This column originally appeared on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008
Shall we recap? We shall.
Earlier this month we posited that the leaders of West Chester had, and we put this as gently as we possibly could, lost their emphatically qualified marbles. That instead of staying straight on the Reality Expressway, they had taken the first available exit for Non Compos Mentisville. That they had collectively started dressing up as the Emperor Napoleon and were anxiously planning a late summer vacation to the Funny Farm.
That is, they’d gone crazy.
Why? Because of their decision to join the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s effort to promote places like Bristol, Collingswood, N.J., and Lansdowne as “Classic Towns.” It’s billed as a way of marketing the borough as a place to live, getting its name out there in the public’s eye so that it does not fall off the map. Sort of like Jessica Simpson appearing in ads for that beer in Dallas, except without the blonde curls and shiny teeth.
I argued — quite convincingly, I might add — that the last thing West Chester needs, besides Jessica Simpson bringing the freshmen at West Chester University a couple dozen six packs, is more people. People we’ve got. People, check. Adequate parking spaces, convenient Cincinnati chili parlors and nearby public swimming pools, no; people, yes.
What I wanted, I wrote, was for the good folks at the DVRPC to devise a strategy for keeping people away from West Chester, possibly using some sort of cloaking device that would render the borough invisible so newcomers to the area, driving south of King of Prussia on Route 202 looking for a good place to spend the rest of their lives, would end up buying real estate in Modena.
Ask, sayeth the Lord, and ye shall receive.
The same day that my thoughts appeared in this space, the Associated Press reported that scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, announced that they were a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.
“Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects,” the AP said. “Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects, like Jessica Simpson’s summer reading list.”
OK, I added that last part. But it is clear that researchers are well on their way to providing the technology that would allow us to keep West Chester more to ourselves than the “Classic Towns” folks would have it. This is great news, because heretofore I understood that the soonest the cloaking technology was going to be available was sometime in the mid-23rd century, and then it was going to be used exclusively by the Romulans to hide their Battle Cruisers until they were ready to fire their Plasma Torpedoes at the starship Enterprise. Or some such thing.
Think of it. Gone would be the need for another tedious version of “Landscapes” to protect our open spaces. When suburban sprawlers came knocking, we just wouldn’t be home. And there would be other uses that we could put the cloaking device to, I’m sure. Flip the switch and — blink! — there goes that unsightly new condo development across the street. Crank the handle and — whizzo! — gone are those annoying political signs left along the roadside. Fire that puppy up and — shazzam! — no more having to look at the line of cars stretching out before you on Route 202 on your way to work.
And more to the point, one turn of the knob and — presto chango! — goodbye Jessica Simpson.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
As The Sun Sets Over the Courthouse...
This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008
As the summer comes near its close, we look at the symbolic winter of the Chester County Courthouse. Within weeks of this writing, the halls here will be empty, the courtrooms vacant, the prisoners' lock-up void of its normal inhabitants. By the time we celebrate Halloween, our daily quarters will be blocks away and years ahead. The Justice Center awaits, shiny and new, unexplored territory.
In the meantime, the quest for justice in the old building moves on.
Or at least most of the time.
Over in Courtroom Five, Judge Thomas G. Gavin has just noticed an old familiar face sitting in the pews. It’s veteran defense attorney Paul Rubino, looking harried. “Why aren’t you off somewhere working on your tan?” Gavin wants to know.
“Not me,” Rubino sighs wearily. “Everyone else at the office is on vacation, and I’m left to slave like a dog.”
“Oh my. Poor you,” Gavin commiserates, the barest hint of sarcasm dripping from his voice. Rubino wants to know when he can squeeze in a guilty plea on Gavin’s trial schedule for a client he just picked up. Not next week, Gavin warns him; the judge will be away.
“I’ve got to work on my tan,” he smiles.
In Courtroom Three, however, there is real work to be done – at least while everyone waits for the deputies to bring up the next prisoner. The task at hand today is complex, but timely: a critique of the best event so far in the Beijing Olympics. One attorney picks the synchronized diving; another chooses the on-going Michael Phelps medal saga. But Judge James P. MacElree II knows what it is he really wants to see.
“How about synchronized belly-flops?” he opines from the bench.
Imagine two great oxen of Olympians jumping off the diving platform in tandem, twirling their way ever downward side-by-side, and flat-lining on their bellies on the calm surface of the pool at the exact same moment, MacElree says dreamily. No penalties for a big splash in that contest. In fact, the Japanese team would likely score winning rounds every time just by putting their top sumo wrestlers on the squad, he predicts.
The judge is rolling now. It would be, he says, like a skit from “Saturday Night Live” with John Belushi as the contestant. You could get defensive linemen from the NFL and power forwards from the NBA to compete in a Dream Team of belly busters to bring back the gold from Tokyo. Points would be added if your trunks came off and …
Oops, there’s a defendant shuffling into the courtroom.
“What is your name sir?” MacElree instantly intones, his voice now a model of judicial decorum. “Have you had adequate time to speak with your able counsel?”
Meanwhile, in the semi-stately, oak-paneled confines of Courtroom Two, Judge David Bortner has some serious business to discuss with his two assistant district attorneys, Andrea Cardamone and Cristin Kubacke. There’s a open week coming up for Courtroom One this month and if they put together at least one trial there’s the possibility they might get to try the last case in that stately space before the move to the new digs.
It would be a historic “last,” said the rookie jurist who was sworn in just eight months ago in that same courtroom. But we have competition, he advises the pair; Judge Ronald Nagle might have a trial and he could also put in a claim on the space.
And so it comes down to which of the two newest judges on the bench will have the last go round on the county’s grandest bench.
Don’t push it, Bortner counsels the prosecutors, If you’re going to get a guilty plea, take it, even though a plea can come in any of the shoeboxes they call courtrooms around here. History would be nice, but...
“The pursuit of justice comes first,” Bortner concludes.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Contrary To Ordinary
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008
I do not mean to be a contrarian.
My aim in life is not to be contrary. When I have an idle moment, I do not plot out ways to be contrary. When I was 8 years old and I was hanging out with the guys in my second grade class and we were discussing what we wanted to be when we grew up – fireman, policeman, white collar criminal -- I did not offer up the notion that no matter what the other aspects of my eventual career – spiffy uniform, cool company car, fat pension benefits, five weeks paid vacation, etc. – I wanted to make certain I would be able to get in arguments with people at the drop of an opinion.
So please do not take what I am about to say as the ranting of someone who just wants to take the opposing position, no matter what. It just comes natural with me.
Are the people who run West Chester crazy?
Last month, West Chester Borough Council Vice President Charles A. “Chuck” Christy got together in a room with a guy dressed up like Benjamin Franklin and signed a “Declaration of Classic Towns” to launch a regional marketing campaign developed to spotlight 11 communities across the Delaware Valley as “desirable places to live, work, play and prosper.”
I have few hard and fast rules in life: Always over-tip. Always pick the Phillies to lose. Never buy a hamburger from someone dressed as a clown. And never involve yourself in an event at which there is a man dressed up as Ben Franklin. It can only lead to no good.
So with Ben in the picture, immediately I had my reservations about this “Classic Towns” effort. As I understand it, some folks in the borough are going to pay the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission good money to go out and talk up West Chester so that more people come and live and work and play and prosper here. "Every year hundreds of thousands of people relocate and choose where they will live," said Barry Seymour, executive director of the DVRPC. The “Classic Towns” program "will help the communities market themselves (and) become the communities of choice."
To which I rejoined, “And that’s a good thing?”
For the life of me, I have not noticed that West Chester faces a shortage of people choosing to live here, or work here, or – and the folks who listen fondly to the wolves howling on High Street after midnight on weekends will bear me out on this – play here. I have not noticed that there are gaping holes in the retail market here. I have not noticed that the borough’s landscape resembles that of a ghost town.
As far as I can tell, we’re fine. We really don’t need any help in letting people know that we’re on the map. If we did, we’d only have to turn to Brandon “Bam” Margera, who would gladly go on national cable television and vomit on the “Welcome to West Chester” sign, or whatever, and we’d have free marketing for a year.
Here’s what I want. I want to create a regional marketing campaign to get people to stay away from West Chester. I want to keep them from coming into the borough at all hours of the day and night, clogging up the streets, begging for parking meter quarters, jamming the lines at the Growers Market on Saturday mornings, and driving up the high cost of locally produced beer. I want the DVRPC to devise a way of cloaking West Chester so that people driving south on Route 202 looking for good places to spend the rest of their lives end up buying real estate in Modena.
Some people say this sort of attitude is close minded, chauvinistic and small. I say: “To the contrary.”
I do not mean to be a contrarian.
My aim in life is not to be contrary. When I have an idle moment, I do not plot out ways to be contrary. When I was 8 years old and I was hanging out with the guys in my second grade class and we were discussing what we wanted to be when we grew up – fireman, policeman, white collar criminal -- I did not offer up the notion that no matter what the other aspects of my eventual career – spiffy uniform, cool company car, fat pension benefits, five weeks paid vacation, etc. – I wanted to make certain I would be able to get in arguments with people at the drop of an opinion.
So please do not take what I am about to say as the ranting of someone who just wants to take the opposing position, no matter what. It just comes natural with me.
Are the people who run West Chester crazy?
Last month, West Chester Borough Council Vice President Charles A. “Chuck” Christy got together in a room with a guy dressed up like Benjamin Franklin and signed a “Declaration of Classic Towns” to launch a regional marketing campaign developed to spotlight 11 communities across the Delaware Valley as “desirable places to live, work, play and prosper.”
I have few hard and fast rules in life: Always over-tip. Always pick the Phillies to lose. Never buy a hamburger from someone dressed as a clown. And never involve yourself in an event at which there is a man dressed up as Ben Franklin. It can only lead to no good.
So with Ben in the picture, immediately I had my reservations about this “Classic Towns” effort. As I understand it, some folks in the borough are going to pay the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission good money to go out and talk up West Chester so that more people come and live and work and play and prosper here. "Every year hundreds of thousands of people relocate and choose where they will live," said Barry Seymour, executive director of the DVRPC. The “Classic Towns” program "will help the communities market themselves (and) become the communities of choice."
To which I rejoined, “And that’s a good thing?”
For the life of me, I have not noticed that West Chester faces a shortage of people choosing to live here, or work here, or – and the folks who listen fondly to the wolves howling on High Street after midnight on weekends will bear me out on this – play here. I have not noticed that there are gaping holes in the retail market here. I have not noticed that the borough’s landscape resembles that of a ghost town.
As far as I can tell, we’re fine. We really don’t need any help in letting people know that we’re on the map. If we did, we’d only have to turn to Brandon “Bam” Margera, who would gladly go on national cable television and vomit on the “Welcome to West Chester” sign, or whatever, and we’d have free marketing for a year.
Here’s what I want. I want to create a regional marketing campaign to get people to stay away from West Chester. I want to keep them from coming into the borough at all hours of the day and night, clogging up the streets, begging for parking meter quarters, jamming the lines at the Growers Market on Saturday mornings, and driving up the high cost of locally produced beer. I want the DVRPC to devise a way of cloaking West Chester so that people driving south on Route 202 looking for good places to spend the rest of their lives end up buying real estate in Modena.
Some people say this sort of attitude is close minded, chauvinistic and small. I say: “To the contrary.”
Monday, August 04, 2008
DNA "Hit" Identifies Rape Suspectz
This story originally appeared on Monday, Aug. 4, 2008
WEST CHESTER -- The crime is a woman’s worst nightmare: to be abducted by a stranger at night while driving home alone and then to be repeatedly sexually assaulted.
But the way police began solving the case was law enforcement’s modern dream come true: to get a “hit” on a convicted felon’s DNA sample in the state police database.
It took more than four years to the day of the crime, but in July 2007, police arrested drug dealer and part-time landscape laborer Alex Villa and charged him with rape, kidnapping and other offenses.
Villa, 26, who lived in West Chester before his conviction on drug charges and is now an inmate at the State Correctional Institution in Camp Hill, had been scheduled to go on trial in front of Judge Anthony Sarcione today. His case was continued until September, when his attorney said she expects the case to come to a conclusion.
“I’m not sure how it is going to be resolved, but it is going to be resolved (next month),” said West Chester criminal defense attorney Amparito Arriaga.
Although not predicting the outcome of the case, the lead prosecutor said in comments before the case was continued (because of medical issues that the alleged victim is dealing with) that he felt confident as well that it would be resolved.
“This is the first time I’ve had a case with a DNA hit,” said Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kelly. “I was very happy to see technology work in this case.”
The sequence of events began around midnight on May 31, 2003.
According to court documents, West Chester police say the victim — a 21-year-old school teacher, who lived in West Goshen at the time — was driving home, when she stopped at a red light at High and Market streets, in front of the Chester County Courthouse.
There, a man she did not know forced his way into the car and asked her to give him a ride. She refused and tried to call 911 on her cell phone, but the man overpowered her and broke the phone, throwing it out the window.
Over the next several hours, the man forced her to drive outside West Chester, making threatening gestures that he would kill her. He repeatedly attempted to forc her to perform oral sex on him. After no success, he eventually forced her to have sexual intercourse.
The victim told police she was finally able to get away from her attacker and run from her car. Partially clothed, she flagged down a passing motorist who found her on Route 926, several miles from the site of her abduction.
The next day, police found two things — the car the victim had been driving at the time of her abduction and, inside it, a baseball cap the woman said her attacker had been carrying with him when he jumped into her car.
As part of their investigation, the investigators, led by Sgt. Louis Deshullo of the West Chester police, cut an area on the brim of the hat and sent it to the Pennsylvania State Police’s Bureau of Forensic Services DNA Laboratory in Greensburg, where it was assigned to lab number L03-02489-1.
Four years went by.
XXXXXXXXX
In January 2005, law enforcement authorities began collecting DNA samples from each person convicted of a felony in the state. Prior to that, only sex offenders were required to give up DNA samples.
According to the county’s deputy director of Adult Probation, Jody Carlini, in Chester County, DNA samples are taken either by probation officers or corrections officers at Chester County Prison or, in some cases, staff of the state Department of Corrections.
The samples used to be secured by drawing blood from the offender, but that process caused concern about blood-born diseases, and the probation department routinely called in staff from the county health department to get the samples.
State police now supply DNA sample kits that are easy to handle. The kits contain a fingerprint card, an identification form for the offender’s name, Social Security number and other personal data, as well as two sealed buccal, cheek, swabs.
The offender is directed to open the swab — which looks similar to a home pregnancy tester — and put it inside his or her mouth, next to the cheek. The offender then drags the swab against the soft inside of his or her mouth eight times on one side, then with another swab eight times on the other side.
The swabs are then sealed in a polyethylene evidence bag and sent with all accompanying information to the Greensburg DNA lab. If the felony offender refuses to do the test, those taking he sample are authorized to use force to retrieve it, Carlini said.
Don Blosser, the director of scientific services at the state police DNA lab, said last week that since police began collecting DNA samples in 1996, there have been thousands and thousands submitted for storage and recording. Every month, more come in; every month, there are more tests to see whether the samples match any DNA taken from a crime scene throughout the United States. The system by which all the samples are collected and compared is called CODIS — the Combined DNA Index System, and it is run by the FBI.
The process of ordering DNA samples has become a staple of any formal sentencing in Common Pleas Court, either in the case of someone who has pleaded guilty to a felony or who has been found guilty at trial. The DNA order is so commonplace that it sometimes is signed by a judge almost as an afterthought.
It was just such a boilerplate order that Assistant District Attorney Michelle Frei submitted to Judge Howard F. Riley Jr. on March 6, 2007, in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Alex Villa, CR-4633-06.
Villa was pleading guilty to two counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. The case against him was remarkable if only because of its ordinariness: Villa had twice sold crack cocaine in April 2006 from his apartment in the 200 block of West Chestnut Street in West Chester to an undercover police officer working with the Chester County Municipal Drug Task Force.
Because the weight of the drugs in one of those sales exceeded a certain measure, the case against him was classified a felony — even though the crack was only worth $100. Villa, an illegal immigrant with an eighth-grade education, who could not speak or write English, was sentenced to two to four years in state prison; afterward, he would likely have been deported.
The DNA samples were taken by the staff at Chester County Prison and submitted to the state police lab.
In mid-May, 2007, the state police lab prepared lab report L03-02849-2 and forward it to Deshullo, who was still investigating the rape case from May 2003. What the state police report showed, Deshullo states in an arrest affidavit, was that the unidentified DNA profile he submitted four years earlier from the brim of the cap found in the victim’s car after the alleged rape “was found to be consistent with the DNA profile of a convicted offender from the state of Pennsylvania, to wit, Alex Villa, alias Alejandro Blaques.
Police, finally, had a suspect in the rape.
XXXXXXX
The “hit” was a major break in the case, Deshullo said, but not the only piece of evidence used to charge Villa.
“It is a start on building a case,” Deshullo said last week. “But you’ve still got to be able to show the motive and the criminal action. Just because there is DNA at a crime scene doesn’t mean you committed a crime.”
Police were able to obtain other physical evidence, including a photograph of Villa wearing the cap found in the car.
Deshullo and Detective Scott Whiteside then traveled to the prison at Camp Hill on June 22, 2007, where, using a court interpreter, they interviewed Villa.
In his arrest warrant, Deshullo said Villa acknowledged he had jumped into the woman’s car after drinking beer and wandering around West Chester.
“I asked her if she wanted to have sex,” police said Villa told them during the interview. “She said no and started hitting me.” I may have hit her as I was trying to get her to stop hitting me."
At some point when the victim tried to escape, Villa said he was able to drag her back into the car and take the wheel. “I made her give me oral sex,” Villa continued. He said the victim kept yelling and hitting him the entire time they drove around. At some point, he said, when he stopped to have sex with her, she ran from the car and flagged a motorists down, so he drove away.
On July 12, 2007, Deshullo asked for a warrant for Villa’s arrest.
“It’s a great database,” Deshullo, a veteran West Chester police officer, said of the DNA lab. “But when you get a hit that doesn’t end things. That just allows you to start.”
WEST CHESTER -- The crime is a woman’s worst nightmare: to be abducted by a stranger at night while driving home alone and then to be repeatedly sexually assaulted.
But the way police began solving the case was law enforcement’s modern dream come true: to get a “hit” on a convicted felon’s DNA sample in the state police database.
It took more than four years to the day of the crime, but in July 2007, police arrested drug dealer and part-time landscape laborer Alex Villa and charged him with rape, kidnapping and other offenses.
Villa, 26, who lived in West Chester before his conviction on drug charges and is now an inmate at the State Correctional Institution in Camp Hill, had been scheduled to go on trial in front of Judge Anthony Sarcione today. His case was continued until September, when his attorney said she expects the case to come to a conclusion.
“I’m not sure how it is going to be resolved, but it is going to be resolved (next month),” said West Chester criminal defense attorney Amparito Arriaga.
Although not predicting the outcome of the case, the lead prosecutor said in comments before the case was continued (because of medical issues that the alleged victim is dealing with) that he felt confident as well that it would be resolved.
“This is the first time I’ve had a case with a DNA hit,” said Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kelly. “I was very happy to see technology work in this case.”
The sequence of events began around midnight on May 31, 2003.
According to court documents, West Chester police say the victim — a 21-year-old school teacher, who lived in West Goshen at the time — was driving home, when she stopped at a red light at High and Market streets, in front of the Chester County Courthouse.
There, a man she did not know forced his way into the car and asked her to give him a ride. She refused and tried to call 911 on her cell phone, but the man overpowered her and broke the phone, throwing it out the window.
Over the next several hours, the man forced her to drive outside West Chester, making threatening gestures that he would kill her. He repeatedly attempted to forc her to perform oral sex on him. After no success, he eventually forced her to have sexual intercourse.
The victim told police she was finally able to get away from her attacker and run from her car. Partially clothed, she flagged down a passing motorist who found her on Route 926, several miles from the site of her abduction.
The next day, police found two things — the car the victim had been driving at the time of her abduction and, inside it, a baseball cap the woman said her attacker had been carrying with him when he jumped into her car.
As part of their investigation, the investigators, led by Sgt. Louis Deshullo of the West Chester police, cut an area on the brim of the hat and sent it to the Pennsylvania State Police’s Bureau of Forensic Services DNA Laboratory in Greensburg, where it was assigned to lab number L03-02489-1.
Four years went by.
XXXXXXXXX
In January 2005, law enforcement authorities began collecting DNA samples from each person convicted of a felony in the state. Prior to that, only sex offenders were required to give up DNA samples.
According to the county’s deputy director of Adult Probation, Jody Carlini, in Chester County, DNA samples are taken either by probation officers or corrections officers at Chester County Prison or, in some cases, staff of the state Department of Corrections.
The samples used to be secured by drawing blood from the offender, but that process caused concern about blood-born diseases, and the probation department routinely called in staff from the county health department to get the samples.
State police now supply DNA sample kits that are easy to handle. The kits contain a fingerprint card, an identification form for the offender’s name, Social Security number and other personal data, as well as two sealed buccal, cheek, swabs.
The offender is directed to open the swab — which looks similar to a home pregnancy tester — and put it inside his or her mouth, next to the cheek. The offender then drags the swab against the soft inside of his or her mouth eight times on one side, then with another swab eight times on the other side.
The swabs are then sealed in a polyethylene evidence bag and sent with all accompanying information to the Greensburg DNA lab. If the felony offender refuses to do the test, those taking he sample are authorized to use force to retrieve it, Carlini said.
Don Blosser, the director of scientific services at the state police DNA lab, said last week that since police began collecting DNA samples in 1996, there have been thousands and thousands submitted for storage and recording. Every month, more come in; every month, there are more tests to see whether the samples match any DNA taken from a crime scene throughout the United States. The system by which all the samples are collected and compared is called CODIS — the Combined DNA Index System, and it is run by the FBI.
The process of ordering DNA samples has become a staple of any formal sentencing in Common Pleas Court, either in the case of someone who has pleaded guilty to a felony or who has been found guilty at trial. The DNA order is so commonplace that it sometimes is signed by a judge almost as an afterthought.
It was just such a boilerplate order that Assistant District Attorney Michelle Frei submitted to Judge Howard F. Riley Jr. on March 6, 2007, in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Alex Villa, CR-4633-06.
Villa was pleading guilty to two counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. The case against him was remarkable if only because of its ordinariness: Villa had twice sold crack cocaine in April 2006 from his apartment in the 200 block of West Chestnut Street in West Chester to an undercover police officer working with the Chester County Municipal Drug Task Force.
Because the weight of the drugs in one of those sales exceeded a certain measure, the case against him was classified a felony — even though the crack was only worth $100. Villa, an illegal immigrant with an eighth-grade education, who could not speak or write English, was sentenced to two to four years in state prison; afterward, he would likely have been deported.
The DNA samples were taken by the staff at Chester County Prison and submitted to the state police lab.
In mid-May, 2007, the state police lab prepared lab report L03-02849-2 and forward it to Deshullo, who was still investigating the rape case from May 2003. What the state police report showed, Deshullo states in an arrest affidavit, was that the unidentified DNA profile he submitted four years earlier from the brim of the cap found in the victim’s car after the alleged rape “was found to be consistent with the DNA profile of a convicted offender from the state of Pennsylvania, to wit, Alex Villa, alias Alejandro Blaques.
Police, finally, had a suspect in the rape.
XXXXXXX
The “hit” was a major break in the case, Deshullo said, but not the only piece of evidence used to charge Villa.
“It is a start on building a case,” Deshullo said last week. “But you’ve still got to be able to show the motive and the criminal action. Just because there is DNA at a crime scene doesn’t mean you committed a crime.”
Police were able to obtain other physical evidence, including a photograph of Villa wearing the cap found in the car.
Deshullo and Detective Scott Whiteside then traveled to the prison at Camp Hill on June 22, 2007, where, using a court interpreter, they interviewed Villa.
In his arrest warrant, Deshullo said Villa acknowledged he had jumped into the woman’s car after drinking beer and wandering around West Chester.
“I asked her if she wanted to have sex,” police said Villa told them during the interview. “She said no and started hitting me.” I may have hit her as I was trying to get her to stop hitting me."
At some point when the victim tried to escape, Villa said he was able to drag her back into the car and take the wheel. “I made her give me oral sex,” Villa continued. He said the victim kept yelling and hitting him the entire time they drove around. At some point, he said, when he stopped to have sex with her, she ran from the car and flagged a motorists down, so he drove away.
On July 12, 2007, Deshullo asked for a warrant for Villa’s arrest.
“It’s a great database,” Deshullo, a veteran West Chester police officer, said of the DNA lab. “But when you get a hit that doesn’t end things. That just allows you to start.”
"Crossing" A Bad Bridge
This column originally appeared on Aug. 3, 2008
It was old, corrupt Noah Cross who laid down the law (in the film “Chinatown”) on how detestable things can grow more accepted over time when he told private investigator Jake Gittes, “ 'Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
But I don’t think that any amount of time is going to help the new bridge over the Brandywine Creek on South Creek Road in Cossart.
The new bridge was erected — and when I say erected I mean it in the most bureaucratic, industrial sense of the word imaginable — to replace the old Pylesville Twin Bridge. The Pylesville span was nothing remarkable, and it was certainly crumbling. If there ever was a bridge in Pennsylvania that deserved the classification “structurally unsound,” the Pylesville bridge would certainly be the Barack Obama of bridges: a leading candidate.
But it had its own certain charm, probably because it had, as Cross put it, lasted long enough. It was built in 1925, when guys with first names like Harris and Coulson were county commissioners. It had none of the rural grandeur of the nearby Smithsbridge Covered Bridge, but from a distance it fit in with the surrounding scenery, and it looked at home rising over the Brandywine. I’m guessing it was named after Howard Pyle, the artist who introduced his student N.C. Wyeth to the Chadds Ford area.
I don’t know if the new bridge has a name. It shouldn’t have a proper name. It is too ugly to deserve a name, and certainly not one given in memory of a famed American illustrator. It should be referred to solely as “County Bridge No. 83,” like No. 6 in “The Prisoner.”
When I say ugly, I do not mean ugly like some architect had an idea for a new span that just didn’t pan out, an idea borne of an overdose of chicken tikka and brussels sprouts. I mean ugly like being devoid of any thought of beauty whatsoever, there only to serve the function of keeping the cars passing over it from plunging over the edge of the road into the tranquil waters of the Brandywine below.
The bridge looks for all the world like the cement barriers dividing the lanes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
That is a tough inspiration to live up to, but the bridge does have one thing going for it: It makes a lovely tabula rasa for graffiti. Which is nice, because when tourists come to Chadds Ford to explore the Wyeth milieu, the one thing we want to make sure they see enough of is spray paint on concrete. “Oh look, Martha, it’s like ‘Evening at Kuerners!’ With gang tags!”
I am hoping that this is all just temporary, and that the real new bridge will be built now that Gov. Rendell has decided to spend billions of dollars for bridge replacement and let the commuters on Route 202 rot in hell, or the weekday rush-hour traffic jam, whichever is worse. The real new bridge, I’m hoping, will be designed by a true architect and will make all the surviving Wyeths weep with pleasure.
And it will be a pleasure once again to drive over the Brandywine on South Creek Road, making your way to SIW Vegetables (“Open 7 Days 10-6; Saving the world one ear at a time”), where they still sell the county’s best sweet corn and let you sign an IOU for your produce if you accidentally left your wallet at home.
It was old, corrupt Noah Cross who laid down the law (in the film “Chinatown”) on how detestable things can grow more accepted over time when he told private investigator Jake Gittes, “ 'Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
But I don’t think that any amount of time is going to help the new bridge over the Brandywine Creek on South Creek Road in Cossart.
The new bridge was erected — and when I say erected I mean it in the most bureaucratic, industrial sense of the word imaginable — to replace the old Pylesville Twin Bridge. The Pylesville span was nothing remarkable, and it was certainly crumbling. If there ever was a bridge in Pennsylvania that deserved the classification “structurally unsound,” the Pylesville bridge would certainly be the Barack Obama of bridges: a leading candidate.
But it had its own certain charm, probably because it had, as Cross put it, lasted long enough. It was built in 1925, when guys with first names like Harris and Coulson were county commissioners. It had none of the rural grandeur of the nearby Smithsbridge Covered Bridge, but from a distance it fit in with the surrounding scenery, and it looked at home rising over the Brandywine. I’m guessing it was named after Howard Pyle, the artist who introduced his student N.C. Wyeth to the Chadds Ford area.
I don’t know if the new bridge has a name. It shouldn’t have a proper name. It is too ugly to deserve a name, and certainly not one given in memory of a famed American illustrator. It should be referred to solely as “County Bridge No. 83,” like No. 6 in “The Prisoner.”
When I say ugly, I do not mean ugly like some architect had an idea for a new span that just didn’t pan out, an idea borne of an overdose of chicken tikka and brussels sprouts. I mean ugly like being devoid of any thought of beauty whatsoever, there only to serve the function of keeping the cars passing over it from plunging over the edge of the road into the tranquil waters of the Brandywine below.
The bridge looks for all the world like the cement barriers dividing the lanes on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
That is a tough inspiration to live up to, but the bridge does have one thing going for it: It makes a lovely tabula rasa for graffiti. Which is nice, because when tourists come to Chadds Ford to explore the Wyeth milieu, the one thing we want to make sure they see enough of is spray paint on concrete. “Oh look, Martha, it’s like ‘Evening at Kuerners!’ With gang tags!”
I am hoping that this is all just temporary, and that the real new bridge will be built now that Gov. Rendell has decided to spend billions of dollars for bridge replacement and let the commuters on Route 202 rot in hell, or the weekday rush-hour traffic jam, whichever is worse. The real new bridge, I’m hoping, will be designed by a true architect and will make all the surviving Wyeths weep with pleasure.
And it will be a pleasure once again to drive over the Brandywine on South Creek Road, making your way to SIW Vegetables (“Open 7 Days 10-6; Saving the world one ear at a time”), where they still sell the county’s best sweet corn and let you sign an IOU for your produce if you accidentally left your wallet at home.
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