The skeleton — a 5'7" male with a broken pelvis— wore "a faded, paisley dress and pointed heels." After 35 years, searching DNA databases led to Ronnie Joe Kirk. The police have brought in the Trans Doe Task Force, which works on "cold cases involving L.G.B.T.Q. victims and victims of suspected gender-based violence."
Based on the broken pelvis and the women's clothes and shoes, police had speculated that the dead person had been "a male cross-dresser, possibly a prostitute who surprised a customer angry enough to murder him and stuff his body down a chimney."
Now that they have a specific person, the police are saying, "Based on everything we have at this point, he always identified as male, but I know that sometimes people hide aspects of their life from friends and family." I guess that explains the NYT's choice to refer to the person as a man and to use he/him pronouns.
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91 comments:
If only the store had availed of wood fire for wwinter heaat
Clear proof that trans and LGBTQ's are being hunted down and killed systematically.... by evil intolerant Americans... just like the 6+ million Jews who were killed in the holocaust.
Good thing the LGBTQ Community don't have an entire month to celebrate. Cuz they are so repressed and stuff.
Okay so among the catfight, sleeping beauty and Trans Doe Task Force I think a clear leader is emerging for the most ridiculous story of the day. Good work Althouse. We all need a break from the drudgery of the usual.
When did he go missing? I read the article and did not see. Thanks.
Oops catfight was yesterday. Please substitute insane hotel lobby art in the above when ordering your preferences.
“I guess that explains the NYT's choice to refer to the person as a man and to use he/him pronouns.”
Or it was the fact that he was a—you know—man.
hmmm.
this reminds me the TV news story a few years back of a lady so enamored to a man that she tried to get into his house by going down the chimney . . . and getting stuck!
And here is this fellah dressed in heels in this chimney. Perhaps he had a similar intention/interest and broke his hip on his way down.
bless his heart.
He went from probable murder victim to prostitute and a scammer who tricked men into thinking he was physically female. Other than him wearing a dress, what was the rest of that story based on?
Well.... what the heck? The story just kind of.... stops. Did the NYT run out of paper, or editors, or what?
35 years. Wow. I lived right down the street at the time.
Ann:
You have been a resident of Madison for decades. Tell us about the neighborhood of the Good n Loud music store. Did you patronize it? Was it downtown by the State Theater?
Wouldn’t a decomposing human body give it away, that there’s a corpse, somewhere?
And how did Santa get down the chimney with a corpse blocking his path?
If the #1 golfer couldn’t get around a dead body at a country golf club entrance how did Santa manage to pull that off, for years.
We have more questions than answers here.
“ I guess that explains the NYT's choice to refer to the person as a man and to use he/him pronouns.”
No, the NYT has no reason to believe that the skeleton of a male human could be female. That particular fantasy died when he died.
Sheesh. A murder is a murder, no? The deviancy level of the victim is irrelevant. Probably the task force for this is funded by a US DoJ grant slipped quietly into existence in one of the Christmas Tree omnibus budget bills that Congress does now.
It puts the lotion in the basket, else it gets the hose again….
Althouse said " I guess that explains the NYT's choice to refer to the person as a man and to use he/him pronouns." I guess it would be too much to ask that they refer to him with masculine pronouns because he was a MAN. I thought it might be a rare concession to reality by the NYT but you seem to think it was a conscious, albeit convoluted, concession to the trans crowd.
With that rant out of the way, I can't believe they found a dead man in women's clothes stuffed into a chimney in Madison and it escaped my notice. I have to start paying more attention.
It is a good thing that Madison is (a) so flush with cash, and (b) so devoid of current crimes that they can put money, personnel and other resources into a "Trans Doe Task Force" dedicated to investigating 35-year-old (at least) deaths that may or may not have involved foul play (it seems like the assumption is dead guy in dress necessarily equals murder).
The levels of waste regularly performed by our governments at all levels never ceases to amaze me. We all know our Federal Government is bloated beyond comprehension, bringing in Trillions a year and still never having nearly enough to work with. But what many of us don't pay attention to are the state and local (county and city) governments. These people don't typically go to Washington without first honing their craft at the local and state level.
The Trans Doe Task Force has to be right up there with the most ridiculous wastes of taxpayer money I've heard of recently. Forget your entire detective/investigation forces. Only a person skilled in...what...trans skeletons?...can figure this one out. We are so bored as a society, we spend our time inventing ways to take care of problems that don't exist.
"You have been a resident of Madison for decades. Tell us about the neighborhood of the Good n Loud music store. Did you patronize it? Was it downtown by the State Theater?"
I wouldn't call it a "neighborhood." It was on the main road that connects Madison to Middleton. We did go there sometimes, but spent more time at another store, Ward-Brodt. I bought a lot of guitars, music lessons, and other things in the 1990s, when there were 2 rock bands that practiced in the basement here — all great guys, dedicated to music.
On the other hand, he might have been a gerbil furry simply playing-out a Richard Gere fantasy?
WE ALL KILLED CHIMNEY DOE
That's next...
He should have been wearing "sensible shoes".
So, he wasn't trans/neo, but rather trans/social, and probably trans/homo, with a heterosexual fetish, the feminine gender in a couplet. #HateLovesAbortion, right?
Does this mean that the city would not still have been pursuing his case if they didn't think he was trans?
Cross dressers cold case task force! We are a society run by loons.
Murder in the Rue Morgue? The cops suggest that the dude in a dress was murdered then stuffed down a chimney? Unless the dude was murdered on the roof right next to the chimney, then that didn't happen. Have these guys ever tried to move a corpse? How about carry one up a ladder and stuff it into a chimney?
Is there anything to actually investigate? Like one of the commenters above, a pretty good piece of information is missing- when did the victim actually disappear?
Althouse was a band chick!
"Wouldn’t a decomposing human body give it away, that there’s a corpse, somewhere?"
I assume this chimney was connected to a working boiler- hot dry air would do a marvelous job of mummification in short order if the body were put down the chimney during the heating season.
My guess is that he was high and had just finished watching Mary Poppins. Those Disney movies are insidious.
These very expensive task forces take massive resources away from protecting women, children, and the public in general. And they receive far, far more money per case and unit to investigate crimes aganst these micro-minority groups. And they work in secrecy. And they drop or transfer investigations with no explanation when the offender turns out to have the same skin color, religion, or sexual proclivities.
And women don't count under the gender category -- that's just for transgenders, although the law isn't written that way.
University of London Professor Loses Racial Discrimination Claim Over a Recommendation of a Local Sushi Restaurant
Has the transgender spectrum task force investigated if his abortion was forced by a microaggression? The viability of a "burden" has been Planned, lynched for social justice and lesser Democratic causes of progressivism past and present. Perhaps a jilted transgender partner in a Row (pun intended) over drugs. Pethaps a disillusioned trans/bisexual excluded from equitable inclusion in a transpride parade or social club. Perhaps the failed object of Levine's Dreams of Herr Mengele sequestered in a sanctuary State... state where demos-cracy dies in darkness.
Wake UP! you racist TRANSPHOBES!!
it's NOT up to You to decide whether you "always identified as male".. It's up to the "Trans Doe Task Force"
Dead people, Just Like Living People.. ONLY EXIST to serve the Trans Doe Task Force !!
One Nation, Under TRANS! Indivisible! With Libism and Social Justice FOR ALL TRANS PEOPLE!!!
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...
.. just like the 6+ million Jews who were killed in the holocaust..
REMEMBER!
According to Jupiter, There NEVER WERE ANY 6+ million Jews who were killed in the holocaust.
because, According to Jupiter, There NEVER WERE ANY Jews who were killed in the holocaust.
because, According to Jupiter, There NEVER WERE ANY Jews.
According to Jupiter, The ENTIRE CONCEPT of "Jews" is an EVIL MYTH..
an EVIL MYTH perpetuated by, YOU GUESSED IT: THE JEWS!!
right Jupiter! Not let ME put words into YOUR mouth.. EXPLAIN TO US, about "THE JEWS"
I believe that the music store had been a Christian book store until a short period before the skeleton was found. I knew the book store owner and he said he was never contacted by the police.
His selfie-identity self-aborted with him. RIP (Real Identity Prevails)
George Hesselberg did an annual column on this mystery. It's a pity he never saw the day it was resolved.
It's really not too hard to figure out how someone would end up dead in a chimney. Chances are 100-to-1 that he was trying to break into the store and steal money or goods, and figured it would be easy to get out through a door or window if he could get in without triggering a burglar alarm. Being drunk or on drugs at the time, and probably none too bright to start with, he thought if a fat guy like Santa Claus could go down chimneys, he could too. But the actual chimney was way longer and lacking-in-footholds-and-handholds than he thought it would be, so he fell far and fast enough to break his hip, but not all the way to the bottom, and died there before anyone showed up for work to hear him call for help.
Or did he in fact fall all the way to the bottom? Do the journalists say whether there was an open fireplace at the bottom? Perhaps it had been bricked up, like the ones in my apartment, and he fell into a vertical dead-end. (I live in a subdivided 1859 mansion. Anyone who tried to go down a chimney in my house would be doomed.) That would explain why no one noticed the smell. Or did they? How was his body discovered? Does the story say?
Can AA tell us whether the store had a fireplace when she shopped there? It need not have been one they ever used, just a fireplace that was open (not bricked up) and could theoretically be used, whether for fires or for non-standard entry.
Also, do the journalists say whether his skeleton was right-side up or upside-down?
I dunno - there typically isn't a statute of limitations on murder and it's easy to suspect this was a murder. Finding a murderer and bringing that individual to justice is a worthwhile activity.
The aforementioned article is, unfortunately, behind a paywall and when I tried viewing it on the Wayback Machine, the paywall hid it. I can remember when Madison.com was free with ads. Suffice to say, the remains were discovered at least 11 years before the article from 2011.
"Trans Doe Task Force"
They're main job is sawing off antlers.
Thanks for correcting the nonsense wordage in Para 2.
I only patronized Good-N-Loud a few times, for minor purchases. The location has been redeveloped since then. I remember Ward-Brodt when it was just off the Beltline, where I used my work anniversary bonus to buy a nice acoustic-electric guitar and the appropriate accessories.
"Unless the dude was murdered on the roof right next to the chimney, then that didn't happen. Have these guys ever tried to move a corpse? How about carry one up a ladder and stuff it into a chimney?"
Yeah, I've always found that puzzling. There must have been internal access to the chimney. We (kind of) have that in our basement.
And how did Santa get down the chimney with a corpse blocking his path?
Santa did it. It's the only logical explanation. Maybe this guy was at the very top of the naughty list and a lump of coal this year wasn't going to cut it.
Or maybe Santa caught him stealing out of good kid's stocking and just went berserk on him...put his boot in the guy's ass so hard it broke his pelvis. Then he dragged the guy up the chimney behind him and just wedged him in there halfway and left him. Santa can be hard, man, when he's on schedule and under pressure...do not fuck with him on Christmas eve. It won't end well.
The police have brought in the Trans Doe Task Force, which works on "cold cases involving L.G.B.T.Q. victims and victims of suspected gender-based violence."
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
Bow to your new LGBTIELDKFNDNKNOELIEURWOJIVNCKVDSNLDSJFK religion, peasants.
Found in a chimney, "a 5'7" male with a broken pelvis— wore "a faded, paisley dress and pointed heels"
Trying to launch a new career as a trans-Santa.
He was ahead of the curve.
Althouse:
You bought guitars? You have never mentioned that AFAICR. Do you play at all these days?
I imagine you'd've blogged on the subject matter if you were still playing.
Even when Shouting Thomas was still posting here frequently, the subject of guitars never came up, I think.
My guitar affliction struck me 50 years ago and I've tried to wean myself from it, but I just can't quit it.
I picture you in all black, with a black beret and an acoustic guitar singing a Dylan medley in some smoke-filled coffee shop.
Forgive me.
Goetz von Berlichingen
So, now that he has been identified as "him" in her clothing, will the transgender spectrum task farce hand the case over to the transsocial task farce for progressive investigation? #RIP
Madison Mike said...
"I believe that the music store had been a Christian book store until a short period before the skeleton was found. I knew the book store owner and he said he was never contacted by the police."
Based on the headline from NYT, the remains were found sometime around 1989. We moved to Madison in 1992 so it would have been old news by then, but Hesselberg's column kept the mystery in public view each year.
Does Trump have an alibi? Where was he in September, 1989?
The body was found in a 12" diameter pipe leading to the chimney. The persons who stuffed him in it probably broke the pelvis to make the body fit. Whether that pipe/duct was vertical, horizontal or on an angle is unclear to me.
He was a small man, but he didn't insert himself into a pipe that size.
Is it possible that the crazy guy who lugged his dead victim to the roof to hide the body inside a chimney could have first dressed the carcass in a dress and heels while singing "Doe, a dear, a female dear . . ."?
Or perhaps:
Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie you'll never know
Ronnie, oh Ronnie, Ronnie I'll go on living and keep on forgiving
Because you were my first love
Temujin,
Back in the 80s my father had reason to look into the historical budgets of Santa Clara county. So of course he called the relevant county office, and was told
"I think those records are classified."
say what?
When he eventually got past that barrier (correctly assuming that the clerk was just being lazy) he discovered that the county budget had increased at a roughly constant high percentage, every year, independent of the local economy or population change.
For forty years. For ever and ever, amen, Hallelujah!
If the body was up a chimney then that sounds like self inflicted lunacy. As Michael Fitzgerald noted about moving bodies, as a 20 year old I assisted moving a drunk girl frowm the dorm room the party was in to her room down the hall across the elevator lobby. With three young guys it wasn't an easy lift - she wasn't heavy, just totally limp.
Yes, everyone survived the ordeal.
There are significant discrepancies in the forensics. Given that he was born in 1942 and the body was found in 1989 (about 47 years after his birth), either the estimate of age at death of 18-35 or the estimated that the remains had been in the chimney for anywhere from two months to two years are way off. Worth remembering when on jury duty or watching NCIS.
'So, now that he has been identified as "him" in her clothing, will the transgender spectrum task farce hand the case over to the transsocial task farce for progressive investigation? #RIP'
Some so-called gender equity folks claim there is no difference between male/female (assigned at birth, of course) skeletal remains.
I suppose we will never know...
Imagine the bewilderment of a hardened detective upon hearing he’s been assigned to the TDTF.
Absurdity upon absurdity, but it does make me think. Is it possible that there are a significant number of people for whom the trans stuff has the same moral urgency as the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60’s? That seems hard to believe but half the country is basically a UFO church these days, so maybe it’s so.
Gadfly - I bet you think Trump killed him/her she/he .... Right? Did you hear it on Maddow?
how can democrats use this story to help their prospects?
ah forget it. The illegal entrants voting are the ticket to the left's one party authoritarian Arabella state.
The transgender task force was infiltrated by sexists. The sex task force should investigate them and their gender-leaning comrades for a probable hate crime.
With advances in DNA testing, there are now Doe task forces for other people too, to work on cold cases. But the trans and politically useful race ones get far more attention and resources. Doe funding itself is a good thing, but it should not be u equally distributed nor politicized, let alone the stats arising from it be lied about by activists and the media, egged on by the glory...hounds of the FBI.
The last time I queried about funding and training protocols by the FBI provided (rather involuntarily) to police and prosecutors to figure out how they managed to exclude stranger rape/murder victims (male and female) from both the "sex" and "gender" categories, the government-grant, nonprofit-based employee gigglingly told me they always get that question, but they don't put their answer in writing -- they leave it for the unrecorded Q&A. She has assumed I was an ally. When I asked her why they did that, she gasped and hung up on me. Then I was threatened with consequences if I published the (scheduled, approved, academic) interview.
Then I was put on a hate watch list, a fact dumbly exposed to me by Chuck Wexler, an unelected, dishonest, cop-hating bag of NGO crap who still decides a good bit of how the feds use the FBI to destroy justice and degrade police. You can look him up.
Tell him I said hi. Ask the FBI questions at your own risk. Before yesterday, I thought I finally had a moral, law and order Congressman who could help me get some more answers. But he was apparently too busy rodgering his Texas colleague to bother to discipline his legislative staff to get off their lazy asses and do their jobs.
That is the last politician with access to my lists. Or my speeches. I'm done. I really believed in this guy, and that's vanishingly rare.
Doe, a trans, a trans doe dude
Gay and wore a dress for fun?
Gee we need a task force here
We’ve got a murder case to run
Quaestor makes good points, especially the political ones.
Look at how many children have been abandoned in this story -- the victim, then his own children.
The boiler could have had a secondary vent. Vents are a lot cheaper to fix than fireplace chimneys. That supports Quaester's theory too.
Rabel said...
The body was found in a 12" diameter pipe leading to the chimney. The persons who stuffed him in it probably broke the pelvis to make the body fit. Whether that pipe/duct was vertical, horizontal or on an angle is unclear to me.
He was a small man, but he didn't insert himself into a pipe that size.
************
Huh? A 12 inch diameter pipe has a 3.14 x 12 = 37.7 inch circumference, Enugh space for a purportedly small, slim man to fit himself into w/o breaking his pelvis.
But the guy probably found out very quickly that there was no room for his arms and hands to support himself as he went down the chimney.
The gender task farce is guilty of liberal judgment, labels, and missexing the man. He was transsocial. Was he trans/homosexual?
47 years since birth(1942) when his body was discovered. 18 years since last known contact (1970). Married twice with children. Troubled family life as child and finally adopted by relatives. The dress may not have been actually a dress. Never known to identify as anything but male.
Apparently head first in the flue. Skull first spotted.
Thought to have been in flue 2 months to 2 years but also thought to be between 18 to 35 years old which we now know one has to be a bad guess.
Why did they think there was a gender motive?
Was he targeted by someone with penis envy?
Perhaps a disgruntled trans/homosexual targeting heterosexual males, then dress them in the female social fashion of the period in order to share/shift responsibility.
I may be wrong about Hesselberg. He wrote a lot about death and obituaries but as best I can tell, he retired sometime around 2017. Reports of his death are nonexistent so I must assume he is still enjoying retired life.
The NY Times is kind of screwed here because the only identifiable features of this dead human being are based on sexually specific traits. Reality has a way of finding a way for itself through the fog and smokescreens of cultural Marxists. That's why we can't have free speech anymore.
Bodies (mostly in skeleton form) discovered in chimneys are rare, but by no means unknown. In all the ones I’ve read about, other than this one, the victim is nearly certain to have entered the chimney voluntarily, and then slowly suffocated to death. A truly sad way to die. In a couple cases the victim was believed to have been so tightly wedged in that they could not even scream for help.
Which is why I think Dr. Weevil (11:47) is on the right track, the Madison police on the wrong track. No murder, death by misadventure.
"With three young guys it wasn't an easy lift"
What made it difficult was that you were trying not to hurt or disrespect her. Take away those constraints, and one guy could have moved her easily.
You folks are gonna trigger lonejustice's masturbation nightmare.
Joe Smith:
Some so-called gender equity folks claim there is no difference between male/female (assigned at birth, of course) skeletal remains.
I suppose we will never know...
I presume you're being sarcastic, but they're lying. Yes, there are differences in male and female skeletons.
Gein.
It's going to be lit when they decide the decedent wasn't LGBTQ and the death was not gender-based, so the task force drops the investigation as being outside of their scope and funding.
"Trans Doe Task Force"
This would make a great Law & Order comedy spin-off.
It is so good of the Madison Police Department to find something to do.
They are doing such a good job of dealing with current crime.
They are in the 13th percentile in cities nationally ranked on safety. That's pretty good right? I am sure they will have no problem finding out who did this and apprehending the culprit if there actually is one.
I couldn't find anything on Madison, but Milwaukee's murder clearance rate fell from better than 75% to 55% since 2021.
It is almost as if police departments in democrat cities have found something better to do than their jobs.
First of all, awful.
Second, glad they didn't go into "wearing a dress and a pair of faded blue Manolo Blahnik hangisi pumps.
'I presume you're being sarcastic, but they're lying. Yes, there are differences in male and female skeletons.'
Unfortunately I cannot remember nor find the reference, but it was likely a Twitter/X link.
Even when shown the obvious pelvic differences some people are in denial...
They have special police?
Big Mike:
In all the ones I’ve read about, other than this one, the victim is nearly certain to have entered the chimney voluntarily, and then slowly suffocated to death. A truly sad way to die. In a couple cases the victim was believed to have been so tightly wedged in that they could not even scream for help.
Beats the hell out of what happened to one dumbass down this way. He was squirming his way down feet first through a vent at a KFC. It is more cost effective to leave the oil vats on all night than crank them up every day. He went feet first into one and was wedged in place.
"Slowly" is so subjective.
This would make a great Law & Order comedy spin-off.
CSI. Chimney Skeleton Investigators
No other state has discovered more chimney skeletons in drag than Wisconsin!
If he had changed into some sensible shoes he might still be alive.
Liberals are hunting witches, prosecuting warlocks, Dreaming of Herr Mengele, and conducting human rites and sequestration for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress.
People shouldn't get away with murder. But they do.
We have a similar unit where I live called the Acrophobic Doe Task Force.
Whenever they find an unknown deceased at the base of a cliff wearing a homemade parachute and still clutching somebody else's toupee, these guys swing into action.
The skeleton was found in a pipe between the boiler and chimney, so probably near-horizontal in the cellar or back room, which would be difficult to get to coming down a chimney. Then why did they dig up the parking lot in the 80s? Presumably, they found it when the boiler wouldn't vent properly, which meant it couldn't have been there very long in Wisconsin (unless they had another source of heat, or the store had been empty for a while, perhaps the source of the two year window). The investigators on "Bones" were always more definitive--until the next plot twist.
The NYT likely libels the victim by accusing him of prostitution, I hope the police know better. He'd been married twice and acted as male when last known, so he was probably autogynephilic and not attracted to men (and over 40, so he wasn't getting any paid customers). A very different animal from the tranny hooker type. Or the killer put the woman's clothes on him for the humiliation.
The saddest part is no one noticed he was missing. I'm glad my chimney is already blocked due to age and building code.
If he had changed into some sensible shoes he might still be alive.
Or a sensible umbrella... perhaps a hoop skirt in a pinch... supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
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