Now this is creepy and really strange. This guy made it across the border from Canada.
Weapons, bloody chainsaw, blood stained clothes. Hmmm. Yeah ok, and Have a nice day.
Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, on April 25 carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres.Now to the best of my knowledge border guards are armed. Why would they let this guy in?
Then they let him into the United States.
The next day, a gruesome scene was discovered in Despres' hometown of Minto, New Brunswick: The decapitated body of a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton was found on his kitchen floor. The man's head was in a pillow case under the kitchen table. His common-law wife was found fatally stabbed in a bedroom.
Despres, 22, immediately became a suspect because of a history of violence against his neighbors. He was arrested April 27 after police in Massachusetts saw him wandering down a highway in a sweatshirt with red and brown stains. He is now in jail in Massachusetts on murder charges, awaiting an extradition hearing next month.
Bill Anthony, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Canadian-born man could not be detained because he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and was not wanted on any criminal charges on the day in question.It's not?
Mr. Anthony said Despres was questioned for two hours before being released.
During that time, he said, customs agents employed "every conceivable method" to check for warrants and determine whether Despres had broken any laws in trying to re-enter the country.
"Nobody asked us to detain him," Mr. Anthony said. "Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up."
Weapons, bloody chainsaw, blood stained clothes. Hmmm. Yeah ok, and Have a nice day.
3 comments:
I just saw a picture of this guy on the news yesterday. He LOOKS like a wingnut. If they cast him in a movie, you would know that you were supposed to think he was the crazed killer because he has crazed killer all over him.
I understand that they couldn't keep him out because they had no (hard) evidence that he'd committed a crime, but given what he had with him, you would have thought they could have come up with an excuse to hold him for a day or so while they gave Canada a heads up and time to check out his last known whereabouts. I mean, beyond bringing the body with him, how much more proof of a crime do you need in a border guard situation?
I saw the picture too. I think I would have shot first and asked questions later. Yikes.
I think I'll go out on a limb here and say that the blood stained chainsaw was solid enough to be suspicious and notify the local police. Just because there isn't a warrant, doesn't mean that he hasn't committed a crime. I wonder by there standards of evidence if he had had a head in a box if they would have arrested him.
Check out this article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8174185/
Turns out he was skipping a court appointment in Canada that day... and the customs officials knew it. Don't we have some sort of responsibility to Canada in that case? They said they suspected he was trouble so they fingerprinted him, but then didn't notify local police to keep an eye on him. So the fingerprints were protection against what?
The police in MA picked him up because he looked weird, was behaving weirdly, and seemed to have blood on him. They held him long enough to determine he was involved in a crime. It seems to me that the customs officials should have done the same thing.
This doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the intelligence or capability of our border cops.
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