PART TWO OF: MENNONITES IN MEXICO BATTLE TEMPTATIONS  By Los Angeles Times Staff Writer: Sam Quinones  Sunday October 24th 2004

In fact, no statistics exist on the rate of alcoholism and drug addiction among Old Colony Mennonites. The numbers probably are no greater than in the society at large, and may be less.

Still, that these are problems at all is jarring for a group with a history of cloistered, modest living.

"We have the image of people who are honorable, humble, and simple", says Juan Loewen, a bishop of the 13,000 member Manitoba Rhinelander Old Mennonite Church, the largest church in the settlements near Cuauhtemoc".  "Often, we're not".

Abraham Harms, a local Mennonite mechanic and farmer, was the first person to bring drugs to these communities, Mennonite sources and police say.

Harms apparently began smuggling marijuana in the mid 1980's, proving adept at designing hollow-walled trucks and other ingenious hiding places for contraband.

He was imprisoned in Canada for drug smuggling for several years, and in 1996 was killed in a car crash, and immortalized in a corrido-or ballad--by a local band.

U.S. narcotics officers allege that his sons have since diversified the family smuggling operation to include cocaine imported from Columbia and exported to the United States.

Their drugs, for example, were behind the largest narcotics bust in the history of Oklahoma. In 1999,Oklahoma narcotics officers used a Mennonite informant, Abraham Wiebe, and wiretaps of cellular phones to build a 10-month investigation of a drug ring allegedly run by the Harms brothers.

Eventually, agents arrested 16 people in Oklahoma, indicted eight others and confiscated 10,000 pounds of marijuana and 2,300 pounds of cocaine, all of it shipped from the Mennonite settlements around Cuauhtemoc, says Jesse Diaz, the agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics who ran the investigation.

Oklahoma narcotics agents don't know the quantity of drugs coming from Mennonites near Cuauhtemoc into the United States.

But another informant from the Harms family organization later took the agents on a cross-country tour of places where the family sends it's drugs.

"We drove to Nashville, Wyoming, Chicago, West Virginia, Denver, Kansas City---to all these locations where their trailers unload", Diaz says. "In our case in one month, 4,500 pounds of marijuana and 2,500 pounds of cocaine was taken off---it's a lot of dope".

As Mennonites here have collided with the goods and vices of the modern world, they have left unchanged what helps make them defenseless today: an antiquated education system.

One place to see this is in a settlement a few miles north of Cuauhtemoc, in a schoolhouse with sawdust on the floor that seems plucked from a Willa Cather novel.

Children ranging in age from six to twelve sit on wooden benches.  To the right, 11 boys intently copy Biblical verses. To the left, six girls work arithmetic problems on black slates.

Before them is 33 year-old Pedro Friessen, a clean-shaven man in blue overalls.  Friessen was a dairy farmer.  But that was difficult, Friessen says, "so when the teacher here left, I took the job and tend my cows before and after school"

Friessen has only had seven years of school himself, one year more than the oldest child in his class, and he doesn't read or write well. 

"For years, Mennonites were farmers. You could survive with a little bit of reading, writing and some arithmetic, says Abraham Schmitt, a modern Mennonite bilingual teacher. "But nowadays, education is more important than ever. The world has changed so much in the last 100 years."

In the 21st century, Mennonite life here is a jangled mixture of archaic schoolhouses and Dodge Ram pickups, of traditional cheese and AA meetings. 

"They say we shouldn't be worldly.  It's Mennonite tradition, says Jacobo, the recovering crack addict. "But they're isolating their people spiritually.  Instead of doing them good, it harms them."

hjj             

Sorry, Bobula, but everything I wrote about Holmes Morton is absolutely true and was culled from Scientific Journals, Newspaper stories about his controversial diagnosis involving the rape and murder of an infant.  You may think he is some kind of benevolent hero to the Amish people, however, many in the field of medicine and genetic research, disagree. Nothing I have written about him is untrue.  You just may have not read it before. 

There is nothing "odd" about my essay.  Maybe in your opinion, but that certainly doesn't bother me.  Trust me, I think your opinions are pretty odd, myself.

Furthermore, in my essay, I never wrote that anybody involved in the Laurie Show murder case was Anabaptist, though in fact, John Show is a Mennonite. At least that is what he told Lyn Riddle in her "book", OVERKILL.

I never blamed Yunkin's violence on his religion, so I don't know how you got that impression.

The Anabaptist communties which surround and influence Lancaster County's image to the outside world was an avenue I wanted to explore.  The cultural and religious influence spoke largely to how Laurie Show's murder investigation was handled, perceived, and allowed to be controlled, and due process completely ignored.

I was continually amazed at the e-mails I received which read thusly: "So what if law enforcement made some mistakes....it doesn't matter who really killed Laurie Show, because in the end, God will punish them."

Or,"Lisa Lambert has Evil eyes, and the devil in her soul.  She will burn in Hell for what she's done".

The "image" of Lisa Lambert that was crafted so well by selective information fed to the newspapers by the East Lampeter Police Department, in the days and weeks following Laurie Show's murder, was what struck me most when I first visited Lancaster during the P.C.R.A. hearing.  Almost every day there was an article alluding to her "heavy makeup", "penchant for short skirts", "something about her eyes".  It was obviously intentional and extremely manipulative.

There were scant few article about Lawrence Yunkin or Tabitha Buck.  Almost nothing, in fact.

Interesting details caught my eye, however, as I read carefully through the articles.  By themselves they might seem unimportant, but in fact, when combined with the rest of the biased coverage, they were signifigant and done with motive.

For example, on the day after Laurie's murder, her mother is quoted and referred to as "Hazel Haas"  I learned that she had been Hazel Haas, for over 14 years, because she had divorced John Show when Laurie was 2 or 3 years old. Subsequently, the next day's story referred to her as "Hazel Show".  Why, I wondered?  Why would you take back your ex-husband's name after 14 years?  I could only surmize that it made it look like maybe they hadn't gotten divorced. It went toward creating an image, that was deceptive. Everybody in town who knew Hazel, knew her as Hazel Haas.  But for some reason on day 2 after her daughter's murder, she would now be Hazel Show again for the next 12 years as the trial's and hearings wound themselves around the various judicial venues. 

There was just no other reason I could think of as to why Hazel felt the need to be known as "Show", again after all that time having recaptured her maiden name, except that maybe in a deeply religious community such as Lancaster, divorce was looked down upon, and perhaps it would look better if the long-divorced parents "appeared" to be still united in name.  That was in theory.  In reality, it really made no sense and was deceptive.

I wondered when noting this, if the newspaper editors felt it would be less confusing to the readers if Hazel "Haas" would not be understood to be Laurie "Show's" mother. It was indeed odd. I've read many articles about murders in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, and many of the parents of murder victims have had different names through marriage than those of the victim. They were not compelled to re-assume a name they hadn't gone by for 14 years.

Religion indeed is a very large influence on Hazel Show and her numerous quotes, especially when testifying about her daughter's murder, are heavily laden.  To Lyn Riddle she makes the amazing statement, "What the system doesn't take care of, God will".  Hazel's hatred for Lisa Lambert made her blind to the possibility that the man who raped her daughter could indeed have been her killer, and as the evidence eventually came forth to prove that in 1997,was.  I believe, in her mind, she had "God's" permission to create the impossible scenario which she now truly believes happened.  That being, of course, that by "cradling" her dead daughter's head, somehow the wounds went back together and she was able with a punctured lung, severed vocal cords, and barely a pulse, able to say the things Hazel wishes she could have.  And now truly believes. 

Unfortunately, Hazel's idea of what is true changes when necessary to fit what she wanted to believe.  To that end, she had plenty of help.  Sadly, she has given so many different accounts of what her daughter said,it becomes obvious, not to mention medically impossible; Laurie never spoke those words. 

She was not the only one who wished Laurie had said those words, so with plenty of assistance from the "investigators", the biggest lie began the ball rolling.......and that lie is why the ball is still rolling.......if not for Dalzell, nobody would have been the wiser, and many, because of their loyalty to Lancaster officials chose rather to attack the messenger, and have never read the message. 

When Hazel Haas became Hazel Show again after 14 years, she truly, in her mind, became Hazel Show again.  This is evident in her statement to Lyn Riddle which the writer translated thusly:  "Hazel was planning to be married herself in September 2000 to a man she met while visiting a friend. He has helped her emerge from the shell she wrapped around herself for so long after Laurie died. The marriage seems like a step away from Laurie too.  She will no longer have the same name" 

The truth is, she no longer had the same name for fourteen years until two days after the murder.

Bobula, you are just plain wrong about nobody in the case being of the Anabaptist sect. 

From Page 329 of OVERKILL, "Each year John Show brings forth a candlelight ceremony celebrating lives lost.  It is held on the weekend before Christmas.  The first was held the year after Laurie died. Some three hundred people joined him at his church, MELLINGER'S MENNONITE".

The Anabaptist religions and beliefs are indeed part of this case. 

hjj                              

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette April 2nd, 2000 by Diane Nelson....

Strasburg, PA.

Within three weeks of each other and nearly 700 miles apart, two babies were dead, one among the PA Amish, one in an enclave of Georgia Mennonites.

Each state gathered up the siblings, 15 in all, and took them from their homes.

Each state launched a murder investigation.

But something was wrong with this picture.  How could two babies, within three weeks of each other, wind up VIOLENTLY DEAD in communities that embody America's mostm enduring images of rural tranquility?

Dr. Holmes Morton, a pediatrician in Strasburg, Lancaster County, was sure he knew. He was sure neither child was murdered.

It was late December in a farmhouse in Dornsife, and hour north of Harrisburg, when Elizabeth Glick found her 4 month old daughter, Sara, unconscious in her crib; the Amish baby died in the hospital two days later.  Within three weeks, in Metter, Ga., Rachel Kreider, a conservative Mennonite, found her 15 month-old daughter Christina, dead in bed.

A nationally reknowned pediatric geneticist, Morton has studied Amish and Mennonite health disorders since the 1980's. (he applied for Medical School in 1979)

Without EVEN SEEING THE GLICK'S BABY BODY, HE KNEW WHAT IT TOOK INVESTIGATORS TWO MONTHS TO ACCEPT.  Sara was not shaken or struck, as the COUNTY CORONER HAD RULED. The blood in her brain, he claimed, resulted from a vitamin K deficiency.

Anthony Rosini, the District attorney from Northumberland County, closed the case.  A midwife had delivered Sara Glick at home.  Not only did the baby get no vitamin K at birth, she was born with a genetic liver disorder not uncommon among the Amish.

Morton is just as certain that the cause of Christina Kreider's death in Georgia was also medical.

But that case is not proving as responsive to his "diagnosis".

DEATH ON A GEORGIA FARM

The morning of their baby's death, the Kreiders called the Kennedy-Morgan Funeral Home, which doubles as the county morgue.  Some time later, they opened the door to a prosecutor, a child-welfare worker, a sheriff's investigator and the deputy county coroner.

It is protocol in Georgia for representatives of each office to attend the scene of a child's death, unless the child is in a doctor's care when it dies.

"We were told this child and two other children had the flu", says Tommy Flanders, the deputy coroner and funeral director. The family had recently returned from a visit to flu-ridden Pennsylvania.  Flanders, who is not a physician, says he thought at first the baby had died from the flu. He examined the clothed body at the Kreider home.

At the funeral home, Flanders began his examination with the investigator, the social worker and the prosecutor at hand. 

"When we removed the diaper, we knew we weren't dealing with the flu", Flanders said, because blood was released from the rectum.  "On a personal level, I knew something terrible had happened".  He called the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Crime Lab.

Meanwhile, the Kreiders called Mennonite elders to summon Morton.   Originally from Lebanon County,PA, the Kreiders had moved to Georgia four years earlier to buy cheaper farm land.  They knew of Morton through friends and relatives.  His Clinic for Special Children, built by Amish volunteers on Strasburg farmland, specializes in treating Amish and Mennonite children.

Morton traveled to Metter, near Statesboro in east-central Georgia, to meet the Kreiders.  He stayed with them on their dairy farm and interviewed them about Christina.  In a Chandler County court hearing, he testified that she died of septic shock from an infection.

Morton believes that the authorities in Candler County locked into a belief that a crime had occurred.  "They should have done blood cultures. She was febrile when put to bed and had been ill for 24 hours. She was covered with petechiae"---tiny lesions that indicate blood had leaked from vessels as hemorrages in the skin.  In that case, "you biopsy a lesion and stain it for bacteria"

Kris Sperry, a medical examiner at the Georgia crime lab in Atlanta, says "MORTON MADE HIS DIAGNOSIS WITHOUT SEEING THE BODY OR THE EVIDENCE"  "HE MADE NO REQUEST EVEN TO SEE THE EVIDENCE.  I AM NOT A PEDIATRIC GENETICIST, BUT HE IS NOT A FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST".  WE HAVE TISSUE SLIDES AND ORGAN SAMPLES. THE CHILD WAS MURDERED."

Sperry supervised the autopsy team.  It's analysis of the blood that spilled from the baby's rectum indicated no evidence of DNA that was not her own.  But damage was unequivocal, he said.  He ruled that the baby had been asphyxiated and sexually assaulted.

"If you have asphyxiation in conjunction with a violent act, the reasonable conclusion is she was murdered.  There is no other reason for her to be dead", he says.

Rachel and Arnold Kreider remain under suspicion in their daughter's death, but Morton says he "cannot shake the belief that the parents are innocent".  Even though he never saw the body or asked to see the body or even the evidence.

"I'd never assume abuse couldn't happen", he says.  "But knowing what you know about these communities, you just know there would be a more likely explanation".  Only once in his years among the "plain people" has Morton thought a child might have been abused.  "One child had bruises that told me he had been spanked"

With the Kreider's silence, and no evidence, this case may be on the books for awhile.  The state of Georgia never closes an unsolved murder investigation.

Many cultural groups avoid dealing with the government, but the Amish and Mennonites are religious in their avoidance.  They may pay taxes, but they refuse Military service.  They either home school their children or run their own schools, believing public schools tolerate and expose their children to vices and offenses to God.  These offenses include television and radio.

The Amish do not file lawsuits.  And even in a defensive position, they must seek permission from elders to hire lawyers. 

Mennonites do use telephones at home and drive motor vehicles;some even use the Internet.

While Old Order Amish interact with outsiders, they refuse to live in the mainstream.

The Glicks are Old Order Amish who left Lancaster County several years ago to join three other families in Georgia for more quiet and larger farms.  They have seven sons age 5-15.

Shortly after Sara's death, caseworkers for Children and Youth services arrived to take the Glick's sons.  They were driven to seperate homes on an approved list, a list the Amish would never abide---homes with televisions, radios, electric lights and other unacceptable stimuli.

The Glick's began to worry that the investigator's videos of their old dingy farmhouse would be used against them and hurt their chances of seeing the boys again.

Convinced this was a medical issue and not a crime, Morton contacted Chuck Hehmeyer, a lawyer in Philadelphia who specializes in representing children with metabolic disorders.

Hehmeyer petitioned in Northumberland County for CYS to release the boys to their parents.  By that time, the CYS had already moved the children from "English" homes to Amish ones.  It then agreed to return the children to the Glicks.

As a result of this case, the state of Pennsylvania now has a list of potential Amish foster homes in Northumberland County.  But CYS doesn't really need a list to make placements, says PA rep Merle Phillips of Sunbury.  "The law says they had the right to temporarily put them with Amish relations.  Why they didn't is what we want to find out.  That was child abuse"

On the heels of these events, the Kreider's eight children, ages 2-15 were rousted from their beds in Georgia the night of Jan. 11th and taken to the county sheriff's office for questioning.  Arnold Kreider, their father, accompanied them. 

"When it got to the older boys", says sheriff's investigator Al Evans, "we let the dad sit in as a courtesy.  He said HE DIDN'T THINK THE BOYS SHOULD ANSWER ANY MORE QUESTIONS".

The boys were driven to a children's detention home in Savannah. 

During those four weeks e-mails bounced throughout Mennonite communities from Georgia to Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio.

"We are perplexed with the events as they are unfolding"

"We know that God hears and answers our prayers"

"It is frightening to have children snatched away, to be so powerless to protect them"

"The effectual prayer of the righteous man availeth much"

"Please pray for all involved, with all your heart.  And don't forget the hearing on Feb. 7th"

A relative of the Kreider family, who didn't want his name to be published, says the family was terrified, especially that their children would be sent to public school. At the detention home, the Kreider children were exposed to television. 

"The thing that hurt us the most was the way the law enforcement spoke, very pointedly, about, uh, about, uh, very explicitly about sexual matters, and these dear children with even hardly knowing some of those things"

Crime involving Amish or Mennonites is rare.  This is because local Police departments let them handle their own affairs.

One gruesome case stands out:  In 1997, an Amishman in Crawford County stomped and eviscerated his wife after going of medication for schizophrenia. 

In the seat of Amish country, Lancaster County, Sgt. Robert Patterson of the PA State Police, recalls "one or two" instances of sexual abuse in the past few years, of Amish adults with children outside their fold.  "But no specific cases came to mind". 

"We do have some instances of the teenagers involved in minor offenses, mostly under-age drinking, but adult crime is rare"

Sperry, the Georgia medical examiner, says he was reminded frequently during his investigation of Christina Kreider's death that "these are wonderful Christian people who love their children"

"I have no doubt about that.  But using your faith and culture as a form of PROOF OF INNOCENCE.....IT DOES NOT ELIMINATE WHAT WE SAW". 

That's the end of the article.  Interesting, isn't it Bobula, that Morton can make these miraculous "diagnoses" without ever looking at a body, or even asking to.  Without ever looking at the evidence, or asking to.

It's completely ridiculous and anybody with a brain can see that.

Thanks Justice Junction for giving me the space to talk about what I think is important and relevant.  Cheers.

hjj