A young man is shot and murdered in his car while waiting for a friend. A witness, a bag lady, says the assailant was a pudgy man with greying hair and big glasses. She also mentions a car leaving the area. She doesn't know the exact colour, it was dark that day, but she believes it was Tan-Coloured. A second witness was there, and can confirm what the bag lady said, but is unsure of the description of the assailant.

Some days later, police arrest a man on unpaid parking tickets. It turns out that he drives a brown car, short and slightly overweight, grey-haired, and wears really big glasses. However the Suspect is unwilling to provide a credible Alibi on the murder: he says he was at the movies, but is unable to give a description of where he went, what time he went, and who he went with. When asked about the parking tickets, he claims that he knows nothing about these tickets or where the parking violations occured. The second witness is unable to identify the suspect in a lineup, and the Bag Lady has dissappeared. The suspect is released after the tickets were paid.

This murder is similar to another murder committed in a different area several weeks ago, with the same gun. Going through the parking tickets, they find one which was issued in the same area on the day of the earlier murder, 15 minutes before the fact. A search warrant is executed on his house and several guns are discovered, none matching the murder weapon. Police theorize that the suspect may have disposed of the gun somehow.

Again the suspect is arrested, and again, he refuses to provide a credible alibi. All he can say is that he didn't do it, and that he is not the type of person who would kill anyone. At court, the District Attourney demands that the suspect be remanded in custody on suspicion that the suspect is a serial killer. The Judge approves of the request.

His mother vouches as a character witness to him and says he would never murder anyone. But when she gets wind of the parking tickets, she says that it was her who was using the car when those parking tickets occured (she has reasons for each one of them). She also mentions that her son doesn't even know that she uses his car. Finally she provides the reason her son would not provide an alibi: the suspect is homosexual, and his father is staunchly anti-homosexual, currently in jail for the murder of a gay college student. The suspect fears that his father would blast him with a shotgun.

Upon interviewing the suspect's boyfriend, it appears that the two were out at a gay movie on the night of the recent murder, and the suspect then spent the night at his boyfriend's place. Both places were nowhere near the recent murder scene.

The Bag lady is finally found, but when given the picture of the suspect, she says "That can't be him, he looks like a mama's boy."

The Police go to the prison with a order for the now innocent suspect's release. But they find that he was murdered in the lunchroom over a Ham Sandwich with a screwdriver.

Okay, now who is to blame?
a) The Police who arrested the suspect.
b) The District Attourney who asked the suspect be remanded without bail.
c) The Suspect's Mother, for not informing the son of the parking tickets.
d) The Suspect's Father, for being anti-homosexual
e) It is the Suspect's own fault for not providing a credible alibi.
f) The "Ham Sandwich" Murderer.
g) The Real Murderer.
h) The Bag Lady for dissappearing into thin air.
i) No one. The Suspect is probably the unluckiest man in the world.

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"My Name is Elmer Fudd, Millionaire. I own a Mansion and a Yacht."
Psychiatrist: "Again."

Find him and make him pay... just add it to the list. I believe that there already may be a kind of charge for setting off a chain of events that leads to someone's death. Certainly it's not murder, but perhaps negligent homicide?

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"Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi

"C", his mother certainly should have told him about the parking tickets.

"D", no problem with believing homosexuality is wrong (did you really expect me to say otherwise?), but being so much so that your own son is afraid that you'd kill him if you found out is going way too far, let alone the fact that he killed someone for it. Believing something is wrong is perfectly fine. Hating the people who do that thing is wrong.

"E", the man should have told the police where he was. If his father was in prison for killing someone, then there's not much chance of his getting out to shoot his son, is there? And telling the police would not nesecarily result in his father finding out.

"F", he's at fault, too, obviously. He killed a guy.

Then there's the bag lady that could have helped clear him before he was killed, but was not anywhere to be found. I wouldn't submit that she did anthing wrong, but it certainly would have helped had she been around.

A lot of the circumstances that led to this man's fate were simply a set of coincidences. There would be no way to tell that this would happen from any of the actions taken.

If I were to pick someone as being directly responsible, in that they could have directly prevented the man's death, I'd say it was the prison guards. There should have been no way that one inmate could have killed another.

Wednesday night, I watched that show "The Huntress;" in it was a guy--a bounty hunter--who, while being a complete moron, idolized Jean-Claude Van Damme & would go around telling everyone that he (the guy, not Van Damme) was French...when in fact he was Canadian.

At one point, the mother & daughter stars weretalking about him laughingly & later on told the bail bondsman they were dealing with that he was in fact a Canuck. Afterwards, the bondsman was talking to the idiot & at the end of the phone conversation, took on a really serious tone & expression & said, "Hey...you know what Dottie told me? She said you were CANADIAN...that true?"

You just had to get a South Park reference in here, eh?

Blast Shik for posting at the same time..

Okay. Ever heard of the term French Canadian? IIRC, Jean-Claude Van Damme is French Canadian.

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"Fragile. Do not drop"
--posted on a Boeing 757

More of a civil case than a criminal case...unless a clear and present pattern of negligent action on the part of the guards or the warden/sherrif can be found.

As far as the person directly responsible for the death, "Ham Sandwich" Man gets 25-Life tacked on for 2nd degree murder...or in Texas, they take him out and shoot him behind the blockhouse right after the incident.

The DA's office was doing the job it was intended to do with what little information it had. However, it might have asked for segregated status for Mr. Man. The warden/sherrif would most likely have taken that into consideration.

Van Damme is Dutch. He never was Canadian. He never will be Canadian. Indeed, if you ever saw the travesty to the great game of hockey "Sudden Death" was, you might call him the Anti-Canadian.

And are Canadians the butt of everyones jokes these days? Well, considering I've heard very few anti-Canadian jokes, I disagree. Though I'll admit that the "moose cock" one is kinda funny.

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"When I was in prison I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap. People shouldn't read that stuff. When we read these books what purpose does it serve in this day and time?"
-Mike Tyson

Yer BOTH wrong--Van Damme is BELGIAN. Thus the moniker "the Muscles from Brussels." And of COURSE I've heard of "French-Canadian," although I prefer the term "Qu�becois." My last name (St.John) is an Anglicized bastardization of the Qu�becois "Saint Jean" lo those many generatzi ago. And as for Canadian humor, I think it was put best by Scott Thompson, who said, "I find I can get away with anything in this country with the simple explanation that I'm Canadian....YOU know--an ice nigger!"