JACK TRAWICK..SERIAL KILLER .. ..THE ORIGINAL WEBSITE HAS NOW BEEN CLOSED BUT I THINK IT IS GOOD TO KNOW THAT THIS MAN EXISTS AND CAN STILL BE VERY DANGEROUS IN SPITE OF BEING LOCKED UP! IN FACT I THINK I WOULD NOT SUPPORT ABOLISHMENT OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN HIS OR SIMILAR CASES. THE "LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE" SENTENCE IS TOO OFTEN POLITICALLY ABUSED AND MANIPULATED. Insight Birmingham Post-Herald January 11, 2003 From Death Row, An Alabama Serial Killer Uses A New Jersey Man And The Web To Torment The Families Of His Victims. Is Jack Trawick Still A ... Menace To Society? By TAYLOR BRIGHT Birmingham Post-Herald Jack Trawick has been locked up on death row in Holman Prison in south Alabama for eight years. Yet through the Internet, the man who has been convicted of killing two Alabama women and who says he has killed more is tormenting his victims' families and, with a helper, preaching his murderous gospel to the world. A Web site devoted to Trawick has left families enraged, authorities seething and the site's caretaker smug under the free speech protections of the FirstAmendment. "I'm going to turn him into an international superstar now. I'll make sure of that," wrote the maker of the site, Neil O'Connor, 23, of Mount Laurel, N.J. to a critic of the site. "Try and stop me; I look forward to it." Alabama prison authorities vow they will prevent Trawick from sending any more of his disturbing writings to O'Connor. But they and everyone else appear powerless to shut down the Web site. Unlike many sites set up for death row inmates, which often are used for claims of innocence or denouncing the death penalty, the Trawick site allows him to revel in his killings. "It's disgusting," said Laura Petro, the prosecutor who sent Trawick to death row. "Just sickening." On the site, Trawick has an imaginary conversation with his last victim, Stephanie Gach, a college student whom he abducted from Eastwood Mall and killed in 1992: "Was it really worth it? It was for me (a smiley face is included). I would do the whole thing again knowing death row was waiting for me. Watching you die was (is) worth it all." On the second page of the Web site, Trawick writes, "Trawick philosophy 101: Never rape a woman without killing her. Never kill a woman without raping her. Eventually a raped female will tell someone." Under the heading, "Jack Gives a Female Fan Rape/Murder Advice," Trawick says, "Murder is deliciously, deliciously delightful." Trawick tells Britney Spears, "no security is absolute," and then asks her to write him "ASAP." "Please send some lingerie photos," he asks. On one link, he says he saw the movie "Enough" with Jennifer Lopez, who plays an abused wife in the movie who gets revenge on her ex-husband. Trawick says he would like to tie her up and "do the nasty" with her. He tells O'Connor, "You may enjoy seeing her slapped around." Trawick also describes, in detail, killing his victims. Trawick was sentenced to die in 1994 for Gach's killing and was convicted of killing Frances Aileen Pruitt in eastern Birmingham in 1995. He also made a credible confession in the 1972 killing of Betty Jo Richards, 17, of Quinton, but he was not prosecuted because he already had been sentenced to die. O'Connor, who said he is fascinated with serial killers, said he began writing Trawick in November 2001. O'Connor took the letters he received from Trawick and put them on the Internet in September. Three months and 12,000 hits to the site later, O'Connor continues to write Trawick and post the letters. Most of what is on the site cannot be printed in the newspaper. "It's horrid," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections. O'Connor is unapologetic for the site. "I like Jack. I think Jack is a literary genius," O'Connor said in a telephone interview from his home in Mount Laurel, a small suburb near Philadelphia. "I think he is a Marquis de Sade of the 21st Century." O'Connor said he is not responsible for what Trawick writes or whether it affects someone else. "If someone sick reads the Web site and goes out and acts on something they read, it's their fault," he said. "They would have done it one way or the other. It's not up to me to hide what Jack has to say to those people." The site has incensed Mary Kate Gach, the mother of Stephanie Gach. "I don't want this monster to have publicity anyhow or anywhere until the day he is executed," Gach said. Gach said she wouldn't look at the Web site. "He can't hurt her anymore; he can't hurt me anymore," Gach said. Gach's lawyer was more direct about the Web site. "He's riding a rocket to hell," said David Cromwell Johnson. "If that's where he wants to go, more power to him." Johnson died from natural causes last week. Petro said the site is "criminal or sure as hell ought to be criminal." But there appears to be little the authorities can do about the site. Don Pember, an expert on the First Amendment, said there is little people can do to restrict what is on the Internet. Pember, author of "Mass Media Law" (William C. Brown Publishers), which includes chapters on the First Amendment and obscenity, said people can post "pretty much anything" on the Web. More than likely, Pember said, the site, even though it details rape and murder, would not be considered obscene, according to the law. Pember said the Internet has the same freedoms as printed matter. The difference, he said, is newspapers and book publishers exercise more standards on themselves than most Internet operators. "It's not that they couldn't publish these things, it's that they wouldn't publish these things," Pember said. Arizona legislators made it illegal for inmates to write to anyone who publishes their letters on the Internet, but the American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the law as an infringement of free speech. John Hagerty, spokesman for the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, said while the O'Connor's site may be unappealing, there would be no reason for them to act, especially since the Web site host is in Florida. Florida officials said they had looked at the site and decided there was nothing illegal about it. "We do not see a criminal violation in that Web site," said Bob Breeden, a special agent supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "As distasteful as it is, it's protected under the First Amendment." But Hagerty said the division would advise Spears' management and Jennifer Lopez's management of the threats being made to them by Trawick. O'Connor said he runs the site because he has had a fascination with serial killers since he was a boy. He said the site also helps alleviate sometimes violent thoughts that go through his head that come with his obsessive-compulsive disorder. "I've always been an animal lover," O'Connor said in the telephone interview. "I have four very cute cats. The cutest of the cats a lot of times I just think about stomping on it until her eyes pop out of her head. It (the Web site) alleviates it a bit." Officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections said they would prevent Trawick from writing any more graphic letters to O'Connor, who runs the site from his home. Trawick has agreed not to send O'Connor any more of his graphic letters after he was called into a meeting with Holman Warden Grantt Culliver, said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections. Corbett said the correspondence could be prohibited if it disclosed a breach in security or did not fall in line with Trawick's "rehabilitation goals." "We are going to put a stop to it somehow, some way because it's nothing but trash," Corbett said. Police Probe Trawick Claims Of More Victims By TAYLOR BRIGHT BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD The Birmingham Police Department plans to interview Jack Trawick, already convicted of killing two Birmingham women, about new claims he has made that he killed several other women. The claims were made on a Web site run by New Jersey resident Neil O'Connor. The site is filled with writings sent to O'Connor by Trawick from death row in Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama. "We'll definitely look into that. We'll go down to the prison," said Sgt. Scott Praytor in the Birmingham police homicide department. "We're going to follow up on it and see if we can clear some homicides." Trawick was convicted in 1994 of killing Stephanie Gach, 21, and in 1995 of killing Aileen Pruitt, 27. Both were from Birmingham. He also confessed to the 1972 killing of Betty Jo Richards of Quinton, located just over the Jefferson County line in Walker County. On the Web site, Trawick said he had killed Dr. Virginia Bryant, Michelle Thomas and Susan Hill. He also claims to have killed another woman by the name of Kim and a nameless mother and daughter. The Birmingham Post-Herald tried to find any record of the women through its archives, Internet searches and talks with law enforcement officials, but could find no information about them. Laura Petro, the Jefferson County deputy district attorney who prosecuted Trawick, said Trawick's new confessions are "complete and utter garbage. He always wants to make Jack Trawick bigger and better." Petro said Trawick made similar claims while he was awaiting trial for Gach's murder, but, outside of the Richards case, authorities found nothing to substantiate his claims. "He does a lot of ranting and raving," Coppage said. Praytor said the only way to find out if Trawick is telling the truth is to try and match details from his stories with what the police know about the cases. "Sometimes they (suspects) try and confess crimes they did not commit," Praytor said. Petro said Trawick's confession in the Richards case was credible enough that she believes he committed the murder, even though he was never tried in the case. On the two murders for which he was convicted, Trawick was given the death penalty and a sentence of life without parole. In his new claims, Trawick provides the most detailed description in his depiction of the murder of Bryant, who Trawick said was on Highland Avenue in Birmingham when he abducted, raped and murdered her. He is vague about the rape and murder of the mother and daughter, and the only detail given about Michelle Thomas is that she was pregnant when he murdered her. Trawick has told O'Connor he has killed as many as 14 people, but has not given names or details of all of those killings. . |
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| Jack Trawick * (Alabama) Trawick was sentenced to death for killing Stephanie Alexis Gach in 1992. The 21-year-old community college student was kidnapped, driven to a remote spot, choked, hit on the head with a ball peen hammer and stabbed. Trawick's history of violence against women dated back to age 10, when he forced a neighbor girl to take off her clothes. Before he received the death penalty for Gach's murder, he had already killed four other women. He blamed the criminal justice system, which had three times released him from prison, for failing to give him the help that could have prevented him from becoming a serial killer. ************************* Published on March 22, 1994, Birmingham News (AL) LAWYER TELLS OF TRAWICK'S "SEVERE' ILLNESS Lawyer Bill DelGrosso etched a 20-year picture of chronic mental illness to jurors of accused serial killer Jack Harrison Trawick today. His client, who had repeatedly sought castration to curb his hostility, was such a danger that his parole officer recommended he stay in prison in 1990 because he hadn't been in a prison program for sexual offenders, DelGrosso said. "He was paroled anyway,'' DelGrosso said this morning in opening statements in Jefferson County *************** Published on March 23, 1994, Birmingham News (AL) TAPED CONFESSION BY TRAWICK VIVIDLY DETAILS GACH KILLING The prosecution rested this morning in the trial of accused serial killer Jack Trawick, and the defense made the unusual move of calling a state psychologist to defend him. Kathleen Ronan of Taylor Harper Secure Medical Facility testified today that Trawick had been diagnosed in 1970 as a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal impulses. Defense lawyer Bill DelGrosso introduced medical records from two Birmingham psychiatrists from Trawick's treatment in the 1970s. |
| 04/08/03. I haven't come up with anything new on Jack Trawick in a while. However this week I did hear from my friend George Sibley that Jack is a high powered car freak like himself. Now I have read that one can deduce how a man will treat his woman by the way he treats his cars. I wonder ..is Mr Trawick the exception that proves the rule? Annez / Sweden |
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| 1/16/01.. On Wed.14th Jan 04 I was unable to access my website on Geocities. It seemed there was a tremendous amount of traffic to the site and, on investigating, I discovered that the guy who had originally had up a site for Jack Trawick, Neil O' Connor ( see article to the left of this insert ) was back in business! Now after I had made this webpage I received an e-mail from Mr O'Connor castigating me in very vulgar terms for suggesting that his "friend" be executed. I placed that e-mail on this page and this is the reply I received.. Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 22:10:30 EDT Subject: Hey Vladd... To: vladd77@yahoo.com Please remove my disgusting, uncalled for comments from your website or post my second letter along with it. Once again - I apologize. I'm bi-polar and was writing letters like a maniac this morning. When I get like that, sometimes I say things that I really don't mean and that's what happened today. I don't wish harm to you, your mother, or anyone else for that matter. I'm really having a hard time with life right now and I'm trying to get through this. The Trawick website, along with the articles make me feel like shit. I made a big mistake with the whole thing and I regret it. I'm trying to make amends now and that's why I'm spending my weekends voulenteering at a rape crisis center. My interest in serial crime is almost clinical and one day I'll have my degree in forensic psychology and people will not question why I'm interviewing serial offenders. I don't believe in the death penalty, but I can understand why everyone thinks it's called for in Trawick's case. Now, can we please resolve this? By the way, I notice that you're in Alabama. I am not confident in Alabama law enforcement to do anything to try and solve Trawick's other crimes - and there are other crimes. Alabama law enforcement is notoriously corrupt and when a woman gets murdered, someone goes away for it. Someone. There could be as many as 16 someones out there that Trawick wants to confess to, but is being completely ignored. Innocent men are probably sitting in prison for his crimes. When he killed Betty Jo Richards in 1973 her black boyfriend was tried for the murder and acquitted. When he was arrested in '92, Steve Pruitt was sitting in county jail, indicted for his wife's murder that Trawick committed. Now it's very probable that there are more "unknown" victims out there Alabama law enforcement does not want to admit to. I plan on taking the hundreds of letters that I have from Trawick and having my lawyer forward them to the BSU so that his confessions (he made many more than I posted) can be reviewed by an expert from the FBI. I didn't take the website down because of my probation. I took it down because of Taylor Bright's articles which showed me that the website was truly hurting people. In fact, it's not even a condition of my probation. As you read, the website was not criminal. However, I do not now and do not anytime soon plan on having any association with known criminals. Take care and please help me out here. I really don't want what I said to you being made public. Remember, it was a mistake. - Neil - CNN News Article.. Now I have been out on the Net and see that Mr O'Connor has an Ez Board and a community and he is, as I said, back in business. From his pic ( above) he looks to be a cool guy..but he is causing Stephanie Gach's Mom great pain and I wish he would stop trying to get famous on other folks' misery!! Remembering always.." What goes around, comes around!! " Cheers..AnnEz / Sweden 1/ 16/04 AND THE GOOD NEWS IS..( I found this today ( 1/17/04) while browsing.. Thursday, January 16, 2003 Web site devoted to death row inmate shut down By Taylor Bright / Scripps Howard News Service BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A Web site that featured the gruesome writings of an Alabama death row inmate has been shut down. Neil O'Connor, who ran the Web site that posted the writings of double murderer and self-proclaimed serial killer Jack Trawick, took the Web site down over the weekend, attaching a statement. "I was never out to harm the families of Trawick's victims or anyone else," O'Connor wrote. "I realize that some of them think that I was and for that reason, also, I have decided to end (the site)." "Well, good -- good," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections. "That's good news." The decision to shut the Web site down was contrary to several things O'Connor had said to critics of the site. As recently as two weeks ago, O'Connor said he would continue to post Trawick's writings. "There's more to Jack than just murder and rape and hopefully in the future I'll be able to present a more well-rounded view of Trawick to the world," O'Connor wrote in a Dec. 30 e-mail. Efforts to reach O'Connor were unsuccessful. In his note on the Web site, O'Connor said the site helped carry out its chief purpose, to attract attention to claims Trawick had killed more women than he had been convicted of killing. Trawick told O'Connor that he had killed 14 women. He was convicted of killing two women, and prosecutors say they believed his confession of killing a third. But he was never tried for that crime because he'd already been sentenced to death, prosecutors said. "I had always hoped Trawick's crimes would be investigated fully. I feel that I've accomplished that ... almost," O'Connor's message said. He did not explain what he meant by "almost" in the note. The Birmingham Police Department said they would question Trawick about the claims he made on the Web site. The site, filled with Trawick's correspondence to O'Connor, was exceptionally graphic and filled with talk of murder and rape. Trawick was sentenced to death for the killing of Stephanie Gach in 1994. He also was convicted of killing Aileen Pruitt in 1995. "Yes, it was horribly graphic and sexually violent, but that's what drew people in," O'Connor wrote. "If (the site) wasn't what it was, no one would have taken notice." Shelly Linderman, who works with Victims Against Crime and Leniency, a victim's advocacy group in Montgomery, said she was happy with O'Connor's decision to close the site. "I'm just glad it's gone," Linderman said. "It was like murdering the victims again." In Passing.. Now because this is my webpage I can write what I feel about this case and the problems it addresses. I DO, after all, stand against INJUSTICE! Had the authorities listened to the advice of that parole officer in 1990..Stephanie Gach would probably be alive today! I can't honestly say that I hate Jack Trawick..but I DO hate what he did! I don't know his whole story..but I know there is so much we will never know as to why he thought and thinks the way he does. I have other e-mails from Neil and do have an idea what he is getting at..but he himself has problems that need to be dealt with. Both of these guys are themselves victims. Mentally ill people are out on the streets in their thousands and we, society, choose to ignore this fact and hope it will go away! The gloomy fact is..it won't..until we eventually wake up and thousands more lives have been lost. Mentally ill people are SICK and need to be locked up, treated and cared for. Anyone is at risk!! Some are rehabilitatable but most are not! In Peace..AnnEz 1/19/04.. Today I received some feedback regarding what I have written here. I would like to point out that I am speaking about potentially dangerous persons and not about eg women who are suffering from depression brought about by the menopause or different life crises that we all are under threat of. To view the feedback see.. - FORUM.. |
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| 09/03/2001 - Updated 06:25 PM ET OPINION..DeWayne Wickham Castration often fails to halt offenders.. Sometimes a good idea is ill-conceived. When I first heard that some states were mandating castration for repeat sex offenders, I thought it was a good idea. If these predators can't control themselves, why not have a doctor do it for them? There was a time when castration was a brutal act of physical mutilation. But now it can be done with a series of injections, or by simply removing the testicles and leaving the rest of the male plumbing intact. Given the damage rapists and other sexual predators do to their victims, that sounded harmless enough to me. But when I read in an Orlando newspaper last month that a Florida judge ordered a first-time rapist to undergo chemical castration after he completes a 20-year sentence, I began to question the wisdom of how this issue is being handled. In the Florida case, the judge, fearing that the man would still be a threat after his imprisonment, ruled he'd have to take regular injections to reduce his sex drive during a 10-year probation period. But what happens after those 10 years, or if the offender stops taking the treatment? In another case, Joseph Frank Smith, a sex offender who voluntarily underwent chemical castration nearly 2 decades ago, pleaded guilty in 1998 to another sexual assault, this time on a 5-year-old Virginia girl. At the time, his lawyer said he thought Smith was no longer taking the chemical treatments. Prisoners opt for procedure Like Smith, who served no time for the earlier offense, other sex predators are opting for castration to avoid or lessen a prison sentence. Last year, a 25-year-old pedophile avoided prison time for sexual offenses on two young girls after a different Florida judge ordered him to take chemical castration treatments for life. And in California, the first state to mandate castration for some sex offenders, at least 15 inmates have asked to undergo castration in the hope that it would increase their chances of being set free. There's something wrong with this picture. While lawmakers in a growing number of states are enacting legislation to mandate castration for sex offenders, a surprising number of sexual predators are clamoring to undergo this procedure. The politicians are driven, no doubt, by the public's gnawing fear of crime, even as crime rates nationally are declining. But what is it that pushes sexual predators to want to give up their virility? I suspect it's that they understand better than the rest of us that rape and most other sexual offenses have little to due with sex — and more to do with physical domination. Castration isn't likely to stop a sex offender from preying on people. It will only change the way these predators go about their crimes. As Florida prosecutor Jerry Burford told the St. Petersburg Times: "I get a lot of people who are impotent that still commit sexual battery. It's not their gonads that cause them to commit sexual battery. It's their heads." A better alternative Instead of dumping such sexual predators into prison for long periods of time or forcing them to undergo chemical castration, judges should commit them to high-security mental facilities where they can get psychiatric help in combination with drugs to reduce their sex drives. While chemical castration can turn off a predator's physical urges for a time, psychological counseling is needed to suppress the mental addiction that drives their deviant behavior. But don't expect this to happen. For most politicians, the financial cost of such a fix is too great and the political return is too small. Most people care little about what happens to criminals once they are locked away. While taking sexual predators off the streets is an obsession of many folks, few people care about the criminals' need for psychiatric therapy. Without such help, sexual predators are doomed to repeat their crimes. Lawmakers who think that castration alone will change this outcome are fooling themselves — and the people who put them in office. |
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