Suspect in Ricin Mailings Had Something Nasty In The Dojo

We would like to take a moment to thank the community of Tupelo, Mississippi, for giving us Elvis Presley, that strange Van Morrison song about honey, and now, all these years later, the chicken-fried braintrust of Paul Kevin Curtis and James Everett Dutschke. The only surprise about these gentlemen is that Curtis, the Elvis (and Kid Rock) impersonator who thinks he stumbled across a sinister organ-smuggling scheme in a Tupelo hospital -- and sent crazy letters to people about it for years -- turns out to be the saner, or at least less dangerous, of the two. Last week, Dutschke was arrested in the ricin mailings, and we found out some interesting facts about the two gentlemen. They shared a fondness for conspiracy theories and feuds on Facebook, for instance. We also now know that Dutschke is also an aficionado of ersatz music -- he's a  Wayne Newton impersonator,  for fuckssake. Oh, and yesterday, we learned that the FBI found traces of ricin in Dutschke's martial arts business. Or as Raw Story put it, in a headline that may rival our favorite headline about pot, alligators, and a stripper pole, "Ricin found in dojo of man charged with attempting to frame Elvis impersonator."Some days, we just love our job.

We're just going to copypasta this thing, because we'll be damned if we can improve on a straightforward recitation of the facts. It's one of those "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily" kind of things, you know? (Now that we look at the thing, we see that RawStory couldn't improve on it either -- it is a wire story from Agence France-Presse):

James Everett Dutschke, 41, is accused of trying to frame a fellow Mississippi man with whom he’d had what the FBI described as a “contentious relationship.” At first, the alleged plan seemed to have worked.

Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested after officials found that the ricin-laced letters contained the title of a book he was writing about an alleged black market for human body parts

"Contentious relationship." Black market body parts. Oui. Sils vous playz, DO go on!

Curtis immediately pointed the finger at his rival and the FBI turned its attention to Dutschke, who also had a long-standing dispute with a Mississippi judge who was among the three targets of the poisoned letters.

Dutschke apparently got nervous after defense attorneys blamed him publically for the plot and an FBI agent testified that no ricin was found in Curtis’s home.

But he didn’t notice the FBI agents who were following him as he went to his former Taekwondo dojo on April 22 to pick up a coffee grinder — which can be used to extract ricin from castor beans — a dust mask and latex gloves.

He was spotted dumping them out the window of his van into a public garbage bin about 100 yards away, charging papers said.

The FBI picked them out of the trash and also collected the contents of the bin outside Dutschke’s house. Many of the items tested positive for ricin, as did the drain traps at the dojo, the charging papers said.

If you've got ricin in your dojo, don't be alarmed now,

It's just a drain trap for the Fee-Bees...

And it makes us wonder.

Oh, and just in case there was any question that James Everett Dutschke has a long way to go before he gets tapped to join Bad Horse's Evil League of Evil? He's a computer mastermind, too:

Dutschke also tried to wipe his computer clean of any traces of his research by reinstalling the operating system on April 22.

But the computer had already been searched by state police after he was arrested in January on child molestation charges.

So the FBI was able to detect that he’d downloaded two documents describing the safe handling and detection of ricin on December 31.

They also found records that Dutschke ordered 100 red castor beans off eBay in November and December.

Uh-huh. So he wiped the computer, but only after cops had already seized and searched it. In his child molestation case. You know, it might be time to bring back a friend from 2009, don't you think?

[ RawStory ]