Do Not Patronize PM Study!

I just finished deleting the sixth or seventh spam comment from an outfit calling itself "PMStudy." All the comments read something like this:

olivia jennifer has left a new comment on your post "Project Owner, Project Manager": 

I would say that a PMP is highly respected within both IT & non-IT communities where strong project management skills are required. If you plan on a long term career as a project manager, then yes, even with your level of experience, I would suggest getting your PMP. You can prepare yourself for the exam in one of the leading training providers like http://www.pmstudy.com . You can do minimal prep-work to get 40 PMI® Contact Hours and apply to PMI for PMP Exam before the class begins. 

I wrote the company to ask them to stop spamming my blog, and they denied they'd ever done so. A few weeks later, the comments started appearing again. A second email got no response at all.

I'd never heard of PMStudy before these spam comments started showing up. Although they've gotten status as a PMI Registered Education Provider, that doesn't mean very much — there are many, many companies that offer top-notch PMP prep programs. They are the only one I've encountered, however, that feels it needs to resort to this sort of spamming.

If you're looking for high-quality PMP prep training, look around. You'll find many companies whose marketing practices have integrity, and whose quality I can vouch for. But companies that spam repeatedly after being asked not to do so, and who lie about it when caught, do not deserve support.

Stand up for no spam — don't patronize PMStudy. Thanks.

Political Animals

"I wish nothing but good; therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel."

King George III of the United Kingdom, born June 4, 1738

What motivates this blog post is the quote from King George III above, which appeared on one of my Pinterest boards: Dobson's Improbable Quote of the Day for June 4. It had a lot of resonance for me: while George III said it aloud, a lot of people — including me — feel that way, at least from time to time. I didn't aim it at left or right, because that particular feeling is independent of which side of the fence you fall on.

Within a minute or two of sharing the link on Facebook, a comment appeared: "Substitute 'racist' for 'traitor,' and you have Barack Obama." I deleted it at once and sent a message to the poster explaining my desire to keep politics off my wall.

It was some hours before I checked Facebook again. Obviously, that quote had triggered strong political reactions, because now I had two political comments: "Didn't realize the tea party was so old," and "Still the official motto of the Republican party?" People on both sides clearly saw this quote as describing the attitudes of their political opponents.

- * -

There are, I think, few things in the world more useless than having a political argument on Facebook. There are never any winners, only losers to one degree or another. Those who've known me for a long time know I am a man of passionate political opinions, with an unfortunate tendency to use scorched earth rhetoric when provoked — and I provoke more easily than I should. This tends not to end well.

One of the most popular posts in this history of this blog appeared March 2, 2010: You're Not Being Reasonable. In that post, I tried to establish some objective standards for reasonableness in political discussions, virtually all of which I've violated at one time or another. The cost of those violations has been high: I've lost several friendships I valued. Mind you, it takes two to tango, but my own behavior is the only thing I can control, and I look at my own lapses of reasonableness and decorum as cause for shame and embarrassment.

My obsession with cognitive biases (collected in my personal magazine Random Jottings 6) and argumentative fallacies (only partially done, and on my ever-growing list of projects to complete One Of These Days) has done a lot to convince me of the futility of political argument.  Confirmation bias  alone, the tendency to interpret information in a way that conforms to your preexisting beliefs, derails most discussions before they get started. None of us can shake personal bias altogether, but we can work to limit its effects on our thinking.

Because of the operation of cognitive bias (I include my own bias as well as that of others), I can't think of a single situation in which someone's mind has been changed through a Facebook argument, or indeed through an argument of any kind. When I have changed my mind, it's not because of someone's argument but rather someone's behavior or personal actions, or my evolving understanding of the world around me. If I have changed someone else's mind, it is for the same reasons.

- * -

My social media activity is a combination of personal and professional. A lot of my Facebook friends are actually friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, but many are professional relationships (LinkedIn has been pretty useless in that regard), and a surprising number are people I've actually met and gotten to know through Facebook itself. (Having grown up in science fiction fandom, I'm used to having friends I've never actually met in person.) Some of my Facebook friends have political opinions I find congenial, but a whole lot of them don't.

Mixing the personal and the professional has its dangers. For the first few years I was on Facebook, I mostly posted a daily "Dobson's Law" of project management (collected here). I learned a lot from the discussions that followed. For both personal and professional reasons, I began wishing people happy birthday on Facebook (sadly, I've neglected that in recent months), and started adding a list of shared birthdays. That led to my second blog, Dobson's Improbable History (pace Peabody), a more-or-less daily post of events and people associated with each day, which in turn supports a series of books I'm writing: The Story of a Special Day, one for every day of the year. (Only $7.95 print, $2.99 ebook — it's like a birthday card they'll never throw away!™ — adv.)

In other words, there are plenty of reasons for me to stay out of politics on Facebook.

- * -

My formative political experience was Alabama during the civil rights years. We supported civil rights in a time and place where that was an extreme minority position. My father considered marching in Selma, and only refrained because he was told his job was on the line. He was generally unafraid of confrontation and had a take-no-prisoners attitude toward those with whom he disagreed, and in that, I took after him.  I believed — and still believe — that the segregation side was not merely wrong, but evil. That's not to say I thought the people who held those beliefs were necessarily evil, but when you call someone's beliefs evil, it's hard for them not to take it personally. I didn't have a lot of friends in those days.

Strangely, however, I now call lots of the same people my friends, though in many cases my feelings about their political opinions remain unchanged. Perhaps it's the shared Stockholm syndrome experience of high school; perhaps it's simply the realization that personal history matters. I can get along with people of dramatically different beliefs, but the way to do that is to focus on what we agree on and what we share, not what separates us. At least that's the plan — the execution has been less than perfect.

Yes, I occasionally find political pieces I want to repost, or comments I feel compelled to make. I created a Facebook list of people likely to find my political positions congenial, and when I can't refrain from political comment, at least I don't feel the need to rub it in the noses of those who disagree. I also feel more free to jump into other people's Facebook discussions, especially when I agree with the original poster. After all, they brought up the subject, not me. It's rare for me to comment when someone posts an opinion I find repugnant; instead, I simply hide the most regular offenders from my timeline and thus keep my blood pressure under control.

- * -

I can never tell what posts will draw political reactions. In addition to Dobson's Improbable History and Dobson's Improbable Quote of the Day, I  also explore my fascination with maps on a Pinterest board called, oddly enough, More Fun With Maps!  I generally share them without much in the way of comment: a map should speak for itself. Some maps, however, lend themselves to one political position or another.  I avoid sharing some maps because of the likelihood of triggering a political argument, but that doesn't always do the trick. Maps I think of as fairly neutral have drawn sharply partisan responses. The same thing is true of quotes. Honestly, I didn't think the King George III quote was going to provoke this kind of reaction.

It is much easier, of course, to see the mote in thy brother's eye than the beam that is in thine own eye. We notice the horrible and disgusting things people on the other side say about our side much more clearly than the horrible and disgusting things that our fellow travelers say about them. Whatever the merits of one position over the other, none of us have clean hands when it comes to rhetorical excess. While I'm wary of false equivalence, or "both sides do it," as a general argument, in this particular case, I think it's a fair observation. I wrote this blog post, and then shared it.

The next comment was political as well: "I stand firmly for the Mugwump party."

I appreciated the sentiment. After all, politics is a Mug's game.

••••

Eyewitness to Murder, Part 5

Mark Felsher

On April 13, 1975, an unemployed Silver Spring carpenter named Michael Edward Pearch dressed in his Army fatigues, strapped a machete to his chest, shrugged on a knapsack with 250 rounds of ammunition, and loaded his .45 automatic pistol. He drove to the nearby Wheaton Plaza shopping mall and began killing. Within the next half hour, he shot seven people, all African-American. Two of them died. I don’t want to mention Pearch’s name without also listing his victims, so here they are.

• John L. Sligh, 43, of Rockville, Maryland: died.
• Laureen D. Sligh, 40, his wife: wounded.
• Dr. Ralph C. Gomes, also of Rockville: minor injuries when his car crashed.
• Harold S. Navy, Jr., 17: wounded.
• Connie L. Stanley, 42, of Washington, DC: killed.
• Rosalyn Stanley, 26, of Annapolis, Maryland: wounded.
• Bryant Lamont Williams, 20, of Rockville: wounded.

Pearch died at the hands of the police: “suicide by cop.”

Two years ago, I told that story on my blog, and last month I summarized some of my encounters with others touched by the same experience. The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School led to my revisiting the story, and in particular telling about my encounter with Mark Felsher, one of the last people to talk to the killer. Yesterday, I told the story about how Felsher first met Pearch. Today I'll share the final chapter of that part of the story.


Mowing the Lawn

As Mark entered his teenage years, he spent less time camping in the Greenbelt woods and more time working for spending money. Each Saturday he mowed lawns for a landscape service run by a family friend, going as far afield as Silver Spring, a few towns west of Greenbelt in neighboring Montgomery County, Maryland. The owner, Howie, would pick Mark up (he was still too young to drive), and the two would work together. Mark was fifteen years old.

This particular day, Howie told Mark he had a new customer on Dennis Avenue in Silver Spring. As the two got to work, Howie began working around the right side of the house while Mark started in the front, near the sidewalk. The owner, a woman, arrived at the same time and took in some brown paper bags of groceries. Howie and she exchanged a few words.

The house was old and somewhat neglected. The windows were unpainted and dark, with blinds pulled down. Shortly after the owner went inside, the door opened again and a man walked out.
Mark initially didn’t recognize the man, and assumed he was going to talk to Howie about the work, but instead the man walked confidently and deliberately up to Mark. “You’re Mark Felsher,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

It had been two years since the incident in the woods, and it took Mark a few seconds to place the man. “Mike Phipps?” he asked tentatively.

Mike shook his head. “Sorry, that’s not really my name. It’s Pearch. Mike Pearch. I was just toying with you guys. I said my name was ‘Mike Phipps’ after the quarterback, but my real name is Mike Pearch.” Mike Phipps was an NFL quarterback with the Cleveland Browns, though Mark didn’t know that at the time.

The whole conversation, Felsher said, was uncomfortable. Pearch was intense and focused, not at relaxed as he’d been during their time camping. “I just could not catch up to where he was,” Mark said of the conversation. “It was as though he had seen me yesterday and I had not seen him for two years.”
Pearch had recently come back from Germany, but according to Mark sounded like he was visiting relatives there rather than having been deployed. He told Mark he’d been engaged to be married, but Mark got the sense that the engagement was over.

The real focus of the conversation, however, was about falconry. Pearch had gotten into the sport, and was very passionate about it. But Mark had grass to cut and his boss was watching, so he ended the conversation, fully expecting to see Mike again when they came back to cut the grass.

Mark didn’t think much of the conversation at the time. It was odd, he thought, that Mike had recognized him so readily after two years, but that was all. People change a lot between the ages of 13 and 15, and if you don’t know somebody well, it’s altogether possible that you wouldn’t recognize them after two years of adolescent growth. But Mike Pearch had recognized him with only a glimpse through a window.

It was Saturday, April 12, 1975, in the late afternoon.

Those Who Watch

As an ostensible witness to the situation, as I’ve mentioned previously, I failed to grasp what was going on around me, and I still feel bad about my failure. Mark Felsher told me that one of the reasons he’d gotten in touch is that he also felt bad about his failure to read Pearch’s character correctly, and wonders if there is anything he could have said or done that would have changed the events of April 13, 1975.

In both our cases, I suspect the answer is that even armed with 20-20 hindsight, there was little if anything either of us could have done. But that doesn’t change the feeling of responsibility. I imagine that even the heroes of Sandy Hook Elementary will carry the same feeling — although they did more than either Mark or me, they will always wonder if there was more they could have done, if there were additional steps they could have taken.

The feeling of helplessness and stupidity in the face of terrible events stays with you, and perhaps it’s right that it should. Regardless of what might or might not have been possible, the human need to try should always be paramount in our minds.

More of the Story

Thanks to Mark, I've been able to learn something of the story of two more of the victims: Rosalyn Stanley and Harold Navy. (Navy was the victim I saw.) In addition, I've just received another comment from someone who also knew Navy.

It's usually the killer who gets most of the focus in stories like this, not merely because of the sensationalism but also because of our human need to make sense from horror. But without the stories of the victims, it doesn't mean a thing. Stay tuned.


More to come…

Eyewitness to Murder, Part 4

On April 13, 1975, an unemployed Silver Spring carpenter named Michael Edward Pearch dressed in his Army fatigues, strapped a machete to his chest, shrugged on a knapsack with 250 rounds of ammunition, and loaded his .45 automatic pistol. He drove to the nearby Wheaton Plaza shopping mall and began killing. Within the next half hour, he shot seven people, all African-American. Two of them died. I don’t want to mention Pearch’s name without also listing his victims, so here they are.

• John L. Sligh, 43, of Rockville, Maryland: died.
• Laureen D. Sligh, 40, his wife: wounded.
• Dr. Ralph C. Gomes, also of Rockville: minor injuries when his car crashed.
• Harold S. Navy, Jr., 17: wounded.
• Connie L. Stanley, 42, of Washington, DC: killed.
• Rosalyn Stanley, 26, of Annapolis, Maryland: wounded.
• Bryant Lamont Williams, 20, of Rockville: wounded.

Pearch died at the hands of the police: “suicide by cop.”

Two years ago, I told that story on my blog, and last month I summarized some of my encounters with others touched by the same experience. In October of this year, I heard from Mark Felsher, who had known the killer, Michael Edward Pearch. He wrote:

Mark Felsher

“My connection to this event is before the fact. I had met Mike Pearch a couple of years before the shooting and spent a lot of time with him camping over three days. With only one exception, our paths did not cross again for about two years, until I happened to randomly wind up doing yard work at his mother's house about 24 hours before the shooting began. 

 

“Mike recognized me and came out of the house to talk. The conversation lasted about fifteen or twenty minutes and mostly covered the past two years. I know that there was much more behind his actions, but I have always been haunted by the question of whether something about that conversation may have been the final trigger for him to snap. I strongly suspect that the whole time he was speaking with me that he already had at least some idea about what he was going to do and perhaps he had already planned every detail. 

 

“Not that I think it would have made much of a difference but I was never interviewed by the police. I don't think they ever knew much of anything about me or that I had just spoken to Mike. I was only fifteen at the time and could not figure out what to do with what I knew. My parents were even afraid to talk to me about it beyond being the ones to inform me about the shooting. 

This whole episode is to me like a manila file folder that has no place in the file cabinet. I try to put it somewhere; maybe in the wrong drawer, maybe in the trash, maybe I try to bury it under other things but sooner or later it keeps reappearing on top of the file cabinet. I suspect you and others, connected to this event, feel the same way. And always the question, ‘Is there anything I could have done?’

 

Obviously, there is not a thing I can do to change the past but if there is any way that sharing what I know can bring some relief to someone else affected by this tragedy then perhaps I could finally put this in the file cabinet under, ‘Something good finally came out of that part of my life.’”

I began corresponding with Mark, and on October 21 of this year met him in person. Mark’s a few years younger than I. (He was fifteen at the time of the incident, and I was 22.) He’s a home improvement contractor by trade, with a background in leading youth camps. Highly religious, he’s involved with his church and family. He’s been married for 29 years and has four children with ages ranging from 20 to 23. He currently lives in North Carolina.

Mark had a job to do in the DC suburbs, so we agreed to get together on the Sunday after his work was finished. I drove to Greenbelt, where we met at Generous Joe’s Deli — Mark had gone to school with the owner. Over fried shrimp baskets, we talked about our lives and about our involvement with the Wheaton murders.

Mark — like Pearch — grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland, a planned suburban community located in Prince Georges County, which borders the District of Columbia. Like the two other “green” towns built by the United States Resettlement Administration in the 1930s, the town was designed as a self-sufficient cooperative community, surrounded by (as the name implies) a belt of forest. Eleanor Roosevelt was actively involved in the layout of the town, and appeared at its official inauguration. Greenbelt’s downtown is a lovely (if a bit run-down) example of Art Deco architecture. At the time of its founding, it was officially a segregated community (a proposed annex that would welcome black residents was scuttled in the face of local opposition), and even by the 1970s, black residents in Greenbelt were highly unusual.

The Mysterious Camper

For Mark Felsher, the undeveloped “green belt” that surrounded the town was a boy’s paradise. Along with his boyhood friend, Mike King, he explored the woods on an almost daily basis, building secret forts and camping out. Although they were only a short distance from the townhouse row where they both lived, it was easy to believe that all the civilization around them had disappeared. Both were members of the local Boy Scout troop; both loved camping and the outdoors. He was thirteen at the time.

It was on one of their hiking trips, not too far off one of the winding paths through the forest, that Mike King suddenly stopped and told Mark that someone was nearby. Mark looked around, but saw no one, until Mike King pointed to a small patch of trees where an older man, perhaps in his early twenties, nearly camouflaged in the dense underbrush, stood watching them.

The boys introduced themselves, and the man told them his name was Mike Phipps. (It would be some years before Mark learned his real name.) "Phipps" was also camping in the woods, but on more of a semi-permanent basis. He had built a semi-log cabin, with three straight sides and an angled top, which served as a base over which he’d stretched a tent. The whole camp was artfully concealed in the woods, effectively invisible to any casual observer.

Mike Phipps was friendly, if a bit guarded, and the two boys decided to set up their own camp near him. For three days they lived near each other in the woods. Their conversation was limited. Mike had been a member of the same Boy Scout troop some years previously, and as a lifelong resident of Greenbelt, they knew various other people in common. He had been in the Army, he told them. The conversation didn’t go into a lot of depth.

After a couple of days, Mike took Mark aside and pointed out that he was camping out for solitude, and politely suggested that the boys might want to find a different location.

About six months later, Mark saw Mike Phipps again. He was walking briskly along the trail beside a thin and winding creek, not too far from the old campsite. He was clearly in a hurry. He waved at Mark when he saw him, but didn’t slow down. Where he had come from and where he was going were both a mystery.

Two more years would pass before the third and final encounter.

More to come...

Eyewitness to Murder, Part 3

Sandy Hook Elementary School Students

Mass Shootings in the US in 2012

In the wake of the Sandy Hook killings, I did a little research on some of the other mass shooting incidents in the United States this year.

1. December 15: Birmingham, Alabama triple killing, four dead including the shooter.
2. December 15: St. Vincent’s Hospital (also Birmingham, Alabama), three wounded, shooter killed.
3. December 14: Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, 26 dead at the scene, including 20 children; one offsite death; shooter dead.
4. December 11: Happy Valley shopping mall shooting, two killed including the shooter, one injured.
5. October 21: Brookfield, Wisconsin, spa killing, three killed, four injured; shooter killed himself.
6. September 27: Accent Signage Systems shooting, eight injured and dead including the killer.
7. August 13: College Station, Texas, three killed including the shooter, four injured.
8. August 5: Sikh Temple shooting, ten injured and killed including the shooter.
9. July 20: Aurora Theater shooting, seventy injured and killed; shooter arrested.
10. May 30: Seattle café shooting, seven injured and killed including the shooter.
11. April 6: Tulsa spree killing, three killed, two injured, shooters arrested.
12. April 2: Oikos University killings, ten injured and killed; shooter arrested.
13. March 8: Duquesne University shooting, two killed including the shooter, seven injured.
14. February 27: Chardon High School shooting, three killed, two injured, shooter arrested.
15. February 21: Su Jung Health Sauna shooting, five injured and killed including the shooter.

At least that’s what turned up in a few minutes of Google searching. There may well be more. In fact, in the last thirty years, there have been at least 62 such incidents. That doesn’t include my own encounter with mass murder, which took place more than thirty years ago.


On April 13, 1975, Michael Edward Pearch dressed in his Army fatigues, strapped a machete to his chest, shrugged on a knapsack with 250 rounds of ammunition, and loaded his .45 automatic pistol. He drove to the nearby Wheaton Plaza shopping mall and began killing. Within the next half hour, he shot seven people, all African-American. Two of them died. I don’t want to mention Pearch’s name without also listing his victims, so here they are.

• John L. Sligh, 43, of Rockville, Maryland: died.
• Laureen D. Sligh, 40, his wife: wounded.
• Dr. Ralph C. Gomes, also of Rockville: minor injuries when his car crashed.
• Harold S. Navy, Jr., 17: wounded.
• Connie L. Stanley, 42, of Washington, DC: killed.
• Rosalyn Stanley, 26, of Annapolis, Maryland: wounded.
• Bryant Lamont Williams, 20, of Rockville: wounded.

Pearch died at the hands of the police; “suicide by cop.”


Two years ago, I told that story on my blog, and last month I summarized some of my encounters with others touched by the same experience. In October of this year, I heard from Mark Felsher, who had known the killer, Michael Edward Pearch. That story will appear over the next two days.

More to come...

By Hook or by Crook (Watergate Part 10)

Nixon says, "I am not a crook," 11/17/1973

For previous installments of my irregular series tracing the history of the Watergate scandal, click here. This week, Richard Nixon says, “I am not a crook.”

Immediately after Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of Richard Nixon’s White House taping system, the tapes themselves became the central issue of the unfolding Watergate scandal.

While certain key facts (the burglary itself, the link to the Committee to Re-Elect the President) were not in dispute, the critical question was the one being asked by Watergate Select Committee chairman Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Now that tapes were available, that question could be settled definitely once and for all.

Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox filed a subpoena for eight of the tapes almost immediately, and for his trouble was fired in the Saturday Night Massacre. The backlash forced Nixon to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who continued to press for the tapes.

The Saturday Night Massacre took place on October 19, 1973. Just about a month later, on November 17, 1973, Richard Nixon traveled to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, for a question and answer session before the 400 members of Associated Press Managing Editor’s Association.

As expected, the first questions involved the Watergate scandal and its consequences for the nation. The president of the Managing Editor’s Association wondered if Watergate was serious enough to take down the country.

“Mr. President,” he asked, “This morning, Governor Askew of Florida addressed this group and recalled the words of Benjamin Franklin. When leaving the Constitutional Convention he was asked, ‘What have you given us, sir, a monarch or a republic?’ Franklin answered, ‘A republic, sir, if you can keep it.’ 

Mr. President, in the prevailing pessimism of the lingering matter we call Watergate, can we keep that republic, sir, and how?” Nixon assured him that the Republic would continue.

The Louisville-Courier asked about two of the subpoenaed tapes that had gone missing. Nixon replied that he had other information — Dictaphone belts, diary notes, and telephone call recordings — that would substantiate his claims of innocence. The Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle followed up, but gained no more information.

The Rochester Times-Union asked about the connection to the Ellsberg case, and Nixon replied that it was not part of Watergate, and should be considered a national security matter. The Detroit News followed with a softball question that allowed Nixon to once again reassure the public that everything was under control. The St. Petersburg Times asked about Nixon’s praise of Ehrlichman and Haldeman. Nixon replied, “First, I hold that both men and others who have been charged are guilty until I have evidence that they are not guilty.” (The president of the association later corrected Nixon, who agreed that he had misspoken.) The Des Moines Register and Tribune asked another question about the Ellsberg case, and Nixon reiterated his claim of national security.

Next, the subject of Nixon’s income tax returns came up. Nixon, according to the Providence Evening Bulletin, had paid only $792 in Federal income tax in 1970, and $878 in 1971. Nixon replied that he’d paid $79,000 in income tax in 1969, and the dramatic reduction in tax resulted from Nixon’s donation of his vice-presidential papers to the U.S. government, for which he’d taken a $500,000 deduction. (This practice was outlawed in 1969, so Nixon had gotten in just under the wire.)

The Tennessee Oak Ridger threw in another softball, asking Nixon if the demands of the Presidency were such that he just hadn’t had time to manage the re-election campaign directly. Nixon replied that yes, he’d taken a hands-off approach, but added “I say if mistakes are made, however, I am not blaming the people down below. The man at the top has got to take the heat for all of them.”

Before he took another question, however, Richard Nixon decided to go back to the question of his income tax payments. His government service had not been particularly lucrative, he said. “When I left office…you know what my net worth was? $47,000 total. Now, I have no complaints. In the next 8 years, I made a lot of money [from his book and law partnership]. And so, that is where the money came from.”

Even though the focus of the questions was on Watergate, it was the suspicion of financial irregularities in his personal life that seemed to concern Nixon most of all. Whatever anyone believed of him, his personal finances, he wanted to make clear, were completely aboveboard. It was in defending those finances that Richard Nixon made one of the most famous quotes of his lifetime:

“Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the television audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service--I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.” [Emphasis added.]

That seemed to stop the questions about Watergate. Reporters asked about the wiretapping of Richard Nixon’s brother Donald, additional matters of national security, the desirability of shield laws for reporters, executive privilege, the energy crisis, possible gas rationing, milk price supports, and what Nixon planned to do in retirement. (Hint: work for campaign finance reform.)

The event, televised live, went a few moments over the scheduled time, but that was okay in Nixon’s book. “It is a lousy movie anyway tonight.”

And when it was over, Richard Nixon said, “Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. I guess that is the end.”

But the end was still nine months away.

Eyewitness to Murder, Part Two

On April 13, 2010, I wrote a blog piece entitled “Eyewitness to Murder,” in which I recounted my involvement with a 1975 shooting spree in Wheaton, Maryland. Seven people (all African-American) were shot; two of them died. The killer also died, shot by police. He was white.

Although I drove within feet of the killer and his fourth victim, I completely misread the situation. It was so inconceivable to me that a killing spree was taking place on a sunny Sunday afternoon in downtown Wheaton that I failed to process anything going on around me. I couldn’t have picked out the killer from a police lineup even though I saw him clearly. There was just enough askew about the situation that I decided for safety’s sake to drop by the police station on my way home — and it was there I learned that I had been an eyewitness to murder.

The incident itself quickly dropped off the front pages and has largely been lost to history. With the killer dead, there was no trial, and the number of victims was too small to register with the national media. The incident — and my failure — have stuck with me for many years, and armed with Google, I decided to find out what I could learn, and uploaded my blog piece on the 35th anniversary of the shootings.

For the record, and because it can’t be stated often enough, the victims were:

• John L. Sligh, 43, of Rockville, Maryland: died.
• Laureen D. Sligh, 40, his wife: wounded in both legs, survived.
• Dr. Ralph C. Gomes, also of Rockville: minor injuries when his car crashed.
• Harold S. Navy, Jr., 17, a freshman at the University of Maryland: wounded in the abdomen, but survived. Navy was the victim I saw.
• Connie L. Stanley, 42, of Washington, DC: killed.
• Rosalyn Stanley, 26, of Annapolis, Maryland: wounded.
• Bryant Lamont Williams, 20, of Rockville: wounded.

The killer was Michael Edward Pearch, an unemployed carpenter living with his mother in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Since I first published the piece, I’ve heard from several other people connected to the incident.

About six months after “Eyewitness to Murder” appeared on my blog, I got an email from the daughter of John and Laureen Sligh. We exchanged emails and a few telephone calls, and finally arranged to have lunch on April 13, 2011, the 36th anniversary of the shooting. She told me her story. Her parents normally went to the movies on Sunday afternoon, and were just leaving the Wheaton Plaza theaters in separate cars when they encountered the shooter. The daughter herself was watching television when a special bulletin interrupted her show — and that’s how she learned her father was dead and her mother in the hospital. No one had bothered to sequester the news until the next of kin could be informed.

Both John and Laureen Sligh were scientists working for the Department of Defense. John Sligh was also a businessman and had purchased several small businesses. After his death, Laureen Sligh moved back to her home in Mississippi, and the businesses were left to the care of a relative who unfortunately was unable to keep them going, leaving the daughter without much in the way of means. We’ve kept in touch, and I’ve been pleased to hear that her daughters in turn are doing well; the youngest has ambitions to go to medical school.

I next heard from a man who was investigating the disappearance of the Lyon sisters, an unsolved case of two young girls who vanished in Wheaton in 1975.  Although there’s no known direct connection between Pearch and the disappearance of the Lyon girls, Pearch’s killing spree makes him an obvious potential suspect.

An anonymous comment in June 2012 gave me some more information about Harold Navy, Jr. He wrote, “I'd just like to add a correction, if I may? I remember Harold Navy Jr, being shot in the upper leg and it affected his basketball playing as he had a long recouperation. I remember him returning to High School basketball after the shooting, so I don't think he was yet a freshman in college.”

In August, I heard from another eyewitness, who wrote, “I was in early elementary school at the time of this horrific crime. My family was in the Wheaton Pharmacy (now long gone, but it was in the shopping center with Planters Peanuts,etc.on Georgia Ave.). My memories are vague, but I do remember hearing the gun fire, hiding in the small bathroom with the wife of the owner, my mother and my brother while my father and the pharmacist grabbed heavy objects, ducked behind the counter and waited (seems silly in hindsight, but it was all they could do). I had supressed my memories until the sniper shootings several years ago. I was surprised that this crime never re surfaced in the media. We also found out after the attacks that as a white family, we most likely were safe, but there was no way to know that at the time.”

And finally, a little over a month ago, I heard from one more person — someone who had known the killer.

“My connection to this event is before the fact. I had met Mike Pearch a couple of years before the shooting and spent a lot of time with him camping over three days. With only one exception, our paths did not cross again for about two years, until I happened to randomly wind up doing yard work at his mother's house about 24 hours before the shooting began. 



“Mike recognized me and came out of the house to talk. The conversation lasted about fifteen or twenty minutes and mostly covered the past two years. I know that there was much more behind his actions, but I have always been haunted by the question of whether something about that conversation may have been the final trigger for him to snap. I strongly suspect that the whole time he was speaking with me that he already had at least some idea about what he was going to do and perhaps he had already planned every detail. 



“Not that I think it would have made much of a difference but I was never interviewed by the police. I don't think they ever knew much of anything about me or that I had just spoken to Mike. I was only fifteen at the time and could not figure out what to do with what I knew. My parents were even afraid to talk to me about it beyond being the ones to inform me about the shooting.

This whole episode is to me like a manila file folder that has no place in the file cabinet. I try to put it somewhere; maybe in the wrong drawer, maybe in the trash, maybe I try to bury it under other things but sooner or later it keeps reappearing on top of the file cabinet. I suspect you and others, connected to this event, feel the same way. And always the question, ‘Is there anything I could have done?’



Obviously, there is not a thing I can do to change the past but if there is any way that sharing what I know can bring some relief to someone else affected by this tragedy then perhaps I could finally put this in the file cabinet under, ‘Something good finally came out of that part of my life.’”

For the story of how we met, and what I’ve learned since then, stay tuned.