News just in from the department of Homeland Security
This is just in from Ottawa, and shows that our national security is in the
most competent hands.
They took his bloody chainsaw, and sent him on his way
Gary Dimmock and Chuck Brown
The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Gregory Despres turned up at the U.S. border toting brass knuckles, a
homemade sword and a chain saw that appeared to be
bloodstained. Guards let him into the country.
Gregory Allan Despres was supposed to be going to jail the morning
folks spotted him hitchhiking to the U.S. border with a bloody
chainsaw. His trousers were spattered with blood. Inside his backpack
he had a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife and brass knuckles. He was
also packing pepper spray and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
The 22-year-old man with the Mohawk haircut and bugged-out eyes still
got rides in friendly New Brunswick. And incredibly, in this dawn of
intense border security, he still made it through customs. After
customs officers fingerprinted him and seized his arsenal, including
the chainsaw, they let him go.
According to police, Mr. Despres, believed to be a naturalized
American citizen, told the border guards he was in the U.S military.
They didn't know he was running from the law, let alone linked to the
killings of his elderly next-door neighbours in Minto, an old coal
mining town in central New Brunswick -- killings that ended a
years-long, violent feud.
The Mounties didn't find the bodies of Frederick Fulton, 74, and his
wife Veronica Decarie, 70, until the next day. They had been stabbed
in their bedroom.
Police found the body of Mr. Fulton, a country singer, on the kitchen
floor, just a few feet from his head, which had been stuffed in a
pillow case and shoved under the breakfast table.
According to a U.S Attorney's complaint, filed by the U.S. Attorney's
office as part of the extradition case and obtained by the Citizen,
after he was stopped at the border Canadian and American authorities
consented to his release into the United States.
At the time he crossed the border he was free on bail. That morning --
April 25 -- he was to have been sentenced for threatening to kill his
neighbour's son-in-law. Mr. Fulton and Ms. Decarie had just been
slain.
Mr. Despres changed his trousers, which were spattered in blood,
behind a shop in St. Stephen, N.B, and then walked up to the
U.S. Customs booth on foot, with the bloodied chainsaw strapped to his
backpack. He made it to the border crossing at 10 a.m., just hours
after the double homicide.
Eddie Young, a 38-year-old fish-plant worker, sat next to Mr. Despres
in the customs office at Calais, Maine, while the agents processed
them. Mr. Young was on his way to catch a flight to Mexico with
friends, but was detained when the officers noticed on his file a
20-year-old drug conviction in Ottawa.
"When he come in, they opened his bag up and they took out," Mr. Young
said in an interview. "It looked like large bayonets to me, but they
could have been a little bit longer for swords, and then two pairs of
brass knuckles fastened to his bag, a chainsaw and what looked like a
flak jacket."
Mr. Young said the U.S. customs agents appeared to be joking around.
"I watched the customs guys fling the swords around in the back room,"
he said. "I mean, wouldn't the evidence be ruined with their
fingerprints?"
Mr. Young said Mr. Despres was treated better than he was.
"When I come back in (to the room) they were giving him a coffee," he
said. "He got processed faster than I did."
Mr. Despres, who has a 10-inch swastika tattooed on his lower back,
set off on foot into the United States. He was picked up by
U.S. police two days later, on April 27, the day police issued a North
America-wide warrant. Mr. Despres, arrested in Massachusetts, is now
facing an extradition hearing, to be held next month.
So how did a Canadian, at large for skipping a sentencing hearing,
simply walk through U.S. customs -- with a bloody chainsaw, no less?
"Nobody asked us to detain him," said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for
U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
"Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or
lock them up. We're governed by laws and regulations, and he did not
violate any regulations," Mr. Anthony told the Associated Press.
None of Mr. Despres' weapons are prohibited by law in the United
States. The customs spokesman conceded it "sounds stupid" that a man
carrying a bloody chainsaw couldn't be detained. "Our people don't
have a crime lab up there. They can't look at a chainsaw and decide if
it's blood or rust or red paint," he said.
In a New Brunswick court hearing earlier this year, Mr. Despres'
father was sentenced for beating his live-in girlfriend. High on
cocaine, court heard, his father used to rev up his own chainsaw and
use it on appliances and the ceiling. Another time, his live-in
girlfriend woke up with him standing over her bed with a chainsaw.
The killings of the elderly couple in the small New Brunswick town has
left many devastated. Days after the killings, councillors called a
town meeting to help the citizens cope.
According to the police complaint, the RCMP believe Mr. Despres, bent
on settling accounts with his neighbours, broke down their door some
time in the morning of April 25, then started stabbing them in their
bedroom. The Mounties believe Mr. Fulton ran into the bathroom and
used its door as a shield. He was then stabbed to death and
decapitated. They found his car in a gravel pit on a highway leading
to the U.S. border, on the other side of the St. Croix River, which
runs along the southwest corner of New Brunswick.
end of story
So what does that mean when our border patrol is more interested in
checking out the background of someone who had a 20 year old drug
conviction, rather than the guy who comes up to the gates splattered
in blood wielding a chain-saw?
Hmmmm.
Posted at: 17:42 on 09/06/2005
[ /diary ]
#
vacation coming soon!
Whoo hoo!
I'm going on a one week trip. It's a short one, but it's all I can
take between semesters. I'm leaving in 9 days. There's two parts of
this trip:
I'm going to put about 5000 miles on the bike, and visit the following
cities: Selma, AL; Newton, MS; Ruston, LA; Hope, AR; Tecumseh, OK;
Adrian, TX; Albuquerque, NM; Ganado, AZ; Moab, UT; Durango, CO;
Emporia, KS; Independence, MO; East St. Louis, IL; Richmond, KY.
Three have historical significance (hope, independence, and of course
selma).
On top of that, I'll be in Montrose, CO for the rally, will ride
through Monument Valley on the AZ/UT border, and will head through
Gunnison on the start of the leg home.
I'm not going to fool myself, it's going to be a long trip (500mi per
day average), but I think it'll be what the doctor ordered after
Spring 2005.
I'm almost finished packing, even though I won't be able to leave until
my final exam is done next Friday.
Posted at: 01:53 on 09/06/2005
[ /diary ]
#
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