September, 2007
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
HOCK'S Web Log
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
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28 September 2007: Serial Killers Part 5 - The Haunted Fraternity
As the sun set, Howard Kelly, Brearly and I returned to the station as the others wrapped up the sweaty work in the field. We pulled Lucas from his jail cell, sat him in my office again and swarmed around him with rolling chairs and notepads. Lucas waived his rights. Brearly typed a brief statement.
We got down to the listed nuts and bolts. In a nutshell from this nut, we learned that Lucas met and traveled with a young Florida girl named Freida Becky Powell. They got a job with a small land owner, the elderly Kate Rich of Ringold, TX. This caretaker job also included living on the grounds. Eventually, Henry killed Kate and burned the body. Took money. Henry and Powell hitchhiked away and stopped at this fateful intersection. They camped mid-field. Lucas impulsively did this dirty deed, then checked into the Motel 6 just up from the intersection. Rich was reported missing. Lucas wandered back to Ringold.
For nine months in 1982 and 1983, Ryan and the county Sheriff Conway investigated this disappearance of the 80 year-old Kate Rich of Ringold, Texas. The leads pointed to Henry Lee Lucas, who was seen with Rich the last day she was seen alive. Lucas was arrested and after four days in Conway's jail, he called out to jailer Joe Don Weaver, "I've done some bad things." Henry confessed to burning Rich up in a cook stove, killing a girl in Denton, Texas, and well ... Henry hasn't stopped talking about bad things yet!
I wondered about the Powell murder. Lucas said it was impulsive. Sudden. Yet, was Powell a witness to the Kate Rich murder? Was she weak with resolve? Was Henry methodically removing a witness? But, I was too distracted and busy scratching chigger bites. We were absolutely eaten alive in that field by chiggers in plague proportions. Brearly had to go back the next day and do more work in the field and he experimented with an old wives tale. The tale goes- “put a small potato in your pocket and the chiggers will leave you alone. The next morning with camera and shovel in hand, and an Idaho spud in his pocket, he returned to the dig. Guess what? "That spud don't work." Larry was further bitten and nearly a candidate for a hospital visit.
Howard Kelly was haunted by many past, unsolved cases. At that time I was really too young to fully understand this…this odd, pang…this burn in your gut kind of haunting. This insatiable question. A mystery that still scored in your esophagus like an acid. I didn't understand all that. The “what if?” “Who?” That years, even decades later, the face of a murder victim would pass before your thoughts. Unsolved. Unsolved is such a dirty word. An unacceptable word. Regretful.
The regret runs deep. Regret that you failed. Regret that a criminal walked away free. The worst kind of criminal. The murderer. Regret that a family suffered. Regret that you even let yourself down, your expectations. Your drive somehow failed. Your cleverness collapsed. Your problem-solving skills flunked. Couldn't you have done something else? Pulled some other trick? It took a few more years for me to rub that hole into my gut. Not many people are in this small, haunted fraternity. Sometimes when we stare out a window, or look into a field of trees, or just stare down at our feet on the floor. Our thoughts may not be pleasant ones. Forgive us our transgressions.
Howard had worked a murder of a college girl years earlier. She'd left a party and vanished. Her strangled, sexually assaulted, body was found by some railroad tracks near the outskirts of town. Howard never forgot an unsolved felony and took each one personally. Especially the killings.
“Henry, let me show you something,” Kelly said. He passed Lucas an 8x10 color photo of a young woman. “You know this woman?”
Lucas took the photo, studied it and said no.
“Sure? She was a girl killed here years ago.”
“No. I remember their eyes. I like to look at their eyes while they are dying,” is what he said.
We lost a four year old girl about two years before that. She simply vanished. We ran that case before Henry. “ I don't do kids,” he said. “But I know someone who does. Otis Toole. We traveled around together. You might be looking at him for that Adam Walsh boy.”
Howard told me to prepare a NCIC announcement on these events and send it country-wide. The original National Crime Information Center computer was not so much a computer as we would call it today. This was an old-school, noisy, huge, teletype device and our only link to each other. The NCIC database was created in 1967, under the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The original cost of the NCIC system is estimated at over $180 million and it was well worth it. This connected us all to quickly track criminals, spread intelligence and report leads and news like the confessing Henry Lee Lucas. It would reach the detective divisions from Hawaii to Maine. As soon as we broadcast the news, investigators burdened with unsolved homicides started calling us. This haunted fraternity fell upon the Henry lee Lucas. From everywhere. We even had calls from police overseas asking if Henry had ever left the country! Detectives were desperate and hungry to solve their killings, whether driven by haunting grief or just to clear their books.
I am not too sure what happened next with the Adam Walsh bomb that Henry dropped in our office about Otis Toole killing the son of America's Most Wanted creator and host John Walsh This tip was passed to the Texas Rangers (I was told) and one of us called the Florida police. I can't remember who! And that is why I eventually called the Lucas Ranger Task Force myself on this because I had a funny feeling in all the confusion pounding us in the beginning of this, the Florida detectives may not have gotten the clear tip. I later found out they did - from Ranger Phil Ryan who was always handling up on his business.
Toole was already in the Florida pen for murder. This lead, misused and abused would turn into one of the two national scandals surrounding the Lucas deal. The Florida Walsh case was just one scandal. The Texas Ranger Task Force was the next. For you see, very quickly after the NCIC broadcast, Ranger Ryan had to turn Lucas over to a new group, which I thought was a mistake. I would have trusted Ryan to handle and cipher out this mess but it was indeed a giant mess, surely too big for one man, even a one-riot/one-Ranger operator like Ryan.
The new group was a state created "Henry Lee Lucas Task Force," the Lucas Express! It gave them a set of offices nicknamed by some as the Lucas Hotel where Henry was harbored for all visiting detectives to come and question him. He got his teeth fixed, a color TV, a new glass eye and three square meals a day. Jokes and smokes. Triple-layer toilet paper and a newspaper at his cell door. He ever-so-slowly confessed to murders in 26 states, arranging needed trips throughout the country to see and remember the crime scenes.
But, that would all soon explode over everyone when a veteran Kennedy Assassination investigative reporter sunk his teeth into all these cases.
Coming soon, Part 5: An outsider blows up the cases.
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25 September 2007: The Historian Thucydides records King Leonidas saying this.
"A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors, will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
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22 September 2007: Serial Killers Part 4 - "You See, Hock...I've Got this Problem."
"I've got a problem," Henry told me.
“Okay,” I said as I sat down at my desk. Henry sat in the interview chair. He was cuffed around front and drinking a can of coke. “What's that problem?” I lifted my feet up atop my desk and stretched out.
"Ever since I was a kid, I've been killing things, dogs, sheep, cattle ... and having sex with them. Something snaps in my head, a sex thing."
He told about a man named Bernie back in Virginia, who taught him how to do all. I read between the lines that Bernie did things to him too. I would like to remind people here that this interview was in 1983, a time before all the serial killer paperback books. A time before the nightly news show appearances by retired FBI profilers. Back then, there were no established connections between killing, torturing and having sex with animals and the “serial killer.” In fact the term, “multiple murderer,” might have been a way more popular moniker used. One might say that Henry help build that body of knowledge and terminology. But even back then, as a detective, hell as a human being, one might see an easy link between the animal sex and killing and the human sex and killing. And some...mentor named named...Bernie?
“Who else ya' kill?” I asked.
He began naming locations between Florida and Michigan of where he had killed other women. That afternoon in my office, he recalled only thirty murders. I lost count actually, thinking this was one busy son of a traveling, road-show, bitch, huh? I just didn't know what to think, or really quite where to start...or what? He is lying? Half-lying?
He told me he would hunt women on the highways, following them to gas stations and store, hoping for a chance to get at them. He told me about a recent murder, just before his incarceration by Ranger Ryan, of a hitchhiker on an Interstate. He waited until she stared out his car, passenger window, then..."I kept a large knife on my side of the seat. When she looked away, I reached for my knife and got her good in the chest. Then, I drug her off the road, then had sex with her, leaving her on the desert."
“The desert? Where were you?”
“Oh, west Texas. New Mex?” he said shrugging his shoulders.
The stories went on and on. He talked a lot about his two trips to State prisons without receiving any help for his mental problems. More and more, I found his murder stories difficult to swallow, at least some of them. He was trying to shock me, like a braggart.
Millie Miller poked her head in my office, “Howard needs to talk to you. On my phone.”
“OK.” I stood and walked out into the hallway.
I shouted down the hall to a patrolman, “Hey!” and motioned with my hand for him to come near. “Can you watch this guy in here? He's only killed about 30 people so far and I can't leave him alone.”
“HUH?”
“This is Hock,” I said into Millie's desk phone. It was Sgt Kelly, talking from a convenience store telephone. (Remember little cell phones were only on Star Trek back then. We once had to use big, clubby telephones connected with thick wires).
“What's he saying?” Howard asked. I told him. Silence.
“30 women.” Howard repeated. More silence.
“Lock em' up, Hock. We really need you out here. We are going to start digging.” We'll come back in a few hours and you, me and Larry will question him. I am going out to the house, get my pick up and some gear. You still have them shovels from the Deckerd deal?”
“In my trunk.”
“Bring em. Go home and change. I sent everyone home to change and get some tools. Lewis, Baker and Ryan are watching the place.”
Nowadays, police agencies have what is called Forensic Archaeology teams in their regions. Experts in forensic archaeology, which is the application of archaeological methods to forensic, crime scene, work. Some large cities have their crime scene teams trained for this. Others use trained personnel from large universities. Basically they are folks who examine, sift, brush, peel and dig away at your burial site. But, back in my early days, this was done by any guy with a gun and an old shovel. Ahhh...that'll be me.
But I was, am, is, are, be somewhat schooled?! And I wasn't just a Neanderthal with a pickaxe. Nor were McCormick, Baker, Brearly, Lewis and the rest of us out there that hot day. In fact we had dug up bodies before. Remains as they often called.
I sketched up the field; triangulated key, fixed objects, and we started digging up the areas that Henry had pointed out to us. Captain Cummings methodically walked off the large area, slowly, studying the ground. Ryan and his deputies left for the night. Captain Ron Douglas, CID of the county sheriff's office showed up with some investigators to help us out, which was nice gesture since the killing occurred in our city jurisdiction and not out in the county.
I dug where Henry told me. I did indeed find a pillowcase with bones in it. As Russell Lewis took photos of the discovery, I rested on my shovel handle, thinking about that strange, one-eyed man cooling his heels in our city jail. Who the hell did he kill anyway? How many? What's it going to take to work on all this? Within one month, the crime scene exploded from this open field, to coast-to-coast of the United States of America!
Part 5 coming soon...
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18 September 2007: Serial Killers Part 3: Will the Real Norman Bates Please Stand Up?
You did kill your mother?” I asked, trying to sound casual and half-interested. But, was this yet another undiscovered murder?
Now, before I continue here, because many of you good readers, full of murder mystery books and cop shows are wondering about the Miranda warnings you see and hear about. You know, the “you have the right to remain silent” - thing. "Whoa! you say. "Shouldn't this suspect be advised of his rights?"
The Miranda warnings are tricky, yet painfully simple. So are confessions. As they say there is an art to conversation, there is also a higher art to the confession. I have collected many confessions through the years and was known for getting them. No brag. Just fact. (I can supply the district attorney office names, state and federal to confirm this reputation, should you not don't believe me). I was really good at getting confessions. One manipulates and massages the facts to box a defendant into a corner.
Casual, friendly conversation is one major key or tool at certain times. For example, I have collected some confessions in open restaurants because the suspect is at complete ease, rather than a barren, harsh interview room. It is a call I make after assessing the suspect. Many times I would walk up to an arrested suspect, half-sit on a desk and say, “what in the hell happened out there?” just like I was his cousin. So many times, these suspects would just blurt out the whole thing! Usually this was their first draft, concocted, half-truth story, but once they start talking, I can chisel all that bullshit away later. Criminals often think they outsmart and out-con the police.
After their first explanation, I would often say, “Hmmm, well sir, you need to get that down on paper. Right now you are just a cold-blooded killer! You need to tell your side of the story. The DA needs to know this right away. Want to give a statement? THEN came the rights. Technically I could not use anything he had told me in court up to that point. By the way, I was in court just about every other month for 16 years, for some kind of felony case. Sometimes they still call me back. I have never had a confession thrown out. Never. And Lord knows the defense tries with every one. Many times you don't need a confession and having one can actually be counter-productive to the case and to justice. All of which is the subject of an academy class and not so much part of this tale of a serial killer.
In this situation, here in my car, Henry blurted out a sudden admission - an unprompted exclamation and I probably could use that information in court as a piece of an overall case. But, no need to use it! He continued right on to tell me he had killed his mother in Michigan, with a broomstick. They had argued and he hit her and left. Abandoned, she later died. He quickly told me he had been arrested for it, served time and was paroled. Closed case.
“Why'd ya' hit her?” I asked.
“Oh…arguing. I told the cops that I had to defend myself, you know…self defense and all that. But really? I just got mad at her and hit her in the head. I did time anyway. I killed her. Then I had sex with her, with the broomstick. Then I left Michigan.”
I gazed over at him. Noting his mangled, bad teeth and that wild eye of his? Was glass. No comment from me. If he was looking for shock? He didn't get any. ( I researched all this later. Like Hitchcock's Norman Bates, Henry had killed his mother when he was 24 years old. He stole a car and fled, but was arrested in Ohio while hitchhiking. He told me - other officers and psychiatrists - that he had sex with his mother after he'd killed her. But he later denied this. Yes, he was imprisoned and paroled for this matricide.)
“You have sex with that girl out there in the field, too?” I asked quietly, eyes straight ahead with an added, “look at that fool turn like that!” This additional traffic report emphasized the casual and half-heartedness of my interest. We were just two buddies driving the road.
“Yeah. Killer her. Fucked her. Cut her up.”
“Oh,” I said calmly. I remember thinking how badly I needed to get this fool to talk into my tape recorder and attempt a written confession. At THAT point, it would be the rights-reading, official conversation.
Again, all this is the interview/interrogation subject of an academy class (I taught this subject regularly for years at the Texoma Police Academy) and not so much part of this tale, but I would like to take a few seconds here for the record to say that two people were key in my training and inspiring me in the art of the confession. Former District Attorney Jerry Cobb and the previously mentioned Howard Kelly. (Special mention – the walking law library, Allen Levy). All on-the-job-training that is, through sit-downs, cuss-fits, finger-waggings and pats on the back. Jerry Cobb took me to “criminal law school,” all in a case-by-case basis. If I had worked in a giant metropolis these regular opportunities with veteran, seasoned experts would never have happened..
But now It was time to really and "officially" talk. We drove up to the police station, and I walked Lucas into the jail. Printed him, photographed him, booked him in myself and then guided him down to my office in the detective division section, one I shared with Larry Brearley back them.
And here in this office is where the national, roller coaster really began. Over the next few days, Henry Lee Lucas would no longer be just a mother-killer and a girlfriend-killer. He would soon become internationally famous, or shall I say infamous, as the nation's most prolific, traveling, serial murderer. There are movies made about him. Books written about him. But was he really such a killer? How did he fool American law enforcement and then, the world?
Part 3 coming next..
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14 September 2007: Serial Killers Part 2: Henry Lee Lucas
"89. Meet Ranger Ryan, southwest corner of I35 and University Drive."
"10-4" I replied into the radio mike. Odd place to met Phil, I thought, as it was an open field. Worse it was hotter than hell. The dispatcher began calling a few other detectives. Dan McCormick. Larry Brearley. Mike Baker. Howard Kelly. Our crime scene expert Russell Lewis. Even our detective Captain, Bill Cummings was suddenly on the air and in the route. When the Capn' shows up, this was a big deal.
I got there first, pulling my car off the road and stepped out. I could see Texas Ranger Phil Ryan in the distance, maybe 60 yards away. With him were two Wise County Deputies and…and a strange, skinny man, all three wandering around this dry, sparse field.
"What's up here?" I muttered to myself, but the answer was soon obvious, as I took just some steps toward them, I nearly stumbled over a very startling object in the low grass. A human skull!
I stopped dead in my tracks, in case I was in someone else's tracks! I knelt for a closer look. It was real. It was human. A human skull means a death investigation. I slowly backed out in my my own steps.
Carefully not to cause a media landslide, I got on the radio and announced that there was a “piece of evidence” about 35 feet south of my car. Announce a skull on the air and we have dozens of distractions roaming around. News people. That would all happen soon enough .I took a good look around. Amazingly this was a busy intersection. Just north, across a four-lane road was a convenience store, a Denny’s and a few older businesses. And yet here in this nearby field, a human skull rested for, as I would learn later, through four seasons. I circled the skull and carefully marched south to Ranger Ryan.
“Howdy Hock,”he called out. Phil Ryan was one of my favorite Rangers to work with. He would toil just as hard on a tractor theft as he would a homicide. Great sense of humor, a man with a purpose and a sense of history. His Wise County Office was a small museum of western art - heavy on the Texas Ranger flavor.
“We got us a killing out here,” he said matter-of-factly, hand on his hip. Ryan briefed me, telling me that while working a Wise County murder, he’d developed a suspect named Henry Lee Lucas. “Lucas is a son of a bitch,” he said. “I got him to talking and Lucas said that he had also murdered some girl last year out here. Had sex with her, then cleaved her to pieces with a butcher knife. Left her here.”
“Well, sir, I believe I found her skull right back there,” and I pointed back.
“Then its a done deal. Real deal,” Ryan said.
I asked Ryan where Lucas was. To my surprise he pointed to the group of three casually strolling the field. There, walking on a portion of small hill, un handcuffed, was this sickly-looking, thin man, Henry Lee Lucas, smiling and joking with his guards.
The other detectives showed up and we conversed on our situation. The deputies herded Lucas over to us.
“Well Henry,” Ryan asked. “Where is she? Where’d ja bury her?”
“Oooh, a little bit here and there. Then I left the rest of her, you know..unburied. Laying around.”
“Where did you do the burying,” I asked.
“If you dig right about here? You’ll find a pillowcase with arm bones in it. I believe right here.”
Several hours later, I would do so and find said pillowcase and bones, but at the moment we all knew that a body above ground would be carried off by animals. Even dug up at times and carried off. And this was Texas. We even had vultures and other big, hungry, birds with beaks. Our crime scene just got big. REAL big.
“Hock,” Sgt. Howard Kelly said, and walked toward me and then right past me. I followed. Out of ear range he continued, “take him in. Book him and talk to him a bit, but get him in the jailhouse. You, me and Larry will talk to him later and see if we can get something on paper.” He looked over the the large field and frowned. “We are gonna get busy out here and for awhile, and we can’t have this silly fucker walking around with us all day.”
I nodded. Howard told Ryan we were going to book him in to our jail.
“Lets go Henry,” I said, spinning a finger in the air, which he knew was a message to turn around. I handcuffed him and walked him back to my car. I searched him and put him in the front, passenger seat - not exactly SOP - but I wanted to see him and talk with him. And if he got smart? I knew I could bust him up real good. Kinda’ hoped he would actually.
He settled into his seat and looked around and smiled. I got in and drove off for the station.
“I killed my mother you know?” he suddenly said.
Serial Killers Part 3 coming soon.
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12 September 2007: Me and Serial Killers Part 1: The Serialization of Serial Killers
Edgar Allen Poe wrote Murders of the Rue Morgue in 1841 about a multiple murder. Perhaps the first of its kind. Literary experts say this tale set the stage for Sherlock Holmes and the string of investigator characters solving all sorts of crimes, and the occasional murder mystery. Even the multiple murder. Yet, it was the modern-day author, Thomas Harris who actually changed our media culture. He elevated the serial killer into the modern lexicon.
Harris wrote the book Red Dragon in 1980s, which eventually became a B-quality movie and didn't make much of a media wave. It was the next Harris movie, Silence of the Lambs that made the hyper-A-movie jump, putting Hannibal Lector in the international limelight. And since then, we are utterly and completely smothered in Hannibal Lectors and serial killer books. SMOTHERED! I have grown to hate them. I am bored with them. Sick of them. But, the book publishing machine, made of bankers not artists, keep grinding out the same old crap formats. The crime thriller market cranks out best sellers that are the quality of mediocre TV cop show scripts. And the masses still read them and read them and read them like sheep. I can only imagine by now that EVERY style and whimsy of a brutal serial killer has been the subject of a crime book. Each book must have an odder killer, or the killings must be more gore and shocking, than the last.
Before Silence of Lambs, law enforcement new well the term - serial killer. Hell, Jack the Ripper was one really. I had received my first training in the 1970s on the subject matter and when I became a detective, I was sent to various profiling and murder schools. Organized profiling was in its early stages. Good thing too, because In the early 1980s I started working on them. I have investigated a number of double homicides through the years and once in awhile, a few triples. But, most of these were often quickly solved and not the real meat of the movie/fiction book, mystery serial killer.
Hidden in your beat, district, city, county and state murder rates are very confusing definitions. Your city may have had only 2 murders a year! The citizens breath a sigh of relief. "We live in Mayberry!" But, then they ignore the attempted murder rates! And they ignore the aggravated assault rates! In actuality, some unqualified staff people may be categorizing the attempted murder stats from the agg. assault cases. The lines are vague and debatable. Yet, both these categories could have produced murder victims if not for a speedy cop, a good EMT or a efficient emergency room staff. What about brutal, aggravated rapes? A beat, a district, a city or county with two 2 murders a year, may actually have 60 aggravated rapes, 80 attempted murders and 160 aggravated assaults. Now, how safe is that area?
The problem for the investigator is that what often appears as a solo assault, rape, or even murder, may well be the crimes of the traveling serial criminal. These modern schools and profiling experts have created a collective file cabinet for investigators to open and file through, whether they work in Mayberry RFD or New Orleans.
My filing cabinet? I have assisted other agencies in their serial murder cases, helping them piece investigations together, but over the next several days, I would like to write here about two bizarre serial murderers I worked directly on as the assigned case agent, that were indeed the gristmill of popular fiction. Longer term, mystery cases, so to speak. People who torture and kill lots of people. My purpose is to entertain...yeah...sure...but really use entertainment to offer educational insight, information and history.
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9 September 2007: "Them Head Butts Work! Me Have used Them!"
In some martial circles, I have somehow been identified as “that guy who thinks head butts don't work.” Which I think, given my few humble accomplishments in life, is an odd moniker. But actually, I don't think I have ever said that head butts don't work. If anything I think I have alluded to the fact that head butts may work all TOO well. Right back at you!
Not only are there numerous stories of people stunning and knocking themselves out doing head butts, you will also hear stories of head butts working. Still, I worry that with the preponderance of self-stuns and self-knock-outs, I always ask is a head butt worth the risk of the short-term danger in the middle of a fight for your life, Or, is it worth the long term danger through just a few repeated in juries.
Another classic report I hear is, “But, I am hitting with the hard part of my head. That should be fine.” Dear Mr. Numbskull, Your injury is not your skull; rather it is your near-liquid, splashed-about brain inside it, having minor and major concussions. Your Jell-O brain! And, few know that Wednesday night's, bar-fight, successful, head-butt may have worked just fine. AND, next Sunday's night's next, head butt may work fine, BUT this second, very minor concussion in a short period of time, could cause you a slow brain bleeding and long-term, even permanent damage. Who is doing head butts every week? Some violent troublemaker? A bully gang-member? What about your law-abiding students? They may be hurting themselves weekly in your classes by innocently head-butting padded mitts and shields. This repeated impact may be building small mental firecrackers and time bombs.
Two events of late have brought new, advanced science and attention to this discussion, the crazy, murderous death of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit and the new US military's brain trauma injury center.
First, wrestler Chris Benoit's father had his son's brain sliced open for investigation, seeking real answers about rampant steroid use. What they found instead was rampant brain damage from hundreds of concussions. Are these all head butts? No. Are they indicative of very minor brain impacts? Like head butts? Yes. Now, specialists are trying to decide if the odd and violent behaviors were also a result of brain injury? Steroids? Both? For more see: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295794,00.html
Second, the evolution of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center as the latest, biggest, bankrolled government health project, due to the extensive injuries coming in from Iraq. White analyzing and treating the subject for treatment they are uncovering vast amounts of information of the brain. Much of this info is slowly filtering down to the public and to the martial arts industry. For more see: http://www.dvbic.org/
Right now the NFL football league and the UFC are caring and watching this information and they are industry leaders in these concerns. They are seriously worrying about these head injury problems. Are you? Before you do head butts, (even on practice pads and shields), I urge you to look at these materials.
The materials say damage begins when you experience as little as a one-second black-out. What happens to you when you pound your skull into the skull of someone else? So now…what do you say and do, Mister Self Defense Instructor, about this subject, to your students, the ones who have placed both short-term and long-term survival into your hands, your doctrine? I personally think head butts are weapons of the last resort, to be reserved and limited. “God” did not make your head to be an impact weapon. He built your nervous system around protecting your head. I use to teach head butts like everyone else. I learned more. I stopped their rampant, cavalier use. Remember the chant, knees, head butts, elbows? This is the chant of the ignorant. And, there are methods to steel yourself for the worst case scenario, last ditch head butt. There are also alternatives to the head butt.
I have been harping on this for years now. Years! Long enough I guess to get that confused moniker about being the guy who “thinks head butts don't work.” They do work. Too well. At times right back on you.
Folks, I think you will find I have been way ahead of the curve on this one.
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6 September 2007: The September CQC Dispatches has been mailed out!
Please let that effort count as a blog entry? If you have not received your free internet magazine? Then email me at: Hock.Hochheim@SBCGlobal.net
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3 September 2007: Basement Stop-Watch Tests
I was burning the midnight oil lamp last night. You know, I often envision many of the use-of-force studies quoted these days as being nothing more than a cop with a stopwatch shouting orders to other cops, in the basement of some police station...on a midnight shift. Fact is? Many times, I am not far off of that observation. Rest assured though that last night I was not running laboratory tests and making proclamations, as I am not qualified to run tests of such magnitude and importance. Who is, you might ask? Sadly, neither are many of the experts you often read about and even quote.
The fact that I cannot, even with my proven obsession, study and experience in these fields, run lab tests or their non-lab, in-the-field, equivalents...well, if I can't? Who can? Who should? This leads to me to question the research of others, and to question all tests about police, military and fighting performance. It causes me to constantly re-evaluate just who are these people that instructors quote all the time as such impeccable sources. How really impeccable are they? Really?
It becomes easy for police and martial arts instructors to cobble together some training program or article, and it is so easy to quote this-or-that paper on combatives and survival stress. When it comes to the subject of combat stress and performance, some of the most popular articles are authored by...none other than Bruce Siddle, founder of PPCT and the impressive sounding...DOCTOR Hal Breedlove! This dynamic duo! In fact, the list of names that quote the duo as impeccable and unquestionable sources are quite lengthy. They range from Lt. Colonel Grossman on down to even your neighborhood karate school owners who like to name-drop/mention them on their webpages and sound all kinds of hip and modern. The fact that Breedlove is a medical doctor seems to bolster the research, doesn't it? Why, surely Dr. Breedlove must be a P.H.D. in Maximum Physical Performance or some such, high-falooten' related field.
I am rather intrigued by the zillion times that Bruce Siddle PPCT and Dr. Hal Breedlove are mentioned and regurgitated as prestigious sources of "science " in the studies of human, fighting reaction. I read words like, “amazing.” “Groundbreaking.” “Pioneering.”
How many times I have read,
“The research by Siddle and Breedlove not only confirmed my findings ...”
and
“Then I stumbled upon the research by Siddle and Breedlove and they…”
Then these previously confirming and stumbling people are themselves being re-quoted and re-quoted as the next wave of experts. Segments Of Siddle/Breedlove findings are cherry-picked to bolster their own opinions on fighting, shooting, helps their sales pitches on everything from handgun sights to training programs.
At the essence of their PPCT research is the cause celebre' - the general dumbing down of police training, martial arts training, and the proliferation of Hick's Law misinterpretations. Basically for PPCT, our nervous system is an uncooperative ogre, (yet our nerves/pressure points are magic buttons of control), our heart rate will pound the skill out of us, our adrenaline will surely rob us of survival skills and Lord knows we can't seem handle two or three, tactical choices without sitting down and smoking a pipe to select a choice. Give us four choices? We need a nap. Of course, I am being facetious, but you get the point.
This Siddle impact is seriously vast. Take for just one example, a quote from a shooter, ONE IN SO, SO MANY, using Siddle/Breedlove stress research to bolster his point shooting opinions -
“Lastly, fine motor skills that include any action that requires precision hand eye coordination,
such as shooting a firearm, will initially improve as the heart rate goes up.
But they will rapidly deteriorate once the heart beat reaches about 110 BPM,
and they will be lost at around 130 BPM.”
Lost. Did you say...Lost! Did you know an athlete sitting in a chair and then running up a flight of stairs can heart spike over 110? 110 beats per minute is not much at all for active training and action. Then all is lost! Those poor SWAT teams hitting a second-story apartment! This is but a small example of the confusion caused by this type of conclusion.
Despite the widespread hoopla there is plenty of data that Siddle Conclusion A does not always lead to Siddle Conclusion B, but these Siddle A and B observations are vast and perhaps un-retrievable, a spreading sea of misinformation. On this one heart-rate point alone, the loss of motor skills by increased heart rates is now completely discounted in the last few years, says Dr. Bill Lewinski of the Force Science, University of Minnesota. He, along with other experts who now have the benefit of modern technology, learned that motor skills are lost not by heart rates but rather by fear and/or anger (and of course - fatigue, sickness, drugs and alcohol). It is rather primitive to always blame the main clock spring for every single problem with the clock, as such is the blame placed on the heart rate for all performance problems. A little dab of oil on the second hand may actually solve the clock's time problem. The main spring may be just fine.
"It is rather primitive to always blame the main clock spring for
every single problem with the clock, as such is the blame placed on the
heart rate for all performance problems. A little dab of oil on the second hand
may actually solve the clock's time problem. The main spring may be just fine." - Hock
This has nothing to do with my opinions on point/instinct shooting, and I am not writing today to pick on heart rate issues, or for that matter Mr. Siddle and Mr. Breedlove. I am instead, obsessing and investigating expertise problems in general, in our industry and using some specific examples about the “cop with a stopwatch” analogy.
Who are these people? Who in fact, are Siddle and Breedlove anyway? Being a nosy, paranoid type, and questioning the issues, I had to look deeper. Neither of these people are clinical psychologists, or trained sociologists and in fact, this Dr. Breedlove is...brace yourself...an eye doctor. Yes, an optometrist. Did you know that? Law officers of the world? Re-quoters of the world, that Dr. Breedlove is not Stephen Hawkings or Albert Einstein? He is not toiling away at the Rand think tank, or a Harvard Medical School. He is Dr. Breedlove of OD Coastal Vision, Virginia Beach, VA, selling eyeglasses and contact lenses.
This good doctor himself is not leading you on personally. Rather the hundreds of shallow, re-quoters are innocently elevating him (and Siddle) to this Nobel Prize status. (Not to wander far astray here, but vision plays a part in combat for sure, of which I would talk to Dr. Breedlove in great length, probably get good advice and also get an eye exam. But, I would check with a heart doctor about my heart.) And further, there is no M.D. or PH.D. after ex-cop, Bruce Sidle's name either.
PPCT has long been a small thorn in the side of many police officers, both here and abroad. People argue with them about Isosceles and Weaver stances and point shooting and on and on. I am a vet of several mandatory and voluntary PPCT classes through the decades. I too have been mildly unimpressed, then downright enraged at the baton courses (but they, like ASP, are really hamstrung by department policies). Many certified PPCT instructors I know are not too happy either, but really who is happy with every aspect of every course, and PPCT services so many paranoid, police agencies that are just, well...catatonic about lawsuits. What's a police training system to do?
There will never be another PPCT, or ASP, or organizations like them. They came at a point in law enforcement history where training monopolies where once possible. Such monopolies are no longer possible. Siddle has worked long and hard to accomplish what he has and it has been quite an accomplishment. Where PPCT tactics are at their best, is when it is fundamentally like every course that is good. To me, Mr. Siddle is at his best, just collecting and reporting information. I do question, when he concludes. Its his conclusions that sometimes drive me crazy.
PPCT underwent a revamp and modernization in the 1990s. It is under yet another revolution as we speak, and it sounds like a very, VERY thorough revamp, because many of its founding principles like the heart rate issue to name one, have been challenged at their core. New book. New ideas. Lots of Doctors? I am glad the Siddles are flexible to change. I wish them luck.
Right now, their webpage reads..
"Welcome to the future home of PPCT.com.
We are currently swamped in a huge amount of breathtaking changes,
so please check back over the
next few weeks to see the newly revamped website."
So, warning, warning, warning! The next time you read about Siddle and the good Doctor Breedlove, especially real, old studies (folks, he has changed some things two times now) or the next time you read any martial instructor pontificating with scientific-given, source of impeccable research, spouting things on startle/flinch, stress, Hicks Law, heart-rate-destruction-of-motor-skills research? Ask, “where is the clinical, research by schooled professionals from accredited universities.” AND IN THEIR FIELDS! Don't get a basketball coach to teach tennis.
If you must run a test with your stopwatch, in the basement with a handful of cops as subjects? It might be wise to have a clinical, expert present to at least supervise and oversee the project. They know how to cleave out confusing and misleading information, make for a cleaner test, evaluate placebos. I do know that the oddest things may throw a whole test off. Get someone who is working on their masters (this way THEIR teachers will critique too!). In the end, this adds great credence to your results. Then comes the professional, peer review!
Ladies and gentlemen, I am just an ex-cop with a stopwatch. Do not quote me for science. I don't think Siddle has ever worn a white smock either. We both put our pistol belts on the same way every morning. I only quote the medical/clinical experts. You should too. I will never quote Siddle, unless he is talking about putting his pistol belt on.
I burn the midnight oil trying to decipher and present this stuff from the qualified experts. But, first you have to establish who the real experts are! When it comes to medicine, science and biomechanics, be picky, push, poke, prod and question. Demand related degrees. And PLEASE! Remember. Doctorates are always welcome!
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum! http://www.hockscombatforum.com
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1 September 2007: Some Up and Coming Major CQC Group Camps, Seminars and TM9 DVD set
(Look to the upper, right-side for the rest of 2007)
TM 9 is ready.
4 discs. 3 hours and 40 minutes.
Unarmed versus the Knife,
Unarmed versus the Stick,
Gun Ground Fight Module.
Hock and McCann in
Ft Washington, PA (eastern PA border)
Nov 17, 18
Dallas, TX USA, Jan 12, 13 Fire and Brimstone!
BIG Survival Ground Fighting Seminar.
Hand, stick, knife and Gun Ground Fighting
Military Knife Seminar, Frankfurt, Germany, Oct 6, 7
Gun/Counter-Gun, Cincinnati, OH. USA - Oct. 26, 27, 28
CQC Group Camp, Gent, Belgium - Dec. 7, 8, 9, 10 2007
CQC Group Camp Sacramento, CA. USA, Jan 24-27 2008
(all seminars build the ranks for the CQC Group AND
the SFC Hand, Stick, Knife, Gun and PAC courses.)
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum! http://www.hockscombatforum.com
Report back to Headquarters! http://www.hockscqc.com/
