www.theoxfordscientist.com


​... the less missing, and the less dead


​E LaMont Gregory MSc Oxon

In British Columbia, the rate of unsolved homicides and missing Native Canadian females is four times
the rate of non-Native British Colombian women.

Native Canadians have been urging British Columbian as well as federal Canadian officials to conduct an inquiry
into the inability of local law enforcement to solve these cases, some of which drew worldwide attention due
to the involvement of several prolific serial killers operating in the area.   Prime Minister Harper and a former
Attorney General (who was the AG at the height of the serial killing spree) both object to the need for such an
 inquiry, citing that they know what the problems are and the fact that an inquiry might cost 10 million dollars.

At the heart of it, what that response suggests is that if we could only bring these poor unfortunate people
out of the - throw away people class - law enforcement (the police, prosecutors, courts, attorney generals
and prime ministers) might pay more attention to the investigation when one of them went missing
​or was murdered. ​
​
6,000 people get away with murder on average each year over the past decade in the United States,
bringing the average nationwide solution rate to below 64 percent, in Canada the solution rate 82%,
where nearly one in five murders go unsolved.  
 
The importance of this article lies in the following facts.  In 2010, the Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS) contacted the Gary, Indiana, Police Department suggesting that based upon their study, a series of murders, a cluster, in the Gary area might be the work of a serial killer(s).  

The Gary Police Department did not respond to the Scripps Howard News Service.

In addition, it has been possible to date the likely time of death (year) in which Vann's 7 victims were killed.  Vann could not have been responsible for the alarming cluster of unsolved murders identified in the Scripps 2010 study.  Although, it is well understood that many serial killers exhibit periods of dormancy between their kills.

Therefore, it can be stated that the arrest of Vann did not capture the serial killer operating in that area, but just one of the serial killers operating in that area.

Since the Scripps 2010 study of unsolved murder clusters, there have been at least 325 additional serial killings across the United States (not including Vann's recently discovered 7 victims).  

Further, as demonstrated in this article, if we include the likely number of persons who are now considered missing, who are actually unsolved murders, the number of unsolved murders increases by a little more than 15%, and the number of alarming unsolved murder clusters also increases. 

A previous contribution on this site ~ Hidden Crimes, Hidden Victims ~ includes the following statement: 

What may prove enlightening is when enough is known about the unsolved murders and unidentified remains data bases to allow for the correlation of that information with the register of missing persons.  

It can be assumed reasonably, and there is substantial evidence to support the fact that some presumed missing persons are in fact unsolved homicides, although there is insufficient information to officially categorize them as such.  http://www.theoxfordscientist.com/hidden-crimes-hidden-victims.html

A few words of caution before proceeding:  

This article was written basically for the Attorney Generals of the several states and members of various sections of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the The Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit (Behavioral Science Unit), the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, the Supplementary Homicide Report Program and  the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, among others. 

This author has made every effort to discuss this matter with each of the aforementioned individuals and agencies as well as various international agencies to which local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, by international agreements and conventions, report regularly.

If you have a family member or friend who is missing or whose murder has not been solved, this article was not written as a recipe for the immediate resolution of any specific case, but is concerned with the intelligence that should be applied to missing persons and unsolved homicide cases in general.  The individual cases cited in this article serve that purpose only, and are not intended as a criticism of any specific missing person or unsolved homicide case investigation, ongoing or cold.

It should also be noted that the use of some rather highfalutin terminology is unavoidably of necessity—concepts, such as, linkage and pattern blindness, prosecutorial bias, the null hypothesis analysis (the scientific and mathematical basis of the concept of presumed innocent in investigatory procedure) among others.

Let us take the case of a 43-year-old suspect from Gary, Indiana, Darren Vann.  Vann stands accused of killing 7 women in the Northwest Indiana and possibly Northeast Illinois area, the eastern sector of the Chicago Metroplex. 

The important issue for this discussion is the fact that six of Vann's victims, those whose bodies had been concealed in abandoned buildings had been declared missing.

The most important concept in any missing person or murder investigation is the idea that the investigation be so designed and conducted as to discover the facts, that is, to arrive at the truth.  

Those who have studied philosophy at the university level, when the subject of truth was introduced, have probably been confronted with this question; if a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, did the tree fall? 

The only correct answer is, of course, an unqualified, yes.  Remembering that the goal is to arrive at the truth, the tree fell and that fact is not dependent on any one observing it at the time that it fell.

Six of the seven victims in the Vann case were homicides that were not being investigated.

Furthermore, not one of them fit the well-accepted characteristics of missing persons who are thought to be alive.  

Missing persons are classified by the police into one of several probable cause options, i.e., accidents, wandered off/lost, runaway, unknown and foul play suspected, respectively.  The category runaway is usually reserved for those under the age of 18, and because these were all adults,  that option and those concerned with parental abductions, with or without custody are simply not the subject matter of this contribution.

In relation to six of the seven women in the Vann case, it was not reasonable to assume that they were victims of accidents, such as, being swallowed up by an avalanche on a ski trip or drowning in a boating mishap.  There is also no evidence that any of them wandered off or might be lost, as happens when a person in a confused state leaves a hospital or mental institution or becomes disoriented in the deep woods while hunting or hiking. 

Unknown, is police code for instances where they have no record on the missing person, or alternatively, insufficient background information to categorize the missing person under any of the other probable cause options.  Again, in this case that does not apply, since all of Vann's victims were known to the police. 

As we shall discover, through a rather laborious process of elimination, the only reasonable categorization for each of those declared missing in the Vann case was that of - foul play suspected, which was not assigned to any of the victims. 

None of the victims whose bodies had been dumped in abandoned buildings, for instance, had a history of disappearing for extended periods of time.  In fact, most of them not even for short-time periods without telling someone, either a family member or friend, where they were going and leaving some possibility for a family member(s) or friend(s) to contact them, even if that contact was through a third party.  

So much so, in the case of Vann's last victim, an odd message received by a friend on her cellphone from the victim's phone, led the friend to immediately call the police, which in turn, led the police to the room in the motel where her friend's body was in fact found, which then led to Vann's almost immediate arrest.

There is a lot more to it, but given the facts as they are known, it is reasonable to conclude that the scant police investigations into the disappearances of Vann's victims were blatantly inadequate.  A further knowledge of these women leads one to the inescapable conclusion that no serious investigations were undertaken in these cases because of a lack of respect for the women involved, who were poor, minorities, associated with drugs and some of them, at least occasionally, worked in the sex trade.  

Canada

​That said and, knowing the emotion-ridden nature of the subject matter we have embarked upon, in light of the recent upheaval in Ferguson and New York City, perhaps an objective and dispassionate look at missing persons and unsolved homicide cases north of our border, among Native Canadians in the Province of British Columbia, will prove valuable.  As we shall discover, most of the elements involved are more universal than one might assume or presume.

In British Columbia, the rate of unsolved homicides and missing Native Canadian females is four times the rate of non-Native British Colombian women.

Native Canadians have been urging British Columbian as well as federal Canadian officials to conduct an inquiry into the inability of local law enforcement to solve these cases, some of which drew worldwide attention due to the involvement of several prolific serial killers operating in the area.   Prime Minister Harper and a former Attorney General (who was the AG at the height of the serial killing spree) both object to the need for such an inquiry, citing that they know what the problems are and the fact that an inquiry might cost 10 million dollars.  

Dollars, which the Prime Minister suggests, would be better spent tackling issues already linked to higher rates of violence against Native Canadian women, including unemployment, poverty, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse. 

At the heart of it, what that response suggests is that if we could only bring these poor unfortunate people out of the - throw away people class - law enforcement (the police, prosecutors, courts, attorney generals and prime ministers) might pay more attention to the investigation when one of them went missing or was murdered.  

Victims, Steve Egger, who coined the concept of linkage blindness, referenced by the thought-proving term, the less dead.

On the surface, to some, the Prime Minister's remarks have merit; in reality they are old, worn-out false arguments.

Whereas 10 million dollars might go a long way towards unraveling the unsolved missing persons and homicide cases, ten million dollars would not even set up the administrative wherewithal to address the problems of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse.   In other words, Prime Minister Harper was simply, and quite irrationally, saying no to an inquiry into unsolved missing and murdered Native Canadian women.

In addition, the very idea that such an inquiry would cost some ten-million dollar is itself an invention, false.

A single reporter, Thomas Hargrove, working for the Scripps Howard News Service (SCNS) conducted a thorough search of state and federal computer files and by filing numerous state Freedom of Information Act requests with local police departments, created a database of 185,000 unsolved murders committed in the United States since 1980—an average of 3700 unsolved murders per state.

The SHNS/Hargrove database is considered to be one of the most complete accounts of homicide victims ever assembled in the United States, and it did cost the Scripps Howard News Service 10 million dollars, Canadian or American.

The Scripps/Hargrove database unearthed a number of alarming clusters of unsolved female homicides across the United States.  The Scripps/Hargrove study centers on a thorough  analysis of data from communities where law enforcement had failed to solve more than three-quarters (75%+) of female homicides of the same age murdered in similar ways.  Women represent more than 70 percent of all known multiple and serial killer murder victims. 

The search turned up more than 160 clusters in which nearly 1,300 murdered women met the criteria.  As a result, authorities in Indiana, Ohio, Arizona and Texas promised to launch new investigations into suspected serial killings after the data suggested, a more than reasonable likelihood, that there were serial killers targeting women operating in those states.  

The Vann case and the fact that the I-70 Motorway killer is still at-large (dormant, operating in a different area, or deceased), suggests the unfortunate conclusion that the promise made by the authorities in Indiana was more a reaction to the negative publicity the Hargrove/Scripps study brought about, than a sincere effort to conduct any special investigations where the clusters suggested.   And, the same can be said for the other states mentioned in the report.

Vann operated in one of those 160 clusters.

Returning to Prime Minister Harper's refusal to support an inquiry, in fairness, the Prime Minister did state that it was his belief that better cooperation between law enforcement and the Native Canadian community could help solve many of the missing and homicide cases, citing the particular reluctance of members of the Native community to come forth with information that could be valuable to law enforcement in their effort to investigate the alarming clusters of missing and unsolved homicide cases among Native Canadian women.

A clear example of the nature of the relationship between law enforcement and many poor and working class communities in Canada or the United States can be gleaned from a look at Ferguson, Missouri.  And, I am not addressing the headline grabbing, although rare, occurrence that propelled that sleepy backwater town into international notoriety, but the day-to-day interaction between law enforcement and the poor and working poor in that community.

Before Badge 609 became a household word, that same officer was involved in an incident with a 30-year-old resident over a possible violation of a city ordinance against having a broken-down automobile or truck on one's property within the city limits.  

The individual starting taping the encounter on his cellphone, the officer instructed him to stop and Badge 609 arrested him for failure to comply, took him to the city jail and booked him on a number of charges, which were all subsequently dropped when the 30-year-old engaged legal representation and started the process of charging Badge 609 with making false statements.  It seems that the state law in Missouri against making false statements to the police also applies to police officers who make false statements in official police reports.

As I looked into this case (one example of a nationwide phenomenon), what I discovered was the fact that Badge 609 was out, for all practical purposes, on a collection run, that is, enforcing just one of the many city ordinances that allow the city to raise millions of dollars a year from the poor and the working poor.  The Ferguson City Police Department issues an average of three warrants per household per year in the largely African American community for having an alleged broken down vehicle on their property.  

And, for the courts in that area, it should be impossible to ignore such a high level of prosecutorial bias involved in this systematic institutional injustice.  But, there again, if injustice was not enforced, there would be no injustice.

In America, it is the responsibility of the courts to root out such systematic bias.

No one should ever be considered a candidate for any public office in the United States without addressing the Municipal Court system and the preferential use of city ordinances to collect millions from the poorest members of our society.  And, with the millions coming out of our poorest communities in this legal way, it is no wonder that one in five children in America go to bed hungry.

But the essential element of this discussion in relation to the alarming numbers of missing and unsolved female homicides in America is that the nature of community/police relations is a complex one, and one should not expect a good relationship between law enforcement and communities, where the poor and minorities are systematically used by law enforcement and the courts as easy targets to raise revenue.  And this fact is a problem across the United States as well as Canada.

The Hargrove/Scripps Howard study illustrates how effective the proper use of existing data can be in identifying female unsolved homicide clusters, but as we shall discuss, that is only half the equation even on the data analysis side of the problem.

The FBI maintains the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) database, a voluntary program in which local police forces fill out a nearly twenty-page form describing the key characteristics of a violent crime 
and send the data on to the FBI.  FBI analysts use the data to look for patterns employing various algorithms, which in more current terminology, represent various data mining operations.

The analysts look for patterns in victim selection, targeting (how the victim is engaged once the selection is made), how the victim is controlled or restrained, how the victim(s) were killed (asphyxiation, stabbing, blunt trauma), and finally, how the body was concealed (disposed of). 


And, it is often the means of concealing or disposing of the remains that gives the killer their media name, such as, I-70 Killer and Green River Killer, respectively. 

Additionally, in the case of mobile multiple and serial killers, the place where the victim was selected and engaged may not be where they were held.  If the victim was imprisoned in the cab of a long-haul driver for some time, the venue of the victims selection could be a considerable distance from where they were killed, and the site where the body was disposed of could be in another location again some great distance from the other parts of what is an expansive, multi-jurisdictional crime scene. 

Unlike law enforcement, multiple and serial killers, highway serial killers and other violent offenders operate outside the limits of city, county, states and even national boundaries.  That and the voluntary nature of the ViCAP program as well as the lack of exacting terminology and descriptions are its glaring limitations.

To introduce the next series of elements to our analysis, we need to find a parallel occurrence, and for that purpose we will use the Hubble telescope development, a joint American and European multi-billion dollar (10 billion) space optical exploration program.  

In a nutshell, American scientists worked in feet and inches, while their European counterparts used the scientific measurement language of millimeters.  The telescope was launched and when command went to unfurl the telescope and activate it, the smallest variations in the parts made in America in inches and those manufactured in Europe in millimeters presented themselves and the telescope was found to be out of focus. 

NASA and the European Space Agency were then faced with some rather dire decisions; start all over again, abandon the project, or fix the problem.  Once the decision was made to fix the problem, the idea of a corrective lens was advanced and that resulted in saving the Hubble telescope and the space optical exploration program as a whole.

The ViCAP program needs a corrective lens.  And, I suggest that locating a parallel program in the Attorney General's office in the several states would be an advance in identifying, investigating and reporting back to local law enforcement agencies the discovery of cluster information which could aid the investigation and solution to the growing number of past and present unsolved homicide cases across the United States.

States already provide similar services to local communities, for instance, all traffic accidents are fed into state databases to identify traffic accident clusters.  After analysis, that information is fed back to the local community for corrective actions.  Perhaps, signing is a problem, speed, road surfaces in need of repair, and so on and so forth.

But as I suggested earlier, the focus on the unsolved homicide lists addresses only half of the problem. 

Crime writer, Alex Hannaford's decription of multiple and serial killing investigations as "an inter-institutional mess in which law enforcement agencies hardly communicate with each other, leaving murders unsolved, families without closure, and killers on the loose." elicited the following response from the FBI, which provides a clear understanding of the current state of affairs. 

According to the FBI, " ... the mobile nature of the offenders, the high-risk lifestyle of the victims, the significant distances and involvement of multiple jurisdictions, the lack of witnesses and forensic evidence combine to make these cases almost impossible to solve using conventional investigative techniques.  In many cases, they are impossible to solve at all."

The FBI to clarify that statement added the following caveat, since "submissions to the agency’s Highway Serial Killings database were, like those to ViCAP, voluntary, so a higher number of murders reported by one state is not necessarily indicative of a greater crime problem there.  By that same token, reported figures are likely to be smaller than the real number, because law enforcement agencies are under no compulsion to notify the FBI."

In contrast, all traffic accidents are reported by local jurisdictions to their respective state authorities.  And, as the SHNS/Hargrove database demonstrates, clusters can be identified without twenty-page reports.  And, the speed with which the several states can respond back to local communities once a cluster or pattern of concern is identified, including multi-jurisdictional occurrences of concern, should aid in the identification of multiple and serial crimes.

In addition, a telephone call or an email to a neighboring state's AG's office can widen the  awareness of serial instances which follow highway routes.  The existence of such a unit within an AG's office has enormous ramifications, including the fact that unlike the ViCAP database, the state data is complete, that is, it is a record of all known occurrences, and not a voluntary, hit or miss, program.

But, as indicated above, the unit within the Attorney Generals also has a complete register of all missing persons as reported by every jurisdiction within that state.

Let us say we use the SHNS/Hargrove study as our control data.  That data is fixed in time as it were.  We now take our missing persons register and we begin our null hypothesis analysis of that data.

Mike Pence, the Governor of Indiana, one of the states identified in the Scripps/Hargrove study of underestimated multiple and serial killers, announced his intention to have the very busy Attorney General of Indiana begin putting together a case against the President's immigration executive order.    This author made every effort to ascertain if the governor or attorney general had under taken a study of the likely impact of the president's immigration executive order on the state of Indiana. 

No member of either branch the Indiana State legislature was aware that the Governor or Attorney General had undertaken an assessment of the executive order's probable impact on the state of Indiana, financial, political or otherwise.

Criminal Law professors Senna and Siegel have suggested that the integrity of a prosecutor (The Attotney General is the top prosecutor in the state) can be discerned by the answer given to the following question: When you exercise discretion, are you more concerned with fairness, the likelihood of a conviction, or political considerations."

This case, is just the latest foray into the 2016 race for the White House, in which political considerations overwhelm any other, and all other considerations. 

23 other states have joined Texas (all, save one, with very busy Attorney Generals) and Governors like Mike Pence of Indiana in preparing a legal challenge to the president's executive order.  

It is not surprising that Greg Abbott is due to file the initial motion with the Brownsville division of the Southern District of Texas.  One of the two judges on that court, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, was appointed to the South Texas court in 2002 by President George W Bush.

Hanen's views on the subject of Presidential and Executive Branch action on immigration matters are well known.  In a 2013 immigration case decision, for example, Hanen wrote:
 
“The DHS (Department of Homeland Security), instead of enforcing our border security laws, actually assisted the criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goals ... In summary, instead of enforcing the laws of the United States, the government took direct steps to help the individuals who violated it.”

And this is the point and the proof of politics in the court challenge to the president's immigration executive order. 


Hanen states, in no uncertain terms, that he has in his possession evidence that the Department of Homeland 
Security severally engaged in criminal conspiracy to violate the laws of the United States.  And yet, neither the Director of Homeland Security nor any individual Homeland Security agent has on the basis of any evidence presented as prescribed by the laws of the United States been order to cease and desist any activity which they all sums engage.

As we witness the spring of discontent in Baltimore, as in Ferguson, Cleveland, etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera, I do not believe that it is the respect for law that is at a low ebb in America, but the rightful lack of respect for the cruel and unusual way some of those who administer the law, whether it be police, prosecutors, attorney generals or judges that is being called into question.

And when, the American people again realize that those powers not enumerated to the federal government, nor reserved to the states, are retained by the citizens themselves, will the necessary, proper and inevitable corrective actions take place.

The hypothesis, the information we wish to test is this:  

The characteristics of the proven victims of multiple and serial killers will mirror a significant number of those on the register of missing persons classified as foul play suspected as well as *unknown. 

* Note Bene:  

Although, the probable cause option classification of unknown, on missing persons reports, was meant to reflect those persons on whom the police had no record or insufficient background information to categorize otherwise, nevertheless, the unknown option is also used in the same sense that Steve Egger used the term the - less dead - to describe unsolved murders of little interest to the police.  Therefore, it is just as likely that the unknown category is also used by the police to describe what E LaMont Gregory termed the - less missing - missing persons cases that are of little interest to the police.

To restate our hypothesis - a significant number of missing persons classified as our expanded group of foul play suspected (including the unknown) will have the same characteristics as those of proven multiple and serial killer victims.  'A significant number' could also be stated as a mathematically testable number.

We begin by constructing a Null Hypothesis, which we attempt to prove, and when we cannot prove it, it means that our original hypothesis must be true.

The fact that we wish to test is that a significant number of foul play suspected categorized missing persons share the same characteristics as the proven victims of serial killers.

So, we set up the null hypothesis that states foul play suspected missing persons - do not - share the same characteristics as the known victims of serial killers.

We then analyze the data trying to prove the null.  If we prove it then our hypothesis is incorrect, false.  

If we cannot prove the null that lends credence to the truth of our original hypothesis, that the two groups do share the same characteristics.  And, depending on the p-value, we will have statistically proven that the two groups share the same characteristics. 

In addition, since the publication of the Scripps/Hargrove study in 2010, a number of unsolved homicides have been solved and the remains of a number of those from the missing register, classified as unknown and foul play suspected, have been found, our control group.  


The question to be answered is does the control group in any way change the characteristics of the Scripps/Hargrove murder clusters i.e., areas of 75%+ unsolved female homicides, where women of the same age were killed in similar ways.  Or, did the Scripps/Hargrove study reasonably predict that those murder cases that were subsequently solved, and the bodies of the missing that were subsequently found would be in areas of 75%+ unsolved female homicides, where women of the same age were killed in similar ways.

The short answer to the first and second question is no, and yes, respectively.  Those murder cases subsequently solved do not change the Scripps/Hargrove murder cluster characteristic in any appreciable way.  And, those remains of thought-to-be missing persons, now known to have been homicide victims are consistent with the characteristics of the Scripps/Hargrove murder cluster data.
 
A further extrapolation from control group/subsequently solved cases comparison, suggests that the number of current unsolved murders underestimates the actual number by approximately 15%.   And further, using the unsolved murders committed before 2010 whose remains have been subsequently been found as a control group, and combining that data with the discovered remains of persons who had been considered missing (either unknown or foul play suspected)  there is reason to believe that the 161 alarming unsolved murder clusters from the Scripps/Hargrove study also underestimates the number of unsolved murder clusters.

And although, shifting the number of those reported missing from the missing persons register, who are in fact unsolved homicides, significantly increases the rate of unsolved homicides, it does not significantly decrease the number of persons reported missing.

That is because the number of missing persons is five to six times greater than the number of unsolved homicides, and without the ability to equalize the two populations, calculating any probable decrease in missing persons by shifting the likely deceased from that far greater number is fleeting at best.

What we do know, however, is that the number of unsolved homicides and the number of missing persons are both increasing, alarmingly.

The voluntary nature of current federal violent crime monitoring agencies is inadequate to provide the kind of immediate information that local law enforcement agencies need to assist in reducing the number of unsolved murders as well as to categorize properly the unknown and foul play suspected missing.

In addition, there is a need for a special unit within the office of the Attorney General (one to three people depending on the number of jurisdictions) of the several states to coordinate the missing persons register, violent crime register and Supplemental Crime Reporting so that mis-classifications do not prevent the discovery of multiple and serial killing clusters within their specific states, and regionally.  

The special unit would aid in information sharing between states, since most unsolved murder clusters along our highway system point to the regional operation of serial highway killers, although there are clearly examples of highway, multiple and serial killers whose areas of operation are of greater scope; multi-regional, if not bi-coastal e.g., Israel Keyes. 
 
Perhaps, when the 24 Attorney Generals grow tired of a pointless legal action against the President, they will turn their collective attention to the very real problem of foul play suspected missing persons, the growing number of unsolved homicides representing an average solution rate in their states of below 64%, and the fact that hundreds of highway serial killers use their states as dumping grounds.  Not to mention, the anguish and lack of closure that the missing and the murdered represent for the citizens of their states.


... work in progress

ebook by E LaMont Gregory - The Egyptian Secret -
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MKNXPRU

​
The recently released Justice Department Report of its investigation into the Ferguson Police Department,  confirms this author's assertion that the Ferguson Police Department systematically used the Minority residents of Ferguson to raise revenue.

However, this author made a second assertion that the Ferguson Police Department, knowingly and willfully allowed the Aryan Brotherhood and other biker gangs to manufacture and deal drugs in that community with impunity.  

It begs the question, is it the responsibility of a police officer, when a member of his immediate or extended family engages habitually in criminal activities in the same jurisdiction where he work to notify the proper authorities?

The racist emails exposed by the Justice Department exchanged between the chief and officers of the Ferguson Police Department are the tip of an iceberg.  

What is most interesting is the ruckus being made over Clinton's use of private emails, when these officers, sworn to uphold the law used communications paid for by We the People, to violate every conceivable standard of public office.
  
And, the same Congressmen who shout about the former are silent on the latter.  

Jeb Bush not showing up in Selma, is akin to Romney not showing up for the inauguration, a mistake, that will haunt him.