Gerard J. Sniffen, IIII am grateful to the Mobile Alabama Press-Register and Jillian Kramer for writing an article about my son's disappearance and reported Alabama death. It's unfortunate Ms. Kramer is still young, inexperienced and does not research her stories well enough to be a serious crime reporter. And if Ms. Kramer asks for an interview, never expect a thanks, or the courtesy of notification of when she finally publishes the article. Watch for the article for up to a year after she gets your interview. The article Ms. Kramer wrote can be found
She pointed out that the Alabama state forensics report recording 3-inch scars on each knee, did not match my son's body. The problem is, Ms. Kramer's description of the scars was not quite correct, because she apparently did not view any forensics reports or police reports. Ms. Kramer mentions my son swigged whiskey per the Sheriff, but the autopsy report shows the body examined had no alcohol present. In the article, Sheriff Mack also says he spoke with me several times and "started recording the calls after the first few." I believe all police calls are recorded, so is Sheriff Mack's office different? I may have spoken with him one time, when I believed I was speaking with John Garner, and I have the notes to back it up. I do recall speaking with Mr. Mack's father, the coroner, now deceased. Sheriff Mack never said I could come and view the body. It's not true. Had Ms. Kramer cared about the FACTS she would have investigated further. As it was she got the story, and after about six months published it in a time slot where it would get as few readers as possible, during the Christmas holidays.
While Ms. Kramer may use human interest stories to further her career, for the sake of the innocent, and for her lack of compassion and desire for truth, she should avoid stories which involve facts, families, children, and criminal situations. While she's young and ambitious, only responsible reporters should be assigned such serious subjects.
My son disappeared not long after I had reported information to Brunswick, North Carolina police I had hoped would help solve the the murder of Amy Frink. My son's disappearance and reported death had similar characteristics as Amy's. Both were last known calling at a phone booth. Both crossed state lines and died in adjacent states. Both suffered gruesome deaths. In neither case did the mother identify the body.
I have strongly suspected foul play, even interstate organized crime, and believe since there were no witnesses to his alleged suicide, there should have been a homicide investigation.It is important to note
It is also important to note my divorce attorney, Kenneth Schatten called me to his office Spring, 1999 and advised, in the presence of Billy Carter, Private Detective, that he and Mr. Carter believed my husband may have murdered our son, and as mentioned above, there was motive to make him disappear before he could witness in any court trial.
The past ten years were spent with shock and dismay, confusion, grief, anger and fear fleeing Georgia, while finding more of the same harassments in Kentucky. While attempting to get the truth I was enduring all forms of intimidation, stalking and sabotage to my home and animals.
Below are notes taken March, 2001 in speaking with authorities in Baldwin County, Alabama. Mr. Garner explained I would not be able to get police records without a lawyer and subpoena. He was very rude. He did say he'd spoken to me before and I recall telling him I'd never called him and it must have been someone else. A few years later, in 2004, I learned Jimmy Johnson and not Garner, was sheriff and Mr. Johnson was kind in sending records. I am still curious to know who was driving the truck my son was said to have hitch-hiked on from the phone booth location in Georgia.
Family Affair
It is very important to note there are two "Huey Macks," father and son. Huey Mack, Jr. is presently the Baldwin County sheriff, who replaced James Johnson, sheriff in 1998. At the time of my son's death I believe Mr. Mack, Jr. was a deputy. Huey Mack, Sr. was the coroner, and owner of the funeral home who in 2001 provided much of the verbal information recorded below, including the flight records, body shipment schedule, and shotgun model.
I do not recall speaking with Huey Mack, Jr. but recall 2001 conversations with Huey Mack, Sr. besides speaking to Mr. Garner, 2001. I have since read there was only a cooler at his funeral home to store bodies temporarily, so have wondered if that long-term body storage information given was in error.
There is considerable evidence to open a proper investigation and find the truth regarding the death of my son. Information provided from a suspicious local resident, noted apparently near the same time there was a similar shot gun death in the same area, and the homicide victim's body was decomposing in his roadside car, undiscovered for three days. For the past ten years with an abundance of evidence, I have been unable to convince any authority to unravel the truth. My former husband of twenty-three years, well connected as a railroad executive, and his Atlanta attorney Michael Broadbear were very powerful people in Georgia with far-reaching business and political liaisons.
If the public could please submit any information regarding this tragedy, I would be most grateful, having never lost faith in the good will and integrity of the American People, at-large.
It is very important these tactics are never used again against other Americans––that those of us committed to stand and resist corruption and crime are not punished, ridiculed, stalked and harassed by criminals and ignored by disinterested or misinformed law enforcement.
If anyone should have any information, please feel free to contact me at fm_looney@yahoo.com or feel free to post comments anonymously or otherwise at this blog. You may also submit information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation at this site: https://tips.fbi.gov/
--Private Detective Billy Carter's Website, which has since been taken down--
Where the Mobile Alabama Press-Register article suggested my son had taken "a few swigs" from the whiskey bottle, forensics examiner records challenge the information relayed to Ms. Kramer.
".....When he saw a whiskey bottle on the kitchen counter, the 18-year-old Georgia native took a few swigs, then moved over to the gun rack and selected a shotgun. ..."
http://www.al.com/news/press-register/metro.ssf?/base/news/1230657324316790.xml&coll=3&thispage=1
4 comments:
It is a tragedy when you loose a child. I've always believed that a parent should never bury their child.
However, I happen to very well know the people in alabama who live on the property where your son took his life. You have every right to want to investigate further, question the sherriff's department and try to find out what happened leading up to your son's death. But before you go to the press register and start opening old wounds maybe you should take into consideration the others involved.
Many years have been spent trying to recover from the tramua of having someone kill themselves in their yard. For you to bring this memory back to the front of their minds by questioning "who these people are" on the front of the mobile press is inconsiderate and just plain wrong.
Continue your search for why this happened to your son. From what i read all you really want is some consideration in what you are trying to do. If so, you should show some consideration for those who didn't know your son and would like to forget.
joy
Thank you for your comments, Joy. What matters is the truth. Sincerely, Michelle
Comments on what Medawar understands about the Winchester 1200 shotgun used in this case:
This is described in the police reports as a "riot gun" model with a 20" barrel. Although, deer-hunting models, also with barrels designed mainly for slugs and buckshot, also exist and would be pretty similar.
However, other officers' observations, re: the number of cartridges still in the gun, suggest a Defender Model, that is, one designed either for fighting with, or for sports, such as "practical shotgun" which emulate shotgun combat.
Basically, the Defender model has a seven-shot magazine (pretty much same length as barrel) which allows a total capacity of eight standard-length (2.75" or 3") 12 bore cartridges, including one in the chamber.
Models sold specifically for hunting or variants of clay-pigeon shooting, will have either shorter tubular magazines, or be "plugged" to physically limit the gun's capacity, in line with the law on hunting in the place where the gun was sold. (IE: in Malta, Italy or France, probably no limit at all, other than the hunter's ability to wield the gun. The ideal sporting shotgun for Southern Europe would be drum or belt-fed and fitted with a liquid-cooled barrel.)
Medawar understands that a shortened, four or five shot magazine is usual, which can then be semi-permanently "plugged" if necessary to lower capacities. "Plugging" a seven-shot magazine not only requires a bigger plug, but the weight of that is consequently nearer the muzzle and would result in something that was a perfect beast to handle. Many sportsmen would prefer the short magazine for handling reasons, even if it was not a legal or rule-book requirement for their sport.
But there is no reason why an eight-shot gun shouldn't be used for PRACTICE on clay pigeons. Indeed, this is actually a recommended way for those who must use a shotgun for fighting with, to develop the necessary familiarity and skill with the weapon.
So, Medawar can reliably infer from the police reports, that the Winchester 1200 in question was a Defender model, or a close relative with the same magazine. There is no suggestion that its owner was violating any laws, and he might have been if the police had evidence it was used for hunting game species. So that probably wasn't why the gun was owned.
Legitimate uses would have been: self-defence, pest control, sport in the form of "practical shotgun" as a formal discipline, or informal clay-pigeon shooting to develop general skill. The weapon had a barrel appropriate to shooting deer with (foster-type) slugs or buckshot, but in most US States the owner would have been required to limit the magazine capacity, with a gunsmith-installed plug, for this to be strictly legal.
The deceased appears to have selected this gun from several that were there. It isn't known why. Obviously, a short-barreled gun would be preferable to a fowling-piece for self-destruction, but also for self-defence. That assumes that the deceased selected the gun. It may also have been the one that happened to be left loaded, or with the right gauge ammunition accessible. (but an extra cartridge was obtained from somewhere, that matched the others. See below.)
The autopsy reports mention a significant amount of soot in the victim's mouth. Short-barreled shotguns do generate soot, especially if fired a couple or more times with cartridges meant for wildfowling or other applications where a slower-burning powder is used. Smokeless powder burning can cease abruptly as the shot charge and wads leave the muzzle and the gas pressure inside the barrel swiftly drops. Also, the slower-burning powders are usually slower-burning because of the inclusion of moderating compounds or coatings on the powder grains, and these things generally turn to soot unless the pressure and heat in the barrel are high and prolonged. (This can be a warning sign of too high a breech pressure, in fact.)
The autopsy reports the pellets remaining in the wound as "fragments" ranging in size from 0.2cm to 0.4cm. This is a little hard to interpret in the absence, in anything that Medawar has read so far, of a determination of what shot size they were before they became fragments. Mangled pellets are inevitable when relatively small shot hits something hard while all the pellets are still jostling against each other.
However, Medawar sees two possibilities:
If "0.4cm" represents an intact pellet, and "0.2cm" a bit of one, that suggests that the pellets were originally either "BB" or (US birdshot) #2. Wildfowling load in either case and in the latter case, almost exclusively American-made for a 12-bore cartridge. British-made wildfowling loads would be BB shot: the artist who illustrated "The Wind in the Willows" signed his work "BB" because he was never known to use anything else.
Not any expert's FIRST choice for a fighting shotgun, especially as nearly always propelled by a slow-burning powder in the nature of Nobel 82 or Blue Dot, meant for gentle acceleration in a long barrel.
If "0.2cm" represents a more or less undamaged pellet, and "0.4cm" one that has flattened into a disk when impacted between hard bone and other pellets, then the cartridge was filled with relatively fine birdshot, US #9 or thereabouts. Consistent with a "skeet" load for clay-pigeon shooting, also only sensible choice if using a 12 bore gun on vermin like rats or mink -or small doves. A little small for most game shooting, but the suitable sizes of #7 and #6 aren't far away and the only information is about mangled shot.
(A British pigeon shooter might not use #9 shot, but British woodpigeons are two or three pies on the Sarah Kennedy "pie scale" whereas most American doves shot as game are one pie at most.)
#9 shot is not unthinkable in a fighting shotgun. It is the standard load used by South African Police when trying to disperse, rather than kill, rioters. (Only non-lethal at a little distance.) The premises were a mobile home, and if the owner wanted to tackle burglars without causing avoidable innocent casualties on the other side of the relatively flimsy walls, birdshot would be a sensible choice. It is also what one would load if clay-pigeon shooting with the fighting gun to build skill.
(Apart from being ineffective on small clay targets, due to a low pellet count, buckshot loads are extremely dangerous at hundreds of yards if fired up in the air. LG buck, for example, has pellets the same size as the balls for a Colt Navy revolver -and they are traveling as fast.)
It's also quite likely that the owner would actually use his other guns more, for sport, and therefore that there would be greater numbers of birdshot cartridges in his premises.
For serious fighting use, the smallest likely pellet size would be AAA buck, which is about 0.5cm in diameter, up to US 00 buck (SG Buckshot in English) which is a bit over 0.8cm in diameter. (0.33"). LG buck is 0.9cm or 0.36", Medawar thinks this is "000 buck" in the USA. In those conflicts where shotguns have been official British Army issue, the issue load has tended to be SG Buckshot.
{Ironically, the officer responsible for developing this policy (in Burma and Kenya), Lt Col Riley Workman, was murdered using SG buckshot at his home in East Hertfordshire a couple of years ago. Almost certainly by the local deer-poachers Fred Moss and Chris Nudds. Nudds is now in jail for subsequently murdering Moss, and the colonel's murder remains officially unsolved.}
A buckshot load at point blank range does an awful lot of harm and the autopsy report is more consistent with a large mass of smaller pellets, quite apart from the description of "fragments". Large buckshot would be less liable to break up, but Medawar is unsure about AAA shot or US #4 buck.
None of the police reports mention any difference between the two cartridges expended and the seven remaining in the gun, so presumably they were all consistent, both as to make and shot size. However, this brings us to the anomalies:
There were two spent cartridges by the deceased. The gun had a live round in the chamber and another six in the magazine. This is one more cartridge in total than the gun could have held, although there is no inconsistency between the number of cartridges which the police report as till being in the gun, and its capacity, if it were a defender model capable of hold eight cartridges: one in the chamber and seven in the magazine.
In increasing order of unlikeliness for this to have been a suicide:
The deceased must either have fired a round, which hit nothing, or found the chamber still to have contained a fired but unejected cartridge from the last time the gun was used. The latter is consistent with a lot of soot, but not with good practice by the owner. Either way, the deceased apparently topped up the magazine with another cartridge. This is an odd action in itself, if intent on suicide, and also implies that he found and took one, but apparently ONLY one, spare cartridge with him when he went outside with the gun.
So far, surprising and odd, but not impossible, and people do odd things under extreme stress. Still, the extra live cartridge does imply a purpose in mind other than suicide, such as self-defence with the best weapon to hand and whatever cartridges presented themselves. The expertise of the owner isn't questioned, that of the deceased (military shotguns are not usually issued to cadets) is unknown. This could account for any peculiar match between shot size and the type of gun.
Then, having either fired a round which hit nothing, or ejecting a previously-fired cartridge and topping up the magazine to have a maximum eight cartridges in the gun, the deceased supposedly shot himself -and then cycled the action to eject the fired cartridge and bring another into the chamber.
It's the latter which is the real anomaly. There's a lot of travel and force involved to cycle a 12 bore pump-action: Colonel Workman's troops in Malaya were issued with modified Browning Automatic Shotguns, because the Remington pump-actions used in Burma had been known to jam if the action was incompletely cycled by frightened soldiers in close proximity to the enemy. Only after his retirement, and after a fix had been found for this problem, did the British Army revert to pump-action shotguns -and then only in the hands of special forces, so far as Medawar knows.
There are motion pictures in which the heroine cycles a pump-action shotgun with one hand on the pump, effectively with a violent shake. Notably, one Australian picture about a female former Red Brigades Terrorist fighting a small war against the Mafia in the outback. This is actually very difficult to do on purpose, and usually the film's armourer has to work on the gun and (pretend) ammunition to make this work. The required arm movements are not available to someone already at full stretch in the suicide position, but it MIGHT happen if the gun was being grappled with at the time of death.
There was no powder residue on the deceased's hands, which is a bit surprising, really, no matter what actually happened at the scene. It strongly suggests that the deceased did not fire the first shot, which did no damage (at the scene at anyrate) but as stated above, he might have found the gun with a spent cartridge in the chamber anyway. But some witnesses reported "shots" plural.
The extra spent cartridge can be explained, the live round chambered after death is very surprising.
The shot size seems to have been either in the region of BB or #2, wildfowling loads, or #9 skeet or dove loads, depending on what the words in the pathologist's report mean. The latter is actually more consistent with known practice concerning fighting shotguns, especially where there is an intent to minimise innocent casualties or to only inflict deterrent damage on rioters or looters.
The numbers of cartridges still in the gun is consistent with it being a fully-loaded "Defender" model, but there's one spent cartridge too many, and that must either have been ejected at the scene or bought to the scene. It was also replaced with a single live cartridge before the fatal shot. There are no reports to suggest additional live cartridges outdoors where the body was found, so the deceased appears to have had one extra cartridge!
With a lot of soot in the mouth from the second and fatal shot, it's a bit hard to see how the deceased hand's remained completely clean of powder residue if he fired the previous shot that accounts for the extra spent cartridge. This was a shot barreled gun, they are inherently a bit sooty, and there would have been gas and soot out of the breech, near both his hands, as he cycled the action for the fatal shot. Unless that shot was fired by someone else, or quite a while previously.
The identity of the deceased is another matter, which could be resolved satisfactorily if any alloy implants involved in the knee surgery were removed and traced to a surgeon who knows who he operated on! Mr Sniffen's mother is unaware of him having any knee surgery at all.
The deceased's teeth were in good condition and this is frankly highly inconsistent with the hints of amphetamine use. Unless it was a one-of or somehow a very limited exposure.
Correction.
There's a typo, which puts "Malaya" in respect of where Colonel Workman commanded a battalion after the Burma campaign. It was in fact Kenya, the Malayan campaign was a couple of years later. Close quarter fighting in sugar cane or rubber plantations in both conflicts.
Regular infantry units in Malaya continued to use the Browning Automatic Shotgun there, but special forces employed Remington pumps and cartridges with "special SG" shot rather than SG shot. the former is 0.30" rather than 0.33" and the cartridge holds more pellets. At some point the Remington design had been modified to make it more jam resistant than the (1935 manufacture) models, possibly from Indian police armouries, used by British soldiers in Burma.
Medawar wants his facts to be nitpick-free!
By the time of the Malayan campaign, Colonel Workman was serving in Germany.
The basic logic of British infantry soldiers using automatic shotguns, because it can be difficult to cycle a pump-action properly under stress, (or with lots of loose twigs getting in the slide) is valid. The special forces do the other thing, but they are not being asked to engage the enemy at close quarters for the first time after only thirteen weeks of army training and their first overseas trip, which was the case with some national service soldiers in Kenya!
The point with regard to the Sniffen case, is that pump-action shotguns do not readily cycle themselves!
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