1950-1951: The Discovery of Gender Differences

I was born in the midst of the Roswell melodrama in the U.S. Navy military location of Norfolk ("northern people"), Virginia ("maiden"), on July 12, 1947.

My family moved back to Illinois ("tribe of superior people"), specifically Decatur ("sign of the cat"), soon afterward.

Today, my sister Susan ("lily") forwarded me proof that I discovered the female of the Homo sapiens species, sometime between 1950 and 1951 (a full decade before becoming a Fortean/cryptozoologist).

Here's the photographic evidence:

Loren Coleman, September 1950.

Loren Coleman and a friend, 1951.

Did I mention I grew up in Illinois. :-) 

Now, for the great synchromystic researchers out there, what is my middle name, which means "from the old forest" and/or "of the old, noble woods"?

MLB Suicide: Brian Powell

Brian Powell, a former major league baseball pitcher, has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a sheriff's official in Georgia has reported. He was 35.



Captain Liz Crowley of the Decatur County Sheriff's Office said Powell died Monday, October 5, 2009, at a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida. Powell was from Bainbridge, Georgia.

The Bainbridge native was a three-year letterman for the Bulldogs from 1993-95, going 19-14 with a 3.80 ERA. He ranks second in school history with 17 complete games, 352 strikeouts and five shutouts. In 1995, he led the Southeastern Conference in strikeouts (138); innings pitched (147) and was second in complete games (seven).

Powell was a second-round pick, the 41st overall selection, of the Detroit Tigers in the 1995 MLB draft and reached the majors in 1998.

Powell was 7-18 with a 5.94 ERA in 59 games for Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. He last pitched in the majors with the Phillies in 2004, and spent 2005 in Triple-A for Washington.

Funeral services were held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 8, 2009, in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Powell is survived by his wife and three children. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and former teammates.



The timing of Powell's suicide, at the end of the regular season of 162 games (despite the one tie-breaker that was played on Tuesday, October 6, 2009), does not appear to be a coincidence.

I wrote the following concerning what my study of such suicides revealed about their timing:

Baseball players were most likely to die by suicide during the off-season, if the individual was a recent player, within three years of an active involvement in the majors, or after age 65, after a "retirement" from a post-baseball career. For some former players, the end of March to the April opening days seemed to be a specific temporal black hole.

That a suicide should occur so close to the end of the regular season should not be a surprise.

Chapters on my findings regarding baseball players' suicides are to be found in Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond (2003) by Edward J. Rielly, in my own book The Copycat Effect (2004), and in other sources now quoting those books.

This year, 2009, is the 20th anniversary of my research and call for suicide prevention efforts among Major League Baseball players. There was a cluster of baseball suicides in 1989, which I had predicted. Donnie Moore was the individual MLB player who died of suicide receiving the most publicity, but there, sadly, were others.

Sherlock Holmes Killer Found Dead

George Zinkhan killed "Dr. Watson." Now Circe and Madison have found Zinkhan's body, ending the mystery of where the killer is. His body is at GBI Headquarters in Decatur, Georgia, and the rest of the story will be told next week.

On Saturday, April 25, 2009, George Zinkhan, a 57-year-old marketing professor at the University of Georgia, shoot to death Marie Bruce, 47, Zinkhan's ex-wife, Tom Tanner, 40, and Ben Teague, 63, all members of Town & Gown Players at the Athens Community Theater, Athens, Georgia. The killings took place outside the theater building. The local theater group was staging a performance of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure," the weekend of the shooting.

Actress Marie Bruce was collecting money for the theater lunch that was occurring, and which had begun at 11 a.m.. It was meant to give past and present Town & Gown Players a chance to catch up and meet each others' families.

Ben Teague and Tom Tanner, both set designers, mingled with guests, inside the theater and on the patio. Tanner was to play the role of Dr. John H. Watson in that night's production of "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure."

A week after Zinkhan's Jeep was found, two cadaver dogs — Madison, a 7-year-old Australian shepherd, and Circe, a 5-year-old German shepherd — picked up a scent around 9:50 a.m. Saturday, May 9th, and found Zinkhan mostly buried "beneath the earth" 10 minutes later, said Athens Clarke County Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin.

The search had been scaled back from the initial 200 officers from local, state and federal agencies the day the Jeep was found to teams of eight to ten searchers a day for the next week. And while search and tracking dogs had been used in the initial search, cadaver dogs from the volunteer civilian organization Alpha Team K9 Search and Rescue weren't brought in until Friday.

Along with Zinkhan's body were two guns that match those described by people who witnessed the shootings. Officials said there was no indication that anyone else helped Zinkhan bury himself and that the body had started to decompose.

But they remained tightlipped about any other details, saying they'd reveal a cause of death, how long he'd been dead and other information at a news conference next Tuesday. For now, the discovery is "another sad chapter to the story," said Bob Covington, Zinkhan's neighbor. The professor dropped off his children at Covington's home after the shootings.

"It's been two weeks of people being on pins and needles, every time you see a police car," Covington said. "I think this will ease a lot of tension. People can get back to their lives and move on from this horrible tragedy."

Alabama Mass Violence: 9 Dead

Five new shooting deaths were discovered in rural Alabama, April 7, 2009, which follow in the wake of the stabbing deaths of four people in a home in Hueytown, near Birmingham, on March 7, and the shooting spree deaths of 10 people on March 10 by a gunman in south Alabama who also took his own life.

One question I have: Has the media decided that everyone wishes to read indepth details about every new murder-suicide that occurs?

Events like this happened in the past routinely, quietly and locally, but now each one has been elevated to a national story. As a demonstration of this, I reprint the following example.

The Associated Press covered this expanded domestic violence incident today from near Priceville, Alabama:

A man facing a divorce trial shot and killed his estranged wife, their teenage daughter and two other relatives in rural north Alabama before returning to his home in a nearby town and killing himself, authorities said Tuesday [April 7, 2009].

Kevin Garner's body was found Tuesday afternoon near his Priceville home, which burned to the ground overnight. His divorce trial was to start Wednesday [April 8, 2009].

Garner apparently shot himself in the chest, said Travis Clemmons, chief investigator for the sheriff's office in Lauderdale County, where the four bodies were found earlier in the day in a home in Green Hill, a small community near the Tennessee line.

The victims were identified as Garner's estranged wife, Tammy, 40; their 16-year-old daughter, Chelsie; Garner's sister, Karen Beaty of Illinois; and Beaty's 11-year-old son, whose name was not released.

Investigators said the four were shot, apparently with a handgun, around midnight Monday. They did not know if Kevin Garner was licensed to carry a firearm.

It was one of eight mass shootings around the country and the third in Alabama in the last month that have left grief-stricken communities in shock.

Clemmons said a neighbor visiting the Green Hill house Tuesday morning saw a body through the door and called authorities.

Court officials said the Garners were in court Monday in advance of the trial and nothing seemed unusual.

"I just can't understand it," said Clemmons, "and with a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old kid, there's nothing rational about it."

In the divorce file, Tammy Garner sought custody of their daughter and alleged that her husband "has been both physically and emotionally abusive."

Kevin Garner accused her of adultery and of taking $38,000 out of their joint bank account when they separated May 27.

Michael Corley, chief deputy in Morgan County, where Garner's body was found, said Beaty and her son might have been on the witness list for the divorce case. He said investigators believe Garner was "unhappy" with proceedings and "after court adjourned it appears he set some of his plans in motion."

He said it appears the divorce was filed about a year ago but was just now coming up on the court docket.

"Now that we know the final end of it all it's just going back and putting the pieces together," Corley said. "We feel like this was solely a homicide, that he killed them, then went to the home. He used some type of accelerant that caused the home to burn very, very quickly, then walked about 200 yards back into a wooded area behind the house and took his life."

Jerry Knight, an attorney who represented Kevin Garner in the divorce case, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that Garner "had a terrific work ethic and value system. I was terribly shocked and saddened by this unexpected tragedy."

Kevin Garner had worked at a Decatur chemical plant and Tammy Garner at a Huntsville department store.

Along with Garner's two-story house, which collapsed in the fire, a green Subaru Legacy belonging to Tammy Garner was found burned in the Morgan County community of Somerville, less than 10 miles from the burned house.

by Jay Reeves