Many Comments and Thoughts About Jessica Lunsford
Below an interesting, and sad, comment from an apparent neighbor of the Lunsfords.
I found this journal in a random passing. Here is some info from ground zero, inside the police siege lines of that neighborhood:
The day Jessica was abducted the deputies came by where I live, and searched the property after asking for and being given permission to do so. They thoroughly searched around where I live, including under the porch and skirting.
Later that evening, they came back to conduct a second interview, and this time searched the inside of where I live after asking for and being given permission to do so. It seemed like they were going door to door in both instances, doing the same, or so I thought. I willingly agreed to both searches because I had nothing to hide, and anything that would help find the girl I was willing to endure. Apparently I thought wrong about the door to door searches.
Why didn't they look in that house? It was right next door.
God forgive me, I was up late that night she was snatched, and didn't hear anything. :( If only I had been more attentive...
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And a Thoughtful Response to the Above Comment
Dear Anonymous--God does forgive you and that girl's blood is not on your hands. I lived in Pasco County for 10 years and my mother owns a place in Homosassa.
Florida has been a catch basin for the dreck of humanity since time out of mind. I saw people and situations on a regular basis in FLorida that just broke my heart.
The cops are different there; my experience with Pasco deputies was that they were afraid and, in the few times that I had to call them for help, they were next to useless. I don't believe that Citru County deputies are any different. They probably searched your place because you seemed like a normal human being. They probably did not search the Couey mobile because they were afraid of the people.
Go to a Wal-Mart in Florida anywhere near you after say 9:00 PM and tell me if half the people there don't look exactly like the mugshots of Couey and his friends.
The LORD has placed a burden on my heart to pray for Couey's eternal soul, which I do. I pray that the LORD will soften his heart and that he will humble himself, confess his sin and pray to receive Jesus as his LORD and Savior. They say that Ted Bundy got saved on death row up in Starke before he died.
What Couey did was totally beyond imagining; it was the work of a demon possessed man. No amount of laws could have protected the public from hinm or those similarly possessed. Pray that the LORD will send revival to Florida and that so many who are bound in demonic possession will pray to receive Jesus in their hearts.
I pray for the peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding to fill the hearts of the Lungsford family in their time of grief.
I pray that none of us ever has to drink from the same cup.
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Posted by Anonymous to The Kaitlyn Mae Book Blog at 4/11/2005 11:01:59 PM
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Another Helpful Comment
What a shame for everyone involved.
However, parents CAN be more informed in general, via a service like the one I found:
National Alert Registry
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I Want to Answer This Comment
I came accross your site when trying to know more about Jessica Lunsford. I was shocked at the way you talked about her family in your posts prior to the
arrest of the criminal. And then send a simply "It turns out that John Couey
was her murderer. " Retract when you are wrong.
You should apologize profusely to any folks that like me end up on your site by mistake when looking for objective information. On poor Jessica's father ou said: "incapable of tying a shoe"... How can you say that about a man who suffered such a loss??? A man who is now helping the authorities to solve another murder? A man who clearly thinks about people other than himself, which is hardly what one can say of you and your blog. I hope you are ashamed of what you wrote.
This comment was emailed to me. It seems to come from a thoughtful person who is, ahem, mistaken. I went back and checked. The remark about "tying the shoe" was said of JOHN COUEY, not Mr. Lunsford. I've never said anything bad about Jessica's father.
And I'd argue I'm right about John Couey not being able to tie his shoe as no way he could have gotten away with abducting that child without a little help from his roommates. Who are going to walk, by the way, as repayment for cooperating with authorities in finding Couey. I'll always consider them guilty for hiding the guy, possibly Jessica herself, but the prosecutor doesn't seem to want to be bothered. Bill O'Reilly's been ranting about this several nights now on his show.
And I'll surely not apologize. The crime was ongoing, speculation was rampant, all over the place, not just this Blog. Surely? You don't think the police suspected one of the Lunsfords?
Sheesh. Not gonna happen. If it bothers, please feel free not to click in.
There are a few other comments on the Lunsford threads. Again some of them not so nice. But hey, calling me a transvestite, damn, that's a compliment. But woefully wrong.
A transvestite would look much better than me.
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Re The Apprentice
Everyone keeps forgetting about Tana. #1 seller of Mary Kay cosmetics, and doing a pretty good job at becoming the first woman to win this thing.
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Posted by Anonymous to The Kaitlyn Mae Book Blog at 4/13/2005 09:14:10 AM
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Finally, on "By Two by Two"-A True Crime Book Review
From BlogCritics
Comments: I like the way you present your review Pat, with a nice immediacy. Well written to boot -- great job.
Cooking Sunday 4/9/05
Which turned out to be a "cooking Saturday" hence the wrong date.
I was due to have guests on Saturday April 9 in this year of our Lord 2005. Only the guests asked if they could change to Sunday April 10 instead.
Which was fine with me as I only had to change my normal cooking Sunday to a cooking Saturday. To my delight, food cooked on Saturday tastes as good as food cooked on Sunday.
Or as bad, depending on how it was cooked.
The changing of the visit to Sunday was opportune in that I could also prepare a meal for my guests on the cooking Saturday. Since I only cook one day a week and since that one day was too far in advance of Saturday, I'd originally planned to serve my guests lunch meats and deli type food. Perfectly fine, actually, and I would have done it up nice. But on this Saturday replacement cooking day I was able to place home made meals for my guests the following day.
And in fact they did enjoy their meal. Or at least said they did but a cook knows when their results are appreciated. It was a pleasure in that the prepared meals were so inexpensive as well.
The cooking day menu was as follows:
chicken rotisserie-BBQ
sparerib meal
butter brickle
choco velvet pie
green bean salad
Beginning with the BBQ Crock Pot Chicken-Below:
Slow Cooker Barbecue Chicken
a.. Chicken pieces, as much as you need, skinned
b.. 1 Onion, cut up
c.. 1 Bottle barbecue sauce
Put chicken in bottom of slow cooker or crockpot and add onions and barbecue sauce. Cook on LOW for about 8 to 10 hours.
Such a simple recipe. Although that ingredient A is a bit confusing. Is it cooked chicken pieces? And "as much as you need" seems a bit vague. I don't know where this recipe came from but it was in my database.
Suppose I need enough BBQ chicken to feed my son's little league team? Wouldn't I then need more than 1 bottle of barbecue sauce. Although hey, how large a bottle of barbecue sauce?
Recipes written like this just plain suck.
So a little common sense kicked in. The local grocer was selling rotisserie chickens for 3.00 each. I don't know why, maybe they had a bunch of poultry about to go bad and decided to cook it up and sell it cheap to the public. For three bucks a chicken even if it was so bad it has to go to the dogs it's still a bargain.
The rotisserie chicken I purchased was described as "herbed". It was a smallish bird as one would expect but perfectly cooked and fine for adaptation to the recipe above.
I cut that chicken up and even left in the skin. Following the recipe, I dropped it in the bottom of my small slow cooker, added only ½ bottle of barbecue sauce and the onion. I eyeballed it. When the chicken in the slow cooker looked like chicken that could be heaped on a hamburger roll I stopped adding the sauce and turned it on. This was the meal scheduled for my guests the following day. After enough hours that I determined it looked done, about five, I unplugged the crock pot, pulled out the inner crock and put the whole thing in the fridge for my guests the next day.
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Next came the ribs. Recipe below:
Honey Garlic Ribs
4 pounds pork spareribs
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon garlic salt
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Slice the ribs into individual pieces. In a large bowl, combine the honey, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and brown sugar. Stir until honey and sugar are completely dissolved, then stir in the baking soda. The mixture will begin to foam. Transfer ribs to the bowl, and turn to coat.
Cover a cookie sheet with foil, and arrange the ribs meat side up on the sheet. Pour excess sauce over all, and sprinkle with the garlic salt.
Bake for 1 hour, turning every 20 minutes.
Makes 4 servings
Below is a pic montage including these ribs, and two deserts made this cooking Saturday. The ribs look a little obscene.
I'll likely not make spare ribs again except on the grill. And then I'll likely not do even that.
Spare ribs should be purchased at America Red, Hot and Blue alongside spicy cole slaw and pork infused baked beans.
But I had a slab of spare ribs in the kitchen freezer and wanted to use them up. For I shall no longer freeze meats to stockpile in my freezer. Something I always did through my life but now with just me and husband (and occasional guests) it's just as simple to buy the meat required for the week at the grocery. Thus methodically I work through the meat inventory in the freezer.
The ribs cooked per this recipe turned out fine. If you've a side of spare ribs in your freezer you want to use up. Beyond that, cook them on your barbie or go to America Red, Hot and Blue.
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On to the pie. Which had a fatal flaw.
Chocolate Velvet Pie
1 unbaked pie crust
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup water
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 eggs, well beaten
2 tsp. vanilla
whipped cream
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake pie crust for approximately 12 minutes, or until pie crust is golden brown. Meanwhile in saucepan, over low heat, melt chocolate with milk; remove from heat. Stir in eggs. Add water and vanilla, mix well. Pour into hot pie crust. Bake 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake 20 minutes longer or until center of pie is
set. Cool. Chill thoroughly. Top with whipped cream.
The flaw was my total mishandling of the stirring of the ingredients. I used a spoon. I should have used a whisk. So little pieces of cooked egg settled throughout the pie, not necessarily all that bad to the taste but kinda ugly to look at. Also, I used an unbaked pie crust as I always do since I don't do pastry. There's something not right about the recipe. The instructions say to bake the pie crust for 12 minutes. Then the ingredients are added to the baked crust and the thing is cooked AGAIN for a forty minutes. This made the rim crust scorch noticeably. Also I had a devil of a time getting a slice out of the pan. The pie crust is positively glued to the bottom of the pan.
I don't think I will use this recipe again. My guests ate a piece as did I. It tasted only okay and that crust thing was almost embarrassing.
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I've written before about my first attempt at making Butter Brickle. It's a vintage recipe gleaned from a cookbook compiled at my mother-in-law's retirement community. I was intrigued by the ingredients, especially the combination of saltines and chocolate.
The first time I made it I scorched the crackers. And still the result was delicious. This time it turned out perfectly. My guests enjoyed the butter brickle and took some home for those left behind.
Butter Brickle
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter-no substitute
12 oz. Chocolate bits
40 saltine crackers
3/4 cup chopped walnuts-coarse
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cover large cookie sheet with a lip with foil. Line pan with 40 saltines on a single layer. On stove, melt butter and brown sugar. Bring to a full boil and cook three minutes, stirring constantly. Pour over crackers. Bake 5 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate bits on top. Leave until soft. Swirl over top and sprinkle with nuts. Refrigerate 4 hours. Break into pieces. Store in refrigerator.
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The surprise dish turned out to be the green bean salad.
A last minute edition in that as I reviewed my plan to serve my guests I thought some sort of side dish type of salad would be appropriate. I planned on having the barbecued chicken on rolls, a side of cheese cubes and black olives, perhaps some chips. As I perused this offering it seemed that another sort of side would fill it out nicely.
Usually I'll make potato or macaroni salad for this type of informal meal. There was no time and no ingredients.
So I concocted a side dish composed of green beans, roasted red pepper, diced, chopped onion and spicy Italian dressing.
The guests adored the dish and insist on the "recipe". I told them there was no recipe so they insist on the ingredients list. So okay, here it is.
For my guests who should copy it from this Blog. Why write it all twice?
Two cans of Del Monte green beans. Same size cans as I pulled out of my pantry that day. Yeah, it's a lousy way to devise a recipe but it was never meant to be public. Of course the green beans do not have to be Del Monte. The point being avoid the store brand for dishes such as this where the vegetable is the star of the meal. Get a quality brand is what I'm saying here.
For the roasted peppers, well I had them in a jar in the fridge. I pulled out about five good size pieces and chopped them up. So get a jar of roasted peppers from the grocery.
Chop up a medium sized onion, add to the mix.
Cover it all with Spicy Italian dressing, enough to give all the ingredients a nice coat.
Refrigerate overnight. Serve cold.
Switching to a Bi-Weekly Payroll
With over twenty five years of accounting experience, not that I’m proud of that fact and not that any fool can plainly see I should have been writing all that time, my specialty has always been payroll.
I’ve done payroll via huge AT&T mainframes, tiny bug-ridden programs on an IBM 386, the large outside payroll processors such as ADP and yes, once I paid everyone in the company in cash, including an extra roll of quarters for the kids’ lunch money.
Not that, ahem, I’m proud of that fact either.
All this experience has given me a nice sideline type of job as a consultant and hey, I’m not proud of that either.
What I can do is write a business consultant book. I thought I would begin with that most sacred of business duties: paying the help.
Give me a NY Times best seller, then I’ll be proud.
Recently my husband’s company transitioned to a bi-weekly payroll and now how many times have I done this?
Doesn’t matter if you own a small or a large business, you do pay bi-weekly, right? For any business not to pay employees on a bi-weekly fashion is foolishness of the highest order.
It helps with cash flow. It cuts payroll processing costs in half. It’s perfectly legal.
There’s only one way to switch from weekly to a bi-weekly payroll from a businesses’ perspective. I’ve long since patented the process yet I discover that my husband’s company did it all wrong. And paid the price.
Well they didn’t ask me. Been there, done that.
Add to all my payroll experience, I’ve paid everyone in America including, yes, one time the President of the United States.
Okay, so that’s a lie. But I have paid the Presidents of many companies including all executives/bigwigs and persons of note.
EVERYONE, yes everyone, be it the Chief Medical Officer of a hospital, the managing partners in a large accounting firm, CEO’s of banks, hates to have their paychecks messed with.
Some of my biggest headaches in life have been the bigwigs. They might make almost a million a year but let their paycheck be wrong and they’re in my office.
Oh, and the things people will tell you when you do their payroll. Sheesh. Bearing in mind that a payroll processor knows how much you make, your exemptions, your child support deductions, all liens on your paycheck and if your latest illness is covered by company health insurance.
The bafflement to me is why companies get so put out by the employees’ confusion and outrage when the payroll transitions to bi-weekly.
A person’s paycheck, goodness, it’s why they come to work everyday. You might hear about love of job tasks, a desire to make a difference, a job that is a dream with great perks. Shut up. Everyone wants their paycheck and forget love of job or making a difference. Come payday the check better be there or all hell will break loose.
So a company desiring to transition to a bi-weekly payroll shouldn’t take the position that a handy email memo or notice in the company newsletter is sufficient then go on and do the deed.
Sure, in the Perfect world of Walgreens people aren’t so dependent on their paycheck, they don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck and of course there’s money set aside for financial emergencies.
This is seldom the case and a business should consider changes to employees’ payroll as a major change for those affected.
Here’s how to do it:
On the very first week that a paycheck will not be distributed, for there will be a “first” in the transition from weekly to bi-weekly payroll and it will impact your employees way more than you can imagine, employers should give employees a “cash advance”. Weekly paid employees are used to getting money every week. They’ve planned their life and expenses around that weekly cash inflow. The first week they don’t have that cash will be tough on them. No mind how much notice given, no mind the warnings, no mind any of it. After the first week without a check and when they receive their first bi-weekly check, they’ll adjust their cash flow and payments. But never think that it’s not a major transition and never be so above the little guy making minimum wage as to not understand this.
A bunch of little guys standing around bitching over the lack of a paycheck can stop shipments going on, services being performed and customers from having purchases rung up. Give them short shrift and your business will pay for it.
When announcing that the company is going from weekly to bi-weekly, also announce that to ease the transition the company will offer a cash advance the first week when no paycheck will be distributed. Keep the cash advance at one amount-ie don’t allow the employees to say how much they want. You don’t want to create an accounting nightmare.
Distribute a form for employees who so desire, say, a flat $300 cash advance for the first week of the missing paycheck, have them sign it and turn it in. Assure them this will have no effect on their taxes. Which it won’t. The deductions to repay will be paid back AFTER taxes. Notify them that this cash advance will be repaid to the company at say, $50 a bi-weekly pay beginning with their first bi-weekly paycheck.
Using the company’s payroll system, distribute flat checks of $300. How do you do this? Simple. Make it a NEGATIVE payroll deduction. Set the cap at $300, set the bi-weekly deductions to pay it back at some easy amount like $50.00. Boom. Press the payroll processing button and everyone set up with the negative deduction will get a check for $300. By setting the cap and the deduction for payback, the payroll system will handle the rest.
I’ve done this with large hospitals and small companies. The payroll system tracks the payback. The accounting entry for the advance checks would be a credit to cash for $300, a debit to “Employee Receivables” for $300. The accounting entry for the bi-weekly payback would be a credit to “Employee Receivables” and a debit to cash. Eventually the “employee receivable” account should zero out. If it doesn’t, someone didn’t repay the company. Your accountants do reconcile the ledger files, right?
If an employee leaves the company before the cash advance is paid back, the remainder due is deducted from the employee’s final paycheck. A good payroll system will track this. Any advance memos should also make this clear.
This method has the employer helping affected employees adjust to the change. Remember when the employees get their first bi-weekly paycheck it will be MORE money than they’d been getting on a weekly basis. They’ll like that part. At this point they should be back on track in terms of their personal cash flow.
By deducting the advance back in modest amounts the employee will not feel it as much from a bi-weekly paycheck.
Most important, it keeps the employees on the job with a much better attitude.
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