I hate obligatory remembrances as much as the next guy, but they serve their purpose. So yes, it was a year ago today that UW-student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered in her Doty Street apartment.
And here's where obligatory remembrances serve their purpose. I have typed or spoken some version of that phrase, "UW-student Brittany Zimmermann, murdered in her Doty Street apartment," literally hundreds of times in the past year -- maybe more. As a news reporter and anchor, I've made mention of the event so many times that... well, I don't want to say it lost its meaning to me, but over time, the bitter anger I felt over her death had begun to abate.
But the first anniversary of this tragedy gave me all new sources of that stinging clean, white-hot rage that first welled up inside me and inspired me to start blogging.
I didn't know Brittany personally, but I felt her loss as a Badger alum, a member of the community and a guy with a little sister Brittany's age living within blocks of the murder scene. The outrage I felt stemmed from a combination of shock, alarm that the system could fail this woman so completely and disappointment in our local officials for their lies, half-truths and complete unwillingness to disclose answers about the debacle.
These are all distressing, ugly feelings to have, and with time, it becomes easier and healthier to let them fade away. It's more comfortable to remember "Brittany Zimmermann, who was murdered in her Doty Street apartment," than it is to fathom the full human scale of the tragedy.
So it was with considerable chagrin that I approached my first assignment of the day -- covering the Brittany Zimmermann remembrance under the bell tower atop Bascom Hill. I certainly recognize the news value in the event and the interest we as members of the public have in peering into it, but nothing will ever stop me from feeling like a voyeur when I'm literally going out of my way to watch other people suffer.
But I have a job to do as a journalist, and self-hating reporter or not, I'm comfortable with myself if I cover these sorts of events in as sensitive a manner as possible, clutching my humanity and decency close. Reporter or not, I'm a human being first, and while it may cost me some so-called "competitive edge," as a matter of principle I won't ever do anything I wouldn't want done to my family if I was the one in the ground.
Apparently, though, two people left their humanity and their decency at home in recognition of Brittany's death.
A Madison Police press release in the week leading up to the anniversary made it clear that Brittany's family did not want to deal with the media, and those members of the media with a soul respected that. My assignment at the remembrance today was to roll some nat sound and then talk to a few students and get their take on the atmosphere around campus.
When I arrived, the family was gathered around the base of the bell tower. Nearby, posses from the university and police administration hovered respectfully. Keeping a 20-yard perimeter around them was a small ensemble of media, mostly newspaper photographers and television crews, all respectfully silent.
The ceremony began as a color guard approached the tower, and the bell began to sound, once for each of the years in Zimmermann's short life. All in all, it was very nice, until the tool bag with a camera and a long lens moved in for the kill.
While I can find a lot of stones to throw at our Modern American Mediascape, I'm often the first to take offense when someone accuses the media of being too pushy. I maintain that, like with any line of work, 99 percent of reporters are decent people doing their job the best they can that know where the line is and will go to extremes to avoid crossing it.
But there's one in every crowd, and as a former newspaper photographer, I can tell you exactly what tool bag was trying to do with his long lens. Faced with a row of sobbing family members, he had to move to within five feet to get a sharp picture of his subject, framed from the eyebrows to the chin, of tears running down the subject's cheek. The depth of field in a shot like that is so shallow, the other family members are reduced to fuzzy cardboard cutouts, but the tears pop off the paper like gems.
It's a layout editor's wet dream.
And he didn't just shoot a few photos. That bell tolled 21 times, and from clangs two through fifteen, he was crouched up and down that row of mourning family members, shutter clicking like a machine gun until police spokesman Joel Despain tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a look that said the only thing that needed shooting was tool bag with the long lens.
I didn't recognize tool bag with the long lens, so I can't call him or the publication he represents out yet. But while the rest of the media kept a respectful distance, he was in there milking that family's grief for all it was worth, and it cast all of us as a whole in a poor light.
But as inappropriate as his behavior was, there was someone else at that remembrance even more hollow as a human being.
In hindsight, I should not have been surprised to see county executive candidate Nancy Mistele there. She's staked her entire campaign on faulting incumbent Kathleen Falk for the tragedy, sometimes fairly, but usually in ways that make me nauseous. Without the murder on Doty Street, Mistele's campaign platform would be bereft of all but one knotty plank -- some rural residents' regressive, irrational fear of bringing commuter rail to Dane County, but that's another issue entirely and couldn't win her 30 percent of the vote.
No one has managed to wring more personal benefit from this innocent young girl's death than Mistele. If there weren't laws against such a thing, she would probably try to dig up Brittany Zimmermann's body and ride it straight into the county executive's office like a sled.
Yet there she was atop Bascom Hill, surrounded by her posse of county officials which included, I was sad to note, Supervisor Ronn Ferrell, who's always struck me as a decent guy otherwise.
I bit my tongue until it went numb and walked the other way when the bell stopped tolling. Had I been a little more in control, I'd have stuck a live mic in her face and asked, "Seriously? What the hell? Have you just foresworn decency in your pursuit of this office or what?" I really wish I had now.
I heard later from another reporter that he did meander over to her and, without rolling tape, asked what brought her out. My source tells me she gave him a calculated lip quiver and sniffled, "I'm just out here for Brittany."
Every decent person on top of that hill today spent half an hour in the place they least wanted to be at that particular moment. Brittany's family was suffering the most visibly, but rest assured Lori Berquam and her crew had nice warm offices within a hundred paces, the police officials present would have traded their badges to have a killer off the streets, and most of the media were so busy hating themselves they'd just as soon have been working for the Rocky Mountain News.
But it was a red-letter day for Nancy Mistele, for whom the afternoon's biggest tragedy was that none of Brittany's family wanted to have their picture taken with her for campaign literature.
Showing posts with label brittany zimmermann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brittany zimmermann. Show all posts
Friday, April 3, 2009
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Eat, Sleep and Breathe it
In light of everything that's happened the past couple of weeks, I guess it makes sense we were due for some good news. But as I head into tomorrow's press conference, I would just like to state for the record how godawfully tired I am of the words "murder," "homicide" and "slaying."In fact, with the number of high-profile killings I'm trying to keep my finger on the pulse of, I'm going to have to create some new synonyms or risk appearing inarticulate.
Madison Police announced today they have a suspect in custody for the murder of Joel Marino. I couldn't be happier at this news, and if it turns out to indeed be the killer, an entire corps of detectives deserves a barrage of back slaps, a standing ovation and a staggering round of drinks. The Capital Times is reporting they tracked the suspect down by poring over mental health records, through which they found a man who matched a suspect seen the day of Marino's death. A detective personally made the trip to Minnesota and interviewed the man, who, supposedly, admitted to killing Marino.
If this turns out to be legitimate, the sheer amount of grunt police work that went into this find is staggering. I am in awe of the lengths to which Madison's detective corps went for this case, and they are indeed a credit to the badges they wear.
With that much said, I can't help but take note that, even on what should by all accounts be a turning point for the Madison cops, the relationship between the press and the police is as strained as ever. Indeed, the press release that kicked the entire Madison media body into action late this afternoon was almost antagonistically simple.
Officer Mike Hanson didn't write much -- about half a page, in fact -- and what he did say was short, vague and to-the-point. In a nutshell, it read, "We've arrested a guy somewhere in Minnesota, we're extraditing him, and we're not saying anything else until the press conference tomorrow." And as any reporter in town will tell you, the department has been on information lockdown ever since.
I understand the need to get a whole lot of work done by tomorrow morning. I applaud the men and women who are still hunched over their desks as I type this in my flannel pants and the comfort of my own home. But isn't that what you hire a guy like Joel Despain for? Isn't the point of paying a public information officer having someone to act as the lone go-between for the police and the press so the cops can grind away at work while only occasionally fielding questions from someone who's already caught up on all but the latest developments?
Funny thing, that, actually. In what can simply be described as one of the most enviable occurences of fortuitous timing in public relations history, Joel Despain has been on vacation for a good week or two. A number of other regulars at the Madison Police Department have been filling in for him, including Officer Mike Hanson, Officer Howard Payne and Lt. Jerry Tomczak. I don't think any of them knew what they were getting into when they volunteered for that duty.
But back to the issue. Half a million people (excepting, I guess, the radio DJ who walked into our newsroom today and asked who Joel Marino was) in the Madison area have been thirsting for answers in an information dessert for months, and the police this afternoon handed them a shot glass of Tang and said, "We'll get you another round tomorrow."
In the mad flurry of phone calls I made after we received that email, I ended up on the horn with Minneapolis Police Department Sgt. Jesse Garcia. He was incredibly helpful, to the extent he was able, at least. In the span of a half hour, he dispatched a dozen phone calls to determine the suspect was NOT, in fact, arrested in Minneapolis. Yes, we were very strapped for leads.
When we touched base later, after the initial frenzy had settled down, we had a moment to chat. Garcia mentioned he had been on the phone with a few Madison police just to make sure this case was not one his department should be aware of. He even kidded me a little, "It doesn't sound like they want to talk to you right now. You've been too rough on them."
It's a universal misperception that hits reporters the most. When one newspaper, radio or TV station reports something, the perception quickly becomes, "It's the media out to get us..." As in, "every one of you bastards with a press pass."
In this case, I personally was guilty as charged, so I laughed about it. I explained that, yes, a number of us in the media had taken some pot shots at the police administration for what I still consider to be an overzealous approach to controlling the information about these stranger murders. I told him about Kelly Nolan, who turned up dead a year ago, and how her family, friends and neighbors still don't even know how she died.
I expressed my belief that an informed public is a public armed to defend itself -- maybe even help police catch the perpetrators -- and he agreed with me. "Yeah, it sounds like they could really do a lot more to work with you guys on this," Garcia told me.
He explained to me that his desk is located in the Minneapolis Chief of Police's office. He is privy to attend meetings with the Chief, and they work very closely with the press to release as much information as possible. When I told him how Madison Police Chief Noble Wray subverted public information officer Joel Despain by keeping him out of the loop early in the Brittany Zimmermann case and going around him to announce a week into the case her door had been broken down, Garcia was bemused.
"That doesn't sound very effective," he said.
"It's a miserable way to play the game," I agreed.
"Should it really be a game though?" he asked, then caught himself. "I mean, I guess it kind of is any way you play it. But aren't the police and the press ultimately in it for the same reason?"
He's right, we agreed. After all, I could be making a whole lot more money as...well, just about anything that's not a reporter, but I chose this line of work for now as a means to better society as I see it. "Knowledge is power," and I want to protect the public, just as the police do in their own way. Sometimes the means to that end differ between the media and the authorities, but those differences are out of control in Madison.
Granted it's skewed, but from my viewpoint, the police started what's become a bitter, even spiteful tug-of-war game with all the facts as a rope. The harder we pull, the harder they pull back, to the point where we're picking battles over some pretty petty issues.
So tomorrow is a big day for Madison's police department. The men and women who have helped bring this suspect into custody still have a lot of work ahead of them, but they'll finally get some of the credit they're long overdue.
The police administration has a chance to shed a whole lot of information on a case that has, quite frankly, been scaring the crap out of people for far too long. It's certainly possible they'll simply hand out another vague page of information and spit out a few useless soundbites, but I'm hopeful this press conference will mark a new information modus operandi for the Marino case, if not the unsolved murders altogether.
One thing's for certain: I'd probably better wear a tie to work tomorrow.
Madison Police announced today they have a suspect in custody for the murder of Joel Marino. I couldn't be happier at this news, and if it turns out to indeed be the killer, an entire corps of detectives deserves a barrage of back slaps, a standing ovation and a staggering round of drinks. The Capital Times is reporting they tracked the suspect down by poring over mental health records, through which they found a man who matched a suspect seen the day of Marino's death. A detective personally made the trip to Minnesota and interviewed the man, who, supposedly, admitted to killing Marino.
If this turns out to be legitimate, the sheer amount of grunt police work that went into this find is staggering. I am in awe of the lengths to which Madison's detective corps went for this case, and they are indeed a credit to the badges they wear.
With that much said, I can't help but take note that, even on what should by all accounts be a turning point for the Madison cops, the relationship between the press and the police is as strained as ever. Indeed, the press release that kicked the entire Madison media body into action late this afternoon was almost antagonistically simple.
Officer Mike Hanson didn't write much -- about half a page, in fact -- and what he did say was short, vague and to-the-point. In a nutshell, it read, "We've arrested a guy somewhere in Minnesota, we're extraditing him, and we're not saying anything else until the press conference tomorrow." And as any reporter in town will tell you, the department has been on information lockdown ever since.
I understand the need to get a whole lot of work done by tomorrow morning. I applaud the men and women who are still hunched over their desks as I type this in my flannel pants and the comfort of my own home. But isn't that what you hire a guy like Joel Despain for? Isn't the point of paying a public information officer having someone to act as the lone go-between for the police and the press so the cops can grind away at work while only occasionally fielding questions from someone who's already caught up on all but the latest developments?
Funny thing, that, actually. In what can simply be described as one of the most enviable occurences of fortuitous timing in public relations history, Joel Despain has been on vacation for a good week or two. A number of other regulars at the Madison Police Department have been filling in for him, including Officer Mike Hanson, Officer Howard Payne and Lt. Jerry Tomczak. I don't think any of them knew what they were getting into when they volunteered for that duty.
But back to the issue. Half a million people (excepting, I guess, the radio DJ who walked into our newsroom today and asked who Joel Marino was) in the Madison area have been thirsting for answers in an information dessert for months, and the police this afternoon handed them a shot glass of Tang and said, "We'll get you another round tomorrow."
In the mad flurry of phone calls I made after we received that email, I ended up on the horn with Minneapolis Police Department Sgt. Jesse Garcia. He was incredibly helpful, to the extent he was able, at least. In the span of a half hour, he dispatched a dozen phone calls to determine the suspect was NOT, in fact, arrested in Minneapolis. Yes, we were very strapped for leads.
When we touched base later, after the initial frenzy had settled down, we had a moment to chat. Garcia mentioned he had been on the phone with a few Madison police just to make sure this case was not one his department should be aware of. He even kidded me a little, "It doesn't sound like they want to talk to you right now. You've been too rough on them."
It's a universal misperception that hits reporters the most. When one newspaper, radio or TV station reports something, the perception quickly becomes, "It's the media out to get us..." As in, "every one of you bastards with a press pass."
In this case, I personally was guilty as charged, so I laughed about it. I explained that, yes, a number of us in the media had taken some pot shots at the police administration for what I still consider to be an overzealous approach to controlling the information about these stranger murders. I told him about Kelly Nolan, who turned up dead a year ago, and how her family, friends and neighbors still don't even know how she died.
I expressed my belief that an informed public is a public armed to defend itself -- maybe even help police catch the perpetrators -- and he agreed with me. "Yeah, it sounds like they could really do a lot more to work with you guys on this," Garcia told me.
He explained to me that his desk is located in the Minneapolis Chief of Police's office. He is privy to attend meetings with the Chief, and they work very closely with the press to release as much information as possible. When I told him how Madison Police Chief Noble Wray subverted public information officer Joel Despain by keeping him out of the loop early in the Brittany Zimmermann case and going around him to announce a week into the case her door had been broken down, Garcia was bemused.
"That doesn't sound very effective," he said.
"It's a miserable way to play the game," I agreed.
"Should it really be a game though?" he asked, then caught himself. "I mean, I guess it kind of is any way you play it. But aren't the police and the press ultimately in it for the same reason?"
He's right, we agreed. After all, I could be making a whole lot more money as...well, just about anything that's not a reporter, but I chose this line of work for now as a means to better society as I see it. "Knowledge is power," and I want to protect the public, just as the police do in their own way. Sometimes the means to that end differ between the media and the authorities, but those differences are out of control in Madison.
Granted it's skewed, but from my viewpoint, the police started what's become a bitter, even spiteful tug-of-war game with all the facts as a rope. The harder we pull, the harder they pull back, to the point where we're picking battles over some pretty petty issues.
So tomorrow is a big day for Madison's police department. The men and women who have helped bring this suspect into custody still have a lot of work ahead of them, but they'll finally get some of the credit they're long overdue.
The police administration has a chance to shed a whole lot of information on a case that has, quite frankly, been scaring the crap out of people for far too long. It's certainly possible they'll simply hand out another vague page of information and spit out a few useless soundbites, but I'm hopeful this press conference will mark a new information modus operandi for the Marino case, if not the unsolved murders altogether.
One thing's for certain: I'd probably better wear a tie to work tomorrow.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
a Little Shaken Up
Bad news travels fast, they say. That's how it worked out that it took me a year to find out my old classmate Kelcey Fike had moved out to Nebraska, and only about a day to find out she was dead.
Murdered, actually, is what they're saying now. Authorities arrived early Tuesday morning and found her home on fire, and so for a couple days they allowed the story to persist that it was an accidental death. But in a press conference on Thursday, the Kearney Police said that's not so much the case. Apparently, autopsy results show the cause of death to have been something else entirely.
Of course, the police are playing it tight-lipped with the details. Quite honestly, they haven't said shit, and for Kelcey's friends back here in Wisconsin, it's maddening.
A couple of months ago, I invested a good deal of effort in lambasting the Madison Police Department for their reprehensible lack of transparency in the unsolved murders of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann. In fact, this Monday will mark a year since Kelly Nolan was last seen in the State Street area before turning up dead in a swamp south of Madison weeks later, and her immediate family -- the people she lived with and loved -- still don't even know how she died.
A lot of people pointed out -- and fairly, might I add -- that as a member of the media, I'm inclined to take the approach of full disclosure. They maintain I think the police should release any pertinent detail, consequences be damned. I know that's not true. In fact, when I was working on a very high-profile murder case in Portage a year ago, I'm still very proud of the decisions I made with Jason Maddux, our editor, Ed Treleven, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, and WSJ state editor Phil Brinkman about which information was fit for publishing and which was simply titillating conjecture.
I also think the Portage Police Department was very professional and very fair in the manner they chose which information to release and which to repress, in that case. They're a goddamn bastion of "right-to-know" prowess when contrasted with Madison lately.
It's been my fear since I started in this line of work I would end up on the other side of the reporter's notepad. A wise, albeit fictional, man once said to a doctor, "You ought to be shot. Or stabbed. Lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified. But they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?"
That was how I felt last night when I found out Kelcey had been murdered: numb like I'd been shot. We went to the same church, we sang in the same choir and, most notably, we dicked around in Mr. Bennett's eighth-hour Stagecraft class together -- the source of my most vivid Kelcey Fike memories. And then when I graduated, she became one of those people I always wished I had kept in better touch with.
It seems very distant now, and I don't think I had talked to her since I graduated high school five years ago, excepting a few Facebook wall posts. Her death, for me, is just a taste of the kind of pain I document in other people as a reporter. I'm incredibly unsettled, distracted even. I'm a little scared, a little vulnerable, a little wistful. But mostly, I want answers, and quite honestly I want to see the person that did it to her flayed alive. I want to see them writhe in pain, terrified of death and overwhelmed with remorse for the heinous crime of snuffing out a life as vibrant as Kelcey's.
I've heard second-hand that Kelcey's brother, John, and her parents are in agony -- obviously. I can't do anything but wish them the best and hope there are quick answers to the questions burning inside them.
It's the doubt that's the worst. I feel like I need answers before I can accept this as the actual truth. Right now, it seems too surreal to be fact, and I can't see myself acknowledging it until I know much, much more about what happened. I can't see how people like the families of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann have made it this far with as few answers as they've gotten.
I'm sure of this: I'm glad I'm not working closely with this story as a reporter. The authorities in Kearney, Nebraska had better think long and hard about how they approach the information surrounding Kelcey's death this weekend, because there are a lot of people just hanging, waiting for answers.
I wouldn't be able to handle working on this story. I watched the video (link above) of the press conference in Kearney, and if I had been there, I would have been hard-pressed NOT to knock that smug facade off Police Chief Dan Lynch's face. I'm not a patient person, nor do I have much stomach for the standard "we're not going to talk about" it bullshit. I would have had to excuse myself from the room or face officer assault charges for grabbing that bungler about the throat and screaming "She's not just another body, you pig!" into his face.
Lynch told reporters, "We have several suspects...we're trying to work it down." Hopefully that means they'll have someone in custody shortly, and they'll be able to answer more questions. In the meantime, I hope Kelcey's laughing somewhere at what a fuss all of us are making over this whole thing.
I did spend a half hour this afternoon digging through an old box of photos I have. I was sure I had a good one of Kelcey in there somewhere, something I had taken in Stagecraft my senior year in high school. As I flipped through dozens of photos, my stomach dropped through the floor with dread as I found pictures from that class. I knew I was coming up on it.
Then, suddenly, there she was, standing among a saw-dusty set shop in jeans and workboots. The lighting in that back room was terrible, and as a result, the camera's flash lit her up brighter than everything else. She looks vital, very much alive, and her smile jumps right off the polyethylene.
I had to show it to Clinton, my roommate and best buddy, who was closer to her than I was. He nodded slowly. "That's a nice picture," was all he said.
Murdered, actually, is what they're saying now. Authorities arrived early Tuesday morning and found her home on fire, and so for a couple days they allowed the story to persist that it was an accidental death. But in a press conference on Thursday, the Kearney Police said that's not so much the case. Apparently, autopsy results show the cause of death to have been something else entirely.
Of course, the police are playing it tight-lipped with the details. Quite honestly, they haven't said shit, and for Kelcey's friends back here in Wisconsin, it's maddening.
A couple of months ago, I invested a good deal of effort in lambasting the Madison Police Department for their reprehensible lack of transparency in the unsolved murders of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann. In fact, this Monday will mark a year since Kelly Nolan was last seen in the State Street area before turning up dead in a swamp south of Madison weeks later, and her immediate family -- the people she lived with and loved -- still don't even know how she died.
A lot of people pointed out -- and fairly, might I add -- that as a member of the media, I'm inclined to take the approach of full disclosure. They maintain I think the police should release any pertinent detail, consequences be damned. I know that's not true. In fact, when I was working on a very high-profile murder case in Portage a year ago, I'm still very proud of the decisions I made with Jason Maddux, our editor, Ed Treleven, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, and WSJ state editor Phil Brinkman about which information was fit for publishing and which was simply titillating conjecture.
I also think the Portage Police Department was very professional and very fair in the manner they chose which information to release and which to repress, in that case. They're a goddamn bastion of "right-to-know" prowess when contrasted with Madison lately.
It's been my fear since I started in this line of work I would end up on the other side of the reporter's notepad. A wise, albeit fictional, man once said to a doctor, "You ought to be shot. Or stabbed. Lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified. But they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?"
That was how I felt last night when I found out Kelcey had been murdered: numb like I'd been shot. We went to the same church, we sang in the same choir and, most notably, we dicked around in Mr. Bennett's eighth-hour Stagecraft class together -- the source of my most vivid Kelcey Fike memories. And then when I graduated, she became one of those people I always wished I had kept in better touch with.
It seems very distant now, and I don't think I had talked to her since I graduated high school five years ago, excepting a few Facebook wall posts. Her death, for me, is just a taste of the kind of pain I document in other people as a reporter. I'm incredibly unsettled, distracted even. I'm a little scared, a little vulnerable, a little wistful. But mostly, I want answers, and quite honestly I want to see the person that did it to her flayed alive. I want to see them writhe in pain, terrified of death and overwhelmed with remorse for the heinous crime of snuffing out a life as vibrant as Kelcey's.
I've heard second-hand that Kelcey's brother, John, and her parents are in agony -- obviously. I can't do anything but wish them the best and hope there are quick answers to the questions burning inside them.
It's the doubt that's the worst. I feel like I need answers before I can accept this as the actual truth. Right now, it seems too surreal to be fact, and I can't see myself acknowledging it until I know much, much more about what happened. I can't see how people like the families of Kelly Nolan, Joel Marino and Brittany Zimmermann have made it this far with as few answers as they've gotten.
I'm sure of this: I'm glad I'm not working closely with this story as a reporter. The authorities in Kearney, Nebraska had better think long and hard about how they approach the information surrounding Kelcey's death this weekend, because there are a lot of people just hanging, waiting for answers.
I wouldn't be able to handle working on this story. I watched the video (link above) of the press conference in Kearney, and if I had been there, I would have been hard-pressed NOT to knock that smug facade off Police Chief Dan Lynch's face. I'm not a patient person, nor do I have much stomach for the standard "we're not going to talk about" it bullshit. I would have had to excuse myself from the room or face officer assault charges for grabbing that bungler about the throat and screaming "She's not just another body, you pig!" into his face.
Lynch told reporters, "We have several suspects...we're trying to work it down." Hopefully that means they'll have someone in custody shortly, and they'll be able to answer more questions. In the meantime, I hope Kelcey's laughing somewhere at what a fuss all of us are making over this whole thing.
I did spend a half hour this afternoon digging through an old box of photos I have. I was sure I had a good one of Kelcey in there somewhere, something I had taken in Stagecraft my senior year in high school. As I flipped through dozens of photos, my stomach dropped through the floor with dread as I found pictures from that class. I knew I was coming up on it.
Then, suddenly, there she was, standing among a saw-dusty set shop in jeans and workboots. The lighting in that back room was terrible, and as a result, the camera's flash lit her up brighter than everything else. She looks vital, very much alive, and her smile jumps right off the polyethylene.
I had to show it to Clinton, my roommate and best buddy, who was closer to her than I was. He nodded slowly. "That's a nice picture," was all he said.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Going fast
I'm guessing this means the police have cleared Brittany Zimmermann's house as a crime scene.
http://madison.craigslist.org/apa/681596568.html
We wouldn't know, of course, from what they've told us about the investigation thus far (Read: nothing). But this is still maybe a little premature. Have they even had time to repaint the walls and recarpet the place yet, or are they counting on that as a selling point? "And if you'll look to your left in the (REDACTED BY THE MADISON POLICE DEPARTMENT) room, you'll see the stain where Brittany Zimmermann laid in her final minutes on earth. And over here is the door the killer broke through. Don't worry though... we've fixed the lock!"
And in fact, it says right in the craigslist ad: the building "could easily be used as a whole house for a group of friends!" That's good, because someone will be upstairs to hear you scream. And if you need an early move-in, no worries! It's not like the outgoing tenants are around to object.
I think Wisconsin Management Company is doing the honorable thing here, I really do. After all, sure Brittany Zimmermann's death is tragic, but the real tragedy would be if one of Madison's biggest slumlord management companies went a year without squeezing every conceivable cent out of the UW's student population.
http://madison.craigslist.org/apa/681596568.html
We wouldn't know, of course, from what they've told us about the investigation thus far (Read: nothing). But this is still maybe a little premature. Have they even had time to repaint the walls and recarpet the place yet, or are they counting on that as a selling point? "And if you'll look to your left in the (REDACTED BY THE MADISON POLICE DEPARTMENT) room, you'll see the stain where Brittany Zimmermann laid in her final minutes on earth. And over here is the door the killer broke through. Don't worry though... we've fixed the lock!"
And in fact, it says right in the craigslist ad: the building "could easily be used as a whole house for a group of friends!" That's good, because someone will be upstairs to hear you scream. And if you need an early move-in, no worries! It's not like the outgoing tenants are around to object.
I think Wisconsin Management Company is doing the honorable thing here, I really do. After all, sure Brittany Zimmermann's death is tragic, but the real tragedy would be if one of Madison's biggest slumlord management companies went a year without squeezing every conceivable cent out of the UW's student population.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
A Real Burden
A great man, albeit a fictional one, once said, "It's a real burden being right so often." I take no pleasure in either the fact that it was, indeed, "a damn long day" today, nor the fact that everything I was afraid of is coming true.
The Isthmus broke the story today. This was a very fine piece of digging by reporter Jason Shepard. I've said before that good reporting should turn heads, great reporting should rip them off, and the shitstorm that blew up behind this article was certainly a Category Five.
As information emerged from two press conferences, I read a new version of this story on the air EVERY TWENTY MINUTES for four hours. Here's the short of it: Someone at the police department, likely frustrated, leaked to Shepard that Dane County's dispatch center received a 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone at the time of the murder. That call was disconnected, and in their followup to the call, someone absolutely dropped the ball and may have squandered valuable time.
The police, in their infinite wisdom, won't say anything about the content of the phone call. We don't know if the dispatcher spoke to Zimmermann. We don't know how long the call lasted before the line went silent, leading the dispatcher to disconnect from it. We don't even know if it was Zimmermann who made the call. All police are saying is that something in the content of the call should have led the dispatcher to alert them immediately. Instead, the dispatcher took another call in the queue, and broke from national 911 policy when he or she did not try to call the "hang-up" back.
Dispatch center director Joseph Norwick, for his part, quibbled over the county's ability to accurately trace 911 calls placed via cell phone. None of that matters, of course, if we are to buy Chief Noble Wray's line that something about the call ought to have caused dispatchers to notify police right away. But with each side pointing its finger at the other, and neither releasing any substantive information for fear of "compromising the case," attentive citizens will just have to be satisfied venting their rage at law enforcement in general without a specific, deserving target.
The real crime here, at least the one that's not murder, is that none of this was made public until the article ran today. In all likelihood, were it not for Shepard's vigilant snooping, the public would never have known the case was mishandled from its very inception. I'm not saying police could have saved Brittany Zimmermann's life, but they VERY conceivably could have arrived on the scene in time to spot a deranged maniac with a bloody knife running down the block.
Like the decision to withhold information for a week that the home was broken into, keeping this from the public was bad judgement, and it reeks of a coverup. Norwick saying his department has "nothing to apologize for at this time" is despicable, but Wray should be ashamed of the growing lack of transparency in his department. Five unsolved murders in one year is scary. A public that doesn't know enough to protect themselves about any of them is damn alarming.
What's more, with as little information as has been released, there's no guarantee there aren't more major mistakes lurking beneath the surface of these stories. The answer to Lisa Simpson's age-old question "Who will police the police?" isn't the Coast Guard, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don't think we've seen the last cover up.
The Isthmus broke the story today. This was a very fine piece of digging by reporter Jason Shepard. I've said before that good reporting should turn heads, great reporting should rip them off, and the shitstorm that blew up behind this article was certainly a Category Five.
As information emerged from two press conferences, I read a new version of this story on the air EVERY TWENTY MINUTES for four hours. Here's the short of it: Someone at the police department, likely frustrated, leaked to Shepard that Dane County's dispatch center received a 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone at the time of the murder. That call was disconnected, and in their followup to the call, someone absolutely dropped the ball and may have squandered valuable time.
The police, in their infinite wisdom, won't say anything about the content of the phone call. We don't know if the dispatcher spoke to Zimmermann. We don't know how long the call lasted before the line went silent, leading the dispatcher to disconnect from it. We don't even know if it was Zimmermann who made the call. All police are saying is that something in the content of the call should have led the dispatcher to alert them immediately. Instead, the dispatcher took another call in the queue, and broke from national 911 policy when he or she did not try to call the "hang-up" back.
Dispatch center director Joseph Norwick, for his part, quibbled over the county's ability to accurately trace 911 calls placed via cell phone. None of that matters, of course, if we are to buy Chief Noble Wray's line that something about the call ought to have caused dispatchers to notify police right away. But with each side pointing its finger at the other, and neither releasing any substantive information for fear of "compromising the case," attentive citizens will just have to be satisfied venting their rage at law enforcement in general without a specific, deserving target.
The real crime here, at least the one that's not murder, is that none of this was made public until the article ran today. In all likelihood, were it not for Shepard's vigilant snooping, the public would never have known the case was mishandled from its very inception. I'm not saying police could have saved Brittany Zimmermann's life, but they VERY conceivably could have arrived on the scene in time to spot a deranged maniac with a bloody knife running down the block.
Like the decision to withhold information for a week that the home was broken into, keeping this from the public was bad judgement, and it reeks of a coverup. Norwick saying his department has "nothing to apologize for at this time" is despicable, but Wray should be ashamed of the growing lack of transparency in his department. Five unsolved murders in one year is scary. A public that doesn't know enough to protect themselves about any of them is damn alarming.
What's more, with as little information as has been released, there's no guarantee there aren't more major mistakes lurking beneath the surface of these stories. The answer to Lisa Simpson's age-old question "Who will police the police?" isn't the Coast Guard, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don't think we've seen the last cover up.
This week's BAMFs
It's been one of those weeks that runs high on inspiration and low on free time.
However, I couldn't stay away from one piece of information I got for long. It was actually funny, because I was sitting at the Mifflin Street Block Party informational meeting when I heard about it. Contrary to conventional wisdom, when confronted with the choice between sitting at a table with strangers and plopping down with a couple of competing reporters, I will often plop down with the other newshounds. We delight in taunting each other with tantalizing leads we're working on and swapping stories of our favorite and least favoite public officials.
Anyway, the meeting was getting long, a student asked a particularly asinine question of an already badgered Madison cop and I was sharing a knowing glance with State Journal writer Brittany Schoepp and WIBA reporter Jason Fischer. Mike Verveer, in the midst of a sentence that likely defused the eighth potential police / student clash of the evening, mentioned this noteble tidbit. Immediately, the three of us siezed notebooks and began shorthanding furiously.
Apparently, Brittany Zimmermann's family will be at the Mifflin Street Block Party this weekend operating a food stand. That's right, the people whose daughter was stabbed by some psycho who's nowhere near being brought to justice will be selling hot dogs to drunk college kids a few short blocks from where the body was found in order to raise money to establish a college scholarship in their daughter's name. I hope you'll pause just a moment to reflect on the colossal hearts beating in these people's chests...
...because I, quite frankly, am in awe. And don't for a moment think that it's numbness or insensitivity at play in her parents. This is love. It's bravery, it's philanthropy, it's every good and decent thing most of us don't even have the gall to imagine we would be capable of in their position. Instead of wallowing in self pity and hiding from the cold reality of the situation, they're immersing themselves in it. Saturday will, in all likelihood, be the second most painful day of their lives, as they watch kids their dead daughter's age enjoying everything Madison has to offer. Every reveler they see will be a reminder that Brittany should be there, among them.
They know this, yet they'll be there Saturday, tears streaming down their faces, lips pressed tight in brave smiles, hearts broken. They will come because it's a chance, they think, to raise a few hundred bucks to keep their daughter's memory alive.
I spoke to Brittany's father, Kevin Zimmermann, a couple of weeks after the killing. He told me he never went to college, but his family loved the Univerity of Wisconsin. They went to football games for years, and it was his daughter's goal to attend school here. She made it in, and even though they were a family barely scraping by, they worked hard, together, and raised the money for her to attend. He told me he and his wife agreed founding a scholarship in her name is something Brittany would have liked a lot.
On Saturday, I hope our students show the Zimmermanns not only that we know how to party at the UW. Everyone knows that. I hope we show them how we take care of our own, and how the block party is more than just a "drunk fest." It's a celebration of life in general, and foremost this year, one life in particular.
In the worst years, through sleet and rain, I've seen 10,000 people turn out to the block party. In good years, authorities have estimated the number between 25,000 and 30,000. At any rate, if half those people visit the Zimmermanns' food stand and buy something for five bucks, they'll have enough money to start a fund that will guarantee their daughter's name will outlive them both, which Kevin told me was his goal. I will personally be disappointed if they leave Miffland with less than $100,000, and long after the last hot dog has been sold, I expect to see Badgers lined up to pay their respects and drop a tenner in the bucket.
After all, it's how we roll.
In closing, I just caught wind there was a shooting on West Washington Avenue, and crews are going to begin setting up to shoot scenes for the new Depp movie at the state capitol tomorrow. There's a whole lot of shooting going on. May 1st is indeed going to be a damn long day.
However, I couldn't stay away from one piece of information I got for long. It was actually funny, because I was sitting at the Mifflin Street Block Party informational meeting when I heard about it. Contrary to conventional wisdom, when confronted with the choice between sitting at a table with strangers and plopping down with a couple of competing reporters, I will often plop down with the other newshounds. We delight in taunting each other with tantalizing leads we're working on and swapping stories of our favorite and least favoite public officials.
Anyway, the meeting was getting long, a student asked a particularly asinine question of an already badgered Madison cop and I was sharing a knowing glance with State Journal writer Brittany Schoepp and WIBA reporter Jason Fischer. Mike Verveer, in the midst of a sentence that likely defused the eighth potential police / student clash of the evening, mentioned this noteble tidbit. Immediately, the three of us siezed notebooks and began shorthanding furiously.
Apparently, Brittany Zimmermann's family will be at the Mifflin Street Block Party this weekend operating a food stand. That's right, the people whose daughter was stabbed by some psycho who's nowhere near being brought to justice will be selling hot dogs to drunk college kids a few short blocks from where the body was found in order to raise money to establish a college scholarship in their daughter's name. I hope you'll pause just a moment to reflect on the colossal hearts beating in these people's chests...
...because I, quite frankly, am in awe. And don't for a moment think that it's numbness or insensitivity at play in her parents. This is love. It's bravery, it's philanthropy, it's every good and decent thing most of us don't even have the gall to imagine we would be capable of in their position. Instead of wallowing in self pity and hiding from the cold reality of the situation, they're immersing themselves in it. Saturday will, in all likelihood, be the second most painful day of their lives, as they watch kids their dead daughter's age enjoying everything Madison has to offer. Every reveler they see will be a reminder that Brittany should be there, among them.
They know this, yet they'll be there Saturday, tears streaming down their faces, lips pressed tight in brave smiles, hearts broken. They will come because it's a chance, they think, to raise a few hundred bucks to keep their daughter's memory alive.
I spoke to Brittany's father, Kevin Zimmermann, a couple of weeks after the killing. He told me he never went to college, but his family loved the Univerity of Wisconsin. They went to football games for years, and it was his daughter's goal to attend school here. She made it in, and even though they were a family barely scraping by, they worked hard, together, and raised the money for her to attend. He told me he and his wife agreed founding a scholarship in her name is something Brittany would have liked a lot.
On Saturday, I hope our students show the Zimmermanns not only that we know how to party at the UW. Everyone knows that. I hope we show them how we take care of our own, and how the block party is more than just a "drunk fest." It's a celebration of life in general, and foremost this year, one life in particular.
In the worst years, through sleet and rain, I've seen 10,000 people turn out to the block party. In good years, authorities have estimated the number between 25,000 and 30,000. At any rate, if half those people visit the Zimmermanns' food stand and buy something for five bucks, they'll have enough money to start a fund that will guarantee their daughter's name will outlive them both, which Kevin told me was his goal. I will personally be disappointed if they leave Miffland with less than $100,000, and long after the last hot dog has been sold, I expect to see Badgers lined up to pay their respects and drop a tenner in the bucket.
After all, it's how we roll.
In closing, I just caught wind there was a shooting on West Washington Avenue, and crews are going to begin setting up to shoot scenes for the new Depp movie at the state capitol tomorrow. There's a whole lot of shooting going on. May 1st is indeed going to be a damn long day.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
CSI Madison ?!?
The state journal reported today that Brittany Zimmermann's killer forced entry into her apartment on Doty Street before killing her. This upset me a bit, and not just because they beat us to the story. In fact, they beat everybody to the story, including their spokesman Joel Despain. As I understand it, he was just as surprised as everyone when Madison Police Chief Noble Wray decided to come forward with the information.
What alarms me is that, as members of the media and an informed public, we operated under the assumption that Zimmermann's killer walked through an unlocked front door and assailed her. As a downtown resident myself, one who could fire a waterballoon launcher and hit the alley where authorities found Joel Marino's body, I took heed to the warnings of friends and family. They cautioned me, "Lock your doors, even in the middle of the day."
If our original assumptions were correct, and if police are correct in assuming Zimmermann's slaying was indeed a random act, and if they are correct in saying her killer is still at large in the downtown community, locking the door would have been enough to keep anyone safe...Except now, Chief Wray adds, almost as if it were an afterthought, that the killer broke into her house. And it seems like, if my friends and family really wanted to give me good advice, "You ought to consider reinforcing your front door with quarter-inch steel rebar and plating the windows" would have been more appropriate.
I understand the need to keep certain details of an investigation shielded from the public view. As a reporter, I deal with it, I accept it like a brick wall, every day. In Joel Despain's written statement to State Journal reporter Sandy Cullen, he makes note of it as well:
"When you have a homicide where there is the distinct possibility that a true stranger/strangers might be the perpetrator/perpetrators things like method of entry, and cause of death are often withheld. The reason for this is that detectives must rely heavily on interviews wih potential witnesses/suspects wherein only they and the killer/killers or witness/witnesses possess the details of the crime. It is not unusual that some contacted during an investigation -- who because of things like mental illness, or alcohol/drug abuse -- will proide bogus confessions of information. They may purport to know things they do not, and the only way to determine their veracity is by holding back key details. Police Chief Wray, as you know, is also keenly aware of the question regarding public safety as it may relate to the mode of entry in the Zimmermann case. He took time deliberating whether revealing this detail would outweigh investigators desire to withhold the information while they search for a killer. It has proven to be a difficult decision. However, Chief Wray has decided -- after conducting this balancing test -- that the right thing to do was to confirm to you that there was forced entry on a door to the building in which Zimmermann resided..."
You're DAMN SKIPPY the right thing to do is to confirm the damn detail! A DETAIL?!? A measily, worthless little DETAIL?!? We're talking about the public safety of forty-two thousand University of Wisconsin students and maybe twenty-five thousand more downtown residents. Telling us the door was forced open is simply a START. How about telling us HOW it was forced open, and what WE can DO to keep it from happening to US?
Chief Wray certainly "took time deliberating" over the release of this information...eight days, in fact, during which it could have happened again. I won't insinuate there's a connection between Zimmermann's murder last week and Marino's murder in February, but I wouldn't be the first to do so. The similarities are striking and apparent to anyone who can read. I will, however, drag the other THREE unsolved murders in the past year out onto the table.
Authorities have remained ever-so-tight-lipped about the details surrounding each, but it doesn't seem to have helped them catch the killers. To this day, we don't know how UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan was killed after she disappeared from State Street, and police have yet to release any details other than where she was found.
I have a sticker on my computer monitor that reads, "Knowledge is power. Arm yourself." Under this standard, the Madison Police Department has left every single Madison resident vulnerable and defenseless.
Now I know that we're talking about Madison, a metropolitan area of only half a million. Furthermore, I know there are cities that would, pun intended, kill for a murder rate as low as ours. That's what's appealing to so many Madisonians.
Policing is an occupation that puts glory in danger and duty, and Madison ain't New York City. But if Chief Wray and his detectives are occluding details that are in the public's best interest to know so they can have a macho "CSI moment," we have more than a murder problem in Madison. Detective Sipowicz might wear a tie with short sleeves, but even he isn't foolish enough to endanger the public by squelching information. It makes you wonder if they don't just clamp down on details as some kind of demonstration of their authority as police.
It makes you wonder what mistakes and ineptitudes might be exposed if the investigations were more visible to the public. Not that I have any reason to suspect the police have handled the murder investigations in anything but a competent and professional manner. But they have utterly failed in their obligation to keep the public abreast of the crucial knowledge they may have in these murders that affect, endanger and frighten us all.
As a reporter, it becomes easy to fall into the habit of accepting it at face value when a member of law enforcement tells you they've given all the information they can give. It's the authorities' responsibility to keep the public informed and safe, and it's the media's responsibility to do the same. But beyond that, it falls to the media to out the authorities when they're not holding up their end of the bargain.
What alarms me is that, as members of the media and an informed public, we operated under the assumption that Zimmermann's killer walked through an unlocked front door and assailed her. As a downtown resident myself, one who could fire a waterballoon launcher and hit the alley where authorities found Joel Marino's body, I took heed to the warnings of friends and family. They cautioned me, "Lock your doors, even in the middle of the day."
If our original assumptions were correct, and if police are correct in assuming Zimmermann's slaying was indeed a random act, and if they are correct in saying her killer is still at large in the downtown community, locking the door would have been enough to keep anyone safe...Except now, Chief Wray adds, almost as if it were an afterthought, that the killer broke into her house. And it seems like, if my friends and family really wanted to give me good advice, "You ought to consider reinforcing your front door with quarter-inch steel rebar and plating the windows" would have been more appropriate.
I understand the need to keep certain details of an investigation shielded from the public view. As a reporter, I deal with it, I accept it like a brick wall, every day. In Joel Despain's written statement to State Journal reporter Sandy Cullen, he makes note of it as well:
You're DAMN SKIPPY the right thing to do is to confirm the damn detail! A DETAIL?!? A measily, worthless little DETAIL?!? We're talking about the public safety of forty-two thousand University of Wisconsin students and maybe twenty-five thousand more downtown residents. Telling us the door was forced open is simply a START. How about telling us HOW it was forced open, and what WE can DO to keep it from happening to US?
Chief Wray certainly "took time deliberating" over the release of this information...eight days, in fact, during which it could have happened again. I won't insinuate there's a connection between Zimmermann's murder last week and Marino's murder in February, but I wouldn't be the first to do so. The similarities are striking and apparent to anyone who can read. I will, however, drag the other THREE unsolved murders in the past year out onto the table.
Authorities have remained ever-so-tight-lipped about the details surrounding each, but it doesn't seem to have helped them catch the killers. To this day, we don't know how UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan was killed after she disappeared from State Street, and police have yet to release any details other than where she was found.
I have a sticker on my computer monitor that reads, "Knowledge is power. Arm yourself." Under this standard, the Madison Police Department has left every single Madison resident vulnerable and defenseless.
Now I know that we're talking about Madison, a metropolitan area of only half a million. Furthermore, I know there are cities that would, pun intended, kill for a murder rate as low as ours. That's what's appealing to so many Madisonians.
Policing is an occupation that puts glory in danger and duty, and Madison ain't New York City. But if Chief Wray and his detectives are occluding details that are in the public's best interest to know so they can have a macho "CSI moment," we have more than a murder problem in Madison. Detective Sipowicz might wear a tie with short sleeves, but even he isn't foolish enough to endanger the public by squelching information. It makes you wonder if they don't just clamp down on details as some kind of demonstration of their authority as police.
It makes you wonder what mistakes and ineptitudes might be exposed if the investigations were more visible to the public. Not that I have any reason to suspect the police have handled the murder investigations in anything but a competent and professional manner. But they have utterly failed in their obligation to keep the public abreast of the crucial knowledge they may have in these murders that affect, endanger and frighten us all.
As a reporter, it becomes easy to fall into the habit of accepting it at face value when a member of law enforcement tells you they've given all the information they can give. It's the authorities' responsibility to keep the public informed and safe, and it's the media's responsibility to do the same. But beyond that, it falls to the media to out the authorities when they're not holding up their end of the bargain.
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