A WAKE FOR THE GODS

 

I pity those Bronze Age civilians who lived  next door to that collection of sociopathic drama queen “heroes” of Greek mythology, like Hector and Agamemnon.  Consider the adolescent Patroclus, who murdered his boyhood friend over a game, then did time "up state" guarded by centaurs, where he hooked up with another thug named Achilles. 

These two terrorized half of Asia Minor, fighting a ten year gang war which eventually killed Patroclus in a chariot drive by.  Achilles then avenged his death by killing the rival gang chiefdom and dragging his body all around town. Then Achilles was slain by Paris. What a bloody mess! But consider the modern day collision of similar heroes at the ironically named “Family Focus Community Center”.

On 19 February, 2008 , 31 year old Javor Brooks of Chicago was visiting friends when he was shot and wounded several times in front of a home on Florence Avenue in the suburb of Evanston. Javor was found conscious and transported to St. Francis Hospital, where he died of his wounds 12 days later, on 9 March.

On Saturday, 15 March his family gathered for a memorial and luncheon at the Family Focus Community Center  (above) to celebrate Javor's life when what might best be described as a Dionysiac Frenzy broke out. (The cops just called it a brawl). After it was all over, according to the Chicago Tribune, “… Elmo Hatfield, 39…was charged with mob action and marijuana procession. Sheldon Morales, 26,…was charged with mob action and obstructing a police officer. Dale Rafael Miguel Richardson, 28,…was charged with aggravated assault. (And) Zipporah Saphire Morales, 24,…was charged with disobedience to police, mob action and obstructing police.” So many arrests at a funeral: it sounds like a funeral rite only someone like Althaemene could appreciate.

The gods had warned Catreus, the king of Crete, that he would be killed by his own child. Learning this and loving his father, Catreus's son, Althaemene,  decided to distance himself from his father and moved to Rhodes. Years later, as he neared death, the elderly Catreus sailed to Rhodes to inform his son that he was about to inherited the crown. 

But the fishermen on Rhodes mistook Catreus and his men for a rival gang. They called for help and Althaemene arrived and immediately opened up (threw his spear) on the intruders.  That spear struck and killed Catreus, thus fulfilling the prophecy.   In his grief and guilt, Althaemene staged a grand funeral for his father, inviting all the kings from the Greek world - including Menelaus, the King of Sparta. And this is why, when Trojans Hector and Paris stopped off at Sparta to pay their respects to Menelaus, they found his wife Helen, home alone. So in a way it was the funeral of Catreus that caused the Trojan War.

When Agamemnon returned after ten years at that war, his wife, Clytemnestra (above, center), promised him a huge banquet. But as Agamemnon stepped from his bath before the festivities Clytemnestra threw a heavy robe over her husband’s head and while he fumbled in it she stabbed him to death with his own sword. Then she quickly married Aegisthus, who had been her lover for the seven years the king had been absent.   And if there is one man alive today who might understand how poor old Agamemnon felt, trying to defend himself under that robe, it would be Andrew Scullen, of Hastings, Minnesota, who looked upon the face that launched a thousand ships and two nasty lawsuits.

Andrew, at age 36, married the lovely Kimberly, aged 26, on 10 March 10, 2006.  Just five days later he shipped out for Iraq with his National Guard unit. But before he left he granted Kimberly power of attorney, so she could take care of any little legal things while he was away a war. However, when he returned home in July of 2007, the lovely Kimberly greeted Andrew with divorce papers. 

He then discovered that Kimberly had spent all of his combat pay and emptied his savings. She had bought a new car and then let the payments lapse “…giving rise to various fees, penalties, interest and foreclosure”, and destroying Andrew’s credit rating. 

Kimberly also ran up huge debts on their credit cards, paying for trips with and making straight cash payments to one Nicolas Hale, age 23, Kimberly’s new boyfriend. Andrew then sued Kimberly and Nicholas to get his money back, (good luck with that) and he is demanding a trial by jury, under the theory, I suspect, that no jury could refuse to convict a petty pretty gold digger like Kimberly. It might make a good plot for Aristophanes’ next play.

And how could you describe the tragedy of Jeffery Gillham (above), a 37 year old engineer, except to say it was mythological, but in the original Greek meaning of the term, “Mythos”, meaning a traditional tale. 

On the night of  28August, 1993, Jeffrey’s father, 55 year old Stephen Gillham, was stabbed 29 times and died in the master bedroom of his home (above) in Woronora, a western suburb of Sydney, Australia.. His body was then soaked in turpentine and set alight. 

Jeffery’s 58 year old mother, Helen (above, right), was stabbed 17 times, and died in the family room. Then her body was soaked in gasoline and set afire. And finally Jeffery’s 25 year old bother Christopher was stabbed 17 times and also died. His body was burned in the fire that severely damaged the family home. But who could have committed these horrible acts?

If this was truly a Greek Tragedy, one of the gods would be the chief suspect. But the age of heroes has passed, and in our logic driven world chief suspicion fell on the only surviving family member, Jeffery (above), who by surviving had inherited $916,717.59 Australian. At the time of the murders Jeffery was a 23 year old student earning $8 an hour and had just $8 in the bank. But Jeffery’s version of events confounded the prosecutors.

He admitted to chasing down, stabbing and killing Christopher, but only because Christopher 

had just confessed to him of murdering their parents. 

Jeffery could offer no motive for Christopher (above, center) to have murdered their parents, but claimed to have even seen Christopher set their mother’s body on fire, just before a rage drove Jeffery to avenge his parent’s death by murdering his elder brother. A jury was swayed by Jeffery’s testimony and he was only convicted of manslaughter. He was given a 5 year suspended sentence. And for 14 years his success at swaying a jury proved a Gordian Knot too complicated to unravel.

But thirteen years after the massacre the Director of Public Prosecutions for New South Wales reversed his two earlier assessments of the case. In February of 2008 Jeffery was finally charged with the murder of his parents. 

At trial the jury was lead into the labyrinth of the case. A fireman testified that when Jeffrey met him at the front door his hair was wet and his clothes were dry and clean (above), but “smelled of petrol”. The Coroner testified that all three victims (including Christopher) had been stabbed in the “region of the heart”, while probably lying motionless on the floor, by an assailant who was probably kneeling over them. He also testified that all were stabbed with the same knife and that the assailant would have been covered with blood. Unless he showered, and ran his clothes through the washing machine and dryer. 

Detectives testified that they had found Christopher Gilliam’s eyeglasses, which he needed to find his way across a room (or to defend himself), in the laundry room. Sitting atop the Washing Machine.

Under direct examination Jeffery insisted that he loved his parents and had not wanted for money. And he insisted that he had seen the fire spread quickly into the master bedroom, even though a forensic expert testified that turpentine burns very slowly. But he did admit that he should have thought about helping his parents rather than chasing after his brother. 

Under cross examination he was asked why, if he had called the fire department immediately after killing his brother (and there was blood splatter around his brother’s body and the room) the only blood found on Jeffery was on his knuckles and fingernails. Jeffery had no explanation. Nor could he explain how Christopher could have murdered their parents without his glasses, or how they had gotten into the laundry room. 

And if there is a difference between our reality and the ancient Greek Mythos, it may simply be that had Jeffery Gillham committed his crime in the bronze age he might have been blinded and banished to a slow death by disease. In our more reasoned age, he only had to go to jail for the murder of his brother, 

But the fact based court system then began to meditate on the subject. First there was a push to try him for the murders of his parents. In 2009 he was convicted and sentenced again to two life terms in prison. He appealed. 

In December of 2011 his convictions were overturned by an appeals court. And in 2012 a three judge panel freed Jeffery Gillham completely, with one judge dissenting.

I would call his 11 year journey through the court system epic, not to say mythological.  You might call it justice, I suppose. But only the gods know if that is true.

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HOME IS THE HERO

I go crazy when I misplace things. As anybody with even a touch of OCD will tell you, it quickly becomes more about the crazy than the thing you have misplaced.  I learned this lesson from John Paul Jones, the pugnacious and self centered Scotsman who founded the American Navy, and Teddy Roosevelt, the pugnacious and self centered American President who found John Paul Jones after he got lost.

John Paul had the first requirement for greatness; luck. While serving as third mate on board a merchantman in 1768, both the captain and the first mate died of yellow fever, instantly promoting him. Over the following years Captain John Paul acquired a reputation for brutality. And just when the bad press had brought his career to a a screeching halt, luckily, his brother in the colony of Virginia dropped dead and left him a small fortune.

Having made the voyage to collect his inheritance, John Paul decided to stay in Virginia.  And to confuse any hounding lawyers back in England, who wanted a piece of his new fortune,  Jones added a third name to his moniker. And when, luckily, the shooting started in Boston, Captain John Paul Jones packed up his resume and offered to fight for his new country as a privateer.

At first he did most of his fighting just to get a ship. But when he finally did, flying the American flag while sailing out of France, he at last justified his luck. He raided British ports. He captured British merchant ships in full view of the English coast. They branded him a pirate. He lashed his ship to an English warship and fought it out until both ships were sinking. Offered a chance to surrender, he responded, “I have not yet begun to fight.” Then the British warship surrendered to him.

When that war was over John Paul Jones was out of work. So, with congressional approval, he hired on as an admiral with the Russian Navy. But Jones was pushy, and the Czarina did not trust pushy men.. "Catherine the Great"  told the American admiral  to "go mind your own business."

So in May of 1790 Jones returned to Paris, and took a third floor front apartment at #42 Rue de Tournon (above).  And it was here, over the next two years, that the self assurance and self promotion that served Jones so well in obtaining a ship and winning battles, now isolated him.  The Marquis de Lafayette, once an admirer, could no longer tolerate his "colossal egotism.". 

And the American Minister to the Court of Louis XVI,  Gouverneur Morris, grew so weary of his badgering demands, Morris skipped Jones' sick bed for a dinner appointment. It was when he reluctantly returned 2 days later, on the afternoon of 17 July 1792,  that Morris found the 45 year old admiral lying face down on his bed, dead as a door nail.  Jones' servants and few admirers pickled the hero in rum, packed him into an iron coffin, and buried him in the old Saint Louis Cemetery, set aside for foreign protestants. The expectation was that he would be transferred home to America, as quickly as funds could be raised.

Unfortunately, three weeks after John Paul Jones was laid to rest, a mob descended on the Royal Palace of Tuileries, and captured King Louis and his Queen. To achieve this, they first had to butcher his disarmed Swiss guard (above), which the mob did with a relish. During the cleanup their bodies were dumped into a common grave,  right next to Jones' resting place. What with the revolution and the Napoleonic wars, by 1815 when peace finally broke out,  the cemetery was long abandoned and forgotten.

Over the next century,  John Paul Jones floated in rum and slowly pickled while the mundane world continued on with out him.  In time the land atop John Paul Jones came to be occupied by a grocery, a laundry, a photographic studio, an apartment house (above) and their attendant backyard sheds, toilets, cesspits  and wells.

And there John Paul Jones might have stayed, but for an anarchist and unemployed steelworker named Leon Czolgosz,  who, on Friday, 6 September 1901,  shot American President William McKinley. The President died 13 days later. 

That made Vice President Theodor Roosevelt (above), at 44, the youngest man ever to take the oath as President of the United States.

But when Teddy decided to run for his own term, in 1904, he was opposed by Republican National Chairman, Senator Marcus  (Mark) Alonzo Hanna. Hanna (above) portrayed his fellow Republican as a wild eyed lunatic, and called him  “that damn cowboy”. Hanna also said, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second is".  To beat Hanna in 1904, Roosevelt needed something which would make him look like a stalwart defender of tradition. 

Luckily, he found what he needed when his ambassador to France,  Horace Porter (above), reported some success in his search for the lost Revolutionary War hero, John Paul Jones. 

Back in 1897 Ambassador Porter had read a new biography of Admiral Jones, which recounted his hurried burial and the subsequent mystery as to it's location. Porter had become obsessed with finding the body.  After three years of research through old maps and confusing government records Porter thought he had figured out where Jones had been buried. 

What was once the St. Louis Cemetery  was now bordered by the Rue de la Grange aux Belles - or in the more prosaic English, Street of the Beautiful Barn.  Because of all the new building (above)s, the only way to recover Jones was to tunnel into the graveyard -  not a pleasant occupation, but a great plot for a horror movie.

Before he could dig, Porter had to get the current owners’ permission. That took two years to negotiate. He eventually got a 3 month contract with all the land owners. At the same time President Roosevelt submitted a special appropriation to pay the $35,000 estimated price tag to dig up Jones’ corpse. 

John Paul would not have been surprised to discover that a hundred years had not made the American Congress any more rational. Still, on the evening of Friday, 3 February, 1905,  Mr. Porter started the work, on his own dime. Congress had tabled the President's funding request.

Heading the project was the mining engineer M. Paul Weiss (above). 

Weiss sunk the first of several shafts 18 feet straight down in a back yard (above). It wasn't long before the miners hit their first corpse. That meant that luckily,  the bodies had not been moved when the cemetery had been abandoned..

Unfortunately, despite all the construction over the graves, the ground was not well compacted, and a great deal of time and money would have to be spent shoring up the shafts, and supporting the walls of the buildings above.  

Or at least that's what Ms Weiss told Ambassador Porter (above, left) when he presented the first bill. Noted Porter, “Slime, mud, and mephitic (foul smelling and poisonous) odors were encountered, and long red worms appeared in abundance.”

Wrote Porter, “Two more large shafts were sunk in the yards and two in the Rue Grange-aux-Belles (above), making five in all.  Day and night gangs of work men were employed…Galleries were pushed in every direction and ‘‘soundings’’ were made between them with long iron tools,…so that no leaden coffin could possibly be missed."

The wooden coffins had long since corroded away and for the last century those bodies had been slowly decaying into the soil. Now the miners working for Ms Weiss (above, center)  had introduced waves of fresh air, which accelerated that decay. The stench was often overwhelming. 

Three lead coffins were found, the first on 22 February, 1905, and the second a month later. Those two had copper plates identifying their occupants. Neither was John Paul Jones.  Shortly there after they began finding the bodies of  King Louis' Swiss Guard, stacked one atop the other. And now Weiss knew he was on the right track.

On 31 March, 1905, the miners hit a forth lead coffin, this one without a copper plate.  

The miners decided they needed more fresh air before they opened it, so they dragged it into the gallery they had carved while digging. It was a lucky thing they did.

On 8 April, 1905 they finally pulled the coffin loose from the soil, and while still in the tunnels pried open the coffin lid. Ambassador Porter (above, left) was there,.as was Ms. Weiss (above, center) , to catch by flickering candle light the first glimpse of  the great hero since 1792.  

The body inside was wrapped in tin foil. The stench of alcohol filled the tunnel. Rolling back the tin foil, they gazed upon the face of John Paul Jones, a physical connection with the American Revolution. 

His nose had been bent by the weight of the coffin lid, but the face was still recognizable as matching the busts made in his lifetime. It was John Paul Jones. I told you he was lucky. After a hundred years he needed a shampoo, but that was to be expected. 

Doctor J. Capitan performed an autopsy and determined that the heart and liver were normal, but the left lung showed signs of “small patches of broncho-pneumonia partially cicatrized” The doctor came to the conclusion that “the corpse...is that of John Paul Jones”.

Teddy Roosevelt ordered up a fleet of 11 battle ships to escort Captain John Paul Jones back to America.

The French even threw in a few battle ships of their own.

On 24 April, 1906,  Admiral John Paul Jones was placed in a temporary tomb (above)  at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. It was temporary tomb because Congress had yet to pass the appropriation to even pay the cost to recover the body, let alone so the navy could build an actual tomb. They never did.

When the hero arrived home, Teddy Roosevelt (above) gave a speech, in which he barely mentioned John Paul Jones. Instead Teddy talked a lot about his plans for the future of the American navy.

By now, Teddy had been re-elected without serious opposition in part because, luckily for Teddy, his Republican foe Mark Hanna had run a terrible campaign, and then suddenly died of typhoid fever in February of 1904. So the entire effort to rescue John Paul Jones from anonymity to save Teddy's political future, had been unnecessary. 

And it turned out the entire effort had really been about Teddy - in much the same way that John Paul Jones efforts had not been about creating an American Navy but had rather had been about John Paul Jones.  And Congress never did pass the authorization to pay for the effort because the members of Congress were under the impression that it was all about them.

Ambassador Porter (above) had to take up a collection to try and get his money back. But at least, at last, the body of John Paul Jones had been found and brought back to his adopted home, where he spent so little time.  

Still. as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for his  own 1894 epitaph,  "Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill".

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