you say?

Chuck out.