ST. CLAIR CO.—We have come to the conclusion that there are quite a few people—public officials, media, and dopers—in St. Clair County who have not a stitch of sanity left.
We know the drugs are bad over there in the Metro-East. We know the corruption is so thick folks can cut it with a knife, courtesy fools like Ol Jerry Costello and his ilk. We know that they have incompetent or utterly corrupt folks in charge of police in certain towns.
But this story just takes the cake.
THIS is the dead guy....Wayne Baugh....who looks like he already had enough problems if you ask us.....
Let’s get the Reader’s Digest condensed version down for you. There’s a 30-year-old woman there who’s a “dominatrix” (not necessarily illegal) and a prostitute (definitely illegal). She had (the key word being HAD, as in past tense) a boyfriend by the multiple names of Steven Wayne Baugh Hedrick, who goes (or went) by Wayne Baugh for whatever undisclosed reason. Ms. Dominatrix/hooker and her bf Wayne were out with (one of) her ex bf’s and another person on September 30, partying down with heroin, and Wayne died. In the car. But instead of taking his carcass to someone in charge, they went to yet a fifth person’s house, a 54-year-old woman with two teenage kids, in Caseyville, where they spent a lengthy amount of time arguing what to do with the corpse. No lie. You can’t make this shit up.
Ultimately they took the corpse to a hospital. But while everyone involved gave statements, no on was arrested. Why? We don’t know. Possibly because officials are morons? Maybe. Ongoing investigation? Sure. But there’s a greater problem at work here….and that is that the paper that supposedly “covers” news in the area, the Belleville-News Democrat (hey, “News” is their middle name) isn’t giving the names of Ms. Dominatrix, the ex-bf, the other person in the car, or the 54-year-old heroin addict in Caseyville. Why? Because it’s their “policy.” If a person hasn’t been charged, even though their names are all over written statements and police reports about the incident, the BND just doesn’t print the names.
Which has its own inherent problems. Why?
Because Ms. Dominatrix has already been present at the death of yet ANOTHER boyfriend, this occurring four months earlier, when he, too, OD’d on heroin. Provided by her. And they didn’t produce her friggin name THEN, either. So the newest bf, the now-deceased, formerly preppy-looking, heroin-shooting Wayne, wouldn’t have any idea to avoid her like the plague, because surely, there are more heroin-using dominatrix prostitutes in St. Clair County than one who is already producing a list of deceased boyfriends.
This is the problem we’re having with this. Police reports—and handwritten statements, by witnesses, accompanying it—are PUBLIC RECORD. I don’t CARE if this is “an ongoing investigation”—PROVIDE A REDACTED COPY, and say that the POLICE are withholding the names, don’t “have a policy” that withholds them. Because then you become part of the problem, and the problem is: there is no deterrent for this kind of behavior. Providing the name of a 1) dominatrix who is 2) also a prostitute who 3) does heroin, through which 4) she’s already lost TWO boyfriends (and who knows how many others, really) might, just MIGHT, put a spotlight on the bitch so that she kinda slows down a little bit and doesn’t take someone else with her. But noooo. Not with the BND. They might not have any “news” if she stops leading to the deaths of people by heroin OD.
We’ve half a mind to call St. Clair County, get the reports, and splash the names out there, just to be ornery. But that’s not our readership base. We just want to show you what’s going on in places other than ours; that there are people out there who are just simply NUTS….and there are solutions to it. And the solution is to bring their lunacy to light, maybe poke a little fun at it, and hopefully embarrass the marching morons to the point that maybe they’ll start handling things properly.
But we won’t hold our breaths.