Ramblings' Journal

Chainsawing killer gets into US; Homeland security at work

Goggle-eyed 22 year-old Gregory Allan Despres showed up at the border crossing at Calais, ME on April 25 trying to enter the US. Despres was wearing a bulletproof vest and had a virtual arsenal of bladed weapons on him, including a homemade sword, knives, a hatchet and a chainsaw with blood on it. Oh, and his clothes were covered in blood, too.

What did the authorities at the border do? They confiscated his arsenal and let him go.

The next day, RCMP Mounties found the bodies of 74 year-old Frederick Fulton and his wife, 70 year-old Veronica Decarie in the mining town of Minto, NB. They had been hacked and stabbed to death, and just happened to live next door to Despres.

Police found the body of Mr. Fulton, a country singer, on the kitchen floor, just a few feet from his head, which had been stuffed in a pillow case and shoved under the breakfast table.

According to a U.S Attorney's complaint, filed by the U.S. Attorney's office as part of the extradition case and obtained by the Citizen, after he was stopped at the border Canadian and American authorities consented to his release into the United States.

At the time he crossed the border he was free on bail. That morning -- April 25 -- he was to have been sentenced for threatening to kill his neighbour's son-in-law. Mr. Fulton and Ms. Decarie had just been slain.

Eddie Young, a 38-year-old fish-plant worker, sat next to Mr. Despres in the customs office at Calais, Maine, while the agents processed them. Mr. Young was on his way to catch a flight to Mexico with friends, but was detained when the officers noticed on his file a 20-year-old drug conviction in Ottawa.

"When he come in, they opened his bag up and they took out," Mr. Young said in an interview. "It looked like large bayonets to me, but they could have been a little bit longer for swords, and then two pairs of brass knuckles fastened to his bag, a chainsaw and what looked like a flak jacket."

Despres was picked up two days later, walking along a road in Framingham, MA.

When asked about detaining him when he showed up at the border in the first place, a US Customs spokesperson showed just how little regard the Feds have for border security.

"Nobody asked us to detain him," said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up. We're governed by laws and regulations, and he did not violate any regulations," Mr. Anthony told the Associated Press.

None of Mr. Despres' weapons are prohibited by law in the United States. The customs spokesman conceded it "sounds stupid" that a man carrying a bloody chainsaw couldn't be detained. "Our people don't have a crime lab up there. They can't look at a chainsaw and decide if it's blood or rust or red paint," he said.

No, they can't. But if TSA can detain 80 year-old grandparents and turn planes away, they can certainly detain a wild-eyed chainsaw-wielding guy who shows up at the border in bloody clothes, a flak jacket and a veritible arsenal in his bag for a few hours until they can figure out what he's doing.

And to think: these are your tax dollars at work.

Posted by mhking at June 8, 2005 08:15 PM