Amy Lord is remembered in churches and at vigils
Hundreds pay respects to slaying victim Amy Lord
Amy Lord remembered as role model, friend
Related: Bulger's Ghost Haunts South Boston
"2012 case linked to ‘person of interest’ in woman’s death; Edwin Alemany’s ID found with attack victim, but police didn’t follow up; ‘I’m very disappointed in what the detective did,’ Davis says" by Maria Cramer and Javier Panzar | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent, July 26, 2013
Boston police disclosed Friday that one of their detectives failed to follow up on the 2012 assault of a woman who was choked into unconsciousness and then awakened to find she was holding the wallet of her suspected assailant — the man now under scrutiny in this week’s fatal stabbing of a young South Boston woman.
The horrible murder could have been prevented?
The suspected assailant in the 2012 choking, Edwin Alemany, is charged with attacking two women in the past week, and is considered a “person of interest’’ in the killing of Amy Lord, the 24-year-old who was abducted as she left her Dorchester Street apartment, forced to withdraw money from five ATMs, then stabbed to death at Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park.
The announcement by police that one of their detectives did not aggressively pursue Alemany raised the troubling prospect that a highly dangerous man with a lengthy criminal record was allowed to remain on the streets....
Well, if there are no criminals you don't need any cops, right?
The victim in that 2012 case, a young architectural student who asked that her name not be published, said she did not follow through with police after she was attacked on a Roxbury street in September of last year. She said in an interview Friday that she had wanted to put the ordeal behind her.
“Now that I look back on it, it’s kind of stupid. I should have called,” she said, growing emotional....
“As you can imagine, it’s incredibly frustrating that we are here today talking about a man that has 18 juvenile arraignments, and 34 adult arraignments and is still not incarcerated,” said Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis during a late afternoon press conference....
All the spy s*** and surveillance they have going on and this guy "slips through" the cracks?
--more--"
Related:
A preventable attack?
Detective demoted for lapse in case tied to Alemany
Detective in Alemany case ignored calls, says Davis
Detective in Alemany case ignored calls, says Davis
Parents torn over children’s safety, dreams
Fear surges after attacks in South Boston
"In South Boston, fear remained pervasive. At gyms, women asked for self-defense classes, and men volunteered to walk them home. Police said they had added extra patrols, planned to hand out whistles to women Friday afternoon, and announced that they would host self-defense classes."
Didn't they catch the guy?
"This is an anomalous crime, but one that has shattered the sense of safety in every corner of the city. The only comfort now is that police appear to be making progress in the case."
Also see: Police ‘close’ to answer in South Boston slaying
"Keypad alarms on cash machines: Preventing future murders?
The shocking murder of Amy Lord this week has brought a renewed realization: ATMs are tools for criminals, but they could also be tools for crimefighters. Lord’s story might have ended differently if, as her assailant forced her to withdraw cash from five different ATMs last week, she had been able to secretly alert police to her plight.
In fact, criminologists and entrepreneurs have long peddled ideas about high-tech ways to help victims while they’re in the process of withdrawing money. Many have pitched that technology to various state governments, often in response to other horrible crimes. The proposals take on a range of forms, from “panic buttons” on ATM keypads to special PINs — perhaps the customer’s regular access number in reverse — that would dispense money but also set off an alarm inside the bank or at a police station.
Banks have long lobbied against any laws to require high-tech safety measures, saying they are prohibitively expensive, could lead to false alarms, and could put victims in greater danger by angering their assailants while they struggle to remember special PINs. A spokesman for the Massachusetts Banking Association also told the Globe it would be unfair to require this technology at bank ATMs but not at cash machines in gas stations or convenience stores.
Isn't it amazing how despite all the computer foul-ups and such, bank ATMs never lose a cent?
Can't get your vote right, but when watching the pennies for banks.... (sigh).
But these are not good reasons to abandon the idea altogether. Isolated, stand-alone cash machines represent the easiest targets for criminals; ATMs in stores and gas stations are inherently safer because there are other people around. The cost estimates of keypad technology vary, but if they are truly large, they could be offset by some state subsidy, or by a small surcharge on consumers.
Yeah, as long as the banks can make a profit off it.
And it’s impossible to guess how criminals would act in every situation; surveillance footage released this week suggests that, in at least this one case, Lord’s assailant wasn’t hovering over her shoulder as she withdrew cash.
Yeah, were was he because the media has been very vague about this? If he didn't have a gun and wasn't right by her side, why wouldn't she run?
The Legislature has a chance to take up the issue soon. State Senator Brian A. Joyce, a Milton Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would require greater ATM security standards, such as adequate lighting, surveillance cameras, and emergency phones. Joyce and his cosponsors should also launch a full inquiry into keypad technology ideas and their relative costs. Doing so would be a tribute to Lord’s memory that could help prevent similar outcomes.
--more--"
Related: Murder renews calls for ATM safety measures
"Emotional trauma may have kept Amy Lord from fleeing" by Chelsea Conaboy | Globe Staff, July 26, 2013
It is the question asked by so many people trying to will the story of Amy Lord’s slaying to a different end: Why didn’t she run when she appeared to have the chance?
Beaten and terrorized, Lord was probably in such fear of her assailant that escape did not seem possible, specialists said Thursday.
A surveillance camera captured the 24-year-old stepping out of the passenger side of a sport utility vehicle, along a busy Boston road in the morning light Tuesday, cars passing nearby. Police say the image, released to the news media, was captured during Lord’s abduction, when she was forced to withdraw cash from five bank machines. Presumably, her attacker was in the driver’s seat.
Did he stay there? And if not, he would have been on surveillance tape, right? And what of the second person allegedly involved? You know, the one that always disappears in mouthpiece media reports?
It is impossible to know what was going through Lord’s mind at that moment or whether she had tried to get away earlier or would try later. Police have not said whether her abductor was armed.
Odd. I was under the impression he had a knife.
But a law enforcement official said that her attacker brutally beat her in her South Boston apartment that morning, and specialists who study the mind-set of victims and assailants said that trauma could help explain why she did not escape.
I'm not into mouthpiece media speculation and rationalization, sorry. Seen enough of it over the years.
Lord may have made the same judgment many others have made in a moment of terror, believing that the safest option was to go along with her attacker’s demands, said Dr. Ronald Schouten, director of the law and psychiatry service at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“You want to believe — it’s survival mode — if I do what I’m told, this person won’t hurt me,” he said.
Perpetrators in cases such as this one often display an ability “to be calming and manipulative,” even if they are also violent, said Schouten, who coauthored the book “Almost a Psychopath.” They terrorize and cajole, convincing their victims that if they do as they are told, they will escape further harm, he said.
Specialists interviewed for this article were not involved in the investigation but spoke generally about patterns of victimization. Often in such crimes, they said, attackers know their victims and use threats against them or their loved ones as a means of control.
In other words, they act like a government looking to wage war.
Police have given no indication that was the case with Lord. No one has been charged, but police have called Edwin J. Alemany a “person of interest.” The 28-year-old has been accused of attacking two other women in the same area Tuesday and Wednesday.
Dr. Harold Bursztajn, a psychiatrist and founder of the program in psychiatry and the law at Harvard Medical School, said that head trauma could have played a role in Lord’s case, if she had been badly beaten, leaving her confused or disoriented. People respond in a variety of ways to emotional trauma, he said.
Then having a different PIN number would have meant nothing.
“The usual acute traumatic stress disorder involves either fight, which some people do, flight, or if you’re badly enough injured, people freeze,” he said.
“She may have been, literally speaking, scared stiff.”
Often, victims are afraid of escalating the violence against them, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. He pointed to the murder of eight nursing students in Chicago in 1966 by just one man, Richard Speck. Speck tied the women up in their apartment, promising that all he wanted was money, and then killed them.
“People just oftentimes trust that he wants the money . . . that taking my life is not going to get him anything,” Fox said. “They reason. They believe that, logically, the best move is then not to get them angry.”
--more--"
Also see: Residents, mayor welcome new restaurants in Hyde Park
Didn't even mention Lord.
Fear surges after attacks in South Boston
"In South Boston, fear remained pervasive. At gyms, women asked for self-defense classes, and men volunteered to walk them home. Police said they had added extra patrols, planned to hand out whistles to women Friday afternoon, and announced that they would host self-defense classes."
Didn't they catch the guy?
"This is an anomalous crime, but one that has shattered the sense of safety in every corner of the city. The only comfort now is that police appear to be making progress in the case."
Also see: Police ‘close’ to answer in South Boston slaying
"Keypad alarms on cash machines: Preventing future murders?
The shocking murder of Amy Lord this week has brought a renewed realization: ATMs are tools for criminals, but they could also be tools for crimefighters. Lord’s story might have ended differently if, as her assailant forced her to withdraw cash from five different ATMs last week, she had been able to secretly alert police to her plight.
In fact, criminologists and entrepreneurs have long peddled ideas about high-tech ways to help victims while they’re in the process of withdrawing money. Many have pitched that technology to various state governments, often in response to other horrible crimes. The proposals take on a range of forms, from “panic buttons” on ATM keypads to special PINs — perhaps the customer’s regular access number in reverse — that would dispense money but also set off an alarm inside the bank or at a police station.
Banks have long lobbied against any laws to require high-tech safety measures, saying they are prohibitively expensive, could lead to false alarms, and could put victims in greater danger by angering their assailants while they struggle to remember special PINs. A spokesman for the Massachusetts Banking Association also told the Globe it would be unfair to require this technology at bank ATMs but not at cash machines in gas stations or convenience stores.
Isn't it amazing how despite all the computer foul-ups and such, bank ATMs never lose a cent?
Can't get your vote right, but when watching the pennies for banks.... (sigh).
But these are not good reasons to abandon the idea altogether. Isolated, stand-alone cash machines represent the easiest targets for criminals; ATMs in stores and gas stations are inherently safer because there are other people around. The cost estimates of keypad technology vary, but if they are truly large, they could be offset by some state subsidy, or by a small surcharge on consumers.
Yeah, as long as the banks can make a profit off it.
And it’s impossible to guess how criminals would act in every situation; surveillance footage released this week suggests that, in at least this one case, Lord’s assailant wasn’t hovering over her shoulder as she withdrew cash.
Yeah, were was he because the media has been very vague about this? If he didn't have a gun and wasn't right by her side, why wouldn't she run?
The Legislature has a chance to take up the issue soon. State Senator Brian A. Joyce, a Milton Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would require greater ATM security standards, such as adequate lighting, surveillance cameras, and emergency phones. Joyce and his cosponsors should also launch a full inquiry into keypad technology ideas and their relative costs. Doing so would be a tribute to Lord’s memory that could help prevent similar outcomes.
--more--"
Related: Murder renews calls for ATM safety measures
"Emotional trauma may have kept Amy Lord from fleeing" by Chelsea Conaboy | Globe Staff, July 26, 2013
It is the question asked by so many people trying to will the story of Amy Lord’s slaying to a different end: Why didn’t she run when she appeared to have the chance?
Beaten and terrorized, Lord was probably in such fear of her assailant that escape did not seem possible, specialists said Thursday.
A surveillance camera captured the 24-year-old stepping out of the passenger side of a sport utility vehicle, along a busy Boston road in the morning light Tuesday, cars passing nearby. Police say the image, released to the news media, was captured during Lord’s abduction, when she was forced to withdraw cash from five bank machines. Presumably, her attacker was in the driver’s seat.
Did he stay there? And if not, he would have been on surveillance tape, right? And what of the second person allegedly involved? You know, the one that always disappears in mouthpiece media reports?
It is impossible to know what was going through Lord’s mind at that moment or whether she had tried to get away earlier or would try later. Police have not said whether her abductor was armed.
Odd. I was under the impression he had a knife.
But a law enforcement official said that her attacker brutally beat her in her South Boston apartment that morning, and specialists who study the mind-set of victims and assailants said that trauma could help explain why she did not escape.
I'm not into mouthpiece media speculation and rationalization, sorry. Seen enough of it over the years.
Lord may have made the same judgment many others have made in a moment of terror, believing that the safest option was to go along with her attacker’s demands, said Dr. Ronald Schouten, director of the law and psychiatry service at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“You want to believe — it’s survival mode — if I do what I’m told, this person won’t hurt me,” he said.
Perpetrators in cases such as this one often display an ability “to be calming and manipulative,” even if they are also violent, said Schouten, who coauthored the book “Almost a Psychopath.” They terrorize and cajole, convincing their victims that if they do as they are told, they will escape further harm, he said.
Specialists interviewed for this article were not involved in the investigation but spoke generally about patterns of victimization. Often in such crimes, they said, attackers know their victims and use threats against them or their loved ones as a means of control.
In other words, they act like a government looking to wage war.
Police have given no indication that was the case with Lord. No one has been charged, but police have called Edwin J. Alemany a “person of interest.” The 28-year-old has been accused of attacking two other women in the same area Tuesday and Wednesday.
Dr. Harold Bursztajn, a psychiatrist and founder of the program in psychiatry and the law at Harvard Medical School, said that head trauma could have played a role in Lord’s case, if she had been badly beaten, leaving her confused or disoriented. People respond in a variety of ways to emotional trauma, he said.
Then having a different PIN number would have meant nothing.
“The usual acute traumatic stress disorder involves either fight, which some people do, flight, or if you’re badly enough injured, people freeze,” he said.
“She may have been, literally speaking, scared stiff.”
Often, victims are afraid of escalating the violence against them, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. He pointed to the murder of eight nursing students in Chicago in 1966 by just one man, Richard Speck. Speck tied the women up in their apartment, promising that all he wanted was money, and then killed them.
“People just oftentimes trust that he wants the money . . . that taking my life is not going to get him anything,” Fox said. “They reason. They believe that, logically, the best move is then not to get them angry.”
--more--"
Also see: Residents, mayor welcome new restaurants in Hyde Park
Didn't even mention Lord.
