Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 00:31:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: getting it right

> Keith was not "working on a story."  He was proofing and editing
> either a trial transcript or a deposition transcript, concerning an
> individual who had murdered one or more members of his family and is
> now serving a long jail term.

Yes, a set of related depositions.  I'm 99% sure it's not directly
about him, but about who gets the custody of his surviving children,
now that he's serving a long prison term for beating one of them,
age 3, to death.

One thing about these depositions is they seldom directly say what the
case is about.  They are small pieces of a larger whole, most of which
I never see.

It's a strange extended family.  Everyone in it has really weird
names.  And the relationships would befuddle the most devoted soap
opera fans.  The dead child wasn't his wife's child, but that of
another woman, who, according to his wife, he told her drugged him and
had sex with him against his will.  That was his story after her tax
refund was withheld for unpaid child support; until then, he had told
her it was an unrelated child that he was occasionally baby-sitting as
a favor.

The children are currently in the custody of one of the grandparents.
One of the children reported the murder, and the father isn't happy
about that.  Of course it's possible that that child is lying, and he
is innocent.  Who knows?  But he did have a lengthy record of petty
crimes, and apparently never worked, but let his wife support him and
care for his children while he spent all his time getting other women
pregnant, bouncing checks, and possibly dealing drugs.

But the wife doesn't seem to be much of a paragon, either.  She failed
to notice that the toddler was dead, but strapped the child into the
car seat as usual.  When the other child said something about the
fatal beating, she checked for heartbeat and breathing, and, finding
neither, took the dead child to a hospital -- and then promptly left,
going about her normal daily business.

Today I had to find out the correct spelling of the (oddly named, of
course) town in which another of the (oddly named) grandparents lived.
It's fortunate that he had an unusual name.  There seems to be only
one person with that name on the planet.  If he was named "John
Smith," Google would be useless.

> ... and it was her name that Keith was trying to establish the
> correct spelling of.

The dead child's name, yes.  Her first name.

> I believe Keith went with the news-reported spelling; I would have.

Yes.  It was also spelled with a hyphen in a newspaper obituary I
found online.  Not that I put too much credence in that, since that
obituary misspelled the first name one of her half-sisters, and the
last name of one of her half-brothers.

> We often Google names.

And other things.  As I mentioned, I Googled one name today, not to
find the spelling of the name, but of the town.  Also, I noticed that
two opposing lawyers whose offices were miles apart supposedly had
the same phone number.  One of the phone numbers was obviously wrong.
Google showed me which one, and what the right number was.  A
medication was mentioned, and I used Google to find whether it was
a trade name or a generic name, since only the former should be
capitalized.  And I'm sure I'm forgetting several other uses.