Re: After Love Connection through eHarmony Wash. DC Woman Disappears
M
> Woman vanishes, leaving a trail with no end
> By Paul Duggan
> Tuesday, November 24, 2009
>
>
Baffling story.
His past obviously includes some violence. "Helping governments
combat armed
leftists?" Given US policy in South and Central America, it isn't
clear to me whether that means murdering people or not.
She does not sound like a woman who would go with a man with that
pooor grammar. I always have a very hard time understanding why
people go "upside down" with their houses over trash like luxury
cars. It also sopunds like she pushed the people she cared about out
of her life. Those people may have been dependent on her
financially.
Murder? Suicide? A car crash into a body of water (no reason to
think that, but it seems a popular topic)?
Mick
Poe
> On Nov 24, 3:16 am, Pneuma <frank.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Woman vanishes, leaving a trail with no end
>> By Paul Duggan
>> Tuesday, November 24, 2009
>>
>
>
>
> Baffling story.
>
> His past obviously includes some violence. "Helping governments
> combat armed
> leftists?" Given US policy in South and Central America, it isn't
> clear to me whether that means murdering people or not.
>
> She does not sound like a woman who would go with a man with that
> pooor grammar.
Periodically I come across someone who "dates down", for lack of a
better term. I wonder if they're slumming out of love, lust, or control
over the other person. Usually it isn't a permanent setup, though.
I always have a very hard time understanding why
> people go "upside down" with their houses over trash like luxury
> cars.
ITA - being a frugal person I am always amazed how in debt some will go
for shiny things to impress their friends.
It also sopunds like she pushed the people she cared about out
> of her life. Those people may have been dependent on her
> financially.
>
> Murder? Suicide? A car crash into a body of water (no reason to
> think that, but it seems a popular topic)?
>
> Mick
>
>
He sounds shady, per some of CJ's observations his military history
sounds suspect. Though he has poor grammar, I wonder if he's clever
enough to carry out a perfect crime, or maybe he's just lucky (if he
indeed did something to her).
Linda Griffith
news:93a5a6ae-e6fd-4707...@o23g2000vbi.googlegroups.com...
On Nov 24, 3:16 am, Pneuma <frank.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Woman vanishes, leaving a trail with no end
> By Paul Duggan
> Tuesday, November 24, 2009
She does not sound like a woman who would go with a man with that
pooor grammar. I always have a very hard time understanding why
people go "upside down" with their houses over trash like luxury
cars.
Mick
.....................................
I, too, wondered if the poor grammar didn't bother her. (Surprise.)
Why in the world would she need or want *two* cars? That's two to purchase,
two to maintain, license, and have inspected...but she can only drive one at
a time.
Linda
Marianna
> pooor grammar. I always have a very hard time understanding why
> people go "upside down" with their houses over trash like luxury
> cars.
>
> Mick
> I, too, wondered if the poor grammar didn't bother her. (Surprise.)
>
> Why in the world would she need or want *two* cars? That's two to purchase,
> two to maintain, license, and have inspected...but she can only drive one at
> a time.
>
> Linda
I guess she had the money and liked being able to collect the toys,
though I'm with you on that. It's not the cheapest location in the
world to have 2 cars, either. But then just because someone is
educated and makes good money at their job doesn't mean they exercise
good judgement in other areas.
Regarding the guy with the bad grammar... maybe she was one of these
women who gravitate towards guys in trouble or of lower abilities than
herself. You know, the "fixer" type...I can fix him, I can help him,
he'll be great once I help set him free and he'll be so grateful and
never leave me...blah blah blah.
Marianna
climber
> Woman
If she was a White woman having an affair with hispanic then
not a tear should be shed.
climber
Hell Toupee
> Regarding the guy with the bad grammar... maybe she was one of these
> women who gravitate towards guys in trouble or of lower abilities than
> herself. You know, the "fixer" type...I can fix him, I can help him,
> he'll be great once I help set him free and he'll be so grateful and
> never leave me...blah blah blah.
Or maybe he had a big dick.
Hey, she might've collected those, too.
rwalker
Ah, so you enjoy exposing yourself as an idiot in public.
Marianna
> > Regarding the guy with the bad grammar... maybe she was one of these
> > women who gravitate towards guys in trouble or of lower abilities than
> > herself. You know, the "fixer" type...I can fix him, I can help him,
> > he'll be great once I help set him free and he'll be so grateful and
> > never leave me...blah blah blah.
>
> Or maybe he had a big dick.
>
> Hey, she might've collected those, too.
That too. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. ;)
Marianna
Kris Baker
"Marianna" <nomiddle...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c2a82b2f-e8a7-4153...@1g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
Marianna
--------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely correct -- and here's one that makes you shake your
head. Never-married, retired West Jordan Utah 911 dispatcher
finds love with man six years younger than she.
Here's his criminal record, and all offenses occured *after* they
got together.
http://utahsright.com/chargesprofile.php?id=1337098
Forgery? She still let him hang around? Good God, this woman
was a police dispatcher; with her connections, she could have
had every cop in West Jordan City enforcing a restraining order.
Click on the link to see a picture of her. I swear, *every* darned
"fixer" woman I've ever known, looked like her.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_13840940?source%253Dmost_viewed.20F88DA3D7D369F5BB70F372987EAE1F.html
Utah News
MORE UTAH NEWS HEADLINES
'Generous' caregiver killed by boyfriend
W. Jordan � She was 'a little afraid' of the man who shot her, then turned
the gun on himself.
By Lindsay Whitehurst
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 11/21/2009 11:40:29 PM MST
When friends asked Michelle Welch why she didn't break up with her
boyfriend, she brushed them off, even after fights that brought police to
her house.
"I think we all worried about her when we saw the police outside, but she'd
say, 'Oh, no, he didn't hurt me,' " said friend and neighbor Linda
Christensen. Instead, Welch worried about the well-being of her on-again,
off-again boyfriend, 43-year-old Gary Howard.
"That was her thing. 'If I kick him out, where does he go?' " Christensen
said. Once, when Christensen pushed Welch to end the relationship, Welch
replied: "'Well, I'm a little afraid of him.' "
Early Saturday morning, police again arrived at her house in the 6800 block
of Triumph Lane (1050 West), said West Jordan police Sgt. Drew Sanders. At
about 2:50 a.m., Howard called a friend and said he had shot her once with a
shotgun, killing her.
Officers believe he had been drinking, and when they arrived at the house he
barricaded himself inside with the gun, threatening suicide. Police reached
him on the phone and he told negotiators he had shot her accidentally,
Sanders said. As the morning wore on, he stopped talking to police. Officers
heard him shoot himself at about 7 a.m.
"She was a good person and she didn't deserve this," Christensen said. "She
was generous to a fault, and that's what did her in."
Welch made a living helping other people get through emergencies as a night
dispatcher for the Salt Lake City Fire Department, and was particularly good
at talking to callers with psychiatric problems. She worked there for 30
years before retiring this summer.
Welch was also a caregiver among her friends. After Christensen, a dispatch
supervisor, had a heart attack, it was Welch who stopped by with gifts.
"Anybody that had problems at home, she'd always take care of them," she
said. "She'd take them in, give them a room to stay in."
Welch had never married, and about six years ago she met Howard, a
relationship Christensen likened to "[taking] in strays."
Though he drank and had had difficulty finding a job, Christensen said, he
helped her out around the house. Neighbors like Cheryn McNicol said Howard
also assisted with projects in their houses.
"He was the first person to talk to me when I moved in," McNicol said.
Howard lived in Sandy but often was at Welch's Triumph Lane home. Welch
picked out the lot and built the house on the gated street of new, well-kept
homes.
She had four dogs, two toy fox terriers and two Chinese crested. The dogs
Saturday were being taken care of by friends, including Christensen, who
took in the two Chinese crested. They skittered about late Saturday morning
in similar blue and pink dog shirts to protect their sensitive, hairless
skin. Another friend took the terriers.
Christensen knew something was wrong Saturday morning when she saw them
running loose.
"I thought, something's not right ... because they were her life," she said.
"I just feel grief. I just feel sorry for her."
M
> In article
> <93a5a6ae-e6fd-4707-9299-864fb3baf...@o23g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>,
> M <m...@pitt.edu> wrote:
>
> > His past obviously includes some violence. "Helping governments
> > combat armed
> > leftists?" Given US policy in South and Central America, it isn't
> > clear to me whether that means murdering people or not.
>
> The US wasn't fighting the FMLN
> in El Salvador, but it was giving a huge amount of assistance to the El
> Salvador Government to fight them, besides supporting death squads under
> ARENA"s founder Roberto D'Aubuisson.
>
I'm sorry I had to clip to get these two juxtraposed. I hope I did
not obscure your meaning Comadrejoa.
But I have to ask. How is "providing assistance" and "supporting"
death squads different from "murder"? Seems the same to me. There
was a guy in FL who got convicted of murder for loaning his car to
someone who killed a guy during a burgulary.
Mick
M
> Woman vanishes, leaving a trail with no end
> By Paul Duggan
> Tuesday, November 24, 2009
>
> 40s, each long divorced and yearning for new romance.
>
> By all accounts, Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and Pam Butler were a happy couple
> for most of their five months together. "This was a woman I really cared
> for, okay?" said Rodriguez-Cruz, who met Butler through the online dating
> service eHarmony.
>
> "I mean, I treated her like a queen."
>
> Then, on the eve of Valentine's Day, she disappeared.
>
> "I'm telling you," he said, "there's no way I would ever hurt her."
>
> And no one can prove he did.
>
> Butler, 47, a computer specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency,
> vanished in February in what D.C. police think was a homicide. From the
> outset, detectives have focused on Rodriguez-Cruz as a suspect, searching
> his Alexandria apartment with a warrant, taking his car and other
> belongings, digging into his past and questioning him aggressively.
>
> But with Rodriguez-Cruz denying any knowledge of Butler's whereabouts and
> detectives lacking enough evidence for an arrest, the stubborn case "has
> gone about as far as it can go at this point, unfortunately," a law
> enforcement official said.
>
> A dead end.
>
> Rarely is homicide in the District so complicated; rarely are the facts so
> intricate. This year, 130 people have been killed -- the carnage numbing,
> its rhythm bleak: A gunshot sounds; detectives roll up to a corpse on the
> pavement; there are shell casings to examine, motives to explore,
> witnesses to cajole. Maybe a thug cuts a deal, snitches on the shooter and
> the file gets put away.
>
> Not this time.
>
> Of the dozens of active cases being handled by the D.C. police homicide
> unit, only one involves a suspected victim who can't be found. Butler's
> mother said a detective told her that investigators might never learn what
> happened to her daughter.
>
> "They're never going to find nothing to indicate that I did something to
> her," said Rodriguez-Cruz, an office manager at a private substance-abuse
> treatment center in Annandale.
>
> After months of avoiding publicity, the 44-year-old former military police
> officer discussed Butler's disappearance for hours in recent interviews
> with The Washington Post, acknowledging that he is a suspect and saying
> that detectives have "made my life hell."
>
> "You're tried and convicted by the police," he said, describing himself as
> an innocent victim of misconstrued "so-called evidence," much of it
> circumstantial. He voiced sympathy for Butler's relatives, mired in
> anguish over the stalled investigation, but said he stopped cooperating
> with detectives because they want him to confess to a crime he didn't
> commit.
>
> "You know what my worst fear is?" Rodriguez-Cruz said. "That they never
> find her. Somebody who's guilty, that's what they hope for, that they
> never find her. I'm the opposite. I want her to be found."
>
> The mystery centers on a highly educated woman who normally was
> hyper-vigilant about her safety -- a career-minded professional with a
> six-figure salary who friends said was lonesome for a man in her life.
> Butler met Rodriguez-Cruz online last fall, and soon he was regularly
> staying overnight at her Northwest Washington home.
>
> It was there, in her immaculate brick house in the Brightwood
> neighborhood, that Butler was last known to be alive, in the company of
> her boyfriend.
>
> "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . .
>
> "Not because I'm talking arrogant and I covered my tracks," he said. "It's
> because I didn't do nothing to that woman."
>
> Everything 'just so'
> "Everything Pam did was absolutely meticulous," said Brenda Mosely, a
> microbiologist who worked with Butler at the EPA's headquarters in
> Washington.
>
> With a bachelor's degree in information technology and a master's in
> public administration, Butler was in charge of computer systems in the
> agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
>
> "I mean, she kept her office like 'Good Housekeeping,' " Mosely said of
> her missing friend, who was in her 11th year at the EPA, making $120,000
> annually. "Color-coordinated artificial flowers; all her awards and
> certificates displayed just so, in an orderly fashion. . . . She was just
> a careful, organized, efficient individual."
>
> Butler, 5-foot-3 and 130 pounds, with shoulder-length brown hair, was a
> "clean freak" at home, said her widowed mother, Thelma Butler, who lives
> in Southwest Washington. Her brother, Derrick Butler, who teaches auto
> mechanics at Ballou High School in the District, said, "She was so neat,
> if you walked into her house, you'd be almost reluctant to sit down."
>
> Her impeccable tidiness would offer detectives and her family clues about
> what might have happened.
>
> Security alarms, cameras
> With her EPA income, plus her shared ownership of two rental houses in
> Baltimore and a 12-unit apartment building in Southeast Washington, Butler
> lived comfortably, at least until the economy tanked. Her two-story
> six-room house at Fourth and Oglethorpe streets NW, for which she paid
> $175,000 in 2000, was worth about $600,000 at the peak of the city's real
> estate boom, and she borrowed substantially against it, records show.
>
> In addition to other high-end possessions, she owned a Mercedes and a
> Jaguar at the time she vanished.
>
> Guarding her safety and belongings carefully, Butler bought not only an
> alarm system and motion-activated floodlights for her house, she also
> bought surveillance cameras for the outside, one to cover the front door
> and one each for the three doors in back.
>
> Most of the downstairs windows also appeared in the closed-circuit images,
> which were displayed simultaneously on three video monitors in the house,
> each with a four-way split screen. Butler wanted to size up any strangers
> before greeting them in person, friends and relatives said.
>
> After Butler disappeared, the continuous video feeds, which were stored on
> a computer drive, greatly contributed to the suspicion that fell on
> Rodriguez-Cruz.
>
> Friends and relatives of the missing woman said they knew of no trauma in
> her past that made her so cautious; they said it seemed part of Butler's
> nature that she felt acutely vulnerable, especially living by herself in
> the city.
>
> "I think she was lonely," said her friend Rita Moss, a human resources
> manager in the Defense Department. Butler's brief marriage to a merchant
> mariner had ended in an amicable divorce in the mid-1990s.
>
> "She had everything else," Moss said. "She was successful in her career;
> she had her nice house, her nice cars. I think what she really wanted was
> someone she could spend some quality time with."
>
> As protective of her privacy as she was of her safety, Butler apparently
> told no one close to her that she had signed up with an online dating
> service. When people asked her last fall how she and her new boyfriend had
> met, she spun varying fibs about a chance encounter on a Metro train or in
> a Costco store.
>
> Not until after she vanished did her family and acquaintances find out
> that Butler had joined eHarmony and that a computer had generated a list
> of potential soul mates for her, including Jose Angel Rodriguez-Cruz.
>
> A match made online
> "If I remember, I got an e-mail," Rodriguez-Cruz said. "Pam read my
> profile. That's how we started e-mailing. Then we talked on the phone."
> Then they met for dinner at a Cuban restaurant, he said, and "it went real
> quick from there."
>
> As for why the computer matched them, he cited eHarmony's "29 dimensions
> of compatibility," saying that he and Butler agreed on the most important
> qualities in a relationship -- "trust, communication, physical affection"
> -- and had common likes and dislikes.
>
> "For one thing, we were both very neat and orderly," he said. From the
> night they started dating in September last year, he said, he was
> "forthcoming about everything" in his past, including "my psychological
> problems," which he said are a result of his military service.
>
> Stoutly built at 5-foot-9, with a shaved head and black mustache,
> Rodriguez-Cruz, who did not want to be photographed for this article,
> lives in the $800-a-month apartment he was renting when he met Butler, a
> modern efficiency done up like an Ikea showroom 16 floors above Seminary
> Road in Alexandria.
>
> He said he grew up in Puerto Rico and New York and joined the Army in
> 1982, at age 17. Only snippets of his service record are public. They show
> that he was a military police officer, that he was stationed outside the
> United States for a time and that his final rank, private first class,
> took effect in April 1988, a month before he was discharged.
>
> Rodriguez-Cruz said he had been a sergeant at one point and was honorably
> discharged. He said he was demoted near the end of his enlistment for
> having a romantic affair with a fellow serviceman's wife, a violation of
> military law.
>
> Another reason he had trouble in the Army: He said he had post-traumatic
> stress disorder, which caused him to feel "paranoid" and agitated. He said
> the illness stemmed from dangers he faced while serving with Reagan-era
> military advisers in Latin America, helping governments combat armed
> leftists.
>
> "In Peru, it was Shining Path; in Colombia, it was M-19; in El Salvador,
> it was the FMLN." He said he also served in Guatemala and Panama.
>
> "When I came back, I had PTSD, which I still have," he said. Living in the
> Washington area after his discharge, he said, he was employed mostly as a
> security guard in the 1990s but was unable to work regularly some years
> because of "my nerves."
>
> "I still get treated," he said one afternoon in his apartment, his brown
> eyes wide and intense. Describing waves of extreme anxiety and a crushing
> migraine that had come over him the night before, he said he takes the
> antidepressant Zoloft and 800-milligram tablets of ibuprofen, among other
> medications, to stay on an even keel.
>
> After
>
> read more »...
BTW, the pic in the article makes it appear that she is a black
woman. This has no relevance I see to the case itself, but may
explain why she is not all over the DisGrace show and other media.
Not the missing white woman of the week.
Mick
JonesieCat
Mick
---
Ah. Yep. I'd like to see photos of the house too. Guess I'll go looking.
jc
M
> The US Military wasn't using US soldiers to fight the civil war in El
> Salvador.
This I am a little skeptical about.
> The US Army isn't going to an enlisted army soldier with no
> special training like Mr. Rodriguez-Cruz to fight a civil war,
But this makes total sense to me.
He appears to be less than truthful about hsi military experience.
But then, that seems to be true of an awful lot of vets - including
the major presidential candidates in the 2006 election.
Mick
Kris Baker
"JonesieCat" <jonesi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:_lZOm.57288$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> ---
> Ah. Yep. I'd like to see photos of the house too. Guess I'll go looking.
>
> jc
>
Do you have the exactly address? This is the block she lives on:
http://snurl.com/tepne [maps_google_com]
Kris
M
>
> M <m...@pitt.edu> wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 5:42 pm, comadrejo <comadrejoa...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > > The US Military wasn't using US soldiers to fight the civil war in El
> > > Salvador.
>
> > This I am a little skeptical about.
>
> find evidence that US soldiers were in heavy combat with the FMLN, (you
> can get extra point if you know what the acronym means, and when they
> signed a peace accord with the El Salvador Government) Find evidence
> that these same US Army units were in direct fighting with FARC, M-19,
> MRTA, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
>
> The US gave military aid and assistance to these countries fighting
> basically civil war, especially Colombia, but US troops weren't used for
> fighting. The US used specialized advisors attached to train a
> specific unit or for a very specific program. If the US Armed Forces
> did missions in these areas, it is going to be Special Ops, not a MP.
>
> There was plenty of slaughter in Peru by the Shinging Path, and plenty
> of slaughter by the Peruvian Military during the 1980s to early 1990s,
> there is no cases of US soldiers fighting the Shining Path. Peru had a
> big truth commission to delve into this time period which side did what
> in the Civil War in 2004.
>
>
>
> > > The US Army isn't going to an enlisted army soldier with no
> > > special training like Mr. Rodriguez-Cruz to fight a civil war,
>
> > But this makes total sense to me.
>
> > He appears to be less than truthful about hsi military experience.
> > But then, that seems to be true of an awful lot of vets - including
> > the major presidential candidates in the 2006 election.
>
OOps. I meant the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
> You are going way off track. Mr. Rodriguez-Cruz is lying, it can
> easily verified that he is lying. Being Stationed in the Panama Canal
> Zone or even working at the School of the Americas is different than
> fighting some serious insurgency movements.
But the experience still allows for the possibility of Post Traumatic
Stress. Heck, even basic training can do that for some people.
Mick
M
>
> > > The US Military wasn't using US soldiers to fight the civil war in El
> > > Salvador.
>
> > This I am a little skeptical about.
>
> find evidence that US soldiers were in heavy combat with the FMLN, (you
> can get extra point if you know what the acronym means, and when they
> signed a peace accord with the El Salvador Government) Find evidence
> that these same US Army units were in direct fighting with FARC, M-19,
> MRTA, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
I don't need evidence of "direct combat." US soldiers get killed on
"training missions" too.
You seem to imply that the dates are wrong for these groups, but a
quick google search indicates taht 1982-86 is prime time for all of
them, Mr Skeptic.
Example: the informatioin I found was that FLMN became seriously
violent in the early 1980's and the the peace accord was signed with
teh El Salvadore government in 1992. Is your information different?
Mick
> The US gave military aid and assistance to these countries fighting
> basically civil war, especially Colombia, but US troops weren't used for
> fighting. The US used specialized advisors attached to train a
> specific unit or for a very specific program. If the US Armed Forces
> did missions in these areas, it is going to be Special Ops, not a MP.
>
> There was plenty of slaughter in Peru by the Shinging Path, and plenty
> of slaughter by the Peruvian Military during the 1980s to early 1990s,
> there is no cases of US soldiers fighting the Shining Path. Peru had a
> big truth commission to delve into this time period which side did what
> in the Civil War in 2004.
>
>
>
> > > The US Army isn't going to an enlisted army soldier with no
> > > special training like Mr. Rodriguez-Cruz to fight a civil war,
>
> > But this makes total sense to me.
>
> > He appears to be less than truthful about hsi military experience.
> > But then, that seems to be true of an awful lot of vets - including
> > the major presidential candidates in the 2006 election.
>
> Which country had their 2006 Presidential Election?
>
> You are going way off track. Mr. Rodriguez-Cruz is lying, it can
> easily verified that he is lying. Being Stationed in the Panama Canal
> Zone or even working at the School of the Americas is different than
> fighting some serious insurgency movements.
>
>
>
>
>
> > Mick- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
JonesieCat
Mick
PTSD can come from witnessing, not only from participating. Just sayin. (I
tend to think the guy is a liar too, but not nec about his PTSD.)
jc
M
>
>
>
>
>
> M <m...@pitt.edu> wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 6:27 pm, comadrejo <comadrejoa...@mac.com> wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <e631e16a-e4cf-4f97-a572-f5d4fe218...@p32g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > > M <m...@pitt.edu> wrote:
> > > > On Nov 24, 5:42 pm, comadrejo <comadrejoa...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > The US Military wasn't using US soldiers to fight the civil war in El
> > > > > Salvador.
>
> > > > This I am a little skeptical about.
>
> > > A skeptic uses empirical evidence to find the truth. So you should
> > > find evidence that US soldiers were in heavy combat with the FMLN, (you
> > > can get extra point if you know what the acronym means, and when they
> > > signed a peace accord with the El Salvador Government) Find evidence
> > > that these same US Army units were in direct fighting with FARC, M-19,
> > > MRTA, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
Comdrajoa, you seem to have missed where I said this:
>
> > I don't need evidence of "direct combat." US soldiers get killed on
> > "training missions" too.
There are plenty of opportunities for trauma for military personnel.
Particualarly in teh cowboy Reagen years.
Mick
Chocolic
"comadrejo" <comadr...@mac.com> wrote in message
news:comadrejoagua-D06...@news.giganews.com...
> He is lying his ass off and being super evasive in this article. If
> the authorities find her body, I think they should have enough to a
> conviction of her ex boyfriend.
You really think so? I haven't read anything at all to make me think that.
I also haven't read anything yet to convince me he didn't do it either.
Chocolic
M
> "comadrejo" <comadrejoa...@mac.com> wrote in message
I'm with choc on that. Also, maybe the newpaper isn't really painting
him the way he is.
I was thinking that he wasn't smart enough to begin to pull this off,
but then before that, I was thinking he wasn't sharp enough for the
girl in the first place. So who knows.
Seems between the cameras, cell phone records, and everything else, it
would be hard to pull something off without leaving a lot of tracks
behind.
Mick
JonesieCat
Mick
--------
Bf dunnit IMHO.
jc
Poe
> guilt.
> Too long to post.
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112404264.html
>
> Picture and floor plan of the house
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/11/25/GR2009112500341.html
>
> Here's the timeline:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112303964.html?hpid=topnews
>
> Timeline: Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and Pam Butler's relationship
> Tuesday, November 24, 2009
>
> -- September 2008: Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and Pam Butler meet through
> eHarmony.com and begin dating. He is soon regularly staying overnight
> at her Northwest Washington home.
>
> that she and Rodriguez-Cruz want to take her out for dinner on
> Valentine's Day. At 9:48 p.m., one of Butler's home security cameras
> records her leaning out a door to get her mail. The cameras never show
> her leaving the house again.
>
> -- Feb. 13: Butler works in her house all day, beyond the view of the
> outdoor security cameras. Rodriguez-Cruz arrives at her house in the
> evening. He says she broke up with him that night and kicked him out.
>
>
> -- Feb. 14: Butler and Rodriguez-Cruz fail to keep their Valentine's
> date with her mother. A security camera records Rodriguez-Cruz
> entering and leaving Butler's house alone. He later says that he was
> there to pick up his belongings and that Butler wasn't home.
>
> -- Feb. 15-16: A camera records Rodriguez-Cruz going in and out of
> Butler's house. He says that he was getting more of his possessions
> and that she wasn't home.
>
> -- Feb. 17: Butler's relatives report her missing after going to her
> house and finding disturbing signs that she has been harmed. Her
> brother confronts Rodriguez-Cruz at his Alexandria apartment.
> Rodriguez-Cruz tells him that Butler broke up with him the previous
> Friday night and that he hasn't seen her since.
>
> Sources: Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and relatives of Pam Butler.
I think he did it, whatever "it" is, after some kind of altercation that
last evening.
Sounds like he used her keys to go in and out, and her sheets as part of
getting rid of her, probably via that side window. It wouldn't be hard
for him to get the security code if he accompanied her as she entered it
he could shoulder-surf. Due to the messy pile of RE records, I wonder if
he was hoping to do some kind of RE scam using her access, credentials,
whatever.
This guy might be incredibly lucky to not leave a trace, or perhaps
investigators aren't that good. Or both.
JonesieCat
"Poe" <hau...@terrible-thought.com> wrote in message
news:7nalgmF...@mid.individual.net...
He didn't HAVE her security code. Yet wasn't worried about going in and out
with the keys that have since mysteriously disappeared. (He'd never rec'd
keys or the code from her (IMHO); he was using her own keys to go in and out
after he disappeared her - when he knew the alarm wasn't on.)
Unless this woman sneaked out of her own house with her bedsheets in tow
thru her dining room window and ran off into the sunset of her own volition,
this guy offed her. I vote the latter.
jc
JonesieCat
> In article <7n9g8jF...@mid.individual.net>,
> and he is lying in the article. He calls her "that woman", tells the
> the reporter,
>
> "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . ."
>
> to spin them to make him look in the best light possible. He lies about
> his military service. He acts very nonchalant about how she disappears.
>
>
> Could it be another culprit? of course, but he is waving red flags by
> his behavior. I think he doesn't want his photo in the paper, because
> he doesn't want others to go to police with more information about him,
> or someone outside the Washington Beltway. He could not want his photo
> in the paper for innocuous reasons, but he sounds he has been in prison.
> His evasion and his blatant lying about his military career really
> bother me.
His whole attitude is 'poor me'. Like Jeff MacDonald, Drew Peterson and so
many others.
jc
Poe
I think he offed her, too. I think if he wanted the security code it was
easy to get via shoulder surfing. I think he got access to the place,
got rid of her, and was also lucky.
Marianna
> > I also haven't read anything yet to convince me he didn't do it either.
comadrejo wrote:
> Dhe disappears after breaking up with him. He is being super evasive
> and he is lying in the article. He calls her "that woman", tells the
> the reporter,
>
> "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . ."
That quote caught my attention. How would he know that there was a
struggle or blood involved if he wasn't?
Marianna
M
>
> > "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> > Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> > was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . ."
>
> That quote caught my attention. How would he know that there was a
> struggle or blood involved if he wasn't?
Yeah. That seems... odd. If he didn't know anything, he would be
wondering if they would find blood, maybe even eager for it ("Two
people's blood and neither of them is mine? Good.")
No news and they seem to be giving up. I'm pretty disppointed by the
LE's statement about a dead end, usually they emphasize how they will
keep loooking until they find something.
Black D.C. Woman Disappears, Police Say Case Has “Hit Dead End”
http://newsone.com/nation/black-d-c-woman-disappears-police-say-case-has-hit-dead-end/
From the Washington Post:
They made a love connection in cyberspace, two lonely strangers in
their 40s, each long divorced and yearning for new romance.
By all accounts, Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and Pam Butler were a happy
couple for most of their five months together. “This was a woman I
really cared for, okay?” said Rodriguez-Cruz, who met Butler through
the online dating service eHarmony.
“I mean, I treated her like a queen.”
Then, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, she disappeared.
“I’m telling you,” he said, “there’s no way I would ever hurt her.”
And no one can prove he did.
Butler, 47, a computer specialist for the Environmental Protection
Agency, vanished in February in what D.C. police think was a homicide.
From the outset, detectives have focused on Rodriguez-Cruz as a
suspect, searching his Alexandria apartment with a warrant, taking his
car and other belongings, digging into his past and questioning him
aggressively.
But with Rodriguez-Cruz denying any knowledge of Butler’s whereabouts
and detectives lacking enough evidence for an arrest, the stubborn
case “has gone about as far as it can go at this point,
unfortunately,” a law enforcement official said.
[snip]
Part 2:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112404264.html
Romance is for younger folks, Thelma Butler said. Until she noticed a
cluster of heart-shaped red balloons on sale at a grocery store one
morning, it hadn't occurred to her that Valentine's Day was near. To
an elderly widow living alone, the occasion meant little.
Never again, though, will Feb. 14 be just another day on her
calendar.
She waited that Saturday in her small house in Southwest Washington.
And she waited and waited. Her daughter Pam Butler, 47, had called two
days earlier, saying that she and her boyfriend, Jose Rodriguez-Cruz,
wanted to treat her to a Valentine's dinner. They were supposed to
pick her up at 3 p.m. for the early bird. Then 3 p.m. came and went.
Thelma Butler, 77, said she had socialized with Rodriguez-Cruz at
holiday gatherings last fall and winter but knew little about him. "I
thought he was a regular guy -- you know, nice." In her living room,
watching the clock tick toward evening that day, she wondered why her
daughter hadn't called to say they'd be late.
"I thought, 'She's never done this before.' "
Feeling her first twinge of worry, Thelma Butler said, she dialed her
daughter's home and cell phones, but got no answer. "I thought, well,
maybe they just decided to go out by themselves for Valentine's."
After church the next day, though, when she called her daughter again,
she still couldn't reach her.
Pam Butler, a computer specialist for the Environmental Protection
Agency, had a compressed work schedule: 10 hours a day, Tuesdays
through Fridays, with three days at EPA headquarters and Fridays at
home.
Because Presidents' Day, Monday, Feb. 16, fell on one of her regular
days off, she had planned to take Tuesday off for the holiday, giving
her a four-day weekend. As Thelma Butler's anxiety worsened Monday,
others in the family tried to reassure her, saying that maybe the
couple had booked a last-minute Valentine's getaway.
Too scared to go to her daughter's place alone, afraid of what she
might find and not having a phone number for Rodriguez-Cruz, Thelma
Butler said, she waited until Tuesday. Then she and a posse of
relatives descended on Pam Butler's two-story brick home on a corner
lot at Fourth and Oglethorpe streets in the Brightwood neighborhood in
Northwest Washington.
Walking around inside a house that her daughter normally kept
impeccably neat, Thelma Butler said, she thought: Something's
definitely wrong.
The relatives found no vivid evidence that Pam Butler had come to
harm. They saw no blood, no signs of a struggle or forced entry. What
they saw in the house amounted only to puzzle pieces.
But soon the pieces would fit together in their minds.
Pam Butler's nephew Brandon Butler, 19, the first of five relatives to
arrive at the house, said the doors were locked. He said he got in
using keys that his aunt had given him when he lived there.
This Story
A D.C. MYSTERY, PART 1: Woman vanishes, leaving a trail with no end
A D.C. MYSTERY: In wake of woman's disappearance, her family sees a
pattern of clues
Questions remain in empty Butler house
Family: Ex-boyfriend not telling whole story about Butler's
disappearance
Timeline: Jose Rodriguez-Cruz and Pam Butler's relationship
Family remembers Pamela Butler, reflects on life without her
View All Items in This Story
View Only Top Items in This Story
She had also given him the four-digit code to shut off the alarm, he
said. Looking at the keypad near the kitchen, though, he saw that the
alarm had not been activated. He said his aunt was a stickler about
setting it before leaving the house.
In Butler's home office, stacks of her real estate records were out of
her filing cabinets and piled on the floor, the relatives said.
Upstairs, her bed was a bare mattress, her pillows and beige comforter
heaped on a settee. They said they searched the house for her used
sheets but couldn't find them.
The purse that Butler usually carried, containing her credit cards and
driver's license, was nowhere in the house, the relatives said. Her
keys were gone, too. Yet her Mercedes and Jaguar were in the driveway
and garage.
Just as troubling, they said, was what they saw in the dining room.
Butler's outdoor surveillance cameras did not cover three of the
windows below the second floor that are big enough for an adult to
easily fit through. The windows are on the first floor -- one at the
front of the residence, clearly visible to tenants in a crowded
boarding house across Fourth Street, and two in the dining room,
facing quieter Oglethorpe Street.
Like Butler's other windows, the two in the dining room were fitted
with specially made blinds that opened not only from the bottom up,
but also from the top down. Butler's brother, Derrick Butler, said
that his sister would lower the blinds a little from the top, to let
in sunlight, but that she was adamant about keeping them drawn at the
bottom, to ward off prying eyes.
When the relatives checked the dining room, however, they saw that one
of the blinds had been left nearly halfway open from the bottom. It
was the only window in the house with an open blind -- and the only
window that had been left unlocked.
"No, sir, that wasn't right," Thelma Butler said.
Seen for the last time
After finding Rodriguez-Cruz's Alexandria apartment address in his
sister's home office, Derrick Butler, 46, drove there that night,
hoping to get some answers. As far as Pam Butler's family knew, she
and Rodriguez-Cruz were still a couple.
Meanwhile, Brandon Butler said, he logged onto his aunt's computer and
began fast-forwarding through six days' worth of stored security
video, starting at the previous Thursday, when she had made the
Valentine's date with her mother.
The time-stamped video, later confiscated by homicide detectives,
shows only his aunt and Rodriguez-Cruz at the house, Brandon Butler
said.
He said the couple left together early Thursday, apparently headed to
work. That night, he said, Rodriguez-Cruz arrived back at the house
first and waited outside until Butler got home a little while later.
Then she opened a rear door and they went inside.
At 9:48 p.m. Thursday, he said, his aunt again stepped into camera
view, leaning out the front door to get her mail from the box.
Rodriguez-Cruz, 44, said he stayed overnight Thursday. The next day,
Butler's work-at-home Friday, he left the house by himself in the
morning.
Although Butler, working inside, is not seen on Friday's video,
nothing indicates that she was in peril during the day. Besides text-
messaging her friend Rita Moss, she sent e-mails to EPA colleagues in
the morning and to a cousin late in the afternoon. Then Rodriguez-Cruz
returned to the house just after 8 p.m., Brandon Butler said.
That was the Friday night when Pam Butler suddenly broke up with him,
telling him to gather his stuff and get out, Rodriguez-Cruz later
said. Brandon Butler said the video shows Rodriguez-Cruz leaving
shortly before 11:30 p.m., about 3 1/2 hours after he had arrived.
Trying to catch sight of his aunt again, Brandon Butler said, he
continued scanning the video, fast-forwarding through four more days,
right up to his and the other relatives' arrival at her home that
Tuesday afternoon.
But there is no sign of Butler, he said. He said the video shows only
Rodriguez-Cruz repeatedly going in and out of the house after Friday.
Rodriguez-Cruz stayed for almost two hours Saturday, a half-hour
Sunday and about 90 minutes Monday, Brandon Butler said. After two of
the visits, he left the house carrying a shoulder-slung duffle bag,
plus a plastic trash bag on one occasion, Brandon Butler said. He said
none of the bags appeared to be heavy.
As for Pam Butler, there was that glimpse of her getting her mail
Thursday night, then going back in the house. "And that's the last
time you ever see her," her nephew said.
Going in -- and never walking out.
'I'm done cooperating'
"I know what they think," Rodriguez-Cruz said in an interview.
He meant what police and Butler's family think: Removing her body from
the house without being recorded by the video system or seen from
Fourth Street would have been tricky. Someone familiar with the
cameras and the neighborhood probably would have chosen a dining room
window. Maybe Butler was working with her real estate files when
trouble began. Maybe her body went out a window wrapped in those
sheets.
"I don't know what happened, okay?" Rodriguez-Cruz said
He said he didn't realize she was missing until the Tuesday night when
Derrick Butler went to his apartment, wondering where his sister was.
Rodriguez-Cruz told him that he and Pam Butler had broken up days
earlier and that he hadn't seen her since.
That Tuesday, Feb. 17, Thelma Butler reported her daughter missing to
D.C. police, and the case was soon assigned to the homicide unit.
Evidence technicians kept control of the house for three months,
examining virtually every square inch of it, while detectives focused
hard on the most recent man in the victim's life.
"I know without a doubt that they're looking at everything in my
background," Rodriguez-Cruz said. He said he cooperated in the case
for a while until "overzealous" detectives began badgering him with
"draconian tactics."
"They've already looked like bozos because they messed up the Chandra
thing," he said, referring to the sensational case of slain D.C.
intern Chandra Levy. "They want to make themselves look good again.
All that pressure is on them to solve this case, come hell or high
water."
He said he knows he is the only person seen on video with Butler just
before she vanished. But he didn't kill her, he said. He said he
didn't spirit her body out a dining room window Friday, then exit the
house normally so the video would show him leaving. He said he didn't
drive somewhere and dispose of a dead woman from his car trunk.
And he said he returned to her house that weekend for an innocent
reason -- not to straighten up a crime scene and remove evidence.
"I told the detectives that," he said. But "when they're telling me,
on the second interview, 'We're going to charge you with homicide,'
what am I supposed to do? I mean, you're a fool if you're not going to
sit there and get upset."
When police searched his apartment, hauling away bundles of clothes
and shoes, his desktop computer and personal records, even his iPod,
Rodriguez-Cruz said, they "trashed the place."
And months after seizing his belongings, including his 1997 Dodge
Neon, he said, detectives haven't given them back. "Believe me, if
they found any evidence that I put her dead body in my car, I wouldn't
be sitting here today."
Court papers related to the searches, including affidavits laying out
evidence to justify the warrants, were ordered sealed by an Alexandria
judge at the request of D.C. police.
Rodriguez-Cruz said he last spoke with detectives on the night of a
scheduled polygraph exam at the homicide unit's offices. As the
questioning was about to start, he said, his anger at being accused
boiled over, and he demanded to leave. Derrick Butler, who was waiting
outside the polygraph room, said Rodriguez-Cruz "stood up and just
snapped, starting pulling the wires off him, screaming obscenities."
That night, Rodriguez-Cruz said, he decided, "I'm done cooperating."
Except for a news briefing in February at which D.C. Police Chief
Cathy L. Lanier appealed to the public for tips without disclosing
many details of the case, authorities have said little if anything on
the record about Butler's disappearance.
As for the house, Derrick Butler said, a detective told him that crime-
scene technicians found no blood in any of the rooms -- and he
remembered that Rodriguez-Cruz, in denying any wrongdoing, had told
him from the beginning that the techs would find no blood.
Inquiries, and answers
"They did everything," Rodriguez-Cruz said. He said detectives at one
point tried coaxing a confession from him with an empathy ruse, saying
they understood how angry he must have been, getting dumped by his
girlfriend on the eve of Valentine's Day. What an emotional blow that
must have been, they said. Maybe he wasn't guilty of murder; maybe it
was manslaughter; maybe he'd be out in five years.
"I told them, 'Look, it makes a nice story, it really does. But it
didn't happen that way.' "
After Butler kicked him out Friday night, Rodriguez-Cruz said, he
tried to reach her by phone the next day. He said he wanted to ask
whether he could stop at the house to pick up his clothes and other
possessions.
When he got no answer, he said, he figured that she had kept their
Valentine's date with her mother and that the two were at dinner. He
said he left a voice mail, telling her what he planned to do, then
drove to her house and let himself in.
All he did there, he said, was gather his belongings, on Saturday,
Sunday and Monday, carrying them out in a trash bag and duffle. He
said he left phone messages for Butler before the Sunday and Monday
visits, too. When he arrived and she wasn't home, he said, he assumed
she had gone out because she didn't want to see him.
How did he get in?
Rodriguez-Cruz said Butler, in happier times, had given him a set of
keys. But her relatives said they doubt she would have done that. They
said it would have been unlike Butler to show that much trust in a
fairly new boyfriend, no matter how often he stayed overnight. They
said they suspect Rodriguez-Cruz used Butler's keys to keep the house
secured over the weekend until he was finished doing what he had to do
there.
Rodriguez-Cruz said investigators pressed him on that point. When a
detective asked him to produce the keys, he said he replied
truthfully:
"I don't know exactly where they are."
After he was done at the house, he said, he lost them.
What about the alarm?
If Butler entrusted him with keys, it stands to reason that she would
also have told him how the turn off the alarm. He said a detective
asked him about that: What's the code? He said Butler never gave it to
him. Why would she give him keys but not the code? He acknowledged
that it seems strange but chalked it up to her "siege mentality."
After Butler's family figured out she was missing, it became clear
that the alarm had been off since the previous Thursday, when she last
got home. Rodriguez-Cruz said he didn't know that when he visited her
house over the weekend. So when he walked in to get his stuff, wasn't
he worried the alarm would sound?
"No, because sometimes she would leave the house, knowing I was
coming, and she would leave the alarm off," he said. But how could he
have been sure she would leave it off for him that weekend? "I never
thought about it," he said. "It never occurred to me."
So where could she be?
"It's a complete mystery to me," he said.
And until it's solved, he said, "I'm on hold for any type of
relationship." Like Thelma Butler, who said she searches her dreams in
vain for her missing daughter's face, Rodriguez-Cruz said he is
trapped in a nightmare.
"They're thinking, 'How did this Houdini do it?' Well, I'm telling
you, I'm not Houdini. I can't make people disappear."
realpch
>
> On Nov 27, 8:52�pm, Marianna <nomiddleinitia...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> > > Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> > > was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . ."
> >
> > That quote caught my attention. How would he know that there was a
> > struggle or blood involved if he wasn't?
>
> Yeah. That seems... odd. If he didn't know anything, he would be
> wondering if they would find blood, maybe even eager for it ("Two
> people's blood and neither of them is mine? Good.")
>
> No news and they seem to be giving up. I'm pretty disppointed by the
> LE's statement about a dead end, usually they emphasize how they will
> keep loooking until they find something.
>
Well, they may have said that, but he's cocked a snoot at them, and
they're not going to give up until they nail him.
Peach
--
Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
Save some dough, save some grief:
http://www.xenu.net
http://www.scientology-lies.com
M
> M wrote:
>
> > On Nov 27, 8:52 pm, Marianna <nomiddleinitia...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > "Like I told the police from the first day, you can search that house,"
> > > > Rodriguez-Cruz said. "You're not going to find anything to suggest there
> > > > was a struggle. You're not going to find no blood. . . ."
>
> > > That quote caught my attention. How would he know that there was a
> > > struggle or blood involved if he wasn't?
>
> > Yeah. That seems... odd. If he didn't know anything, he would be
> > wondering if they would find blood, maybe even eager for it ("Two
> > people's blood and neither of them is mine? Good.")
>
> > No news and they seem to be giving up. I'm pretty disppointed by the
> > LE's statement about a dead end, usually they emphasize how they will
> > keep loooking until they find something.
>
> <snip>
>
> Well, they may have said that, but he's cocked a snoot at them, and
> they're not going to give up until they nail him.
>
I hope you're right.
Mick
M
>
> M <m...@pitt.edu> wrote:
> > No news and they seem to be giving up. I'm pretty disppointed by the
> > LE's statement about a dead end, usually they emphasize how they will
> > keep loooking until they find something.
>
> they have enough evidence to charge Rodriguez-Cruz with 2nd Degree
> Murder. There is probably enough circumstantial evidence to get a
> conviction.
>
> They are probably keeping a close eye on Rodriguez-Cruz to see how he
> slips up. It is obvious that he killed her.
Yeah. It's possible that their public statements are designed to make
Rodriguez-Cruz confident.
Mick
JonesieCat
Mick
----
Hope so. I'm afraid her body is now at the bottom of a giant landfill, never
to be seen again.
jc