CH115: Science of Crime

I awoke at about ten on Sunday. Unfortunately, I missed the dew and fog that’s present during Colby mornings. I headed over to Dana for a bagel and coffee, and then I was ready to explore.

I decided to take the path less traveled through the Arb for an enigmatic entrance to the scene of a secret crime. As I traversed the treacherous and –beautifully– overgrown forest, I was forced to hop over roots, skip over mud, and take in the damp nature all around. Until I came across a clearing. The low ground was painted in wildflowers and, around them, waist-high grass flourished. As I continued through the clearing, my feet left the cushioned dirt; and were met by rigid concrete. However, writing this I’ve begun to wonder how reliable my eye-witness account is. Would someone struggle to find what I found, or is the vivid detail just my imagination? 

Regardless, I found thirty minutes in the forest pass too quickly. As I dwelled on this, I saw it, the mysterious site. Despite my hopes, I wasn’t confronted by a yellow tape boundary, or a chalk outline of a body. It was clear at that moment that my addiction to true crime television had warped my expectations (I will still be watching The Wire tonight). All that was lying out in front of me was a generator, a steel railing, and a patch of dead grass. Yet, this seemingly innocent setting had a slightly eerie aura to it.

It looked uncared for and was partially covered in overgrown greenery which elicited an unsettling feeling within me. It was like this small generator was part of a bygone era, left there as a lonesome reminder of its past. I wanted to stay respectful and within legal bounds so I didn’t take the stairs just behind the generator. Which left me with little to go off of, and a feeling that the directions described. Confusion. I was utterly puzzled as to why I was there and what crime took place. I hypothesized that it was unlikely to be a violent crime, and instead, potentially, vandalism or destruction of property charge- Which seemed much more befitting of the scene. However, as it is with much of the true crime world, the truth is shrouded in mystery. Then a question brewed inside: what does a crime scene actually look like?

(397)

Pictured below: the site and my partner in crime (Avon Barksdale)

This assignment made a seemingly sluggish run more adventuresome. Today’s weather was quite muggy as I trudged down Mayflower Hill midday. Having entered the coordinates of the into my phone yesterday, I eagerly made my way to the address – 27/29 Viollette Drive Waterville (picture below).

As I ran down Mayflower Hill I felt at home (getting there) and in familiar territory with nothing out of the ordinary. I came all the way down the drive to the intersection with First Rangeway and turned right. The houses shrunk a bit and became more crowded compared to their counterparts on the Hill. I was in a residential neighborhood. I continued my winded jaunt towards the left turn on Violettle – more of the same.

The scenery felt ordinary for the most part, a house here and there appeared unkempt but nothing felt immediately alien. The location sat between two avenues and from first glance appeared… unimposing. Honestly, I was expecting the house to be completely abandoned or have some glaring abnormality about its exterior. I was probably thinking like a detective living before the ideas of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and later Edmund Locard. There definitely is more than meets the eye – especially because what was meeting my eyes was very little.

As unprofessional as it is to make assumptions without any definite evidence, I’m going to have to infer some about this past crime with such little I gathered at the scene. Like we learned in class, the house did not take many security measures from the street or the houses around it (i.e. fence, wall, line of trees etc.) so it is definitely plausible for a home invasion to have happened in the past – similar to the story of JonBenet.

I didn’t notice any noticeable burn marks in the past that might’ve indicated a fire or possibly arson but obviously I have no evidence to scientifically refute a fire having happened beyond simply the eye test.

I am very intrigued by this site and wonder what actually happened here. Hopefully through more classes, content and lessons I will be able to infer without having so many questions like I do now. 

Whatever did happen there long long ago is lost to time. (Word Count 371)

Picture this: It’s a hot summer day in early September, and you’re ten-years-old. It’s finally Friday afternoon, and you have the whole weekend to look forward to. You jump off the school bus, grab your bike, and race to the nearby playground where you can hear your friends already laughing. 

Or, how about this: You’re sixty-years-old, and you’re enjoying your retirement years. As the last heat wave of the summer makes its final appearance, you try to take advantage of the warmth before yet another brutal Maine winter. To soak up as much of the sunshine as possible, you stand out on your front lawn making small-talk with the neighbors, cold beverage in hand. 

This is what Violetta Avenue appears to look like any stranger who is passing through. Clearly not a rich neighborhood, but a decent one, with freshly mowed lawns, maintained gardens, and miscellaneous trampolines, basketball hoops, and slides scattered throughout backyards. 

The first word that comes to mind to describe this area is safe. Certainly not a place where a crime was committed. As I jogged down the streets close to Violette Avenue, I took notice of the large playground and school buses. 

As we discussed in class, I was able to infer that this was an area populated mainly by families with children. This was based off of the simple observations I made while trying to get a feel for the area. The first two paragraphs of this blog describe real events I watched unfold as I wandered down the streets. I saw young children walking by themselves, which made me believe that the parents of the youngsters had the same thought that I did; that the neighborhood was a safe one. 

After seeing the members of the community interact the way they did while I was there, it made me wonder what the severity of the crime was like that unfolded at 29 Violetta Avenue. This is a street where I would feel comfortable walking around by myself, and it was pretty clear that the people who lived there felt comfortable as well. If I could draw any kind of conclusion from this experience, it would be that crime scenes do not have a standard way of looking. They won’t all immediately give you goosebumps and send shivers racing down your spine, but can rather be in areas that could otherwise be deemed as uneventful. (Word Count: 399).

Street view of 29 Violetta Avenue, Waterville, Maine.

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Fearless Leader

I have always been fascinated by a good mystery. Naturally, when I recently found myself in Boulder, visiting the scene of one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in history seemed like a productive use of the afternoon. Google revealed that JonBenet’s house was about a 5-mile round trip, so I set off from my AirBNB in South Boulder and headed towards the CU campus.

Shortly after the university, I passed a run-down shopping plaza with an adjacent Starbucks. Fortified by an iced coffee, I proceeded another half a mile up Baseline Road, a bustling east-west street that starts at Flagstaff Mountain and cuts across the city. As I counted down the side streets, I noted a school on one corner and wondered if the beautiful little girl had played on that very playground. About a block from my destination, there was a house for sale, with flyers in a box out front. I grabbed one to use as my cover for my close scrutiny of the neighborhood and tried to look like I could afford the monthly payments on a $2 million house.

My extensive reading about the case had led me to a mental picture of a secluded mansion in an elite neighborhood. However, the house on the corner was a modest one-story brick house, and there was still a lot of traffic on Baseline. The houses did get a little fancier as I proceeded down the side street, until I arrived at my destination.

The stock photo of the house taken back in ’96 showed a brick house with a yard flanked by crime scene tape and Christmas decorations in juxtaposition. In real life today, the house appeared to be much closer to the street and the yard smaller. It was almost unrecognizable with its wrought iron fence, overgrown shrubbery, and bizarre statues. So many questions ran through my mind as I walked by. What was up with the landscaping? Where was JonBenet’s bedroom relative to the street? Did anyone currently use that basement room where her body lay for so many hours? A little research on Reddit that night provided many answers- the fence and shrubbery were to keep the looky-loos off the front lawn- her room was at the back- the basement room was permanently walled off. Of course, the key answer can’t be found on Reddit…what really happened inside those walls two decades ago?