I Was a Lonely Boy, I'm Not the Only Boy

By Kevin Guilfoile

While reading coverage of the Cornbleet murder in The Daily Herald, a newspaper from the island of St. Martin, I came across this startling sentence:

(Hans Peterson) reportedly inflicted major lacerations on the dermatologist’s hands and feet and then cauterized the wounds with a blow torch before stabbing him to death with a knife.

I had seen it alleged in other foreign reports that Peterson used a blowtorch in his murder of Dr. Cornbleet last October, but I have never read that claim in the American press.

That's probably because it's not true. Not exactly.

I'm told that Peterson confessed to investigators that he brought a blowtorch with him to Dr. Cornbleet's office with the intention of torturing the physician by cutting his hands and feet and then cauterizing the wounds so he wouldn't lose too much blood. This would have kept Dr. Cornbleet alive for as long as possible so that Peterson could cruelly prolong his suffering. But Peterson couldn't follow through with that part of his plan and he described to authorities the reason why.

More on that in a minute, because it touches on a subject we've discussed recently here at The Outfit.

[If you're unfamiliar with the Cornbleet murder case, in which a Chicago dermatologist was brutally stabbed to death by a former patient because the patient believed he was suffering permanent side effects from a prescribed anti-acne medication, start at the bottom and read up.]

Immediately, it struck me that this idea--cutting into the hands and feet and then cauterizing them--didn't occur to Hans a priori. He had to have heard of someone doing that before. I can only speculate, but I know of at least one popular movie--Tony Scott's version of Man on Fire--in which Denzel Washington does something similar to a man's hands with a cigarette lighter during an interrogation. There is also a more obscure film from the late 90s called Thursday. I haven't seen it but here is a monologue from one scene according to IMDb (bold emphasis mine):

BILLY HILL: Well, I ain't gonna s*** ya, pal. When I leave here today, you're gonna be dead as Cinderella over there. Regardless of what you tell me, I'm gonna f*** you up. [opens his bag and takes out a battery-powered circular saw; turns on the saw and holds it in front of Casey's face] YOU READY TO GET STARTED? [turns off the saw] I know you threw out the smack. And you probly don't know where the money is, neither. That's cool. Tho the truth is... I ain't got nothin' better to do, while I wait here for my old friend Nick. [reaching in his bag] Just so you know, I ain't gonna let you bleed to death. [takes out a blow-torch] No, sir. Cuz when I cut you... [turns on the blow-torch] I'm gonna cauterize it. I consider myself an artist. Matter of fact, I picked up this little girl at this club one time... and I cut on her for 16 hours. That's a personal best, but... I keep hoping... [turns on the saw] Alright, now, let's see. I think I'm gonna start at the feet, AND WORK MY WAY UP!

I have no idea if Hans has seen either film, of course.

I have been told, however, that Hans was a big fan of the Showtime series Dexter (based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay). I would never suggest that Dexter, or any other television program, caused Hans to become a killer. But Dexter premiered just three weeks before the murder and it's obvious why the character of Dexter Morgan--a serial killer who only kills villainous people--must have appealed to Hans, who rationalized his savagery by claiming that he was somehow a victim of Dr. Cornbleet's greed.

(There will probably be a lengthier post on this in the future, but I should note here that Peterson's assertion that Dr. Cornbleet prescribed him Accutane because he was desperate for patients and wanted Hans to make the mandatory follow-up visits is not only absurd on its face, but refuted by evidence that Dr. Cornbleet had a thriving practice and regularly saw more than 100 patients a week.)

But back to Peterson's confession. Hans allegedly told St. Martin police that he did not use the blowtorch on Dr. Cornbleet because killing a human being turned out to be a lot harder than he thought it would be. Dr. Cornbleet was in fine shape for a man of his age. He fought back. Hans ended up punched and bloodied himself. It took all of Peterson's attention and energy just to subdue Dr. Cornbleet. He had nothing left for extracurricular activity.

In the surveillance video from the night of the murder we see Peterson leaving the office building, covering his face with a sweatshirt and, according to one witness, apparently bleeding from the nose.

Last week Libby wrote an eloquent post about the proliferation of violent images in the media and the difficulty we all have determining which depictions are edifying and which are gratuitous. I don't believe that such images caused Hans Peterson to kill and I won't play psychiatrist and pretend I understand the forces, internal and external, that drove him to that madness. But when it came time to actually murder someone at close range, with his own hands, Peterson discovered that violent scenes on television and in movies and video games (and novels, too) had deceived him. He was completely unprepared for the intensity and the struggle and the blood and the chaos. The motion. The smell. The sound. Real murder was nothing like the movies.

In the first episode of Hans's favorite television series, Dexter Morgan, who is not only a serial killer but also a forensics technician, admires a crime scene (not his) that is mysteriously free of blood splatter. He thinks to himself in a voiceover, "No blood. No sticky, hot, messy, awful blood. No blood at all. What a beautiful idea!"

And not possible except on cable TV.

UPDATE: The Cornbleet family has provided a link that will direct you to the US State Department's web site. There you can send a message directly to the Secretary of State (as Senators Obama and Durbin have done) requesting that she continue to put pressure on her counterparts in the French government for the extradition of Hans Peterson to the United States.

UPDATE 2: "There are multiple victims and multiple villains. I feel that one of the victims is Dr. Cornbleet and one of the villains is Dr. Cornbleet. One of the victims is Hans Peterson and one of the villains is Hans Peterson." Channel 5 in Chicago has posted part of an interview with Hans Peterson's father recorded for an upcoming feature for Dateline NBC. They will be running more of the interview on the news tonight, as well as a reaction from Dr. Cornbleet's son, Jon.

Everybody Wants a Thrill

By Kevin Guilfoile

Lots of people have asked me what I thought of The Sopranos finale last night. Many of those people are angry. Like them, I had been expecting something different from the show and so I went to bed not certain how I felt about it. When I woke up this morning (no A3 reference intended) I realized the profound statement Sopranos creator David Chase had just made about storytelling and I was sure that I loved it.

In fiction characters live their lives episodically. We drop in at a particular point and drop out at a particular point and everything that happens in between ties up nicely along the way. Presumably the characters get up the day after the story ends with blank slates. No worries, no debts, no obligations until the next episode starts. It's a manipulation done to satisfy us. Real life, we all know, is a lot messier and a lot weirder.

[BEGIN SOPRANOS SPOILERS]

In the final scene Chase pulls out every manipulative trick in the filmmaker's bag. The two strangers in the restaurant are doing nothing suspicious and there is no reason to think they have designs on Tony except that Chase keeps cutting back to them. Outside Meadow is having trouble parking. Perhaps this happens every time she tries to parallel park but Chase keeps returning to it and suddenly it's ominous. One of the strangers gets up and walks into the bathroom. Anyone who has seen The Godfather knows there's always a gun hidden in the restaurant toilet and we just saw Phil Leotardo killed in front of his wife and grandchildren. The automatic symmetry creator in our heads is already storyboarding the next cut. It's a brilliant scene.

Much has been made about the fact that Journey's Don't Stop Believin' is playing in the restaurant at the time. Some think it's ironic and we're supposed to assume the worst after the screen goes black. Others try to sap meaning from the song's title. But it's obvious why Chase chose it:

Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

There is no place to end this story. Endings are arbitrary and artificial. It doesn't matter if Tony is about to be whacked in front of Carm and the kids, or if they will just finish a quiet meal and go home. Either way it's not an end to the story, it's middle. The Sopranos was all middle, riddled since the series premiere with red herrings and slow parts and unresolved storylines. Our lives are all middle, too. We never get many answers, and the real story just goes on and on and on and on.

[END SPOILERS]

It goes on this month in a federal courtroom where "the last big Outfit trial in Chicago history" begins. Among the 14 defendants will be reputed former boss Joey "The Clown" Lombardo (not to be confused with fictional New York boss Phil Leotardo). Lombardo is alleged to be a brutal gangster who ordered the killings of even close friends including the father of his own godson. A famous cut-up, Lombardo is employing a bizarre defense, claiming that he was never really a part of the mob and even if he was he voluntarily left that life a long time ago. To bolster that claim, Lombardo's attorneys will show the jury a full page newspaper ad that Lombardo took out in the early nineties daring anyone who saw him associating with mobsters to call his parole officer. Um, yeah, no one took him up on that.

One of the main witnesses for the prosecution is former Outfit hit man Frank Cullotta. Cullotta's been a federal informant for over two decades and unlike Lombardo he flaunts his long ago connections. In one of the most bizarre turns in mob (or mob movie) history, Cullotta actually played himself in Martin Scorcese's film Casino, graphically reenacting his 1979 murder of barber union head Jerry Lisner. (Cullotta was also the inspiration for another character in Casino, Frank Marino. Marino was played by Frank Vincent, who by the way played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos.)

During a Saturday break from the Printers Row Book Fair we were sitting at Kasey's Tavern on Dearborn, just blocks from the skyscraping correctional facility where Lombardo is awaiting trial, and I told Cullotta's story to CJ Box. He shook his head and said, "If you tried to put that in a novel you'd never get away with it."

And David Chase knows it.

Standing The Test of Time . . .

by Sean Chercover

I recently reviewed a DVD box set of the classic 1960s television show I SPY for Crimespree magazine. Here’s part of that review…

The 1960s James Bond pop culture juggernaut spawned a slew of television spy shows. And my favorite - by a country mile - was I SPY, which ran on NBC for three seasons (1965 to 1968) and which I fell in love with as a child in the ‘70s, when it aired in after school re-runs. Such childhood love affairs can be perilous – many of my favorite shows of the time have not aged well (Hawaii Five-O, anyone?). So it was with some trepidation that I broke the seal on Box Set #1 of I SPY.

I needn’t have worried. In a nutshell, I SPY rocks.

Robert Culp and Bill Cosby co-star as Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, two American spies who love their country but sometimes question the wisdom and morality of their superiors at the Pentagon. Robinson is a Princeton grad and former Davis Cup tennis champion, while Scott is a Rhodes Scholar, fluent in seven languages. They travel the world undercover as a playboy tennis bum and his trainer.

The series is smart and funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but occasionally achieves moments of darkness, bitter irony, and even poignancy. The heart of I SPY is the relationship between Culp (Robinson) and Cosby (Scott). Born out of a close off-screen friendship, Culp’s and Cosby’s performances set the standard for buddy bantering and improvisational interplay on television. The chemistry between them is extraordinary.

And it goes deeper than that. In 1965, this was landmark television. The first network series to star an African-American, I SPY featured an interracial friendship and professional partnership where the black guy and the white guy were truly equals.

An example: In one episode, Culp and Cosby are struggling to find a solution to their current pickle. Cosby comes up with the solution, and then we get the following banter:
Culp: Will you stop that? I hate it when you do that.
Cosby: Do what?
Culp: Being smarter than me. You’re always doing that.

Have I mentioned that this was 1965? Never on a soapbox, these guys simply walked the walk, presenting a divided nation with two friends whose relationship was way beyond race. This was groundbreaking stuff, and it changed the way many young people looked at race in America. In that regard, I’m not sure it has been matched to this day.

In the review, I went on to wax enthusiastic about the guest stars and exotic locations and cinematography, etc. The point is, I SPY had a big influence on me as a child, and it stands the test of time. It holds up as a great show, all these years later.

Other crime shows that hold up for me include Baretta, The Rockford Files, Kojak, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, while I've recently been disappointed by revisiting such "classics" as the aforementioned Hawaii Five-O, Starsky & Hutch, and Vega$. Even the pull of nostalgia wasn't enough to keep me watching past an episode or two.

And there are so many crime shows that I loved at the time, but haven’t seen in many years. I’m curious to see if these hold up: Peter Gunn, Harry O, Police Story, Police Woman, McCloud, Cannon, Mannix, Bannacheck, Columbo, Ironside, The Mod Squad . . .

So let’s hear it. Share with us the classic crime shows of your childhood, and how you respond to them as an adult. Which ones stand the test of time, and why? Which have nothing to recommend them but nostalgia?