Wise Old Owl
Retired WS Staff & Founding member of AFKBPOFPOPL
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A sign of the times?????
Confessed child murderer spends days in downtown Lauderdale park
City grapples with growing homeless problem downtown
By Brittany Wallman, Sun Sentinel
9:47 a.m. EST, February 25, 2010
FORT LAUDERDALE - Gary Kerpan confessed years ago to snatching a 12-year-old girl, raping her, stabbing her and killing her. Now that he's out of prison, he hangs out in Fort Lauderdale's Stranahan Park.
He is one of Fort Lauderdale's homeless.
The city's warm temperatures attract vagabonds from all over. So much free food is available in this town, you could gain weight eating it, one homeless advocate said. City officials say most of their downtrodden are addicts, mentally ill or in economic crisis. But some, they acknowledge, are criminals, ex-cons like Kerpan.
Twelve-year-old Lisa Slusser was in the woods on Aug. 24, 1977, near her Waukegan, Ill., home when she disappeared. Kerpan was 27, married, with a son.
The community was horrified when two days later, after an intensive manhunt, Lisa's broken body was found along a riverbed. She'd been stabbed 19 times, her head bludgeoned. She'd been sexually assaulted.
The case went cold. Fourteen years later, in 1990, Kerpan called federal agents and confessed.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/br...l-homeless-criminals-20100224,0,2730691.story
BBM
Does anyone else find this very very very disturbing? I know we had a big to-do deal with a large number of RSO's living under bridges and overpasses down in Miami back in Nov or Dec. They had no place to go.
But this, this park is literally 5 minutes from my house. It is smack dab in the middle of downtown - skyscrapers full of suits working for Wall Street or the banks (I think at least 3 of the buildings are owned by various nationwide banks). The public library is connected to this "park" - in fact, from the children's section of the library you can "see" into the park.
I'm sure this is NOT an isolated incident and many many more of "these guys" are living in parks around the the country - whether its a small town or even bigger than South Florida metro areas.
Confessed child murderer spends days in downtown Lauderdale park
City grapples with growing homeless problem downtown
By Brittany Wallman, Sun Sentinel
9:47 a.m. EST, February 25, 2010
FORT LAUDERDALE - Gary Kerpan confessed years ago to snatching a 12-year-old girl, raping her, stabbing her and killing her. Now that he's out of prison, he hangs out in Fort Lauderdale's Stranahan Park.
He is one of Fort Lauderdale's homeless.
The city's warm temperatures attract vagabonds from all over. So much free food is available in this town, you could gain weight eating it, one homeless advocate said. City officials say most of their downtrodden are addicts, mentally ill or in economic crisis. But some, they acknowledge, are criminals, ex-cons like Kerpan.
Twelve-year-old Lisa Slusser was in the woods on Aug. 24, 1977, near her Waukegan, Ill., home when she disappeared. Kerpan was 27, married, with a son.
The community was horrified when two days later, after an intensive manhunt, Lisa's broken body was found along a riverbed. She'd been stabbed 19 times, her head bludgeoned. She'd been sexually assaulted.
The case went cold. Fourteen years later, in 1990, Kerpan called federal agents and confessed.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/br...l-homeless-criminals-20100224,0,2730691.story
BBM
Does anyone else find this very very very disturbing? I know we had a big to-do deal with a large number of RSO's living under bridges and overpasses down in Miami back in Nov or Dec. They had no place to go.
But this, this park is literally 5 minutes from my house. It is smack dab in the middle of downtown - skyscrapers full of suits working for Wall Street or the banks (I think at least 3 of the buildings are owned by various nationwide banks). The public library is connected to this "park" - in fact, from the children's section of the library you can "see" into the park.
I'm sure this is NOT an isolated incident and many many more of "these guys" are living in parks around the the country - whether its a small town or even bigger than South Florida metro areas.