Remembering Ryan Skipper One Month After His Murder

Vigils will be held around the state of Florida and in Washington tomorrow to remember Ryan Keith Skipper.

Ryan was brutally murdered one month ago — stabbed 20 times, his body tossed on the side of the road. In life, Ryan was an open, fun, caring young man with enough energy to manage a retail store full-time while pursuing a degree in computer technology and fixing computers for his many, many friends on the side.

He was also gay. And this last fact is likely the reason Ryan was killed.

The vigils are not, as their organizers remind us, a time to protest. They are instead a time to honor Ryan’s life, which his friends and family are determined to remember for more than its end. I recently talked to Ryan’s brother, Damien Skipper, to find out what the handsome and friendly 25-year-old was like.

The vigils are a time to honor Ryan’s life, which his friends and family are determined to remember for more than its end

“We grew up between Auburndale and Winter Haven. We were both born in Winter Haven Hospital…and we lived in Polk County our whole lives until I went away to college.

Ryan stayed in Polk County and he’s gone to school. He went to Polk Community [College] for awhile and basically he’s carried a job since he graduated from high school. All of his friends are there and I tried a few to get him to move out of Polk County, just because of — not that I ever conceived or could conceive something like this happening — but I just told him that I thought it would be nicer if he lived in a metro area.

Ryan was a handsome and intelligent young man and he’s incredibly honest and he is a true friend to anyone who knew him and I’ll stick with the cliche that everyone has been saying, which is that if you knew Ryan you loved him. He was just that type of person. I don’t think there’s anything in his past that anyone would ever be ashamed of. Ryan, just like all of us, was imperfect. That doesn’t mean anything negative, it just means that we can all strive for perfection but none of us will reach it.

And so I remember Ryan as…I said this at his eulogy. I remember going to the hospital with my father and seeing Ryan and just knowing from that day that he’s my little brother. I’m his big brother and it’s my duty to kind of show him the ropes and protect him and just, you know, make sure that he lived a great life. And he did.

And it’s unfortunate that someone decided they could take that away from us, take that away from him.

Two men were arrested for Ryan’s murder, which is being investigated as a hate crime. They are jailed without bond, and will be until their trials.

Tomorrow we will remember Ryan, a brother and son, friend and student and coworker, who was taken from us. If we protest tomorrow, let it be against hate and intolerance, violence and ignorance, savagery and loss.

Three Fired U.S. Attorneys Signed Letter Critical of Justice Department Last Year

When 17 U.S. attorneys questioned the Justice Department last year about why it wasn’t using a shared law enforcement database, they didn’t know that three of them would soon be among eight fired.

In a letter dated Aug. 30, 2006, the federal prosecutors questioned why the department had not taken a greater “leadership role.” Three of the U.S. attorneys were later fired.

Amid the many revelations that will no doubt come from the investigation of the Bush administration pogrom of U.S. attorneys was this one.

And, as Sen. Bill Nelson (D – Fla.) pointed out this week, the department still isn’t following the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to share information with other law enforcement agencies in the fight against terrorism.

“We learned the hard way from 9-11 that coordinated information-sharing is imperative,” Nelson wrote Wednesday to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The Florida Democrat’s request concerns a crime database called the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or Linx…

Nelson’s letter follows the discovery of a pointed, written exchange last year between McNulty and a group of U.S. attorneys.

In a letter dated Aug. 30, 2006, the federal prosecutors questioned why the department had not taken a greater “leadership role” in promoting Linx. It was signed by 17 U.S. attorneys.

…Nelson and others in Congress have expressed concern over the exchange in 2006 — noting three of the U.S. attorneys who signed the letter to McNulty later were fired.

But — predictably — firing the critics didn’t solve the problem. And just as clearly, the Bush Justice Department is adrift in quibbles, incompetence, and heads up butts.

The 17 U.S. attorneys advocated an expansion of the system beyond its seven targeted regions, but doing so would require an agency other than the Department of Defense — which runs the program — to take the lead, said Mike Dorsey, head of the Linx program.

Dorsey said Thursday that the Justice Department has been supportive of the Linx program but attributed rifts about its future to debates on funding, control and turf wars.

Lakeland Ledger Grabs at a Little Good News in Ryan Skipper Mess

The Lakeland Ledger ain’t the New York Times. Duh. But the Lakeland Ledger is the local paper doing the bad reporting on the Ryan Skipper murder case, not the Times.

I wonder how many negative letters the Lakeland Ledger has received and whether we’ll ever see any of those in print.

We had an e-mail at Pensito Review the other day from a guy who was trying to call the Ledger to task over its bad reporting. Garry, from Louisiana, was frustrated by what he’d read, so he sent an e-mail to the Ledger expressing his frustration (and quoting from Pensito Review). The Ledger, surprise, responded:

Thank you for your email. Everything we printed that you dispute has come from the Sheriff’s Office. If they change what they think happened at some point, we’ll report on that. But for now, that’s its official report.

Best,
Lenore Devore
Managing Editor
The Ledger
Lakeland, Florida

(from Garry’s e-mail to us)

But not everybody is disappointed in the Ledger’s reportage, and the paper printed a letter to the editor today that congratulates it on its coverage of the murder:

Re: Ryan Skipper, thank you for the nice article about Ryan [“2 Indicted In Slaying Of Polk Man,” March 30, page B1]. He was a great guy and a good friend. I will miss him terribly.

Hopefully, I can one day make it through the entire article, but as of right now I can’t without breaking down in tears. I’ll never understand how anyone can do such a thing. Disliking gays is one thing, but there is no rationale for killing them.

Ryan wasn’t just some random gay guy. He was someone’s friend and some parent’s child. There are no words that could make him less of a human being. But I have to wonder if the same can be said for the young men accused of taking Ryan’s life. Their reason for killing him isn’t justified. If they truly felt uncomfortable around him, they could’ve just walked away.

I read an article, recently, about a man who has to spend the rest of his days looking at a picture of the woman he killed. Maybe these men should face that same reality. Putting them to death wouldn’t inflict nearly the same amount of heartache they’ve put Ryan’s friends through.

They should have to be reminded every day of what they took from us, as long as they draw breath on this Earth. We won’t get a quick exit from our pain, why should they?

TODD A. JOHNSON

Lakeland

I hope Todd at some point is able to read the entire article because I think then he would join the rest of us in our assessment that the Ledger is doing a crappy job of reporting on this case.

Parroting back the homophobic assumptions and allegations offered BY THE GUYS WHO DID THE CRIME that Sheriff Judd has said is not good newspaper reportage. It’s not journalism, and all it does is slander a dead guy who, by most accounts was a good egg, not a bad fellow, and by any account did not deserve to be killed.

And printing a letter from a guy who hasn’t even read the whole article is no mea culpa, nor does it let the Ledger off the hook for screwing up.

It’s pitiful that the Lakeland Ledger, out of desperation, prints the only positive letter it has received about its coverage of the Skipper murder. I wonder how many negative letters it has received and whether we’ll ever see any of those in print.

Ryan Skipper Press: With Friends Like These…

One of the nation’s top gay focused web sites has smeared Ryan Skipper, a young Florida gay man recently murdered in what police labeled a hate crime. In fact, what queerty.com said makes the local sheriff and news media — blasted by us and many others for repeating the suspect’s version of events before investigating — look like paragons of open-mindedness and circumspection.

At no time does Pensito Review accept sources at face value and pass them along, unexamined. And if you ever catch us doing that, we’ll strap on some balls and admit it.

According to friends, Ryan Keith Skipper, 25, went cruising Wahneta, Florida, for some quick and easy sex when he came across 21-year old Joseph Bearden. Testing his luck, Skipper offered Bearden a ride, which Bearden accepted. Skipper then took him to his house, where they smoked a bit of ganj and, according to police reports, chatted about using Skipper’s computer expertise to copy checks.

Skipper and Bearden then apparently took Skipper’s laptop and headed off to meet Bearden’s friend, 20-year old William David Brown Jr. From what police gather, Bearden and Brown, nestled in Skipper’s car, then stabbed Skipper 20 times before tossing his body on the side of the road.

That would make a good movie but it bears little resemblance to what actually happened.

Not a single one of Ryan’s friends has said he was cruising that night. All have said they know of no time Ryan ever looked for sex with strangers.

Ryan’s brother, who is in the computer/internet/all that stuff business, was preparing a laptop to send him from his home in Las Vegas but had not yet shipped.

At the time of his murder, Ryan owned a desktop computer, but no printer and no scanner.

Ryan has no history of criminal activity beyond some underage personal consumption charges related to pot. He was a student at a technical college and held a steady job at Sunglass Hut.

Though they jumped to the conclusion expected by rabid anti-gay evangelicals, Queerty is refusing to apologize. They blame their sources and then, worse, their defenders hide behind the excuse they are a blog, not a legitimate news outlet.

In this story, we passed along the Associated Press story…

Skipper’s friends, meanwhile, wrote us an angry note insisting that not only do we have the story wrong, we’re defaming this boy’s name: a stunning allegation, if you ask us…

Rest assured…that was not our intent. We simply report the news as we find it. We’re sure Skipper would be pleased to know that you’re keeping his good name alive. We must say, however, that we find nothing wrong with cruising for sex and, thus, cannot agree that we assassinated anyone’s character. Regardless, we’re sorry for your loss. It’s always upsetting when people are murdered – especially when it’s a senseless a crime as the one that took Skipper. We’ll be sure to keep our virtual eyes on any and all developments in this convoluted and multi-faceted story.

The only convoluted stories are the ones coming from the suspects. But George Bush himself could not have sidestepped this any better. Next they’ll be saying, “mistakes were made.”

“It’s always upsetting when people are murdered.” Yeah, don’t you hate that? What a bother. It probably happens to them all the time, which is how they know it’s “always upsetting.” Sheesh.

That they find nothing wrong with cruising is not the point, SINCE RYAN WASN’T DOING THAT ANYWAY.

We didn’t know Ryan when we read the first reports of his death, but we have half a brain and could see that the suspects’ version wasn’t adding up. Since then, we have spoken to his brother, scoured the web for updates, and are in the process of speaking to his friends. At no time does Pensito Review accept sources at face value and pass them along, unexamined. And if you ever catch us doing that, we’ll strap on some balls and admit it.

Ryan’s family has been cautioned that capital murder trials can take up to two years to prepare. If this is the kind of support they can expect from the “good guys,” it’s going to be a very long 24 months.

Looking for Answers in Ryan Skipper Mystery

All three of us at Pensito Review are drawn to the story of Ryan Skipper.

I was attracted by a headline, “Winter Haven Man Killed for Being Gay,” maybe because I have an inordinate number of gay friends. If it’s true the population at large is about 10 percent gay, my immediate circle is at least three or four times that. I feel like I could have known Ryan Skipper. I can see his face among my friends.

We have made a decision at Pensito Review to follow this story wherever it might lead

Buck spent childhood summers in Polk County, Florida, where the vicious crime recently occurred, and serves as our ambassador to an area neither Jon nor I know well.

Jon’s combined sense of justice and mind like a screenwriter/detective won’t take the official version of the killing at face value. And the fact he is himself gay might help him smell rats that would rustle past straight people unsniffed.

In my initial post on Ryan’s murder, I noted that the local newspaper report, in turn repeated by other news outlets, summed up a story with i’s that don’t dot and t’s that don’t cross. As postulated: Ryan was out cruising for a pickup late one night and made a move on two straight guys. They rebuffed his advances by stabbing him 20 times, dumping his body on the side of a road, and stealing his car but later torching it and abandoning it on a dock one town over. Another angle was of a criminal alliance by the three, involving check forging and drugs.

One of those six degrees moments came for me as I read all this. Years ago, a friend of mine was married to a guy who went on to play the squirrelly preacher in the movie, “The Laramie Project,” Michael Emerson. Because Mike was in it, I saw the movie more than once, and the story of the murder of a Wyoming man, Matthew Shepard, allegedly for propositioning straight men, is a bit ingrained. When I read about Ryan, it was deja vu all over again.

After my post, people who knew and loved Ryan came forward to refute the for-publication version, adding many more questions to a growing list compiled by the three of us at PR.

We have made a decision at Pensito Review to follow this story wherever it might lead. So far, little has been written about the suspects, currently jailed without bail, and awaiting the start of a first degree murder trial whose outcome could be death. Please check back if, like us, you want to know what really happened. And why.

Why Hasn’t Pervo Mark Foley Been Arrested?

It was last September when the story first broke that U.S. Rep. Mark Foley was sending inappropriate e-mails to underaged U.S. House of Representatives pages. It was September 29 when Foley resigned from the House and entered rehab for alcoholism and “behavioral problems” related to childhood sexual abuse by a priest. Here iwe are on the cusp of April and the perv still hasn’t been charged. Why not?

According to the Associated Press:

It’s in the best interests of the GOP powers that be to keep the Foley case under wraps and out of the media — at least until after the prez elections of 2008.

“I can’t really give any more detail other than to say we’re still in the preliminary investigative stance and we are working with state authorities,” said Debra Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office.

Florida authorities announced their own criminal investigation in November but have remained tightlipped on the status since then.

Foley’s lawyer maintains that he never did anything physical to the pages, so no crime was committed. That may be the case some places, but not in Florida:

Federal law generally requires a person to meet or attempt to meet a minor for sex for it to be a crime. However, under laws in some states where the Florida Republican communicated with minors, an attempt to seduce the victim might be enough for a criminal case.

Under state law in Florida, where the age of consent is 18, a crime may have been committed if Foley is simply found to have seduced or attempted to seduce a minor using lewd or explicit language.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel was a little more blunt:

“This type of activity would fall under Florida law’s criminal statute,” said Maureen Horkan, director of the Child Predator Cybercrime Unit in the Florida Attorney General’s Office, adding that the statute is “broad.”

The law states “any person who knowingly utilizes a computer online service or Internet service to seduce, solicit, lure, entice, or attempt to seduce a child” would be committing a third-degree felony and could receive a jail sentence of up to five years.

So why are law enforcement authorities dragging their feet on the investigation? It doesn’t sound like they are working the case zealously:

Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said Wednesday the Foley investigation is “still ongoing” and is weeks if not months away from concluding.

“We are still conducting an active and ongoing investigation into the matter and continue to work with the Florida Attorney General’s Office Cybercrime Unit,” said Kristen Perezluha, an FDLE spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, FBI officials said they are still conducting a preliminary investigation into the matter. “Nothing has changed,” said Debbie Weirman, an FBI spokeswoman. “We are still working with Florida authorities. It is still a preliminary investigation.”

In an interview Wednesday, Stephen Jones, a lawyer for one of the underage pages at the center of the controversy, said authorities have not questioned his client since October.

“Nothing has occurred this year,” Jones said. “[State and federal] authorities have not contacted us recently.”

Foley is an embarrassment to the Republican Party. Any charges or a trial would just dredge up the scum that surrounds Foley, whose resignation contributed to the Democvratic takeover of the House of Representatives last November. It’s in the best interests of the GOP powers that be to keep the Foley case under wraps and out of the media — at least until after the prez elections of 2008. And remember, Florida is a RED state.

Here’s what Foley would have to do if convicted and labeled a “sexual predator” under Florida law:

    To ensure all sexual predators and sexual offenders are identified through the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) system the following Florida driver’s license or ID card registration change was added:

  • Within 48 hours after initial registration, whether the sexual offender/predator is released or under custody of the Department of Corrections (DC), he or she shall register in person and present proof of initial registration at a driver license office of the DHSMV to secure a Florida driver’s license or ID card.
  • The sexual offender/predator must also report to DHSMV within 48 hours any change of address or renewal of driver license or ID card.
  • The failure of a sexual offender/predator to maintain, acquire or renew a driver’s license or ID card, to submit to the taking of a digitized photograph, provide location information or by act or omission to comply with registration requirements, is a third degree felony.
  • Added Community Notification Requirement (Effective July 1, 1998):

  • Within 48 hours upon notification by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) of the presence of a sexual predator, the sheriff of the county or the chief of police of the municipality where the sexual predator establishes or maintains a permanent or temporary residence shall notify each licensed day care center, elementary school, middle school and high school within a 1-mile radius of the residence of the sexual predator.
  • Sexual Offender/Predator Designation:

  • A sexual predator or sexual offender who was designated by a court on or after October 1, 1998, and released from supervision or confinement for at least 20 years and has not been arrested for any felony or misdemeanor offense since release, may petition the court for removal of the sexual offender/predator designation.

I wonder how the former pages feel about justice deferred ….

KSM Also Confessed to Nicole Simpson Murder and Causing Rift in Bushes’ Marriage

Facing scandals and controversies everywhere it looks, the Bush Administration released a confession yesterday made over a month ago by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — one of dozens of Osama bin Laden’s “number two” men:

“I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.” He also confessed orchestrating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid’s December 2001 bid to “down two American airplanes.” Many of the plots Mohammed … took credit for planning never occurred, but were of a similarly grand scale as the September 11 attacks. Mohammed said that he plotted second wave attacks targeting U.S. skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and the Sears Tower, as well as the assassinations of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Pope John Paul II, and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Other crimes he confessed to, according to humorist Don Imus, included the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and the character of J.R. on the soap opera, “Dallas,” in the 1980s. Another cynic suggests he also confessed to the Watergate burglaries, stealing all the “W” keys off White House computers in the early days of the Bush Administration, killing Chandra Levy, causing the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as forcing Scooter Libby to lie to the FBI, firing eight U.S. Attorneys last December and being the “third party” who has caused problems in the Bushes’ marriage.

Privacy: The Newest Battle Cry of Republicans Seeking to Revoke the Constitution

There is no right to privacy in the Constitution, abortion foes like to remind us. To them, it’s a constitutional stretch to say that a woman has the right to make up her mind about her body, all by herself, without government assistance.

But there will be more privacy than you can shake a very big stick at in Florida if a state lawmaker gets his way. Personnel records of public workers, such as teachers and elections officials, as well as arrest records, civil suits, and just about everything else formerly “public” will forever more be “private.”

In an extreme case, a newspaper could be prevented from printing the name of a killer unless the killer gave permission for the personal information to be disclosed.

The bill requires that personal identification information should always remain private, even when collected legally.

It would give people the option of choosing whether to have personal identification information released to the public when requested by a state agency to supply such information.

Personal identification information is defined as a person’s name and any information that may be used to identify an individual, including an address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth or mother’s maiden name.

The bill is one of the three labeled most egregious by the First Amendment Foundation, a Florida open-government advocacy group made up of newspaper reporters, broadcasters, and other members of the press. The same state representative, William Proctor (R-St. Augustine), made the list twice.

His second (HB 1211) would make it a misdemeanor to distribute personal identification information about someone without first receiving permission from that person, even if the distributors legally acquired the information from public records.

The framers of the Constitution, as we all know but apparently need to be reminded, wanted us to be able to keep a very close eye on the courts, since they alone have the power to deprive us of our liberty. Without knowing who’s been arrested or tried for what by whom, we can’t possibly exercise the oversight a free society requires.

“It would just close the door to a whole host of records that we use regularly to oversee our government,” said Adria Harper, the director of the Florida’s First Amendment Foundation.

In an extreme case, Harper said, a newspaper could be prevented from printing the name of a killer unless the killer gave permission for the personal information to be disclosed.

These same Republicans want us to know the addresses, license numbers, and blood types of sex offenders. How these two initiatives will coexist is an interesting question. Proctor’s explanation of what he is trying to accomplish is, at best, lame.

“The basic question is to what level of privacy is a person entitled,” Proctor said. “There is the problem of identity theft. That’s not a small problem.”

It is and it isn’t. Identity theft, like online child pornography, is being pumped up and used as a rallying cry to either unconstitutionally hide us or unconstitutionally snoop on us. Either way, it’s bad law.

Toss Death Penalty, Save Money, Solve Cold Cases

About time: A Colorado House committee took the first step toward abolishing the state’s death penalty Wednesday. The proposed legislation would use the millions of dollars saved on endless appeals of death penalties to investigate 1,200 unsolved murder cases.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 there have been 1,047 executions in the United States.

Of course, Colorado has only executed one death row inmate in the past 30 years, and only has two men on death row now. Opponents of the bill say it’s a “red herring” because the legislature could vote to fund the cold case investigations and still keep the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes.

But what I find interesting about the story is the money angle. I oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, but that’s an argument you can always have with a proponent of state-sponsored homicide. The money angle, however, provides an argument that could cross party lines. The Colorado lawmakers noted that since the state’s last execution in 1998, $40 million has been spent on capital-punishment trials and appeals. That’s an average of $5 million per year, which, at $30,000 a pop, could underwrite 167 DNA tests.

The death penalty simply does not make economic sense. Amnesty International found that Texas taxpayers spend $2.3 million on every execution, while it only costs $800,000 to $1 million to maintain an inmate for life.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 there have been 1,047 executions in the United States (as of September 25, 2006). At 2.3 million each, that comes to $2.41 billion. That’s a lot of moolah. And a lot of it is simply wasted.

Approximately 67 percent of capital convictions eventually are overturned, usually on procedural grounds of incompetent legal counsel, suppression of evidence or bad or wrong instructions from the judge to the jury. Seven percent of those whose sentences were overturned between 1973 and 1995 have been acquitted. Ten percent were retried and resentenced to death.

Add to that the fact that the “cruel and unusual” moniker has been slapped on that most benign of executions — the “lethal” injection — and you’re looking at Constitutional violations, which can be really expensive. After a recent botched execution, the state of Florida imposed a moratorium on executions until it can figure out a painless, foolproof way to kill them so they stay dead.

Several other states are under moratoriums based on challenges to the efficacy of lethal injection as a means of execution. So you’ve already got inmates sitting on death rows where they average 10 years before they exhaust their appeals, why not just let them sit there for the rest of their lives?

It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and, dare I say it? More humane.