A confession. This photo has nothing to do with the Villesca axe murders which are, yes, to this day, still unsolved. This photo, however, is of Victor Licata, who supposedly murdered his brothers with an axe in April, 1938, while higher than a raccoon, thinking that his brothers were going to cut off his arms and legs. The story, under various guises and with wildly differing accounts, went nationwide, but there's no information about what eventually happened to him, if he went to trial, or simply dissolved into history. (Still, I had to use this pix, since he looks like such a deranged evil-to-the core axe murderer.)
He is, if you go by newspaper stories, one of the uncounted numbers who slaughtered their families with axes, while under the spell of reefer madness. By looking into his staring eyeballs, you can clearly see that Victor is sorry he only got to whack one family, rather than the scores of folks his bloody imagination lusted after. Tales of psychos, out of their minds on killer weed, were thanks to Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who went after marijuana growers and smokers with a vengeance between 1930 to 1937. During that time you wouldn't believe the number of axe murders that groups of hopped-up young teens committed. You wouldn't believe the numbers because they didn't exist. The population of reefered-up young people, whacking whole families with axes, was roughly equivalent to the population of toasted young people ramming knitting needles into their eyeballs years later, because of that devil's brew, LSD.
But back to Harry and the weed, here is an account he wrote for The American Magazine about a teen gone rogue thanks to muggles, as marijuana was purportedly called by its red-eyed users:
"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."
None of Anslinger's stories were ever verified, but there is every reason to believe that Harry J. himself thought they were true, and was sincere in thinking that reefer was the great corrupter of our sorta-free nation.
In fact, between the Villesca axe murders, Lizzie Bordon, and Karla Faye Tucker, it's disappointingly thin pickings on the axe-murder front. As I said, the Villesca axe murders remain unsolved, Lizzie Bordon was acquitted but her innocence remains in doubt, while Karla Faye Tucker confessed and, after a born-again experience, was duly and sadly executed.
End of axe murder stuff.
And here's the baby hamster, which even I admit, is cuter than cute. As an undergraduate, my new roommate for my junior year, arrived with a hamster named Gunther and a large sack of weed, then relatively unknown on our square-john campus. I grew to be quite fond of Gunther, the weed not-so-much, since it was home-grown skunk. Gunther, though, was a real gent, whose only bad habit was to run furiously on his squeaky exercise wheel at one and two in the morning. I grew to like him so much, I invited him to my wedding shower, which he attended, his cage decorated in white ribbons in honor of the event.
He is, if you go by newspaper stories, one of the uncounted numbers who slaughtered their families with axes, while under the spell of reefer madness. By looking into his staring eyeballs, you can clearly see that Victor is sorry he only got to whack one family, rather than the scores of folks his bloody imagination lusted after. Tales of psychos, out of their minds on killer weed, were thanks to Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who went after marijuana growers and smokers with a vengeance between 1930 to 1937. During that time you wouldn't believe the number of axe murders that groups of hopped-up young teens committed. You wouldn't believe the numbers because they didn't exist. The population of reefered-up young people, whacking whole families with axes, was roughly equivalent to the population of toasted young people ramming knitting needles into their eyeballs years later, because of that devil's brew, LSD.
But back to Harry and the weed, here is an account he wrote for The American Magazine about a teen gone rogue thanks to muggles, as marijuana was purportedly called by its red-eyed users:
"An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."
None of Anslinger's stories were ever verified, but there is every reason to believe that Harry J. himself thought they were true, and was sincere in thinking that reefer was the great corrupter of our sorta-free nation.
In fact, between the Villesca axe murders, Lizzie Bordon, and Karla Faye Tucker, it's disappointingly thin pickings on the axe-murder front. As I said, the Villesca axe murders remain unsolved, Lizzie Bordon was acquitted but her innocence remains in doubt, while Karla Faye Tucker confessed and, after a born-again experience, was duly and sadly executed.
End of axe murder stuff.
And here's the baby hamster, which even I admit, is cuter than cute. As an undergraduate, my new roommate for my junior year, arrived with a hamster named Gunther and a large sack of weed, then relatively unknown on our square-john campus. I grew to be quite fond of Gunther, the weed not-so-much, since it was home-grown skunk. Gunther, though, was a real gent, whose only bad habit was to run furiously on his squeaky exercise wheel at one and two in the morning. I grew to like him so much, I invited him to my wedding shower, which he attended, his cage decorated in white ribbons in honor of the event.
Now, reporting in on my social experiment, which hypothesized that the combo of a tabloidish topic, coupled with something overly cute, would result in a booming readership. This proved true, which means, I suppose, that readers, however well-intentioned, will at least check out the cheap n' easy. But. This weekend, my numbers dropped to nut'in, honey. True, I hadn't posted anything, but this rarely affects my weekend readership who, perhaps, save my posts for a good catch-up on Sunday.
I'm tempted to call my little experiment to an end. But while I'm thinking about it, here's today's kitler.
I'm tempted to call my little experiment to an end. But while I'm thinking about it, here's today's kitler.
I M UR KITLER 2DAY
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