Details Emerge in W.Va. Torture Case

[Snazzy]

Source: AP

Details Emerge in W.Va. Torture Case
By JOHN RABY and TOM BREEN | Associated Press Writers
12:08 AM EDT, September 12, 2007

BIG CREEK, W.Va. - For at least a week, authorities say, a young black woman was held captive in a mobile home, forced to eat animal waste, stabbed, choked and repeatedly sexually abused -- all while being peppered with a racial slur.

It wasn't until deputies acting on an anonymous tip drove to a ramshackle trailer deep in West Virginia's rural hills that she was found. Limping toward the door with her arms outstretched, she uttered, "Help me," the Logan County sheriff's office said.

Six people, all white, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, have been arrested and could face federal hate crime charges in the suspected attack on 20-year-old Megan Williams, who remained hospitalized Tuesday with injuries that included four stab wounds in the leg, and black and blue eyes. Her right arm was in a cast.

"I'm better," Williams told The Associated Press in a voice barely above a whisper.

....

Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-woman-tortured,0,7058936.story

[Vilis Veritas]

1. I can rec this but comments elude me at this time.

Peace.

[Snazzy]

2. yeah (nt)

[burrowowl]

3. This is beyond my keen

How horrible!

[midlife_mo_Jo]

4. How does one ever recover from something like this?

This kind of horror is incomprensible.

[Lucinda]

6. Yup.

I still cant get my brain around it.

[redqueen]

42. I wonder if it's even possible to fully recover. n/t

[Virginia Dare]

53. Her mother said as much this morning..

her body will recover, but will her mind? It's very difficult to say.

[Judi Lynn]

5. I had to see what this piece of filth looked like, and found a photo.

Frankie Brewster.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_14652.aspx

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NY Times:

Woman, 20, Was Imprisoned and Tortured, Police Say

By CHRIS STRATTON and IAN URBINA
Published: September 12, 2007

Woman, 20, Was Imprisoned and Tortured, Police Say
By CHRIS STRATTON and IAN URBINA
Published: September 12, 2007

LOGAN, W.Va., Sept. 11 — A 20-year-old woman was held captive for more than a week in a mobile home, where she was raped, stabbed and tortured by at least a half-dozen people, the police said. Sheriff’s deputies rescued her on Saturday, and she remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition.
(snip)

The Brewster family and their trailer has a history of violent crime, the police said.

Mr. Brewster killed his stepfather there when he was 12, the authorities said, and served time at a juvenile correction facility.

In July 1994, Mrs. Brewster shot and killed an 84-year-old woman she was looking after, also in the trailer, according to court records.

Mrs. Brewster, who was charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served six years at a state correctional facility. She was paroled in 2000.

In 2005, two men got into a fight outside the trailer, the police said, ending with a fatal stabbing.

In January, the police were again called to the trailer, where they found a man who had been slashed across his abdomen; the man survived, according to court documents, and Mr. Brewster was a witness in that case.

Also being held in the case of the young woman were Danny J. Combs, 20, who was charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding; George A. Messer, 27, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery; Karen Burton, 46, who was charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony; and her daughter, Alisha Burton, 23, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery. The four were being held in $100,000 bond each.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/us/12captive.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Lucinda]

8. There is another thread that has the pics of all 6

I'll try and find the link

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thanks. I've been away and didn't know about it. I'll check back. Appreciate it. n/t

[Lucinda]

11. here ya go

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1780751

[Snazzy]

12. adding those...

[Lucinda]

13. all 6

[diane in sf]

15. These creatures do not look normal.

[Lucinda]

16. Someone mentioned that they looked a lot like meth users

Something about that kind of saggy skin in younger people...Some of their earlier charges were drug related

I think their eyes look dead...skeery stuff!

[Cobalt-60]

24. I concur :Meth users

They have the look.

[David__77]

50. Definitely meth.

The look is clearly of meth. They probably give off the smell of the stuff too.

[shraby]

17. Looks like their collective i.q. would be under 100 n/t

[ClintonTyree]

29. Collective number of teeth.......

14. After everything these evil miscreants have done in the past why are any of them still free to walk the earth? Those are the faces of evil and faces that should never see the outside of prison bars again. :mad:

[Judi Lynn]

25. Oh, my God. Speechless. They look as hideous as their behavior.

Looks as if they could have started their own Charles Manson group. The "kids" look almost brain-dead. Sure glad they are in jail.

Hope their victim gets a chance to see real justice handed to them, really hope somehow she will recover spiritually, psychologically, given enough time, and that her physical scars are going to heal.

Thanks for a look at these guys. What a bunch of monsters.

[NOLALady]

28. With luck, they will keep them in jail this time, forever.

[DUlover2909]

26. I bet they're conservatives

[Judi Lynn]

27. Ha! I wondered if some of them have been posting here, as DU trolls! n/t

[ClintonTyree]

31. I think the closest any of these animals has come to a computer....

is when they were being booked at the local police station. I think they're probably even too dumb to be FReepers and that's setting the bar WAAAAAY low. Trash. I have no compassion for these people at all. None.

[ClintonTyree]

30. They're too dumb to be political......

I bet none of them has ever cast a vote, but I'm sure they hold those good old "family values" near and dear to their hearts and would, if ever forced to vote, vote straight Republican.

[Mike Daniels]

36. And yet it's the Dem senator from WV who was a former top-cat with the KKK

and who in the recent past used the "n" word in an interview.

I have relatives in Pittsburgh who are Dem and despise Bush but have uttered racist/prejudiced statements from time to time.

OTOH, my mid-western "died-in-the- wool" Republican father in law made sure that his senior class trip in late 40's/early 50's Kansas was to a location that would welcome the single black member of his class and treat her equally to the rest of the group.

Funny how racism crosses political and ideological lines, isn't it?

[redqueen]

43. It's not funny... it's logical. Individuals make their own decisions

about whether to be a dumbass or not.

Are you saying that you think there are equal numbers of racist assholes in both parties?

[Mike Daniels]

46. I have no reason to believe that one party's membership is signficantly more racist than the other

From my personal experience, out of all my family members (direct and in-laws) it's the Dem side (mostly northerers) that carry prejudices.

My southern relatives and mid-western in-laws are exclusively Republican and they are the ones who have mixed-race marriages and are pretty open-minded. Perhaps that's strictly because they grew up in farming areas or fishing villages where no one person was that much better off financially than anyone else.

[redqueen]

47. Anecdotal evidence is just that... anecdotal. n/t

[Mike Daniels]

48. You asked a question and I answered it given what I know

Unless a survey has been performed tracking racist attitudes among party members all you have to go on is people's experience.

[redqueen]

49. Hah... no, you also have party platforms.

Gay marriage ban? Illegal immigrant idiocy?

Bigotry is definitely more par for the course in one ideology than another.

[Tunkamerica]

14. Devil's Rejects anyone?

[AngryAmish]

44. That was exactly what I was thinking

Or that Leatherface might be around somewhere.

[Raine]

18. These sub-humans

should have been locked up and the key thrown away...they shouldn't have been released to commit more havoc. :mad:

[AllyCat]

7. This is beyond comprehension. Why on earth were any of these

people out of jail? Wonder what time they'll serve now.

My God that poor woman they hurt. I hope your wounds heal quickly and you find some ease with all this. You're in my prayers.

[Skittles]

20. that gal is very brave

normally they don't release names of such victims but both she and her mother gave permission to use her name - I think it helps when there is a name and a face to such crimes

[Maraya1969]

9. I hope they all go to jail for the rest of their lives. They should not be allowed

on the streets.

[Raine]

19. I'll never understand how women

can do this kind of thing to another woman. :cry:

[Lucinda]

22. Well the older woman hasn't been out of jail too long

She did time for shooting an elderly woman who was in her care....so they had a heck of a role model in her

But I know what you mean... It seems like there have been a lot of stories lately, with women aiding and abetting abuse. I like to think I'm a pretty smart cookie, but I'll never understand how they could possibly do it...

[Tunkamerica]

23. um, the same way men do it to women and to other men

a lack of empathy caused by any number of factors including, but not limited to, trauma during childhood.

[Hulk]

21. Sick is as sick does....

These perpetrators deserve to be behind bars for the rest of their natural born lives. Such human waste. Forgive us our trespasses. These sorts of people are barbaric. Same level as the human suicide bombers. Just a wasted human who is misguided and a "tool".

[ClintonTyree]

32. How would you like to be the court appointed Attorney.....

charged with defending these pieces of shit? I couldn't do it, I wouldn't do it. They deserve the exact same treatment they meted out to that poor, innocent woman. Or worse. :grr:

[Thothmes]

35. defender

Don't know if the feds allow plea bargains, but if I was their PD, I would plea bargain for as few a decades in prision as possible.

[clixtox]

33. Do you think tragedy this is a reflection...

of our culture? There seem to be quite a few disturbing stories featuring our fellow Amerikkkans behaving ridiculously inhumanely. The racial angle alone reflects ubiquitous inculcated ignorance, it is an national epidemic and not just in rural West Virginia.

It is obviously easy, painless and perhaps cathartic to opine here about how cruelly the perpetrators should be punished. It is more challenging to look a little deeper at what are the dynamics that have created so many psychopaths all around and among us!

Perhaps the fundamental hypocrisy permeating every belief, law, icon, corporation, institution, government, etc., is that what unbalances folks. Is it the power of suggestion? Violence, real and fictional, continually assaulting our senses? Wrassling? Is it the eternal war? The blatant war crimes? All of these and more?

What do you think?

Think! Do not react.

Reason, think critically about what happened to the victim, and what sickness motivated her cruel torturers, and your immediate reaction(s).

Think some more...

[Raiden]

34. "There's no such thing as a hate crime!"

x( This is absolutely disgusting

[underpants]

37. Details emerge in W. Va. torture case

Source: AP/Yahoo

BIG CREEK, W.Va. - Inside a shed on a remote hillside of this coalfield community, authorities say a young black woman was tortured for days, sexually assaulted, beaten and forced to eat rat droppings.

Her captors, all of them white, choked her with a cable cord, poured hot water over her and stabbed her in the leg while calling her a racial slur, according to criminal complaints. It wasn't until an anonymous tip led Logan County Sheriff's deputies to the property on Saturday that her ordeal ended and she was able to limp to safety, arms outstretched as she cried "help me!"

"I don't understand a human being doing another human being the way they did my daughter," Carmen Williams said Tuesday from her daughter's hospital room. "I didn't know there were people like that out here."

The suspects in the case have prior arrest records going back several years, according to records from Logan County Magistrate Court. Logan County Prosecutor Brian Abraham said, "I have some familiarity with all those individuals."



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070912/ap_on_re_us/woman_tortured_23

---

The mughots of these people are at the link. Scary.

[underpants]

38. Photos here

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070911/480/f97aab8603ae475fb6598a178fd24cc9;_ylt=AtQDd0Ki7Z14WAneT.yh60xPtbAF

[alphafemale]

39. I wonder how many missing cases of young women there are in that area.

Something tells me they'd better search the woods around that trailer for shallow graves.

:scared:

[Dr.Phool]

40. Jesus Fucking Christ

I was born in Chapmanville. Glad I got out when I was 3 years old.

[redqueen]

41. I wonder who made the anonymous tip.

Whoever did, God bless 'em. She may not have had much time left.

[rateyes]

45. My question is why they were offered

bond at only $100,000? I know they are still in prison, but come on. One of those arrested spent 5 years in jail for killing someone. WTF is up with that?

They should be remanded without bail.

[fishwax]

55. seemed really really low to me, too n/t

[Blue_Tires]

51. how did they capture her in the first place?

was it at gunpoint? did the victim know any of the attackers?

this makes abu grahib look like the humanitarian awards....

[Virginia Dare]

54. Supposedly lured her there via the Internet...n/t

[fishwax]

56. according to the NY Times article, she went there with one of them

The police said that more than a week ago, the victim went with Bobby R. Brewster, 24, who she believed was a friend, to the trailer where he lives with his mother, Frankie Lee Brewster, 49, in Big Creek, in the northern end of Logan County.

[Virginia Dare]

52. This story is bringing the inner sadist out in me..

I'm fantasizing all kinds of terrible things that should be done to the people who did this. I guess that's why we have justice system.

[DUlover2909]

57. each one should be forced to eat shit

and beaten and tortured by the victims families. That's assuming they are tried and convicted in a court of law, of course.

[Judi Lynn]

58. W.Va. torture case not typical despite state's whiteness

W.Va. torture case not typical despite state's whiteness

By VICKI SMITH
Associated Press Writer

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- West Virginia is one of the whitest states in the nation, but the lack of diversity seldom leads to overt acts of racism or bias crimes such as the racially tinged rape and torture of a black woman in Logan County.

Federal statistics show the rural state -- 95 percent white, 3 percent black -- records fewer bias crimes than comparable states. And from one region to another, residents say that where racism lurks, it is restrained, not raging.

"I work with black churches and black people. We just love one another,'' says Johnny Meade, a white pastor in the Big Creek community where six white men and women have been charged in the case.

"This goes beyond prejudice,'' says the Rev. Audie Murphy Sr., president of the Logan County branch of the NAACP. "It's actually evil in its heightened form.

"I feel it's not a direct indication of the community in its entirety,'' he says, "because there are great people here, such as the one who notified the authorities that the girl was being held captive.''

More:
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/section/APNews/News/ap0007r