Your thorough knowledge of the case and you calm and serenty are truly needed. I have read your posts on various forums and enjoyed every one of them. They are testament to a very thorough knowledge of the case - and they are just very calm, dignified and, what is even most important, humane.
I left the site for quite some time because of kyleb. I even received a private message asking me to return, where the author emphasised that kyleb has driven quite a number of posters away from the forum, but I did not respond right away, just needed some time to calm down.
The strange thing about this case is that a lot of message boards are completely taken over by one very aggressive person or two or three (as in the case of IMDb or Salem forums). Your peace of mind and thorough responses are really something to appreciate. If you manage to stand your ground with kyleb - and I am sure you will! - this really contributes to the discussion. I am really looking forward to your posts.
As I said, linguistics (including forensic linguistics) and discourse analysis are my main areas of research - so I do recognize a skillful manipulator. I was really enraged by his tactics last time we clashed and decided to leave this forum for good. Now , on IMDb the supporters are just called idiots and scumbags. Whoever is doing this is so full of energy and possesses huge amounts of time, so that one person - or three - they accuse everybody else of having sockpuppets so there seems to be some first-hand experience there - manages to dominate the whole board. On the Salem forum essentially two people fill in amazing amounts of space and produce hundreds of posts against WM3. Kyleb is equally active, but far more cunning. He is a manipulator nevertheless and it might be good to know his main tactics.
I am not retired so I do not have the time to backtrack every reference. But I am an expert in manipulation techniques, so I'll just list a few that kyleb uses. They all boil down to essentially one: put your opponent on the defensive, assume with confidence that the onus of proof is on your opponent, set them scurrying for evidence while you yourself make the most preposterous claims without any evidence and refuse to answer even when called out on in, and ask for evidence when the whole has already provided just in the next post. (Plus ad hominem attacks: I used caps in the function of bold, had not worked out how bold functions here easy to show me as a hysterical shouting shrew).
The rest of the post is long on some forums I have recEIved praise and penpals - for this, on others this is a fault. No need to read all of it, the gist was just given.
However, in case you are interested, here comes a list with proof:
!) proactivity - he always attacks first and demands documentation from the opponents.(He will never "go digging" for it himself - nor does he do any digging for his own claims. Example:
"There was more evidence presented at trial than what you mention, and more evidence which has come out since then through document releases and hearings" - now these are his words. When asked to back the claims up with not even documents, which he requires from everybody else, but just a list of facts, by several forum members, he diverts the discourse. He has NEVER answered this substantial question - and I do not think this kind of manipulator will ever have any compunctions of not doing so.
Actually, his own claim is preposterous and cannot be backed up by any evidence, but he just hopes the decent members of the board will be busy hunting for exact references for the evidence he keeps requiring so his own sweeping and thoroughly unsupported statements will be conveniently forgotten. He never gives evidence, have you noticed that? Just requires it from everybody else. And we do go scurrying for more and more documents, forgetting that his own outrageous claims have not been backed up by anything at all.
Meanwhile, when you provide him with extensive expert opinions about no knife being used, he counters you with a request to provide evidence that all experts actually said the words: "no knife was used". So he sends you searching for ultimate, "impeccable" evidence, without providing any asked from himself. Not to mention that several experts quoted in you post actually said that no knife was used.
I had the same experience with my claim that no proper door-to-door questioning was conducted in the area near Terry Hobbs. I was immediately required to "Please provide me with evidence of this". (Returning after a long hiatus, I notice that at least the impolite "Please plus imperative" has diminished, though still there - a distinctive marker of his style).
I did find the document on callahan where the police have noted who they questioned and who was not present and who they therefore never bothered to question again, almost half of the people, including, of course, TH, but also the neighbours who saw him with the children - but the point is he could have found the document himself. Putting the burden on the opponent is one of the first rules of manipulation.
2) Double standards. So many prosecution witnesses - the central ones such as Carson and Hutcheson - have recanted tearfully on video. (You are a better expert, but did they not also profit by the Alford plea, just as the state of Arkansas did - as far as I know, perjury leading to a death sentence can be punished up to a death sentence?).
Yet again, witnesses for the defence (not for the prosecution!) probably had memory problems
Notice what is happening - the burden of proving things is again stealthily shifted to the supporters. Why is the testimony of those girls who eavesdropped on Echols's conversations (normally qualified as hearsay, except for by this heavily biased judge), or the testimony of a relative of Hollingsworth, who had every reason to lie and who somehow recognised Damien in the dark (sic!) but erred as to his companion - somehow OK, and their memories and perceptions, let alone motivations not questioned? Yes, we all have memory problems - and then some have prjury problems! - but this should cover both defence and prosecution witnesses.
And then you have a person with no axe to grind who - as you rightly pointed out - would remember if a knife would indeed have been thrown into the water right after the gruesome murders, and actually remembers that it had happened long before - and his testimony is doubted. Again proactivity - putting the burden of proving that one witness was credible on the supporters and disregarding the crucial recantations or prosecution witnesses whose credibility has been proven to be zero, but whose impact on the jury was enormous - they had literally nothing against Jason before Carson's perjury - and kyleb has the nerve to say that he has not delved into these perjuries and yet does not believe they were important - O God!
By the way, we all remember where we were when JFK was assassinated, or when September 11 happened. Even in Biblical theology they say that Jesus's words are probably authentic in the Bible because of the emotional charge related to them. So if a really gruesome murder happens, people's memories are far better than usual. We may forget where we put our watch on an ordinary day, but somebody throwing a knife in a lake right after what shook the community to the core will be distinctly remembered.
3) Asking questions that seem "formally" correct, though the answer is obvious. A typical example is the question "Please give me evidence when exactly Jessie Miskelley recanted his confession". Again, putting the burden on the opponent - and VERY consciously so. Obviously, when Miskelley pleaded not guilty, he thereby recanted his "confession". That is enough proof, and kyleb knows it perfectly well - we have an intelligent manipulator here. Kyleb just again puts the supporters on the defensive - sends them looking for a document where Jessie recanted - whereas pleading not guilty is all that is needed for "proving" recantation. When he refused to testify against the other two, he essentially recanted his confession once again.
So there are all these obvious facts, but I almost feel kyleb experiences some strange pleasure in sending the supporters looking for documented evidence again, although it has long been there out in the open. Your post about the knife gave total evidence about how the experts agreed that no knife was used. Including the statement Looking at the injuries, which in my opinion you need to look at as a group, I view the injuries to the lips as consistent with those that would have been caused by an animal. I dont see injuries looking at what you are showing me, including 48R, that is consistent with a beating and a knifing . To follow this by a post asking you to provide evidence that no knife was used is manipulation at its apex. I notice you have not answered this and I absolutely approve this - all the evidence is there and yet you are required to provide "more evidence". The expert said that they dont see injuries looking at what they were shown (including a concrete photo, but
not excluding anything else) so what is one supposed to do? Dig for an explicit statement: i hereby state that no knife was used on the boys? Such a statement probably does not exist because all the wounds were covered one by one.
To recapitulate, I, for one, am happy you are back. Such textbook means of manipulation are something I cannot gladly suffer. You have the calmness and balance of mind to counter them - and also the good judgment to know when an answer is useless.
Once more, looking forward to more of your posts and wishing you continued patience and strength.
