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But he was such a nice guy

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Just for people judging people so badl wrong:

S.I. basement packs surprise

Suspect is known as a 'nice guy,' but cops say he had cache of guns, pipe bombs, and Nazi paraphernalia


BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA AND DARYL KHAN
STAFF WRITERS

April 30, 2004


Police found a cache of guns, pipe bombs and pictures of Adolf Hitler and Nazi literature in a Staten Island basement, but yesterday neighbors of the man living there described him, swastika tattoos and all, as a "nice guy."

"He always talked about America, what it means to be a good American," Thomas Janul, 28, said of Anthony Boshi.

Boshi, 43, was arrested Wednesday night along with Anna DiCamillo, his longtime girlfriend, after police found 13 guns, seven pipe bombs wrapped in aluminum foil with nails glued to them and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in a converted basement study, police said.

Boshi and DiCamillo, 39, were arraigned yesterday on charges of criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child, their 1-year-old son.

"If the fuses are ignited and explode, they can kill people within 5 feet," Assistant Staten Island District Attorney Adam Silberlight said during the arraignment.

Boshi was ordered held without bail and DiCamillo held on 0,000 bail.

Police heard about Boshi's weapons from a tip related to a narcotics probe launched in November, said Capt. Glen Morisano, the commanding officer of the department's Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Although police had a no-knock warrant, officers staged an argument about a car accident in front of Boshi's house on McClean Avenue. They screamed at one another until Boshi came out. They arrested him when he got close.

Once inside the house, officers found DiCamillo cradling her son while looking out the living room window, a heavy scent of marijuana in the air, Morisano said.

Boshi's lawyer, John Murphy Jr., accused the district attorney's office of exaggeration in its description of the cache.

"They are fireworks," he said of the alleged pipe bombs. "They're used for fishing. No question about it."

Murphy said it is a common practice for fishermen to weigh down M-80s, drop them in the water and blow up bunker fish, which are chopped up and used as bait to catch bluefish.

The lawyer grew agitated when asked about his client's stash of Hitler literature, Nazi war paraphernalia and swastika tattoos. He said there are many libraries that carry Hitler's "Mein Kampf," one of the books police found in Boshi's basement.

A family member said suggestions that Boshi is a Neo-Nazi were inaccurate.

"That is not a fair characterization," said the family member, who declined to give his name. When shown photocopies of the Nazi literature and photographs of Hitler, the man said: "I don't know what to say. That's not the man I know."

Neighbors said Boshi, an unemployed electrician, displayed an effigy of Osama bin Laden with a target painted on the chest after the Sept. 11 terror attack.

"He told us that he was going to move to Washington state where the real Americans are," said neighbor Michael Frazer, 23. "He didn't like that all the immigrants were moving into the neighborhood. He likes people who are red-blooded, born here, real Americans."

link
 
While I have no interest at all in defending THIS particular alleged miscreant, Forteans of all people should realize that the mere possession of books and printed matter does not amount to criminality. How many of us possess books on poisons? On cannibalism? THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK?

I even have an Internet file on grave-robbing, but this hardly means that I have even the slightest desire to make practical use of the knowledge gained from it. (In fact, at age 64 I have no criminal record of any kind.)

I am the polar opposite of an anti-Semite but I have a whole shelf of viciously anti-Semitic books and 75-plus floppy discs full of the same garbage.

As for illegal weapons there are still tons of banned weapons in the basements of otherwise perfectly law-abiding World War Two vets, war "souvenirs" which they dragged home from Germany and Japan.
 
Just by way of information, I would point out the defense is taking a peculiar line and presumably going for a lesser charge, not pleading innocent. Not only is fishing with explosives illegal in every jurisdiction (for obvious reasons), but in most municipalities, mere posession of an M-80 is illegal. I don't know if the UK has the same kinds of fireworks, but in case you don't: an M-80 is a half a stick of dynamite wrapped in silver paper. All fireworks are dangerous; the M-80 is deadly. (The ghost in my Ghost Sitter book died wrestling a lit one away from her little sister. Had she survived, she would have been handless.)
 
I suppose, the swastika tattos might have been a clue. though how visible they were who knows and of course he could have been hearkening back to their ancient historical religious use - but somehow I doubt it.

-
 
M-80s

Fish can indeed be dynamited to the surface, but I'm unceratin whether this can be accomplished with M-80s.

Back in the late 1950s my parents owned a summer home on a large Greater Cincinnati private lake. (The lake was man-made and had been constructed around 1885.) My adolescent cousins would gather there on the evening of July 3rd and we'd begin celebrating Independence Day (July 4th) by tossing M-80s into the lake. We most often used three M-80s with the wicks wrapped together.

These "firecrackers" exploded underwater with a "WHUMP!!" that SHOOK every inch of the surrounding shoreline....including the old earthen dam. Since it was night, the entire lake would light up GREEN.

But the FISH? Can't see where it harmed a single one. No dead fish rose to the surface. More importantly, we and our parents would go fishing the next day and the fish bit normally.
 
Back around the same time as my previous account, just above, there was an M-80 disaster near a Cincinnati high school. Four students decided to create "super M-80s" by wrapping the conventional kind with wires, strong tape, applying clamps, soaking them in glue, anytime to further compress the gunpowder chage inside and thus increase the force of the blast.

As they drove toward the school one of the students decided to toss a "super M-80" bomb out the car window. Instead he dropped it, lit, inside the vehicle. The explosion killed one student outright and blew off the right arm off another (he survived). The automobile's roof was ripped away.
 
Not sure if the post seeks to highlight the dangers of fish-bombs or to illustrate that we often don't know people as well as we believe we do.

If the latter, I agree. And it seems to be confirmed in at least half the news stories about 'nice' guys (and girls) turning out to be not-so-nice. The distraught loving husbands who beg on tv for the safe return of their wife and child, for example, only to be revealed as cold-blooded killers of their own families. Neighbours, friends and family are invariably shocked. Very rarely do we hear a grandmother or friend say: ' I knew he was like that. You could tell. I knew he'd do something like this sooner or later'.

I believed I 'knew' someone extremely well, for over 20 years. It all changed when -- under the influence of a drink or two --- they detailed the way in which they'd poisoned a poor dog.

How could anyone do something like that to a trusting animal? How could I have been so blind, for so long, about that person? Why didn't I see it?

Comes down to attributing our own values and attitudes to others, I suppose. If you haven't considered murdering your own family (for example) it's almost impossible to imagine anyone else doing it ... let alone someone you know and trust.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
While I have no interest at all in defending THIS particular alleged miscreant, Forteans of all people should realize that the mere possession of books and printed matter does not amount to criminality. How many of us possess books on poisons? On cannibalism? THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK?

I even have an Internet file on grave-robbing, but this hardly means that I have even the slightest desire to make practical use of the knowledge gained from it. (In fact, at age 64 I have no criminal record of any kind.)

I am the polar opposite of an anti-Semite but I have a whole shelf of viciously anti-Semitic books and 75-plus floppy discs full of the same garbage.

As for illegal weapons there are still tons of banned weapons in the basements of otherwise perfectly law-abiding World War Two vets, war "souvenirs" which they dragged home from Germany and Japan.

I own the book "How To Kill", published by Paladin Press. But guess what? I'm a pacifist and would never use a weapon.

It is a disgusting book. I found it in a bargain sale bin in a book store and was shocked when I opened the book. But I bought it thinking it was better it was owned by a pacifist than a possible psychopat and user of the book.

It was a once in a lifetime find, considering it was in a norwegian bookstore. I guess someone had ordered the book in the bookstore and didn't collect it.
 
Cincinnati

We had a case here in Greater Cincinnati within the past ten days which neatly fits this thread. A man in his early 40s entered a model home in an Ohio subdivision, raped the two saleswomen he discovered on duty there, then stole two finger rings from the hand of one of the victims.

Excellent police work in both Ohio and Kentucky lead to the Northern Kentucky suspect's arrest within two days. In addition, DNA evidence has allegedly ALREADY linked him to a dozen or more similar rapes over the past 12 years. [Apparently DNA results can be obtained REAL quick when it's the COPS who need them!] The miscreant's usual modus operandi was to rape and rob female convenience store employees working the late shift alone.

It turns out that this bird was a community-oriented family man. gainfully-employed, liked and respected by his neighbors. He was also a veteran children's baseball coach!

And remember Des Plaines (West Chicago), Illinois, killer John Wayne Gacy. He was "a reg'lar fellow" and "good ol' John" to his neighbors even as 34 human bodies were accumulating under his house.
 
Or the BTK killer who apparently seemed like a "normal" upstanding family man.
 
Trouble is, people want psychopaths, serial killers etc. to look different from your apparently nice neighbour. It chills us to the core that such 'monsters' don't look like monsters. Our society uses visual assessment to judge a persons potential character and when this visual clue is soooo wrong with the actual case, it alarms us.
 
i think when you've lived with a charmer (male and female) you get wise to it. Sometimes it can make you cynical. The saying 'too good to be true' indicates that a lot of us, deep down, suspect people and things where the appearance is perfect.

I prefer people to reveal a few flaws. The dog poisoner was probably never a human murderer, a rapist, or a paedophile. I know that isn't necessarily so but you know what i'm saying I hope. I wouldn't like them and would probably be a bit wary but at least I'd KNOW what kind of person they were...

God. I AM cynical, eh?
 
The only thing residents of his neighborhood seem to have even mildly disliked about Dennis Rader (the BTK Killer) was that he tended to be a bit of a martinet in his occupation as local ordinance control officer.

But being a stickler for details surely isn't an automatic indicator of serial killing.

By the way, whenever Dennis Rader's Lutheran pastor has been asked by reporters if Rader has shown any signs of remorse, his reply has been that he can't ethically answer that one without violating pastor- parishioner trust.

That strikes me as "no, he has not."

Because remorse and the seeking of forgiveness are the very names of the Christian game! So saying that, yes, Rader has done those things would violate no ethical rules whatsoever. It would in fact be the pastor's CHRISTIAN DUTY to Rader to reveal that he had done so.
 
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