Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
I have brought this up before. On February 25, 1976, the boy behind me told me that we were getting a substitute because Mrs. Mitchell's daughter had been murdered the night before. I told him that was a very sick joke. Denial. The substitute did eventually arrive but we remained in shock. This was the day after my birthday of 2-24-1976. This was at Earl Wooster High School in Reno, Nevada. The Northern Nevada media was on this murder very heavily for weeks creating quite a panic as Mr. Mitchell's daughter Michelle was that of two English teachers and was a nursing student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Some of my fellow Earl Wooster HS classmates were questioned as suspects. They never got to me as I did not know Michelle Mitchell and I had been celebrating my birthday that night with my family.
That weekend I went to the Washoe County Central Branch library in downtown Reno to look for practical materials to help my fellow Earl Wooster High School classmates and myself cope. I found nothing and over the years since that weekend in February 1976 while looking in many libraries of all types in many different cities in many different states for practical materials to help survivors/victims of crimes get through their experiences. Now, students of a woman Mrs. Barbara Mitchell whose daughter was brutally murdered are not "victims" under law statutes that I have checked but some do go through many of the emotions that someone defined as a "victim" by these statutes does.
I got 4 degrees to hopefully get practical materials into libraries but had my mental health OFTEN put into question when I based my concerns on real life experiences rather than hypothetical theories. So I fought and fight for materials in libraries of all sorts for survivors/victim of all kinds of crimes. This is a broad and not a legal definition of "victim" as we are talking about practical materials to help in a matter of public health.
I have been doing something on this matter-- my 224 613 Project-- since that weekend of February 28, 1976 in Reno, Nevada. This is about 39 years. 224 is my birthday as I mentioned. 613 is the number I had in a 17 week study on stress on the unemployed at the University of California San Francisco Health Sciences Campus in 1992-1993. I had interviewer Myra Young.
Who did I try to get involved with helping with this 224 613 Project? You name a group with any connection to victims and survivors and I have probably contacted them-- US Governors, US Senators, the US Supreme Court, various Presidents, movie studio PR people and others, comedians, singers/songwriters, athletes, judges, various lawyers, librarians of all kinds, etc. Facebook allows me now to communicate with all kinds of people about this.
This is a hobby. Something I do to relieve stress even though it has often lead to stress to people around me. The Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education did count this "hobby" of mine as doing librarianship in the State of Nevada in 2000 to cover the Stipend Grant I got to go to the rather expensive private school the University of Denver to get my MA in Librarianship and Information Management (Class of May, 1984). I worked my way through schools pretty much to get my two BAs at the University of Nevada, Reno (Philosophy 1980, History 1981) as well as my Law Degree from the University of Minnesota Law School (Class of 1989).
I do think this has done far more good than harm trying to get practical information into libraries or accessible through libraries. It is still very relevant in 2015 because technology changes create new kinds of crimes and criminals and new kinds of survivors/victims of crimes.
They did probably finally solve Michelle Mitchell's murder. It seems to be related to the Gypsy Hill killings near San Francisco in the 1970s. The main suspect of these 6 or more murders is Rodney Halbower. He has not been prosecuted yet for this 2-24-1976 murder. They did exonerate a mentally ill woman who gave a false confession to the murder probably because she wanted to get a better room at her mental health facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at that time (around 1979). She was let out a few months ago.
This is not something I always want to talk about as real life experiences bring up a lot of very emotional memories.
I have posted a lot of backup documents on Facebook as the University of Minnesota Law School law professors did teach me that when you are dealing with lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and others not exactly known for their honesty you get everything you can in writing. Many librarians are also more politicians than educators especially when they are fighting for state and/or federal monies.
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I had written many US Congressmen, Governors, the US Supreme Court, lawyers, law librarians, etc. just after the U of MN Law School/Library staff's re-actions to a Memo I wrote about my desire to be honest about my experiences with the Michelle Mitchell investigation and how my discussing this was handled while I was going through law school. This was starting in January 1991 but occurred all throughout that year as I was not working on a computer back then. Once I received responses from enough of these I shared them with many victim/witness assistance providers (probably) 4000 over the years 1992 through 2000 and received 24 nominations to Marquis Who's Who publications and was in about 14 of these, give or take. Once I got on the Internet in 1999, I started e-mailing many politicians, media, librarians, etc. about the needs of survivors/victims of crimes for practical information. I was hit sometimes with incredibly creative ways to destroy my credibility such as a cybersmearer/cyberbully on Findlaw's message boards for about four years from around 2002 through 2006. Many of the attacks on me by the cybersmearer came down to "I do not like what you are writing so you are crazy!" They were much more involved that than but in essence that was their reason --to make be angry enough to destroy my own credibility by continuous and long term baiting of any kind this guy could think of at that time.
You can see a lot of these documents on my Photobucket array on Facebook except for the many e-mails I lost. Some of these will surface every once in a while out of the blue such as one I wrote to
The Justice a Student Newspaper at Brandeis University. This showed up again around May 31, 2011, 22:05 even though I had written it on January 27, 2003. (1/27/03 9:27:47 PM EST) It was on the Internet for three or four years and then disappeared again.