Bodies of Black Women in Detroit Linked to Online Ads

CNN is reporting that Detroit police are investigating the grisly deaths of four black women that occurred during the holiday season. Three of the deaths were linked to online ads that “specifically dealt with prearranged adult dating services,” police Chief L. Godbee said.

“We felt it is imperative to alert the public that deciding to meet unknown persons via the Internet can be extremely dangerous,” Godbee said at a Monday-afternoon news conference, according to CNN. Godbee told the Detroit Free Press that they were “stopping short of calling it a serial pattern.”

Two of the bodies were discovered in a car fire early Christmas day. They were burned beyond recognition.

CNN reports:

In the Christmas morning incident, “the victims have been identified tentatively and are black women, ages 28 and 29,” Godbee said.

The bodies found [in the trunk of a car] on December 19 were those of two black women aged 23 and 24, and neither body showed outer signs of trauma, according to Godbee.

“We are awaiting the medical examiner’s final report for the determination of the cause of death for each of the females.” Godbee added.

Godbee identified the website carrying ads that three of the victims were linked to as womensiteonline.com.

The website did not immediately respond to an e-mail from CNN Monday afternoon seeking comment after Godbee’s news conference.

Womensiteonline.com told CNN in 2010 that it promptly responds to law enforcement inquiries, and said the site includes links to help users notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children if they identify potential abuses.

Godbee is right to make people aware of the possible perils of online dating, but social predators exist in all settings. We also have to be careful not to blame the victim.

So, why bother with New Year’s resolutions? Is there a point to making the same resolutions every year? Lose weight, organize finances, spend more time with the family, blah blah blah.

It’s like an annual empty promise, so why waste your time?

Well, thanks to my wife, I just stumbled on a really good reason.

Ten years ago, my family started coming up with our resolutions at the dinner table over the holidays.

It was fun, we laughed and discussed and compared, then wrote our resolutions down and posted them on the fridge.

My wife, the brains behind most things in our family, saved those slips of paper, and now we look over our resolutions with the perspective of a decade.

Reading back on what I wrote over the years, there are lots of resolutions I DID keep. Writing them down, sometimes again and again over many years, was a big help.

I resolved annually for seven years (2002 through 2009) to master some specific, painfully complicated computer skills. Thanks to our New Year’s ritual and its systematic self-nagging, today I’m professionally certified in those skills. Done.

Resolutions involving something physical don’t take seven years as long as they are realistic. I decided 2008 should be the year to learn to lap swim, and I did. Just like the 2003 resolution to run a half-marathon and 2007 to renovate my daughter’s bedroom. Done and done.

Resolutions to avoid are ones that depend on others, like 2005’s “Learn to play duets with a cellist.” The cellist never showed up.

Or that are too subjective, as in 2007’s “Reduce sugar and caffeine intake.” Huh?

But the failures turn out to be the best lessons.

In 2005 I started making resolutions about my eating habits. “Five servings of veggies a day” lasted a few months, but it helped me understand how to track what I eat, and 2010’s “Think about what I want to eat before I look at the menu” became a new and ingrained habit.

With the 20/20 of hindsight, the piles of un-met goals in my hobby of playing music are all the same mistake: They are all over-ambitious. Amateur musicians take note: You’ll feel a lot more fulfilled if you are frank about your practice time limits.

There is an oddball bit player who shows up when it’s time to write resolutions then disappears for a year until it is resolution time again. The home repairs I need to do only bother me slightly, but consistently. Good reason to keep them in focus.

You may not be surprised that my key resolutions for 2012 are similar to what they’ve been for the past decade. Near the top of the list, yup, is more time with my family, better-organized finances and losing a few pounds.

But the record shows that if I keep at them, keep working out how and why I keep flopping at the same things, perhaps 2012 will be a successful year.

Soul mate ? I think not!

Call me crazy, but if it seems that her kids hate you, she lies and cheats, and you can’t get along, then she’s not your soul mate. But I digress.

Mark met Mary Catherine online. At the time, he was divorced for four years after 21 years of marriage and had just ended a relationship.

“To say I enjoyed dating would be an understatement. I liked meeting different online women and would date two or three at the same time.”

But that all changed with Mary Catherine, “She was so refreshing, genuine and full of life. It was contagious.”

But after five weeks of dating, she broke up with him. Then, a few weeks later, her dog passed away and she called him.

“I came right over and we buried her dog in the garden and planted some flowers over him. That was the beginning of the most fantastic 18 months of my life. I had met my soul mate. I thought I knew what love was, but I was so off. Not to sound too corny, but she completed me. I laughed at that line in ‘Jerry Maguire,’ but with Mary Catherine, it made sense.”

After those “fantastic” 18 months, with the relationship at the point where they were talking about living together and maybe getting married, they had a fight.

“It was one of those fights that start out small over something stupid — it was my fault — then escalate. We should have been one of those old couples who walk down the street holding hands, instead we broke up.”

The fight started at a wedding. They’d both been drinking. They were on the dance floor. Mary Catherine told Mark to stay there with his friends while she went back to the bar.

“I took it as her telling me what to do. It simmered until we got back to our room, and then all hell broke loose. Everything she had been keeping inside came pouring out in not in a nice way. We left early the next morning and didn’t talk for the two hour ride home. I came back later that day to apologize, but the damage had been done.

“We went to dinner later that week to talk and it was very emotional. One of our big problems was my relationship, or lack thereof, with her children. She has four grown kids. Their father left them when the youngest was just a year, so they’re very close. Her two other marriages both ended in less than two years.

“Her kids hated both of those men, too. They’ve told her point blank that they’ll never be happy with her dating anyone. Even though they said they’d never seen her happier or better taken care of, they never warmed up to me.”

That dinner started a period of breaking up and getting back together. Mark started seeing a counselor. He lost 40 pounds and was an emotional wreck. He told Mary Catherine he loved her and wanted to be with her. She said she felt the same, then he found out she was back on a dating web site.

“We broke up again. I took her back again. This happened a few more times. I still love and miss her very much.”

Detroit women ID’d amid probe of escort ads

Authorities have identified three of the four Detroit women found dead this month in two incidents in Detroit, an investigator with the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday.

Three of the Detroit women have been linked to a website that accepts ads for escort services, police have said.

In the latest case, one of the two women found early Christmas Day in the trunk of a car that had been set afire was identified as Vernithea McCrary, 28, the investigator said.

The second victim remains unidentified, said the investigator, who asked not to be identified because he is not allowed to speak on the record to the news media.

The bodies of two other Detroit women found December 19 have been identified as Demesha Hunt, 24, and Renisha Landers, 23. They were found in the trunk of Landers’ Chrysler 300.

Causes of death for the four women were pending toxicology results, which typically take six to eight weeks to be completed, the investigator said.

The process of identification can be difficult.

“People hear of someone that is discovered that we bring down here and they call down here and inform us that someone is missing,” the investigator said. “They give us a description and then they come down if they can be viewed and are recognizable. If not, we ask them to bring a set of dental records for comparison.”

The deaths are being treated as the work of one person or group of people, Detroit’s police chief said Tuesday.

“At this point, we are working it as one case or one suspect or set of suspects,” Chief Ralph L. Godbee told CNN. “There are too many common links for us not to, at this point, work this as one single investigation.”

Among those links, he said, is the fact that three of the women had placed online ads dealing with “prearranged adult dating services” and posted on backpage.com, Godbee told reporters Monday.

“We felt it is imperative to alert the public that deciding to meet unknown persons via the Internet can be extremely dangerous,” Godbee said.

But a lawyer for womensiteonline.com, Steve Suskin, said it was not clear that his company’s website was involved.

“Our team has already provided the police with detailed information about the ads that the suspect or others posted on numerous web sites. Law enforcement authorities now have evidence that the investigation appears to connect to at least 30 different ads or other postings on at least 15 different websites, separate and distinct from ours,” Suskin said.

“We are not aware of the existence of any evidence that would indicate which of these many sites were used by the suspect to establish contact with his victims.”

Backpage representatives have been cooperating with police, the police chief said.

Postings on the escort section of the website cost $1. Referring to the advertisements on the website as “borderline prostitution,” Godbee said that his priorities lie elsewhere. “Right now, we want to get to the bottom of how these four individuals passed away, and who had a hand in their demise,” he said.

Women’s Giving Circle forms Connections of Cumberland County to help homeless women and children

From its homelessness research, the Women’s Giving Circle of Cumberland County saw a shortage of services for the county’s women and children who live on the streets.

The result: a nine-member steering committee agreed on a need for the newly formed Connections of Cumberland County Inc.

“We hope to grow,” said Patty Collie, president of Connections of Cumberland County and a member of the Women’s Giving Circle. “When you read the definition of homeless children, it’s just a very sad kind of situation. They’re basically trying to find shelter and sleeping accommodations that are not for human beings.”

Connections of Cumberland County, a nonprofit corporation, has evolved with a vision. The agency, so far, has nailed down three priorities:

Establish a facility – a day resources center – for homeless women and children.

Provide additional emergency shelter beds for homeless women and children.

Create more transitional housing for the less fortunate.

Collie said the initiative is necessary since most community support for the homeless is geared toward men.

Since October 2010, the group’s steering committee has held a couple of “think tanks,” as Collie put it, in hopes of alerting the community on the issue. City and county law enforcement, religious representatives and service providers, she said, attended to join in the conversation on what Fayetteville and Cumberland County can do to help homeless women and children.

“We really feel like we’re being led to do this rather than make it happen,” Collier said. “There are gaps, and the gaps are real, and we felt the need to do something about it.”

Collie said 600 children were counted as homeless in the 2009-10 school term, according to Cumberland County schools statistics. Last year, that number had increased to 877. And those, she pointed out, are only the destitute school-age youth enrolled in the public schools.

“That number is probably lower than the real number is,” she said. “The numbers are continuing to grow.”

According to the latest Cumberland Interfaith Hospitality Network count, conducted 11 months ago, the number of homeless children was 357, with 225 unsheltered.

Startup costs for the project, Collie estimated, would range from about $750,000 to $1 million. But in the long run, she said, Connections of Cumberland County’s facilities would save the city and county money by having emergency services for the homeless housed in one spot.

“There is a tremendous amount of interest,” she said. “We just need to build a connection.”

Coming to the Ukraine, foreigners are sometimes mistaken for prostitutes, young Ukrainian women: a lot of makeup, short skirt, black stockings, as in cheap American films. Another model of these films, they are adopting and which would then be detrimental to their lives – “bimbo”: a pretty girl in every way and very aggressive, which uses its beauty and for their lives. And when there are no youth and beauty, then what? Should not develop intelligence and abilities? Not better, in my opinion, and traditional Ukrainian kinomodel all young Ukrainian women virgins in white dresses, with garlands on their heads, wandering in the fields and woods. Or “plowing” in the home, nursing children, courted by men. In my opinion, the first feminist in the Ukraine was the poem Mavka Lesia Ukrainka.

Many foreigners believe that Ukraine will be easier for them to find a girlfriend or wife: more accommodating and Ukrainian women want to marry foreigners because they are better supplied with material. In the end, everything depends on the economic situation. But not only. During the discussion, Ukrainian women said that they prefer foreigners because they are more attentive to them, are responsible, are more interested in their opinion, do not drink as much as Ukrainian men. Belong to the woman as a partner to help educate children. Many Ukrainian women do not believe that her husband, a Ukrainian can understand their problems or keep them loyal.

Subordinate position of Ukrainian women is largely determined by the economic situation of the country. On its self-determining way affect parenting and the level of income. While in your community, too, something is changing, at least in big cities. There are women who understand: career – this is important, it is important to have your own world and not just be an appendage of man. But this woman, or over 30, mostly divorced – they have their own business or good job, competent, literate. Or young girls from educated families, where they were taught to respect themselves, to make a career and find their place in society. Not only the woman should be taught to be independent of men, the man must also learn not to depend on Ukrainian women, especially in the home.

Source: “MIRROR OF THE WEEK”

The women in Ukraine: a person or thing?

Sometimes it is interesting to look at ourselves. Eyes of a man from another world with different standards of living. We will talk about the situation of women in Ukraine. And certainly it will interview someone sad, and someone even irritation. Although there are some who agree with the interviewee at least in the main. I would like to make it as much as possible.

Jean-Francois Buzhan – French director of teaching and information center in Kiev, whose activities comprise, Kiev, Chernihiv yet, Vinnitsa, Zhitomir and Cherkassy region. According to him, he came to Ukraine to “see another world, to find out for yourself where the end boundaries of Europe.” Some things in our world, his shock, as, indeed, may have shocked some readers Monsieur Buzhana statements. He first worked in Lviv, where he taught French university students, and he learned Ukrainian. He graduated from the Agricultural University and the University of the business. In Kiev, he also organizes public debates on various topics under the auspices of the French Cultural Centre. In the most recent discussed the status of women in Ukrainian society.

In the past years, a great number of young free Russian women have arrived to the United States of America to marry to western men. Most of the couples have met by means of online dating agencies. There are lots of dating services that feature free Russian women looking for Western life partners. These free Russian women placing their advertisements with online dating services believe to find an American or European husband and have different reasons to do this. The most typical reason is the opinion that Western men treat them better than the Russians do.

Most online dating companies charge a fee for their applicants to register. Some of them make themselves with such catchy slogans as “free Russian women”. Usually, free dating websites have some hidden price involved; registration as well as browsing via profiles can be free of price but there might be a fee to set contact with a Russian bride.

Many online dating companies have begun providing a free registration on the sites. Free Russian women who enroll pay a fee in advance to have the profiles listed. Also, men are charged fees later on for getting address of possible brides. Addresses of free Russian brides arrive with a cost tag. A catalog is typically obtainable with the companies for a high fee. Certain reputed agencies provide free translation services to correspond with Russian beauties. They organize tours for a possible groom to the country and give support for the visa applications, although the services are costly.

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