MSNBC Doc Block Murder

We sat down to lunch today and clicked on the TV. MSNBC is an interesting news channel, in that news doesn't happen on weekends. So over there you're likely to see anything, like prison profiles or Forensics Files types of shows.

Today they had one and I saw the last 35 minutes or so of it only. About some kids in high school in the early '80s out in California, and one kid happened to disappear. It turned out one of the other kids, a boy, killed him. But it took over 20 years for the truth to surface and for the authorities to get it figured out.

Even though this kid's body was found less than a mile from the high school, everyone simply thought he'd run away. Talk about out of sight, out of mind. But they pointed out that they didn't do the whole Amber Alert drill back then. OK, but I lived through the '80s and I didn't think it was Amber Alert or nothing. I guess those of us who lived through that time are lucky we're still here to tell the story!

Anyway, it happened that a guy passing through the area at random with a dog noticed his dog picking at something, and that's when they discovered the body. The kid's name was Russell Jordan. By now everything was decomposed except his bones and his belt, including a distinctive "Schlitz" belt buckle just like the one that Russell had. Still, without other conclusive evidence, they couldn't say for sure it was him. (At this point I was distracted, but somehow they checked out some residue of tissue or something and determined it was him.)

The rest of the story was on talking to his friends, who, it turned out, knew more than they'd originally said. Mostly, it seemed, because they weren't especially grilled on the subject at first. One guy heard the guy who turned out to be the killer tell him three times that he killed him and even described it, but for various reasons (none good) he didn't say anything. Another guy contacted much later, knew about it as well. Then there was the ex-girlfriend, who didn't seem to know much about it, sincerely so.

It was a crazy story, just for the sheer mindlessness of it, that the case was treated in such a dismissive way. Thank goodness we still have curious dogs. It took a dog to do what the entire law enforcement establishment couldn't bring themselves to do.