The Back of an Earring

Sometimes,  professionals whose jobs involve public service, fail miserably. Sometimes the police miss clues, sometimes the media back off a story. When they do, they can put us all at risk.

In Rochester, New York, a convicted murderer who had confessed to the 1988 crime was released this summer because of new evidence that pointed to another man as the killer. The other man had also been a suspect. A teenager at the time, he had bragged to friends that he’d killed a woman taking a walk along railroad tracks. The police questioned him. Yet, his story was discounted, and an innocent man was sent to prison. 

Six years after the seventy-eight year old was shot with a pellet gun and bludgeoned with the same weapon, a four-year-old girl was lured into a neighbor’s apartment and  strangled to death. For a few years, the case was unsolved. Once again, the killer told someone. Once again, he was questioned by police. This time, he led them to the body. Arrest-conviction-25-years to life in prison.

Time to revisit the closed case, right? But that would be admitting that they had failed to do their job thoroughly.  So, the police and the court system stood by their work. Closed case, closed minds. The DA said the conviction is evidence in itself, and they had sent the right person to prison in that earlier case. They refused to go back an even take a look. 

Yet, some people just won’t accept no for an answer. Thank God for the good people at the New York City based Innocence Project who have no mission other than the determination to see injustice undone. They got involved in the Rochester case, interviewed two convicted murderers, took a different tact, came up with a different opinion than the jury , the police, and the DA, and formed a new hypothesis.  They didn’t quit until the evidence was taken out of storage and reviewed for new clues. What did they discover that set a man free?  The back of an earring. (If you are interested in knowing more about this story, search Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and the little girl's name Kali Poulton.)

Trig Truthers have something in common with the staff at the Innocence Project. The media failed the public when it chose not to pursue Babygate,  and we will not accept that.  Sarah Palin is a danger to America. When she took the national stage, hatred and racism, class warfare and religious intolerance leapt into the spotlight with her, and crowds of like minded people turned out to cheer. Some turned out with their guns and many with bigoted placards. When voices called out “kill him!” the campaign organizers cringed. But Sarah soaked it all up. She was a star with a following. She still is. This why we must continue to talk about Babygate. She is not gone. She is reloading. Her guns fire hate and they threaten every American, her influence is showing in the dumbing down of candidates running for national office.

What happened in Rochester, NY could happen and has happened other places.  It’s human nature to stick with your own opinion once it’s been formed and  a suggestion to someone that  they have missed a clue could be taken as an insult.  But if you are in certain professions, you have to be willing to reconsider. Law, medicine and media are among those types of professions.

I think we Trig Truthers need to question our long-held opinions and hard-earned conclusions. In our search for the truth about Trig and Sarah Palin, have we overlooked something?  Maybe there is something equally as easy to miss as the back of an earring, and yet this “something” could break the story wide open. That is why I’ve sifted through Sue Williams words written August 30 and 31, 2008.   

Guess what? I think I found something. It’s  small. It’s only four letters.  A word familiar to every Trig Truther. So familiar, in fact, it’s meaning is taken for granted. The word is….(drum roll please)……. prop!

Trig is a prop, it’s been said thousands of times. He’s used on a stage to enhance the believability of the story line that Sarah is a pro-life hockey mom from Wasilla, Alaska. We’ve seen it hundreds of times. Throughout  the campaign, later in magazines. on the Going Rogue book tour, etc.  It’s a fact. What’s to see?

Stay with me and ask yourself –how much attention did Trig get prior to Sarah’s nomination? He made the cover of People magazine, not bad for an infant no one outside one state had ever heard of. Other than that, he was tucked inside the folds of a sling at some photo ops for the governor, and …what else? I don’t recall. Does being on the cover of one magazine make a baby a photo prop? People who want to find evidence that Ruffles and RNC Trig either are or are not one and the same wish the baby had been a "photo prop" but the "photos" just aren't out there. He wasn't in front of a camera pre-RNC like he was post-RNC. It didn't happen.

Was the word meant to mean he went with Sarah to work? Dragging  a three-day old DS baby born prematurely and with a hole in his heart into an office for the sake of being seen as a tough female who isn’t going to let a little thing like that stop her from being seen doing her big important job makes him a child to be pitied.  A child with a lousy mother.  A child whose needs come after his own mother’s needs. That’s not a prop, that’s a pity. Unless, hmmmm, unless….Sarah is not Trig’s mother…

If Trig isn’t Sarah’s,  then he really is a prop. He’s an acquired thing, a stage setting.

Time to go to our cold case files. When was  the first time, on the blogs Trig was called a prop?   You might guess it was  in a blog written after his debut on stage with Sarah at the RNC. You would be wrong. It was from Sue Williams.

Let me set the stage (and yes, that’s a pun) for Sue’s use of the word “prop.”  Again, these are small clues, old statements, and different times. Try to imagine it is 2008 and we are reading the words of a woman who had seen Sarah at the  Fred Meyers in Wasilla, a woman who knows Sally and Chuck by name, and who remembers what it was like to have Sarah as mayor. 

Sue has heard things. Things from people who are closer than she is to the Heaths. These people have opinions about the Palin kids and the way the Saplins treat them – any of ‘em, all of ‘em. 

Sue Williams introduced the concept of Trig Palin being Sarah’s prop.  “How does one dash about the country for the next 66 days trying to pull off an image of the devoted mother of five…not to say anything about the needs of Trig. But maybe he doesn’t count, except as a talking point or a photo prop.”

Sarah might be a bad mother, “farming the kids out” as they said of her in Wasilla, but shouldn’t those same critics be glad to see her take Trig with her in a sling to a meeting or a bill signing? He wasn't being farmed out. Maybe, with the newest addition, she had become  a more devoted mother. Why are people still talking, is it because this is an acquired baby?

Sue Williams told us Sarah is famously quoted [among family friends] as saying, “My mom does whatever I need her to.” Doesn’t that bring to mind Sally holding baby Trig in a hospital corridor on April 18, 2008?  Yup, Sarah’s mother did what she was told to do, she held the new ‘prop’ and claimed Sarah had just birthed him that day. He was stage setting. He was an acquired prop.

In a sense, the story of Babygate is a story like what happened in Rochester when the police and the courts turned their backs on finding the truth. Professionals, in this case, the journalists, have failed to do their job to serve the public, and we believe the public is endangered by that failure. The media are protected by the Constitution for a reason. We need them.  Police and journalists both have made commitments to find the truth, seek evidence, warn the public of potential danger.

Now, I may be stretching here, so go ahead and challenge this, but I think Sue tipped us off to what inner Heath friends knew.  Trig is different than his siblings for more than just a chromosome. Sarah acquired Trig, to use as a prop and they used the word before any of us. 

If friends knew, then how has Babygate been kept under wraps sooooo long? Well, how did the real murderer go so many years without being convicted, even after he told friends? Odd things happen, folks.  We cannot close our minds to possibilities. If friends let a murderer walk the streets, friends would let a mom claim her grandchild as her own. (Besides, it's Wasilla.)

SW using the word 'prop' is a tiny thing buried in an old comment thread,  like the back of an earring imbedded in a chunk of wood.  It may not be enough proof now, but let’s remember we have it, where to find it, and where it came from.  Someday it may take on more importance.

Until then, Trig Truthers, press on! Do not accept no for an answer. 

Our work is important, and someone’s got to do it.