This part is completely random:

In a posting on a blog associated with the God’s Desire church, Mr. Garrido told of his ability to control sound.

"I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena," he wrote. "I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers."

The guy is clearly bonkers. But what about the wife?? And the neighbors?? And the people who were supposed to be checking in on him for his parole?@??!

He's fucking crazy. But there still needs to be some punishment there. His wife should have said something. I feel badly for the neighbors who suspected there were children living in tents in the back yard but never said anything. I'm sure they feel like shit now.

Babysitting crisis averted. Now I can go tidy up the house.

Cashmere! It is your own darn fault that those two thoughts ran together in my brain! Because if there were a couple of kids living in the tents next door that WOULD avert your babysitting crisis...

Jackson's drug intake before his death: [link]

According to the document, Murray said he’d been treating Jackson for insomnia for about six weeks with 50 milligrams of propofol every night via an intravenous drip. But he said he feared Jackson was forming an addiction to the anesthetic, which is normally used in hospitals only, and was attempting to wean his patient by lowering the dose to 25 milligrams and adding the sedatives lorazepam and midazolam.

That combination succeeded in helping Jackson sleep two days prior to his death, so the next day, Murray told detectives he cut off the propofol — and Jackson fell asleep with just the two sedatives.

Then around 1:30 a.m. on June 25, starting with a 10-milligram tab of Valium, Murray said he tried a series of drugs instead of propofol to make Jackson sleep. The injections included two milligrams of lorazepam around 2 a.m., two milligrams of midazolam around 3 a.m., and repeats of each at 5 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. respectively.

But they didn’t work.

Murray told detectives that around 10:40 a.m. he gave in to Jackson’s “repeated demands/requests” for propofol, which the singer referred to as his “milk.” He administered 25 milligrams of the white-colored liquid, — a relatively small dose — and finally, Jackson fell asleep.

Murray remained with the sedated Jackson for about 10 minutes, then left for the bathroom. No more than two minutes later, he returned — and found Jackson had stopped breathing.

“There’s no surprise there” that death could result from such a combination, said Dr. David Zvara, anesthesia chairman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“All those drugs act in synergy with each other,” Zvara said. Adding propofol on top of all the other sedatives “tipped the balance.”

Also,

A designation of homicide means that Jackson died at the hands of another, but does not necessarily mean a crime was committed.

oh, absolutely...in Simon's book there were a number of tricky cases like that. Mostly kids, tragically.Cops hate them(beyond the human reasons, I should say) because they're hard to close and it's not good for their clearance rate.

In much lighter news, I was asked to set up a meeting with eight people. I assumed that some people would be on vacation next week and the week after, so assured someone that there would be plenty of time for pre-work. I forgot all about that, and got all excited that we're all around next week! So I just set it up for Wednesday morning. Oops?

I feel badly for the neighbors who suspected there were children living in tents in the back yard but never said anything.

one of them called the police, but was told that they couldn't do anything without a warrant. Which isn't quite true. They could go and ask to see the backyard. If the owner refuses, there is nothing they can do, but they could have asked and possibly seen some probable cause to investigate further.

As Vortex notes, the neighbors did call. The thing that boggles me is that the cops had been to his house multiple times and searched it but somehow didn't bother to go out into the back yard to discover the compound. They just looked out the back yard and saw trees and shacks and some pit bulls. Seriously slackass police work. There's an overhead shot in the Chron story of Garrido's lot that clearly shows the compound. A fucking police helicopter could've gotten that easy.

Garrido's luck held in July of last year, when a multiagency task force in Contra Costa County searched his home as part of a sexual offender compliance check, officials said. He had a string of offenses dating back to 1971 and was a registered sex offender on parole in California.

Authorities found only evidence that Garrido, 58, his wife, Nancy, 55, and his mother were living in the home on Walnut Avenue, said Sgt. Diane Aguinaga of the Antioch police.

The team looked in the back, but saw only a screened-in porch and a back fence, she said.

Behind that fence, authorities now believe, was a hidden backyard with sheds and outbuildings. There, Garrido was housing Dugard and two daughters she allegedly had by him, officials said.

...Police, however, had been told about the backyard lair before, according to a former neighbor.

Erika Pratt said that two years ago, she called police after seeing what looked like a living compound with tents and sheds.

Weirdly, it was in Antioch, which is one of the teams we played in all-stars.

I would like to see Garrido and his wife expunged from the planet.

We were talking about packing and moving here, right?

I am doing that super organized thing that I never do when I move. I just printed out labels fot the plastic bins and made up a spreadsheet to keep track of what is where. Box #, Contents, Date Packed, Whether contents have been treated, and then on the spreadsheet, where that bin is located. THIS is the stuff I am good at.

I feel badly for the neighbors who suspected there were children living in tents in the back yard but never said anything. I'm sure they feel like shit now.

Worse still, one neighbor actually did call the cops on him about a year ago. She saw the sheds and caught a glimpse of someone in the back-backyard. The police went to his house, stood on the back porch, didn't see the shed, shrugged and went away. When she checked in to follow up, they basically told her they didn't see anything and didn't have a warrant, so that was the end of it. If they'd run even a cursory check on his name, surely his registered sex offender status would have come up first thing?

I don't know who must feel worse, the neighbors who got bad vibes off him (nobody's saying, "Nice fella, kept to himself," they're all saying things like "Weird, angry man, gave me the creeps") but never called, or the one who did call, assumed the people in charge of doing something would, oh, DO SOMETHING, and then found out that they'd completely fucked off and that poor woman and her children were trapped there for another goddamned year. Sadly, I'm sure the Antioch police have rationalized their way out of feeling bad about it at all. Still, in addition to whatever punishment the kidnapper-rapist gets, I dearly hope someone in Antioch officialdom gets their head handed to them on a platter, or shoved up their ass.

eta: And everyone else got there before me. FUCK, what a police fuck-up. That poor woman. Those poor girls. And in the end all it took was two UC Berkeley cops looking at him, feeling like something was very wrong, and trusting that feeling.

(I'm positive erika has an appropriate Gavin de Becker quote or three about that)