Quote of the day:
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
—Will Rogers
Ed Lee was on the phone.
He had some news from a mutual friend.
Given that Ed is 93, and the mutual friend (also named Ed) is 85, and the news concerned Carmen who is also up in years, the news could not be good.
It wasn’t.
Make that Carmen was also up in years. After falling three times and breaking his wrist, his leg, and hurting his back, Carmen’s body couldn’t take any more punishment and he died.
But our conversation continued. Ed lamented that there are 20 apartments on the floor where he lives and in the past year, there have been seven deaths. He thought that was a pretty high percentage.
I agreed.
Ed is of Chinese extraction and given his age, he finds many things in the modern world quite perplexing. He still refers to himself and other Chinese people as Orientals, for example. Although he is now using an iPhone, which is how he managed to call me, I think he still uses a physical address book, however, as best as I can tell.
Anyway, he was talking about the seven people on his floor who had died in the past year. And there was one arrest, he added.
“Well, I’d like to hear about that arrest,” I said.
“I’m embarrassed to talk about it,” Ed replied. And he went on to tell me about a couple who had died. First the husband, and then three months later the wife.
“That often does happen,” I put in, wondering how I could get the conversation back to the arrest.
“Yes, it does seem that way. Their daughter is here now, cleaning out the apartment and going through their things. It’s very sad.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“I knew this guy for 30 years, practically as long as I’ve lived at this place. He moved in when he was 25 or 26.”
Was he still talking about the couple that died or was this the arrested guy? I didn’t want to interrupt.
“He was nearly always at home, so I asked him, and he said he worked for Comcast as a consultant, so that’s why he could work at home. I just accepted that. It seemed a reasonable thing, anyway.”
I decided this must be the arrested guy.
“He had the apartment directly across from mine, so we saw each other quite often. But then I changed apartments and combined two into one—I told you about that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I recall.”
“So we didn’t see each other as much after that. But from time to time we’d still say hello. And I’d ask him how were things at Comcast, and he’d say they were fine, or something like that. Then last week, without any kind of warning, the police came and started banging on his door—real loud. And they arrested him and took him away. And there was a policewoman standing guard at his door. So I asked her what happened to him. And all she said was that he was arrested, but she couldn’t say any more than that.”
It sounded like he was embarrassed just because his neighbor was arrested. A bit disappointing.
“So I knew his name John and I went to my Mac and googled it.”
Obviously the modern world hasn’t completely passed him by. Also, obviously he knew John’s last name but he didn’t tell it to me.
“And I found him. He’s 55 years old, and he was involved in pornographic— Or is it pedophilia? I’m not sure of the right term.”
“Well,” I chimed in. “If he was doing something with underage children, that’s pedophilia. If he was dealing with pictures and/or videos of children, that’s pornography. Either one is pretty awful.”
“So I guess that’s how he was making his living, not with Comcast.”
“Sounds like he was peddling child pornography then.”
At which point he asked me how I was doing, so I told him about—
The chain of events that led me to find a fellow who plied a 13-year-old girl with liquor and raped her 60 years ago in Richland.
Turns out our stories weren’t all that different.
Addendum: Searching on “john 55 Philadelphia child pornography” gave me this link from October 7:
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/john-stachecki-arrested-child-sexual-abuse/
A Philadelphia man allegedly possessed hundreds of forms of child sexual abuse material, many involving babies and toddlers, that were traded through online groups, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday.
Pennsylvania AG Dave Sunday said John Stachecki, 55, who lives in Center City, was arraigned on 200 charges for possessing child sexual abuse material and has bail set at $1 million.
Members of the Attorney General’s Office and Homeland Security discovered through an investigation that Stachecki was a member of “dozens of online groups — accessible only by encrypted key — that traded child sexual abuse material,” according to Sunday.