Last Days

MONDAY, OCTOBER 13 This week of babysitting pimps,
Craigslist-enabled clobberings, and erotic public suction kicks off
today with a grade-A Last Days nightmare story. The featured
players: 43-year-old Jon Pomeroy and 44-year-old Rebecca
Long, the married couple from Carnation, Washington, charged
today in what investigators say is the worst case of child abuse
they’ve ever seen. Details come from the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer,
which reports that Pomeroy (a software
engineer) and Long (a stay-at-home stepmom to Pomeroy’s kids from a
previous marriage) were arrested last Friday after a two-month
investigation, instigated by a neighbor’s call to Child Protective
Services to report the screaming coming from the couple’s
home.

Investigators arrived to find a 14-year-old
girl—Pomeroy’s daughter/Long’s
stepdaughter—malnourished, dehydrated, and weighing less than
50 pounds. As the girl told police, her condition was primarily the
work of her stepmother, who’d allegedly kept food and water from her
stepdaughter for years—restricting her water intake to half a
Dixie cup of water each day, restricting her food to occasional
pieces of toast, and forbidding the girl from brushing her teeth lest
she sneak an extra sip of water while rinsing. According to court
documents, both the girl and her (apparently untortured) 12-year-old
brother were forced to sleep on the floor of their parents’ bedroom,
the door of which was reported blocked with a heavy dresser after the
girl was caught sipping water from the toilet. Making things ickier:
the fact that the Pomeroy-Long household underwent a preliminary CPS
investigation in 2005, after a teacher voiced concerns about the
then-11-year-old girl. “During that investigation, caseworkers found
evidence of neglect, including that Long was locking the girl in her
room for extended periods of time,” reports the P-I. “The
couple’s children were not removed from the home, and instead, the
agency tried to correct the behavior and monitored the family until it
was satisfied a month later that the girl’s living conditions were
safe.” All was quiet until August 22, 2008, when police served a search
warrant on the Carnation home and found the 14-year-old girl looking
“pale, emaciated, and half her age.” After being hospitalized for two
weeks with severe malnutrition, the girl was placed in foster care,
along with her brother; both are reportedly doing well. As for the
parents: Both Pomeroy and Long have been booked into the King County
Jail on charges of first- and second-degree criminal mistreatment. If
convicted, each faces three to four years in prison, during which time
Last Days will work to pass a ballot initiative giving us the right to
stone them to death in the center of town. Stay tuned.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14 Meanwhile in Oregon, a man in the town of
Tigard learned a bracing lesson about the power of the internet,
as a man and a woman responded to his
Craigslist
advertisement, then tied him up, beat him
silly, and stole his truck. “Investigators did not say what
the [Craigslist] advertisement was about,” reports Portland’s KATU
News, “but it brought a man and a woman to the victim’s home about
10:00 p.m.” Once there, the pistol-packing male visitor beat and bound
the unnamed Craigslist ad-placer, whose stolen truck was later found
abandoned and whose wounds were treated at a local hospital. The
criminal couple remains at large.

••Meanwhile in Ohio, firefighters in the city of
Canton responded to a call about a fiery domestic hubbub outside the home of 36-year-old Shane Helson, who reportedly
decided to spice up his annual Halloween yard display with a burning
wooden cross. The Associated Press provides some background on
Helson, who greeted police by continuing to spray lighter fluid on his
burning cross: “Helson is white, as is next-door neighbor Stephanie
Blankenship. But her husband is black, and Blankenship says they have
had problems with Helson and his roommate before and she feels
intimidated.” For his allegedly misunderstood Halloween decoration,
Helson was fined $100, ordered to complete 75 hours of community
service, and barred from burning any more crosses in his yard.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 The week continues with the final
presidential debate of 2008, an anxiety-inducing 90-minute
grotesquerie in which one candidate continued to appear almost
preternaturally presidential while the other seethed with barely
contained rage and repeatedly flashed a darting lizard tongue.

••Speaking of terrifying creeps: Today also brought the
virtual return of Monday’s stepmother from hell Rebecca Long,
who in addition to being an alleged stepdaughter-starving monster is
also an avid knitter, as evidenced by her well-maintained
knitting blog Shades of Green: “A glance at my stash
growth is eye-popping. Why yes, I’ve bought yarn for 72(!) more
projects than I’ve finished since November 3. Yowser!”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 Nothing happened today, unless you count the
sucky hubbub that went down early this morning northwest of
Detroit, where a man in Saginaw County’s Thomas Township called police
at around 6:00 a.m. to report “suspicious activity” at the local car
wash. As the Associated Press reports, an officer arrived to find a
29-year-old man in the act of “receiving sexual favors” from a
high-powered car-wash vacuum. The vacuum vandal is being held in
the Saginaw County Jail.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17 Today brings the return of Last Days’ newest
feature: the weekly pimp bust! This week’s star: James
Nathaniel Weathington, the 33-year-old Seattle man sentenced today
to 227 days in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree promotion
of prostitution and witness tampering. Details come from the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer‘s police blog Seattle 911,
which reports that Weathington was arrested by vice cops at an Aurora
Avenue motel in March. According to charging documents, he’d acted as a
23-year-old woman’s pimp for several years in several states, where the
woman would post ads on Craigslist, and Weathington would drive her to
appointments with her johns. During the trysts,
Weathington would
reportedly wait outside in the car, sometimes with the woman’s young
children in the backseat, thus earning him the moniker the
“babysitting pimp.” Next up for the jailed Weathington: a
possible transfer to Nevada, where he’s wanted on charges of promoting
prostitution and “pandering a child.”

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 Meanwhile in Iraq: An estimated
50,000 supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr took to the
streets in Baghdad to protest against plans to extend the U.S.
mandate in Iraq. (As the BBC reports, the UN mandate for U.S.-led
coalition forces expires at the end of this year, and a new deal
drafted by Iraqi and U.S. negotiators—which would require U.S.
troops to withdraw by 2011 and give Iraq the right to prosecute
Americans who commit crimes while off-duty—is awaiting approval
from the Iraqi government. Stay tuned.)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19 Nothing happened today.

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