Most of you won’t recognize the names William Simmons or Kaelin Glazier, but you probably do remember who Casey Anthony is. No, they are not at all related, but the circumstances of this murder trial definitely rhyme.

Way back in November 1996, 15 year-old Kaelin Glazier went missing near Ruch, Oregon, a very rural area of Southern Oregon made up of grass fields surrounded by forested areas and thick brush. She had been visiting a friend named William Simmons at his home and had watched a video with him before leaving the residence to walk to a church function on a dark, moonless night. Kaelin never reached her intended destination and went missing for 12 long years before a neighbor, living just across the street from Simmons’ home, decided to mow his overgrown field and discovered Kaelin’s skeletal remains, just 80 feet (or just 26.5 yards) from Simmons’ trailer.

When Kaelin went missing, police questioned Simmons, and later identified Simmons publicly as a person of interest in the disappearance because he was alleged to be the last person to see Kaelin before she went missing. As you will soon see, naming Simmons as the person of interest in the disappearance was a stupid cop mistake, but certainly not the first one. Wait until you read about the alleged blood evidence.

Simmons had a prior, mostly juvenile criminal record involving drugs and petty theft, but he had no record of physical assault. In fact, in the twelve years since Kaelin disappeared, Simmons was never charged with any crime of violence. There was no evidence in Simmons’ trailer of a struggle or a crime scene. The area was allegedly searched by cadaver dogs, including bloodhounds right after Kaelin disappeared, but nothing was found.

Nevertheless, when Kaelin’s remains were positively identified 12 years later, police arrested Simmons and charged him with Kaelin’s murder — even though the state medical examiner could determine no cause of death.

Just as in the Casey Anthony case, I once again pose this question: How the hell do you charge a person with murdering another person, when you can’t even determine how the victim died? How do you charge a person with murder when there is no evidence whatsoever that the victim was murdered? With no evidence of murder or a crime scene, the only accurate statement anyone can make is that Kaelin Glazier is dead, but not one witness who appeared for the prosecution could state that a murder was committed, and no evidence indicates Kaelin died as a result of physical violence, poisoning or even a brain aneurysm! As in the Casey Anthony case, the prosecution has zip, zero, nada hard evidence against Simmons.

The Casey Anthony trial produced more (albeit weak) circumstantial evidence. It appears Simmons’ only “crime” was to have been the last person to see Kaelin alive. But here in Southern Oregon, we do not have even marginally intelligent jurors like they seated in the Casey Anthony trial. The people of Southern Oregon are not well educated in general and they are some of the most mindlessly judgmental, mean-spirited people I’ve ever seen concentrated in one small area. The average person on the street here thinks Casey Anthony should have been tortured to death, let alone sit on Death Row for years awaiting her turn with the Florida executioner, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this local jury come in with a guilty verdict based on virtually no evidence at all.

So let’s get back to the case at hand. Retired Sheriff Detective Crawford stated that he saw blood spatter in the bathroom of Simmons’ trailer, but incredibly, no evidence of that sort was collected to determine blood type, and it wasn’t preserved to test for DNA later. Why this wasn’t done is in keeping with the kind of shoddy police work Southern Oregon is known for, and because the blood evidence wasn’t collected, Detective Crawford’s testimony should have been stricken from the record — but apparently it was not — and a small blood spatter in a bathroom could result from a shaving accident or even an animal. That is not evidence of a murder, particularly when they don’t know where that blood came from.

One woman got on the stand to say she saw a man on the road near Simmons’ trailer at about the same time as Kaelin left Simmons’ home. She later learned the man she saw was Kaelin Glazier’s boyfriend, and his countenance frightened her because she said he stopped and stared at her when she slowed down. She said the look on his face was wild-eyed and threatening, and she drove home scared enough to warn her family about the encounter.

Let me ask you something: If Simmons did kill Kaelin Glazier and dragged her dead body 26.5 yards across the road into an un-mowed field and left it there, wouldn’t he have returned some time during the 12 years Kaelin was still missing and have disposed of the remains so they would never be found? The body wasn’t buried or dismembered, except by coyotes and bears. There was a small defect in her rib bone that the prosecution wants the jury to believe is the result of a knife wound, but the defense countered by pointing out the defect could have been caused by the mower action when the remains were found, or even caused by an animal.

Next, how did two bloodhounds miss a dead, decomposing body lying just 26.5 yards from Simmons trailer? The prosecution wanted the jury to believe it was all-too possible there was no detectable scent at the time of the search. That might be true where the human sense of smell is concerned, but there is no way a bloodhound could miss such a scent, even incredibly slight by our own scenting standards. Bloodhounds can find a living, breathing human with little effort miles from where the person was last seen, so for the prosecution to tell the jury the dogs couldn’t find a decomposing corpse 26.5 yards away from where the girl was last seen alive is to assume the jury is just plain ignorant, downright stupid and mean-spirited enough to convict Simmons anyway, and based upon the jury verdicts I’ve witnessed in other local trials, they are probably right.

The dog handler stated the dog tracked Kaelin’s scent to the road from Simmons’ trailer and then lost the scent, indicating Kaelin may have been picked up by a vehicle or some kind of conveyance. As the dogs were being led down the road from Simmons trailer, one of the handlers told the jury the dog seemed to “hit” on Kaelin’s scent in a car that passed, and she stated the driver was not William Simmons, who is quite tall and somewhat gaunt, with a shaved head and some facial hair.

Here’s where the cops screwed up: If Kaelin Glazier did leave Simmons trailer alive and was abducted by a stranger (or her boyfriend) on that dark road where no witnesses could hear or see what was going on, then after Simmons was named as the person of interest, the real killer knew exactly where to place Kaelin’s remains after all the searching was over. In fact, he had 12 years to dump those remains there, but he probably did so right after all the excitement had died down and nobody was watching.

What I’m telling you is that the Simmons trial has produced less weak, circumstantial evidence against Simmons than the prosecution presented in the Casey Anthony trial, and you all know how the Casey Anthony verdict went: Not Guilty! But this is Southern Oregon, a land of incredible natural beauty, diverse wildlife, rivers, lakes and unlimited outdoor recreation. It is also just about the most evil place I have ever lived and that means something when you remember I was the National Sales Manager and Vice President of Circus Vargas from 1968 to 1974. I know this nation and its people like the back of my hand, and I have never seen such evil concentrated in such a small area as Southern Oregon. If you’re handing some local here your business, you’ll be glad-handed and treated like they love you, but you better get everything in writing because these people are very dishonest in their business dealings and they spread lies and rumors that are virtually always vicious and negative toward others — others they often don’t even know.

For example, the local newspaper ran an article about the Southern Oregon Militia that claimed we are all racists and anti-Semitic. Apparently, they didn’t know my wife is Mexican-American and I am a Christian Jew. Nevertheless, the Medford Mail Tribune never retracted that article. When even the local newspaper libels people they don’t know and ignorantly don’t like because they have the temerity to call themselves a militia, then you have a pretty good idea what the locals are like as well because that newspaper hires locally for the most part. We have the second worst police and judicial corruption I have ever seen in action anywhere, and that is saying something because the very worst I ever encountered was the New Orleans Police Department of the early 1970′s. These local cops kill unarmed citizens all the time around here, and the Grand Jury made up of local morons always comes back and says the killings were justified. If this local newspaper actually did its job for once, they would crunch the numbers and point out that the Medford, Oregon area has had more police killings of unarmed citizens than any other comparable area in just about the entire United States. If you add in the killings of people the cops claimed had knives or other non-firearm weapons, the record goes right off the scale. The police can claim self-defense all they want, but when the actual numbers of police killings are tallied-up and compared to other jurisdictions of similar area, population, age and education, even including crime rates, Medford, Oregon will emerge as the premier human killing ground in the nation — by cops.

I wrote this article because after the Casey Anthony verdict of not guilty came in, numerous prosecutors from around the nation complained on CNN and Fox that she should have been found guilty, and that they had successfully prosecuted many people for murder with the same weak circumstantial evidence the jury rejected in the Anthony trial. Are you kidding me??! Think about what they proudly boasted! They have sent people to prison for up to life, or they have sent people to Death Row on the same kind of weak circumstantial evidence as was used in the Casey Anthony trial? No wonder so many people are being exonerated after DNA proved they could not have committed the crime they were sent to prison or Death Row for! Prosecutors like that are really no different than vicious, common criminals, because they want to win so badly they have literally lost their own souls and utterly destroyed the lives of many people who are innocent. And in all fairness, for every wrongful conviction, 12 stupid, irresponsible jurors voted guilty as well. Wow…

The prosecution in the Simmons case is about to rest and now the defense gets their turn. But Simmons doesn’t have Jose Baez as his defense attorney; he has Michael Bertholf, an attorney provided Simmons via the Public Defender’s Office. Michael Bertholf is the same public defender who represented Joshua Brewer — the poor guy who was wrongly convicted in the medical marijuana case the SOM just got reversed. But I do hold out hope, because in the Brewer case, Judge White commandeered the whole trial and engineered a guilty verdict against Brewer. Right after he did that, Judge White announced his retirement. Bertholf actually isn’t a bad defense attorney, but if the judge hearing the Simmons trial does anything even remotely close to how Judge White handled the Brewer trial, Simmons will be convicted too.

It’s not that we believe Simmons is innocent of killing Kaelin Glazier back in 1996, it is the nearly total lack of evidence against Simmons that bothers us. Whatever happened to letting 10 guilty men go free rather than let just one man be wrongly convicted? In practice, that isn’t happening anymore. Now it is, “Convict them all, and let God sort them out”.

February 9, 2012

Carl F. Worden
Liaison Officer
Southern Oregon Militia