Darren Mack Makes Good Case for Winkler Defense

Justice is Served: Darren Mack Gets Life Sentence

Background: In June 2006, Darren Mack, a wealthy Nevada father who was involved in a divorce, stabbed his estranged wife to death and then executed a well-planned murder attempt on a Nevada judge. Mack shot and wounded the judge but failed to kill him. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, when police searched Mack's residence they found he "had bombmaking materials in his bedroom" as well as "several boxes of firearm ammunition." At the time of Mack’s murder spree, I wrote:

“I condemn without qualification condemn the crimes allegedly committed by Darren Mack in Nevada last week. Mack was angered by his divorce and custody case. Some on the not insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers' rights movement see Mack as some sort of freedom fighter. Most of the commentary by other fathers' rights advocates seem to be of the ‘he couldn't take it anymore and snapped’ variety.

I don't buy it. Though everyone is focusing on Mack's attempted murder of a judge, everyone seems to forget that he first stabbed and killed his estranged wife. After murdering her, he shot the judge through the judge's third-floor office window with a sniper rifle from over 100 yards away. That's not ‘snapping’--that's premeditated murder. Mack is not a good man trapped in a bad system. He is a bad guy. Because of men like him the system had to create protections for womenand unscrupulous women have misused those protections to victimize countless innocent men. Men like Mack aren't the byproducts of the system's problems--they are the problem.”

It wasn't the rope and a tree that Darren Mack deserved, but it was close enough. Friday Darren Mack--who stabbed and killed his estranged wife as his little daughter played with her toys upstairs--was sentenced to life in prison.

Mack first tried what I called the Mary Winkler defense, making the unlikely claim that he slashed his wife's throat in self-defense. How Mack defending himself against Charla necessitated then driving to the courthouse and trying to kill a judge in a well-planned, methodical way was never explained.

Douglas Herndon, the Nevada judge in the criminal case, explained that he let Mack speak for quite a while before his sentencing, and that Mack expressed "no remorse" for his crimes.

http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_2_12_08.htm

There is MUCH background information left out of this story, but it doesn't surprise me as many of the people involved were more intent upon protecting the way their activities enabled the Darren Macks of our world, then in painting an honest picture of the situation here. The truth was that Darren Mack was enabled, empowered and encouraged in his bad behavior for a looooong time before he finally went off in a public enough fashion to bring down the wrath of the law enforcement community upon his head, a long time.

Mack was enabled by the courts during his first divorce, when he (with the help of a famous feminist attorney and the second wife he would eventually murder) managed to wrestle custody of the children from his first marriage. God only knows what he put his poor first wife and those kids through over the years BEFORE he murdered his second wife in his SECOND custody case.

See because this wasn't Mack's first custody battle, it was his second. That's the critical part left out of the story.

Apparently Mack was vetted through a professional court-ordered evaluation in order to help the court make its decision on his first custody case and he ironically enough passed with flying colors, since he was given custody in that situation.

Again, I return to what I've said dozens of times before "What in the heck do those custody evaluations measure if a nut like Mack can pass one of them?" As say what you will about Susan Smith or Andrea Yates, neither of those mothers had any court ordered custody of their children and I have to believe if their husbands had taken them to court, neither one would have managed to get any sort of legal custody. They would have been filtered out by the roadblocks set up to catch the truly dangerous/unfit parent, but yet the system appears to have set the bar much lower for men to become custodial.

That's one big issue.

Many fathers rights advocates aid and abet men like Darren Mack every day of the week, not even knowing anything about them or their situations. They actively assist them in wrestling custody of children from their mothers w/o even the most superficial knowledge of who they are or if they are decent, fit loving parents, never mind law-abiding citizens.

Regarding the comment about the Mary Winkler defense, this story has it sadly backwards. Actually the Darren Mack case points to the logic behind Mary Winkler's defense. That Mary Winkler felt she wouldn't get a fair shake in court, that the courts would allow her husband to use custody of her children as a club against her.

So she took matters into her own hands.

That's the legacy which gender neutral custody has left us with...

Another Hostage Crisis for England

I’ve been following with some interest the Heather Mills-McCartney divorce story, not because I’m particularly interested in how much money she ultimately wins in the divorce settlement. But I’m curious to see if Paul McCartney wins in his attempts to steal Heather Mills’s only child from her by using his superior financial position to ‘work’ the British family court system.

I actually think the custody case has already been settled (with Paul as defacto legal custodian of the child) ever since he got the idea to lock Heather out of the marital home. Previously both parents had a form of shared custody and Paul had moved into another house, some short distance away. The guy is a billionaire, so I’m sure he had plenty of houses.

Anyway, the papers then started reporting that he had made a $50 million dollar settlement offer to Heather (with the little reported condition attached that she give up custody of her only child to him). She refused. But of course, we rarely hear that little detail of his offer. Only that Heather Mills turned down a $50 million dollar settlement offer from poor, generous, put upon, Sir Paul.

What a guy.

She’s so greedy, such a bad human being, yada, yada, yada.

Thank God Ringo was always my favorite Beatle.

Shortly after I heard about that settlement being turned down, I then saw on the news that Heather Mills had been locked out of her house. There was a news feed showing her trying to use a key on the gate and it wouldn’t open. The camera then followed Heather back to her car as she angrily drove away.

Of course, she shouldn’t have been angry the story implied since a good mother would just take this sort of event in stride, go off demurely and find a stable somewhere to live. After all if it was good enough for Mary, the mother of Jesus, it’s damn sure good enough for Heather Mills. According to the media for the sake of a good relationship between both parents, Heather should just ignore whatever low-down sneaky trick her billionaire husband decided to pull.

BTW, this is the usual sort of advice given to mothers when they are engaged in fighting off some dirtbag who is trying to steal their children from them. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but the same criticism was leveled at Bridget Marks when she went into that whole screaming/crying drama on TV. Bridget Marks’ two twins daughters were taken away from her by some crazy gender neutralized feminist “Judge Judy’ clone and it was for the same reason: to aid and abet some sneaky dirtbag trying to gain custody for financial benefit to himself. Marks’ children were to be held as bargaining chips by her boyfriend’s wife in order to negotiate a better financial ‘deal’ for him.

Disgusting.

This is the sad legacy of feminism and what ‘women’s rights’ have degenerated into today. What a waste of time fighting for that was, but that’s another blog story for another day.

To return to the McCartneys: Paul McCartney should have been investigated and officially charged with some sort of crime for even making an offer like that to his child’s mother. It should be a criminal offense just like it is if you attempt to ‘buy’ children on the black market by offering desperately poor mothers money for them.

Anyway after the lockout event, I never saw Heather Mills featured with her child again as a news item. There’s been a total media lockdown on what’s going on with her child. The only item I’ve read since the lockout event is that Paul McCartney was with his grown children and the baby on vacation and they were all overheard calling the baby by a different name, then her legal one. Probably the name her mother picked out for her daughter is now being ignored.

I smell parental alienation here.

Lovely.

Especially lovely that Sir Paul has his two grown daughters helping him with this little scheme. What a wonderful world he is creating for them to live in. Long after Sir Paul is dead and buried, the legacy he has helped create will be haunting his adult daughters.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Heather Mills should be entitled to any of Paul McCartney vast fortune. I think that sort of division of property/assets should be strictly reserved for wealth accumulated during the life of the marriage. Even then it needs to be carefully evaluated to assess each partner’s actual contribution to ensure that one hard-working person isn’t taken advantage of by a parasite (as in Kevin Federline getting $15,000 monthly from Brittany Spears in spousal support, plus equity from a house she purchased with her own money after a two year marriage where he contributed absolutely nothing of value). The media vastly UNDERstated the total dollar amount of Kevin Federline’s divorce settlement, as it was closer to $17 million versus the $700,000 I believe was reported. Plus the media rarely mentioned the $15,000 monthly in spousal support Kevin Federline receives.

What Heather Mills should walk away with is her child (unless she is proven to be an unfit mother) and a decent amount of child support to provide for said child. If Paul wishes to give her a house, fine. But Heather Mills worked before marriage, she had a decent lifestyle and I’m sure she’ll work after marriage and have the same. A marriage license should not be viewed as a quik-pick lottery ticket where you hit the jackpot if you marry rich and divorce a short time later walking away with a million dollar prize.

However the settlement fight is really a sideshow to the real issue going on here. Which is that once again we see a man holding a mother's child hostage to negotiate a better financial 'deal' for himself and the ability for any man to do that needs to end.

Addendum to post:

I just found this on Heather Mills website, I didn't even know she had a website but here it is:

"SUNDAY MIRROR APOLOGY

Heather Mills has today won a landmark victory in her fight to stop tabloid newspapers smearing her name with inaccurate stories.

The Sunday Mirror newspaper, one of the biggest selling tabloids in Britain, has apologised to Miss Mills and agreed to pay her undisclosed damages.

The newspaper has also published an apology into today's edition.

Under the heading We're sorry the apology says: On 4 March under the headline "BEATLED" we published an article claiming that a High Court judge in the Heather Mills McCartney divorce proceedings had thrown out some of her claims against Paul McCartney as being inadmissible and that she had been exposed in court as a fantasist and a liar about those claims and her previous public statements, leading her to erupt with rage and shout and rant before breaking down in floods of tears.

"We now accept that the judge did not throw out any of her claims, she was not portrayed as a lair in court and she did not erupt with rage."

"We apologise to Heather Mills McCartney for any distress or embarrassment caused and have agreed to pay her damages and legal costs."

A spokesman for Heather Mills McCartney said: "Heather is delighted the Sunday Mirror have put the record straight. She is determined to stop newspapers and broadcasters publishing false stories about her and has a number of legal actions pending which she will continue to pursue."

Heather is currently appearing on the American TV show Dancing With The Stars, where her routines have been widely praised by the judges."

Like I said, I didn't know about this before I posted but added it after I saw it, since it's relevant to what I've been saying about the media coverage and how it's often slanted against mothers.

In the words of a good friend of mine: Who knew??? This woman is no Kevin Federline, that's for sure.

http://www.heathermills.org/mirror.php

Ramblings on the Current State of Affairs Regarding Women and the Presidency

I wanted to say something about the current campaigns going on to select the candidates who will be running for President. There is a lot of hand-wringing going on in certain circles because what everyone assumed would be a sure win for Hillary Clinton now doesn’t look so sure.

Well I said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t see this as such a big loss for mothers.

First, I know a number of mothers who wrote to Hillary Clinton when they had their children stolen from them by men who were trying to work the system and get out of paying child support or get some other financial benefit by becoming the legal custodial parent. Sadly, she never saw fit to even respond to them.

Second, I’ve never known Hillary Clinton to make a comment about the issues of fit mothers losing custody of their children. She’s ignored the issue for years like most feminists. Thus, she appears to fully support the gender-neutral policies of our family courts, which policies have cause millions of mothers to lose their children.

BTW, we’re not talking about abuse here. So nobody come up with this whole list of women shelters feminists have set up or policies helping abused women they helped establish, that’s a small percentage of the total. I’m happy feminists did it, thanks a million, but what about the millions of ordinary woman out there who are being held as virtual hostages through men manipulating the family court system?

More importantly, what about these crazy gender neutralized feminists judges they’ve helped unleash upon unsuspecting mothers? Like that venomous Judy Sheindlin of the “Judge Judy” TV show. Now I know she’s only a TV court judge, but the most horrifying thing I keep thinking everytime I see her going off on some unsuspecting non-custodial mother in her courtroom show is that this woman was a real family court judge in New York City for many years. Very similar to the female judge in the Bridget Marks case, that Arlene Goldberg and I can mention dozens more female judges with the exact same profile; all trying to build their gender-neutral “street creds” by going off on some poor mother who doesn’t know what hit her.

The bottom line is that most of these gender-neutralized feminists who we, ordinary women help get into power have the same unfortunate habit of suddenly going ‘gender neutral’ on us as soon as they get in a position where they can finally do women some good.

So I can practically guarantee that Hillary Clinton will do absolutely NOTHING of significance to help mothers once in office. Actually, Bill Clinton, her husband, when he was president passed a federal mandate that obligated all federal programs from Women, Infants, Children (WIC) to Section 8 housing vouchers to become aggressively gender neutral and come up with numbers showing exact 50/50 representation of men and women in every single program. Women are included in WIC, obviously, since they actually bear children and need extra nutrition before, during and after pregnancy to recover, as it is a strain on the body. Not to mention women might be breast feeding after birth. But can someone tell me ONE PHYSICAL IMPAIRMENT OR STRAIN a man goes through before, during or after a woman gets pregnant that would cause a man to be entitled to extra food at taxpayer’s expense????

There isn’t one I can think of offhand.

This mandate was clearly another of the politically correct attempts to show everyone how gender-neutral Bill Clinton’s administration would be and Hillary Clinton went right along with it. Actually let’s be honest, she probably put Bill Clinton up to it. God only knows how many mothers lost their children to some lazy loafer looking to get free food and housing by being named custodial parent of some poor kid, who had the misfortune to be born during the Clinton years.

Do we really need a return to that?

Now, what will happen vis-à-vis these issues if she doesn’t get elected President? Probably nothing. Things will continue on just as they have been for the last decade or so, ever since the laws were changed making it profitable to gain custody of children. That’s won’t change under a man, but nothing would have changed under Hillary Clinton either. Actually things could get a lot worse under her then they are right now, far worse.

For instance, I could even see another Clinton presidency changing the way maternity leave is allocated following the reasoning of that, Linda Hirshman, who thinks woman ‘owe’ some kind of moral obligation to feminism and wants all mothers to rush right back to the work place after giving birth, so as not to squander the ‘legacy’ feminists supposedly left us.

Remember maternity leave, right now, is handled as a medical leave. So clearly a child’s mother is the one entitled to take it for three or six months depending upon the company’s insurance policy. Well what’s to stop a gender neutralized feminist in power who thinks women ‘owe’ feminists like her something, from making ‘maternity’ leave gender neutral? What if these crazy gender-neutralized feminists decided to move it out of the realm of insurance in order to force more women into remaining at work? They could even start penalizing men financially who didn’t take the leave. Then what? Some European countries are doing this right now.

Our future could include women being forced into court before our babies are even born, so a Judge can rule on who was legally entitled to ‘maternity’ leave and it could easily be some one-night-stand recreational sperm donor looking for a paid vacation. You, as the child’s mother, could be forced back to work. It would leave some layabout at home with your infant, while you are forced into paying him child support to be there. He’d probably be watching superbowl reruns all day and tossing your kid a stale potato chip every now and then, so he doesn’t have to move from the couch too often.

Remember, these policies are rarely restricted to just married men. They eventually include ALL MEN, from that great guy you’ve been married to for ten years to the one-night stand you picked up during Spring break (if you had a child from that relationship).

There is no limit on these sorts of policies.

So, back to my original premise, we gain NOTHING if Hillary Clinton gets in, actually we stand to lose. So I’ll shed no tears for her if she doesn’t get the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton and her ilk are just reaping what they’ve sown.