Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Snapshot: Finding Jennifer White; Should Children Search for the Dead?
Some memories never leave you, no matter how many years pass. The image of a human leg sticking up from the ground with a white tennis shoe loosely tied at the end remains vivid in my mind decades after that search and rescue operation in rural Alaska.
As a teenage Explorer with the Alaska State Troopers, I never questioned why we were being brought to death scenes and body recovery operations. When a resident reported their dog bringing home a human skull, it seemed perfectly normal that I'd be among the search party combing the hillsides to find the source. The discovery of Jennifer White's remains in that shallow grave marked me in ways I couldn't comprehend at the time - one of several encounters with death that occurred before I'd even finished high school.
Looking back now with the perspective of a full law enforcement career behind me, I question the wisdom of exposing young minds to such traumatic scenes. These experiences unquestionably shaped my career and nervous system responses. While I eagerly participated at the time, thinking it was "cool," I now recognize the potential psychological harm of normalizing death and trauma during formative years. This isn't about being soft - it's about protecting developing brains from experiences they're not equipped to process.
The Explorer programs continue today, with well-intentioned officers bringing teenagers into "the bowels of hell" under the guise of career preparation. But at what cost? Have you experienced something similar, either as a young Explorer or in another context? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether exposing teenagers to death scenes does more harm than good in preparing them for careers in law enforcement.
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Ladies and gentlemen, here is a Murders to Music snapshot. This is 10 minutes of fun facts, stories, something like that to keep you engaged throughout the week. Hopefully you guys enjoy this. So you guys have heard like episode number two. I believe it was a 13-year-old's experience with death and I spoke about that first body that I found at 13 years old as an explorer and had to deal with it, and how I think that shaped the rest of my career and even as I sit here today outside law enforcement, how I see life and how things affect me.
Speaker 1:You know there was another one that as part of the Explorer post, we got involved in a lot of search and rescues, especially being in rural, remote Alaska. There are times where people are overdue, where they're out snow machining or whatever it may be, and they just need people and bodies to go out and search an area. Well, in this case we had a lady who had been missing for several months and that day I was riding with the Alaska State Troopers and somebody calls up and says, hey, my dog just brought home a human skull. And so we go out there and we talk to the guy and sure enough, there's a human skull and we're like well, the body's got to be around here, somewhere within the area that the dog travels. So we started a search area and we were able to summon a bunch of other explorers out there and we went out and we searched, we took a look at the geographically of this area. Where would there be a body dump site or where would somebody might go to kill themselves or something? So we were able to find this tower and it's a cell phone tower or radio tower of some kind. It's at the end of this long windy road, kind of the top of a hill. And uh, we decided that this looks like, you know, based on the rural nature of the terrain we were in and the location we were in, this looks like it's probably the most feasible place to do a body dump and it's within dog's travel distance of where the skull was recovered.
Speaker 1:So we head out there and there's about 20 explorers or so and other volunteers and we're basically arm to arm combing this hillside. We start at the top and we work from top to bottom all the way down. Can't find anything. Go up, we split the hill on another third top to bottom. Split the hill on that final third top to bottom, we're not finding anything. And as we're coming back up, the only place we haven't really looked is right around the top, or the crown of this hill, if you will. And we go up to the top of that hill and we're searching and there it is, off in the distance, uh, there's a leg sticking up out of a shallow grave with a shoe on it. And we're like, well, either this is a terrible prank or we found our victim. And sure enough, the victim, young lady named Jennifer White. Jennifer White was buried in a shallow grave. Her leg was sticking up out of the ground, there was a white tennis shoe on it that was loosely tied I remember that and parts of her body had been dug up by animals.
Speaker 1:And that was an experience as a third at that time probably a 14 year old kid, you know and those are the types of things that I don't think kids should be subjected to at such a young age. Now, when I was doing it, I wanted to do it because it was cool, but in hindsight and seeing how this affected my career and how it affected my nervous system by seeing these things and being exposed at such a young age, I don't think that it's safe. I don't think that it's healthy and I don't support it. And I'm not like a softy, I'm not a pansy, I'm not, you know, nothing like that. But I do think now, being older and a little bit smarter and a little bit wiser as to how these things affect you and affect people, and I just don't think it's a good thing. And we still have kids out there doing this today.
Speaker 1:We have kids out in the Explorer program and we have cops like me that are like man, you're not going to learn anything if you don't, you don't get out of the car, let's go. And they, you know, bring you into the bowels of hell and I just it just scares me a little bit. You know there were several experiences with death and that type of stuff when I was an explorer, you know, but this was just one of them. I'll always remember seeing that leg sticking up out of the ground, straight up, you know, like a twig with a she was a skinny gal with a twig, like with a shoe on the end of it and uh, that has always imprinted into my brain and it hasn't really affected me. It's not been one of those that's haunted me, but it's been one of those that I will never forget and I think somewhere under the layers of gray matter in my head, it definitely affected me. I just haven't seen the outward signs of it or don't recognize them. To tie those two and correlate those two back together Anyway, that's a 10 minute. That's not even 10 minutes, hell, that's five minutes. That's a five minute snapshot of an experience that I had.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. What do you guys think? Do you guys think that kids should be exposed to this kind of stuff? Is this something maybe it should be reserved for when you're in this career field and you're trying to explore? Do I want to get into this? Should they be exposed to everything that that career has to offer? Does it do more harm than good? I don't know. I don't know. What do you think?
