11 Seattle Gay Bars Receive Threatening Letters

[FreeState]

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/07/7837

Eleven gay bars in Seattle received letters today addressed to the “Owner/Manager” from someone claiming to be in the possession of ricin, a deadly poison. “Your establishment has been targeted,” the letter begins. “I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients.”

<snip>

in addition to the eleven bars, the Seattle Stranger also received notice, with a letter addressed to the attention of “Obituaries”:

The letter’s author said the paper should “be prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals all of whom were patrons of the following establishments on a Saturday in January.” The listed bars are: the Elite, Neighbours, Wild Rose, the Cuff, Purr, the Eagle, R Place, Re-bar, CC’s, Madison Pub, and the Crescent. “I could take this moment to launch into a diatribe about my indignation towards the gay community,” the letter concludes, “however, I think the deaths will speak for themselves.”

(cross posted in LBN Settle Times link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008597989_ricinthreat07m.html )


Here is the Seattle Stranger article:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/01/06/gay_bars_receive_threatening

[Behind the Aegis]

1. WTF?!

Seriously, :wtf:

[FreeState]

2. Scary hu?

And this in Seattle - one of the gay friendliest places around...

unfortunately I think we will see more and more of this. For the first time in my life a few weeks back I did not feel safe in a local gay bar (for no reason just out of the blue).

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Maybe we should reach across the aisle to them.

:puke:

[donco6]

17. Yes. If only we knew who he was.

I'd agree the shit out of him.

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. Tim Eyman give up on gutting the state budget and make a "career move" to bioterrorism?

Seriously, this is some fucked up shit. :wtf:

[PVnRT]

5. Shouldn't we be seeking common ground with this guy?

Post-partisanship! :sarcasm:

[QC]

6. Is there still time to get this guy a speaking role in the inauguration?

We need to hear and honor his perspective!

Let's reach out to him!

[Creideiki]

7. It's just a difference of opinion

Nothing to get upset about.

[SacredCow]

8. No need to get upset....

he has the right to free speech like everyone else, no?

:sarcasm:

[hulklogan]

9. He only has 67 grams!!!1!1!1

Meant to be a spoof of "It's only a two minute speech!!!" but failed miserably because of the seriousness of this threat. :scared:

[QC]

10. Well, if you would just reach out to him, you wouldn't have to spoof anything! n/t

[bluedawg12]

11. Here's some info. from the CDC

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp

How you can protect yourself, and what to do if you are exposed to ricin
First, get fresh air by leaving the area where the ricin was released.
If the ricin release was outside, move away from the area where the ricin was released.
If the ricin release was indoors, get out of the building.
If you are near a release of ricin, emergency coordinators may tell you to either evacuate the area or to “shelter in place” inside a building to avoid being exposed to the chemical. For more information on evacuation during a chemical emergency, see Facts About Evacuation. For more information on sheltering in place during a chemical emergency, see Facts About Sheltering in Place.
If you think you may have been exposed to ricin, you should remove your clothing, rapidly wash your entire body with soap and water, and get medical care as quickly as possible.
Removing your clothing:
Quickly take off clothing that may have ricin on it. Any clothing that has to be pulled over the head should be cut off the body instead of pulled over the head.
If you are helping other people remove their clothing, try to avoid touching any contaminated areas, and remove the clothing as quickly as possible.
Washing yourself:
As quickly as possible, wash any ricin from your skin with large amounts of soap and water. Washing with soap and water will help protect people from any chemicals on their bodies.
If your eyes are burning or your vision is blurred, rinse your eyes with plain water for 10 to 15 minutes. If you wear contacts, remove them and put them with the contaminated clothing. Do not put the contacts back in your eyes (even if they are not disposable contacts). If you wear eyeglasses, wash them with soap and water. You can put your eyeglasses back on after you wash them.
Disposing of your clothes:
After you have washed yourself, place your clothing inside a plastic bag. Avoid touching contaminated areas of the clothing. If you can't avoid touching contaminated areas, or you aren't sure where the contaminated areas are, wear rubber gloves, turn the bag inside out and use it to pick up the clothing, or put the clothing in the bag using tongs, tool handles, sticks, or similar objects. Anything that touches the contaminated clothing should also be placed in the bag. If you wear contacts, put them in the plastic bag, too.
Seal the bag, and then seal that bag inside another plastic bag. Disposing of your clothing in this way will help protect you and other people from any chemicals that might be on your clothes.
When the local or state health department or emergency personnel arrive, tell them what you did with your clothes. The health department or emergency personnel will arrange for further disposal. Do not handle the plastic bags yourself.
For more information about cleaning your body and disposing of your clothes after a chemical release, see Chemical Agents: Facts About Personal Cleaning and Disposal of Contaminated Clothing.
If someone has ingested ricin, do not induce vomiting or give fluids to drink.
Seek medical attention right away. Dial 911 and explain what has happened.

[donco6]

18. And then get ready to die.

Ricin toxicity and lethality can vary by dose and route of exposure. In animal studies, inhalation and intravenous injection are the most lethal routes. Lethal dose for humans, by inhalation or injection, is estimated to be 5 - 10 mg/kg. Because the ricin protein is large, it is probably not well absorbed orally or through the skin.

In animal studies, most orally administered ricin is not well absorbed, and it may remain in the large intestine even 24 hours after exposure until it is finally eliminated from the gut. Although ricin is less toxic by the oral route compared with inhalation and injection, there are hundreds of reported cases of toxicity, and several fatalities, from castor bean mastication and ingestion. If enough ricin is ingested, the potential for significant morbidity and mortality exists.

Ricin is not likely to be absorbed through unabraded skin; however, there are no reported studies on the dermal toxicity of ricin. The effect of adding a carrier solvent to ricin to increase dermal absorption is unknown.

Symptoms of mild toxicity including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and/or abdominal cramping are invariably present in people who chew and ingest a significant amount of castor beans. Oropharyngeal irritation may occur following ingestion as well. Bloody diarrhea and systemic signs such as hypotension, hemolysis, and renal failure are not present, and symptoms typically resolve within 24 hours.

Onset of gastrointestinal symptoms typically occurs in less than 10 hours. Delayed presentation of gastrointestinal symptoms, beyond 10 hours of ingestion, is unlikely to occur.

Moderate to severe toxicity may include: gastrointestinal symptoms - that is, persistent vomiting and voluminous bloody or nonbloody diarrhea, which typically leads to significant fluid losses. This may result in dehydration and hypovolemic shock, which would manifest as tachycardia, hypotension, decreased urine output, and possibly altered mental status (e.g., confusion, disorientation).

In severe poisoning, hepatic and renal failure and death are possible within 36 - 72 hours of exposure. The most common findings on animal autopsy are multifocal ulcerations and hemorrhages of gastric and small intestine mucosa, necrosis of mesenteric lymph nodes, hepatic necrosis, splenitis and nephritis.

[MuseRider]

12. KandR

This is what happens. Damn.

[Poll_Blind]

13. That's disgusting and horrible. A close second to how bad this is? How the media...

...will treat the story. Little airtime, little comment.

  If those same letters had been sent to churches or banks or anything more "mainstream" they would get 2-3 (maybe more) days in the news cycle. I'm hoping this even makes the news blurb for 8 hours on AM radio.

PB

[TheWraith]

28. Actually threats of this kind are pretty commonplace, and don't even merit 8 hours on AM.

You wouldn't believe the number of white powder envelopes that get sent to various places. Mostly they never make it past local news unless the target is a politician or something, and even then it's an astrisk. In a country with 300 million people, some of them are just going to be nuts.

[bluedawg12]

14. Dan Savage blames gays?

>>Savage said the letters didn't contain any religious references, making him wonder whether the author was an embittered gay person.<<

Puhleez.

[bluedawg12]

15. Some still don't get "hate" crime.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?thread=61360&offset=0#post_142506

pookah05
Seattle, WA
119 comments

>>I too hate the term "hate crime". No doubt that what this person is doing is very wrong and should be punished. But the term is ridiculous. I don't know of any crime that is committed without hate involved. Another liberal PC crap term.<<
.......

Here's an example of a rightwing asshole with a keyboard.

If the threat were against all of the city, then it would be a crime and a crime of terrorism.

Since it targets a specific group, then, it is a hate crime and a crime of bioterrorism.

I suppose the OP never thought about it much further, but her glib statement "I don't know of any crime that is committed without hate involved," is ludicrous. Car theft is motivated by hate?

The difference between some crimes is motivation.

Some crimes are simply motivated by personal greed, such as robberies.

Other crimes are motivated by no personal gain, they are an attack on a specific group with the only motive being hate.

Conservative right wing anti- PC crap from a moron. Geez.

[The Brethren]

34. Well put!

If you don't already do so, you should work in the media. And maybe more "rightwing asshole(s) with a keyboard" would listen to you and learn something. I also still believe in Santa Claus. :-)

[DarkTirade]

16. Domestic terrorism at its finest.

Wonder if any of the papers will actually call it that, though.

[One_Life_To_Give]

19. But he will become Gay before completing his plan

But he will become Gay before completing his plan of injecting 55 patrons. Everyone knows that spending any time in a Gay Bar will cause you to catch it. :sarcasm:

Seriously this individual must be a fan of James Bond stuff. The number and controlled spread of victims would require something like the "KGB" Umbrella Injector. I think it's a hoax, but should you feel something like a Bee Sting while in such an establishment I would get concerned.

[JohnnieGordon]

20. Same tone as your average power-tripping homophobe

The only difference is the level of his threats. And actually even that isn't particularly usual. You can see nearly the same thing in countless YouTube threads.

[Bluebear]

21. He MUST be a self-loathing homosexual.

:sarcasm:

[bluedawg12]

26. Riiiight. (not) More like gay hating sociopathic criminal.

But blaming the victims have been taken to new heights...err....lows.

[Sebastian Doyle]

36. Well, he does seem to know where all the gay bars in Seattle are

And apparently is familiar enough with all of them that he thinks he can move around and poison teh gayz without looking suspicious. I wouldn't want this to be a "gay on gay" crime, but it's hard to imagine a Phelps or Dobson type frequenting such establishments without giving themselves away. Though I hope that actually is the case, so they can arrest the piece of shit.

Assuming it's not just some random psycho sending a threatening letter with no intentions of actually taking it further than that, which is always possible. (How many bullshit terra threats in the last 8 years??)

[mitchtv]

22. Be prepared for an news blackout

I doubt if this will receive any attention

[Sebastian Doyle]

37. King TV (channel 5) did mention it.

Interviewed a couple of the bar owners and some people on Capitol Hill. Actually was surprised to see it, considering their over the top coverage of "EPIC FUCKING FLOOD DISASTER 2009!!!!!!!!!!!" Didn't think they would have time to talk about anything else.

[AntiFascist]

23. The Religious Right up to its old tricks....

Washington is too close to Idaho.

[IndianaGreen]

24. Must be one from Rick Warren's flock

That's the sort of hatred that Warren and his ilk teach and preach.

[bluedawg12]

25. This is a sick twisted pay back for boycotts? I'd take it seriously

very seriously, as it is domestic terrorism, but the fact that business are named in this way to intentionally hurt trade with this threat suggests something along the boycott payback lines.

[Jamastiene]

35. That was my first thought as well. n/t

[TheWraith]

27. This reads like a mentally ill person.

I know some people will say "duh," but there's an important distinction between somebody simply being a sociopathic asshole and actually being genuinely unbalanced. The phrasing of this makes me think that the person who sent it is suffering from a delusional state. The obsession with certain numbers, the odd phrases such as "I have always had time on my side," "dead and nearly frozen..." It reeks of somebody for whom this letter has a lot of meaning besides what they say, meaning tied up inside their internal delusions.

[bluedawg12]

29. It looks like pretty organized thinking.

The grammar is good, even the use of semicolons and placement of comma's in clauses.

The writer wants to appear knowledgeable.

Folks who are for example paranoid schizophrenic write in disorganized ways, unlike this letter.

I agree, there is some gamesmanship and ego and arrogance in the letter.

[TheWraith]

30. Organized and delusional aren't mutually exclusive.

The Unabomber is probably the most famous example of a person who lived in a delusional mindset, but remained organized and extremely lucid in other ways, even to the point of voluminous philosophical writing. John Hinckley was also coherent in his writings right up until he took a shot at Reagan. Not all of them are like that of course, but a person who's in the middle of a delusion doesn't necessarily lose their other faculties.

Many years ago I conversed online with a guy who engaged in some very severe delusional states manifesting in obsession, which this letter very faintly reminds me of. He could swing between reasonably rational and normal, and full-throat bat-shit psychotic gibbering. He was a severe case, but others can exhibit a range of behavior as well.

In this case, I would say that the biggest indicators are, number one, the implication in the letter to the paper of some kind of slight against the perpetrator. This is pretty common among delusional obsessives I've seen, that the person feels some kind of personal connection with the target of their obsession, usually either that they're in love with the target person/the target person is in love with them/or the target person or group has somehow wronged them. Far more often than not it's entirely imaginary, and exists only in the delusional state, though once in awhile it's a distorted version of something that actually happened.

Second, as I mentioned, the unusual phrasings. This is because the person feels special attraction to or meaning in certain words, concepts, or images. Even if they don't realize it consciously, it's because these represent things connected to the delusion. Sometimes you can find themes in them, or suss out how they relate to the core pathology. But because it's by definition irrational, it's not always understandable or significant.

I suppose I could be wrong, but my first reaction looking at this was that the person behind it is acting out something more than just being a prick. It might be something fairly mild, and just an extension of more common aggressor behavior, but it's hard to tell from just one or two examples.

[bluedawg12]

31. Delusions are not pathognomic of "mental illness."

I tend to resist making a a judgement about mental illness on scant data.

However, of greater interest to me, is the question of does the individual know right from wrong.

Which, even people with mental illness are potentialy capable of doing.

Compos mentos or non comos mentos?

If this perp knows right from wrong, then, it can run around howling at the moon too, but once caught ( and I hope it's caught, soon) it can stand trial as a mentally competent person.

This is a bit OT but interesting, as I just found it:

>>Bush-Hinckley family connections
According to the March 31, 1981, edition of the Houston Post, and reported by AP, UPI, NBC News and Newsweek, Hinckley is the son of one of George H.W. Bush's political and financial supporters in his 1980 presidential primary campaign against Ronald Reagan; John Hinckley Jr.'s elder brother, Scott Hinckley, and Vice President Bush's son Neil Bush had a dinner appointment scheduled for the next day.<4>

Associated Press published the following short note on March 31, 1981:

"The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice-President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign ... Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr. was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the Vice-President's sons ... The Houston Post said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice-president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Company of Indiana. In 1978, Neil Bush served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the Vice-President's eldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock, Texas, throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980."<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley,_Jr.

[TheWraith]

32. True, but in the context of an uncontrolled obsession and invention of false facts...

...then I think you probably run into the realm of legal or scientific definitions and hairsplitting. No guarantee that that's what this is, but I'm just spinning theory here.

As far as being able to determine right from wrong, it would really be a guess based on so little. But the fact that the perp is so relatively lucid with regard to what they're doing suggests to me that they probably can make that determination, even if they're operating in a delusional framework.

As an aside, I hope the Seattle cops have their psychologists on this. If the person is engaged in a delusional state, it makes them more dangerous, not less. An ordinary person seeking to make a threat against a person or group they think wronged them might mail a threatening letter, or even send something like one of the many white-powder letters that get thrown around these days. But someone whose in an obsessive state would be a lot more likely to escalate their behavior.

[bluedawg12]

33. I would guess they have an FBI profiler on the case.

Probably a psychologist or psychiatrist, too.

The other issue is not hair splitting, it's the difference between standing trail as one who is competent versus one who is criminally insane.

That was the complaint about Hinkley and the Bush connection and getting off as someone who is criminally insane, then, later when under treatment, he started to get little day trips. :eyes: