AN OPEN LETTER TO DOUG GANFREE: AG OF MARYLAND--AND HIS CHIEF DEPUTY, KATHERINE WINFREE

THIS WAS ONCE A PERSONAL LETTER TO DOUG GANSLER, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF MARYLAND, WITH A COPY TO HIS CHIEF DEPUTY, KATHERINE WINFREE.
SINCE NEITHER OF THEM HAD THE TIME OR THE INCLINATION OR THE COURTESY TO RESPOND—OR TO HAVE A SECRETARY WRITE A RESPONSE, I NOW OFFER THIS LETTER AS AN OPEN LETTER TO DOUG GANSLER AND KATHERINE WINFREE.

Dear Mr. Gansler and Ms. Winfree:

On the date below I sent you the letter below. Since it has been nearly a week since I emailed you the letter, I now offer it to the public, via blog sites, so that perhaps this may stir one or both of you to some form of response.

August 17, 2008

Mr. Gansler:

It strikes me that it is about time for me to make personal contact with you and with your chief deputy attorney general, Katherine Winfree, since I have, for some time now, been including both of you in material that I have blogged, and it seems unfair for me to be doing this without your knowledge. I admit to having a serious distaste for doing things behind people’s backs.
Since the office of the attorney general in the state of Maryland is, as I understand it, technically responsible for any and all child abuse investigations that take place in that state, perhaps I should have begun with you in the first place.

I truly do not know, although it appears that officials in both Maryland and DC have investigated this particular case of child abuse in the past and deemed it unworthy of attention, and the abuser and his children have now removed themselves from the area and live in Tampa, Florida. I understand that some people in your area were so convinced that disclosures made by the two boys were completely unreliable that your chief deputy, Katherine Winfree, even wrote to authorities in Florida to inform them that reports of child sexual abuse had been made in the Maryland and the DC areas, were investigated thoroughly, and that the investigations had been closed because the allegations were unfounded.

Pardon a little, old lady for indulging in a bit of terminology from my childhood, but--hogwash!

My research says that even the slides Prosecutor Katherine Winfree showed at Elsa Newman’s first trial bore witness to abuse, as did other aspects of the prosecution case:
· Why was a little boy, Lars Slobodow, stark naked, in bed with a father who was nude from the waist down?
· Arlen Slobodow said the boy had had trouble sleeping and had come to crawl in bed with Dad. And they were both there sleeping when Landry attacked.
· Rrrrright! But if they were both sleeping and if Margery Landry was indeed intent on murder, why did she not slip in beside the bed…place the gun against Slobodow’s head…and pull the trigger?
· Maybe what happened was that Landry came upon a scene of abuse in progress? She said she tried to “pull them apart.” Sounds like abuse in progress to me. Two people—man and child--asleep in the same bed would not necessarily have needed to be pulled apart, would they?
· Maybe it was this sex-in progress scene that caused Margery Landry to lose control and ruin her life, trying to protect that child from something which had previously been only disclosure by that little boy and his older brother.
· And about that the fact that the boy was nude! As the mother of three sons, and as one who only recently and in regard to this case has repeatedly asked other mothers of sons if their little boys sleep without pajamas, I can tell you that little boys do not sleep nude. They simply don’t.
· Evident in one of Winfree’s slides were some items of little-boy clothing. Was that shoes and socks? Or just socks? Whatever it was, the clothing bore silent witness to what had happened—or was happening-- to that little boy in his father’s bed.
· Not only that, but this particular little boy’s bed had not been slept in.
· Therefore what you are asking me to believe is that this little boy, in his bed alone, had either a bad dream or something else that kept him awake. He got out of bed…made his bed…took off his pajamas…put on his shoes and socks or maybe just the socks…walked to his father’s bed…removed his footwear…and, thus nude, crawled into bed with an accused pedophile father, who was nearly nude. Uh-huh! Rrright!
· And what about the slide which had in it a small bag of what appeared to be “sex toys?” What was that doing in the master bedroom—open and ready to use--with father and son, if Arlen Slobodow was all that innocent and sleeping?
· What about the shooting? Is the internet correct when it tells me that, although there were holes in Arlen Slobodow’s leg—one from the entrance wound and one from the exit wound—and although his pajama bottoms were covered with blood, there were no corresponding holes in the pajama bottoms?
· Is the internet correct in telling me as well that there was a burn on Slobodow’s hand from the firing of the gun? And that the police took a picture of this burn. OMG—is it even possible that the man shot himself in the struggle with Landry?
· What about the 9-1-1 call? Did Arlen Slobodow actually tell the operator that his “wife had sent someone to kill him?” Because you and I both know that even if that had been true—and just for the record, I do not believe it is--there is no way Slobodow could have known it.
· Only one more question in this regard: why did Winfree use an entirely different set of slides in the second trial of Elsa Newman? Were the original ones too telling?

Should you question my belief in Slobodow’s penchant for sex with his sons, you might try contacting one Anders Arestad, now of Arlington, Virginia. If I read the situation correctly, this is a man who was “involved” with Arlen Slobodow. They were, in other words, “lovers,” in every way intended by the gay community when they use that word. However, I understand that even Anders sometimes objected to the brutality with which Slobodow treated his sons.

In regard to the propriety of waiting to contact you about this issue until after I have blogged considerably about said issue, I must admit that I have a terrible reluctance to address people in authority and/or in high office, so perhaps that will explain to you why I began as I did—blogging the case of Elsa Newman and her children, rather than writing to you about said case. It has, perhaps unfortunately, taken me all this time to work up my courage to address this issue to you and to your staff personally.

Below my signature on this email is a list of the blogs and websites I have been using, in case you want to see for yourself what I’ve been saying—or have one of your staff members check it out.
Let me say without further ado that I believe that Herbie and Lars Slobodow were and are the objects of sexual abuse by their father, Arlen Slobodow, now of Tampa, Florida. They were and are also the victims of his neglect and of physical, mental, emotional, verbal and even spiritual abuse. I have no question at all but that the man is a sociopath—he fits to a T virtually every quality listed for sociopaths—and I believe him quite capable of indulging himself in the things of which I accuse him. These atrocities have been going on for nearly ten years now.

So…what made me so convinced that this man is an abuser? Research, including the use of a tool called “Deepnet Explorer,” which makes available to me more information that do any of the more traditional web browsers with which I am familiar.

By means of this browser, as well as other more traditional browsers, I have put together and blogged a list of some 60 reasons for my belief that Elsa Newman is innocent and that her children are used and abused sexually and other ways by their pedophile father, to whom the courts of Maryland awarded the children as if presenting some kind of gift. Actually, I guess you could logically say it just that way. He persuaded the jury; he persuaded the court; he persuaded your office and his prize was?—his ex-wife unjustly imprisoned and custody of the children for himself.

This is the man who said of his children, “I don’t care if the kids grow up fucked up!”

I have posted these reasons on blogs around the world—as far away as the UK. With the help of a man calling himself “thewizardofoz”, who became interested in Elsa’s case, apparently from reading my blog, much of this information has also been blogged Down Under.

WhatI want to know is if there is anything possible that either of you can still do to remedy this situation? Or are you merely content to rest on your laurels, knowing that retrying Elsa Newman was part of the publicity you, Mr. Gansler, needed in your run for AG?

Elsa Newman, of course, still resides in the state of Maryland—at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. I can only imagine what this unjustly imprisoned mother must feel, knowing that her children are incested daily by a pedophile father and that from a prison cell there is nothing whatsoever she can do to help them.

I seem to recall that on the occasion of Newman’s trial verdict being vacated by Maryland’s highest court, your response was, “They just released the woman who wanted to kill her kids.” Not only is that statement untrue—Elsa Newman is probably the last person on earth who would want to harm either of her children—but it demonstrates an attitude that frightens me, since I had always been under the impression that the purpose of a prosecutor is to uncover truth.

Or were you simply fearful that the release of Newman, a woman whose incarceration had made such a whopping publicity splash for the two of you would damage your chances in running for office?

The truth will out one day, Mr. Gansler. Perhaps you will put yourself in a position of willingness to help. Such willingness would, I am sure, put you in a good light as a man of integrity, who wants to reverse mistakes—even if such mistakes might be laid at his own door or the doors of members of his staff.

Thank you for taking time to read and consider.
Sincerely,

Aine O’Brocken—retired teacher and obnoxious, little, old lady who thinks the treatment of Elsa Newman and her sons, as well as the treatment of the pedophile father who was awarded custody, all of it absolutely stinks!

The promised list of blog sites follows:
http://360.yahoo.com/grammapug possibly the best, since it has the highest readership—over 80,000 hits since I started it as a pug blog; I wrote a lot about Elsa on this, also
http://www.myspace.com/elsanewmanisinnocent
http://elsanewmanisinnocent.blogspot.com/
http://pugbubbe.multiply.com/
http://pugbubbe.wordpress.com/
http://prisonreform@livejournal.com
http://www.blog.co.uk/user/pugbubbe/
http://www.blognow.com.au/wizardofoz/ --this is not my blog, but is written by a man in Australia, who apparently saw my blogging about Elsa and took up her cause; it is a bit different from the others. Love those Aussies!!!