Someone else's murder

I watched a TV show last night. I do entirely too much of that, but this one was different. I did it at the behest of a good friend, who described how the circumstances depicted in the program had touched the lives of her family, especially her father. Over the past few years, I had heard mention in casual conversation of how the events had devastated her dad, but I never got a clear picture of what, exactly, had happened.

Last night, I got the whole story, chapter and verse, thanks to Court TV™.

The program was titled “The Investigators.” It’s yet another of those “true crime” shows that seem to proliferate on every channel from A&E to Discovery to The Biography Channel. Even the sophomoric E! has taken a swing at celebrity crime.

I have a dark—although unsurprising to the constant reader—secret. I’m hooked on these programs. I watch almost all of them, except anything with “Psychic” in the title, or anything on Spike TV. I’ve had too much interaction with real detectives, and we are agreed that the use of “psychics” on a murder case is a waste of time, and generally a large load of horse manure.

Terrible Ted Turner’s Spike TV, or one of its cousins, is currently airing some equally fallacious program wherein lay people are supposed to play detective and take on a homicide investigation. I am not making this up. The premise is not only ludicrous at first blush, but I am personally offended by it, for reasons that are again familiar to the constant readers of this blog. I’m a layman when it comes to law enforcement, and I’ve been trying to solve one murder for nearly 23 years. I don’t have camera crews hanging on my every uttered speculation. I’m not being paid the AGA [Actor’s Guild of America] minimum, which you can earn for one minute on anyone’s talk show.

Some of the true crime programs—including “The Investigators”—are reasonably serious. My favorite is “City Confidential”, but that’s beside the point. I enjoy Paul Winfield’s narration and the sometimes corny scripting.

To swerve back onto point, my friend’s father employed a young woman as a secretary in his insurance company. Mr. B___ thought the world of his secretary, Carole Garton, in a fatherly way. His daughter—known to ScrappleFace bloggers [see link at right] as “Charlie’s Mum”—has described how devastated he was when he learned she had been shot five times, and one of the .44 slugs had passed through the 8-month-old fetus. This happened in 1998 in Cottonwood, California—in Shasta County, I believe. There has been a book written about the case: Kill or Be Killed. The author is interviewed on-camera, but I don’t generally take notes, so his name escapes me. My eidetic memory is failing me. This is why Google™ truly exists; not to support Blogger™ forums.

I called my friend last night to make sure I was watching the right program at the right time; she’d laugh and agree, but she’s a blonde, and her initial data about air time might have been—err—erroneous.

The name of the episode is “Toy Soldier”, and every detail she supplied me prior to its airing is unerringly recreated, mentioned, or referred to in “The Investigators.” When she first excitedly screeched the news of Court TV™ airing the segment, my 40% deafness led me to believe she’d said “The Pot Garden Murders.” What she said was “Todd Garton.” She spoke it very fast—unsure of the title—and my slow hillbilly hearing interpreted thusly.

I won’t give “spoilers” here; you have to see this to believe it. Todd Garton is currently on California’s Death Row, for reasons that will become obvious with the watching of “Toy Soldier”.

I fixated on this, to the exclusion of more relevant “news”—like California now burning to cinders—because I have no tolerance for murderers, and I don’t trust the state of Arnold as far as I can throw it into the Pacific Ocean. The 9th Circus Court of Appeals is capable of anything.

“Charlie’s Mum’s” father was an “Airedale” during War II; he fought the same great fight as my father. Dad was a ground-pounder; a recounting of how he won his Silver Star is available upon request. Point is, the old man [hers] was devastated.

Someone—later identified as Nathan Daniels—walked into the Garton residence and opened fire on an 8-month-pregnant woman who was taking a nap. Both mother and child were killed instantly; he used a .44 Magnum, a very deadly handgun. One of the bullets passed through the eight-month-old fetus. He shot her very accurately, going double-action with the revolver.

I was once solicited to shoot someone “just a little bit.” Not exactly textbook murder, just “shoot and scare him away, or maybe in the arm.”

Uh-huh.

The motives were clean enough; a friend of a friend’s daughter works for a big-league weather channel, and was enduring a stalker. In their usual elegant way, local law was talking TROs [Temporary Restraining Orders]. Nothing had worked; apparently the guy had a case of terminal pestilence.

There is no dark, scary end to this parable, because aside from a conversation, it never happened....that is to say, no one got shot. My first explanation to the solicitor: when the guns come out, there is never any true control over what’s going to happen. My second, more strident reason: you hire an assassin; you’d better be ready to kill him. If you don’t, they’ll either give you over to the law at the first sign of trouble, or take you off for the fee promised up front. Most likely, if you solicit murder, you’ll end up making a deal with an undercover cop, and wind up doing 25-to-life in some state-run hellhole prison where dropping the soap can be a real pain in the ass. Forget the “just a little bit” part; someone may end up dead and the only thing worse than being the one who takes the dirt nap is the one saying “Ooops!” Last time I checked, hot pursuit of a cute blonde isn’t a capital offense.

No preciousness, no sarcasm. I have the attention span of a gnat, and the temperament of a rat on PCP cornered in a drainpipe. I also have two serious observations:

The first is a question. What ever happened to the good old vilified idea of divorce? I suppose a psychologist would say I’m somehow traumatized by watching my parents fight—verbally—like cats and dogs when I was a pup. Yeah, okay, it was scary. There were things in play I couldn’t comprehend. They still managed to stay married for 50 years, and when my father “caught” cancer in 1968, there weren’t any more “discussions”. My million-dollar mom stood by him like the Statue of Liberty.

If you absolutely, positively cannot get along with your spouse, there is this legal entity called a “no-fault divorce”. For those who actually built a body of money and good fortune and don’t want to risk a portion of that along with their hearts, there is the prenuptial-agreement. Last time I looked, love is a spiritual thing. I consider myself something of both an expert and fool on divorce; few people—especially domestic-battle-scarred guys—remarry their ex-spouses. “Hey, I liked being mugged so much, how about you do it again?”

It’s a serious question: Why, if you cannot abide your significant other for one more minute, can you not afford a good divorce lawyer? They come a lot cheaper than OJ’s “dream team” of homicide attorneys. Life is God’s most precious gift; if you don’t believe that, go find this Nathan Daniels puke explaining exactly how stupid he was born to the Gatekeeper of Hell. I’m sure he’ll be very interested.

After a lifetime of sarcasm, I find it impossible to comment on the unraveling of the strange, true tale that touched the life of a dear friend without resorting to it. The tale is pathetic because of the stupidity involved. I vowed to stay away from sarcasm, but I am mortal.

Murder is a pond ripple on the surface of humanity; it is a stone tossed by those who could care less, and like the ripple, it spreads beyond belief.

Are significant others truly disposable commodities that you can take for “stuff”? I can’t answer for the rest of the universe, but a “yes” or “no” would be helpful.

I, also, have been touched by murder. My mother lived her final years in a state of abject paranoia, fearful that she would be killed as my father was. She was spared the terror of an anonymous shooter in the night; the Reaper came quietly in her sleep.

I don’t worry as much; there is a firearm within reach every ten feet inside the Possum Den. Paranoid? Nah!

For the man who shot an 8-months pregnant woman five times with a .44 Magnum—the most powerful handgun in the world, as “Dirty Harry” points out—were you really stupid enough to believe Garton’s BS about a “company”? You have 50 years to arrive at an answer. Considering your age, I don’t think you’ll make it.