Dismemberment. Murder.

  Court. Judge. Charges. 

These are the five most used words in my vocabulary at work this week. And they will continue to be for at least a week.


Dismemberment

Tomorrow I'll be back in court for the competency hearing of James Bommer, the man accused of dismembering 32-year-old Pamela Prpich in August.

Some of Prpich's body parts were found in a suitcase Aug. 18. I spent the next morning with search crews all day looking for the slightest bit of evidence. They eventually made an arrest and found the other body parts.

James Bommer at the prelim exam

Bommer is charged with dismembering and mutilating her body, but not murdering her. It's a grotesque case.

The quotes from the detectives on the case always get me.

One said, "What are the chances of finding half a body in a suitcase and (during an interrogation) finding out the other body parts are in the (suspect's) closet? I didn't see that coming. I had to stop for a minute."

It's flat out eerie to think about how shocking it would be for someone to tell you he had a woman's body parts in the closet in his apartment. His clean apartment. Police said there were no signs of anything suspicious. No decomposing smell or anything.

I did a full blog on this in September after the preliminary hearing was adjourned.

At this point, I could write this story with my eyes closed. I have studied it and the quotes, the scene and the emotions are burned into my brain. You can trust that I'll give you every detail I found out as it unfolds. This has been the most bizarre thing I've covered, ever.

I'll be live-tweeting in court #NHBommer. Follow me @EricaPerdue. I'll also update my Facebook.

Murder

I received a phone call a few weeks ago about two arrests that had been made. Two men, James Shepher and Christopher Henderson, were taken into custody for murdering a man in Nov. 2010.

Christopher Henderson

James Shepherd

I wasn't working at The News-Herald then, so I knew nothing about this case. As I researched, I became intrigued. One of the men had been arrested in Tennessee in Dec. 2010. The U.S. Secret Service assisted with the investigation.

So many facts that just don't fit.

I attended the preliminary exam a few weeks ago, which was adjourned because a witness deemed necessary by the prosecution refused to come to court.

Both men were resistant in court, refusing to respond to any questions the judge asked. At that point only one defendant wanted an attorney.

The preliminary exam for both men will now begin Monday, Nov. 28. People were crying in the courtroom the first day, so I'm sure it will be emotional and full of rage.

Keep checking back

All around the Thanksgiving holiday, I'll be updating both of these stories. A full story and time-line about the dismemberment story is online and in the Wednesday, Nov. 23 newspaper. Online this weekend and in the Sunday, Nov. 27 newspaper will be a full story about the dismemberment trial tomorrow and also a background story of the murder trials and what happened in the year since Jesus Cabrera was murdered in Flat Rock.

So, keep checking back!

"We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective." - Dave Barry

Any 'Mad Men' fans out there? It's my favorite television show.

Cast of Mad Men, from amctv.com

It's about an advertising agency in the 1960s. I'm not in advertising, but I'm in journalism which deals immensely with advertising.

The setting of the show is entrancing. The men are the top dogs, except for the one woman who managed to squeeze in. All the other women are secretaries who use typewriters and organize the lives of their male specimen bosses.

The men sneak around, cheat on their spouses, divorce is incredibly frowned upon as is remarriage after a divorce ... it's a totally different world, or is it?

I'll stay off the morals part of it for now.

Every time I watch it (which is almost every night, since I have all the of the episodes on DVD) I think about my profession and what it would have been like to be a journalist in that time. Reporters interview the characters on the show often, most of the time they're calling from payphones and smoking a cigarette.

It must have been so different. I have a desk, a computer monitor, a laptop, wireless internet, a cell phone, a video camera, a digital camera, Google maps and other devices that make reporting much different than it was then.

But then again, the expectations have changed. Being on the front page of the paper doesn't mean the same as it used to. That used to be a sign of success, a triumphant excitement. It meant that you were the best for that issue of the paper. It still means that to an extent, but with the digital movement, it's not the same.

Having the most "hits" or "online readers" or "likes on Facebook" now mean success. I'm young. I'm from this era of the online world, but I still don't always like it. As a kid when I thought about being a journalist, I thought about being on the front page. I thought about seeing that byline above the fold.

When I first started, I still looked forward to that front-page story. And I still do, but not like I did before. Some front-page stories in the paper are also the most-read stories on our website, but not always. A lot of times a short, afternoon update about a funny police story beats out all other stories.

I remember one time a few months back, when Karl Ziomek was still my boss and Paige Houpt was still our intern, hearing about how pages used to be designed for The News-Herald. Karl told Paige and I about cutting out pieces of paper to post them on a larger sheet. We discussed the transformation in technology and such. As Paige and I complained about having Hewlett-Packard netbooks instead of Macbooks, we learned how lucky we were.

Digital is the new route. Advertising is digital now. Journalism is digital now. Readers read digitally. "It is what it is," as my former boss would say.

Some morning when I get to work, I think about the last episode of 'Mad Men' I watched and how the scenes compared. Sometimes I want to trade places with one of the characters for a week to see what it really felt like to have the front page story, above the fold. To make a call from a payphone. To rely on shorthand. It would be a riot, I'm sure.

Despite the changes, journalism is still journalism. We still make the calls, we still do the interviews, we still get yelled at, we still get praised, we still are the source for news. No matter how we do it, we get it done.

"Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism," - Christiane Amanpour

Yesterday, The News-Herald hosted our first-ever Blogger Fair!

We had about 25 people come to the fair with interest in blogging for our website. Two other staffers, Rene Cizio and Dave Herndon, and myself gave presentations with a conclusion from Rick Kessler about making money with blogs (of course, the most popular topic of the presentation)!

Tuesday we did a run-through of the presentation and we were all a little nervous about how it would turn out, and I'm so proud to say it went amazingly well! People were interested, asked questions and some have already started blogging!

I had my own special moment at the end of the event. I met an outstanding woman, Charyl Booth from Southgate.

Unexpectedly meeting an inspiring person

As I stood at the front of the room giving my part of the presentation, I had noticed a few people who seemed more enthusiastic than others and Charyl was one of them. I could see the excitement in her face about beginning a blog.

She grabbed me after and had a question to ask. As others started to leave the room I sat down to answer her questions. She started to tell me about what she wants her blog to be about...

I was astounded with what she told me. Charyl used to work at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital, but then she had medical issues, including a terrifying stroke. She told me that doctors have referred to her as a "miracle."

But, her story isn't the only thing she wanted to blog about. In fact, she wanted to blog about the power of words and the inspirational messages she has left on yellow sticky-notes throughout her life.

Charyl is one of those people who always has everyone come first. She wants to cheer up everyone, help strangers and leave an impression on those who have encounters with her. She was able to cheer me up, help me remember to smile and left an ever-lasting impression of my perspective of living life for what it is.

We set her up with a blog and titled it "Yellow Pieces of Paper." She has already posted twice and I am thrilled that she is going to write these influential and uplifting posts. We all need something to cheer us up.

You never know where you will meet someone who will have an impact on you. I wasn't expecting to meet someone as admirable as Charyl yesterday, but I did, and I am immensely happy that I was able to do so.

I love the random moments of being a journalist. Meeting new people, amazing people.

I'm ending this one with one of favorite quotes from Steve Jobs, a man who I think inspired a lot of people without ever meeting them.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma,which is living with the results of other peoples' thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what your truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs during a Stanford commencement address.

Everyone has a different personality that defines parts of them.

Everyone gets upset over different things and everyone has different ways of being cheered up.

I thought about a few different things to blog about today ... most of them scandals (yes, the Penn State ridiculousness crossed my mind, as did the parents who fought at Chuckie Cheese this past weekend in Southgate), but as I sit here listening to my favorite Pandora station, I want to talk about music.

Stress takes over my life often. I get frantic and frustrated with little things because I'm such an obnoxiously-organized person. If things don't go according to schedule, I stress. And trust me, things don't ever go according to schedule in journalism. There's breaking news at the most inconvenient times. Criminals decide to start a car-chase or make a bomb-threat an hour before deadline. Police don't ever want to do an interview right away. I could go on and on...

I'm like this outside of work, too. In college my life was color-coordinated. Every job and class had its own color and I wrote in a planner according to color. I had time-slots for homework and for socializing. I know, it's weird, but hey it got me a bachelor's degree in three years!

My frantic, stressed-out personality has plenty of curses on my life. I've realized recently more than ever that being frustrated about little things doesn't only affect me, but also the people around (especially if those people have to live with me)!

It never fails that when I'm frustrated or stressed, I need to listen to music. I relate everything in my life to music. I have songs that represent my childhood, songs that represent getting over silly fights, songs that make me laugh, songs that make me cry... they all mean something different and bring me to necessary realizations. I don't have a favorite genre, I like them all. It depends on my mood.

I have a good friend who is the same way - we both use song lyrics to define moments in our life. Heartbreaks, falling in love, confusion about relationships, hating our jobs, needing a laugh, getting over a death ... each of these, and many more, are categories full of songs.

It's difficult to describe if you aren't the same way. Song lyrics stick with me. I always remember them. When something goes wrong, I think of a song that I can relate to and listen to it. It's a sort of sense of not being the only one who feels that way. It's the same feeling for when something amazing happens, there's a song for it.

At work I have my headphones in most of the day. I play Pandora all day long while I write. It calms me and every time a happy/silly song comes on, I remember to smile and that things aren't ever as bad as they really seem, no matter how stressed out I may be at the moment.

I identify myself, every part of my personality, with music. I listen to it, I sing it, I play it, I love it.

I would love to hear if anyone feels the same way about music, or anything that you use to take stress away or define yourself. Maybe you like to write poetry, maybe you like to take photos, maybe you like to draw artwork. Whatever it may be, please share!

Until next time, keep singing on.

"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." - Plato

This one is for the veterans...

I've been lucky to have met so many amazing soldiers and veterans in the last few years, and I owe most of it to my profession as a journalist.

You can't really define a veteran or what a veteran has done in his or her life. You can't expect to understand what they've been through. And it seems that you can't ever find a way to thank them for what they've done without sounding silly or cliche.

This isn't going to be a long post. I'm not going to ramble about being a journalist today, because rambling about anything besides the men and women who have served our country is just arrogant.

Thank you to all the veterans. To those I know and to those I don't. Your courage and bravery is appreciated by us all, whether we all know how to show it or not.

I almost always end my blogs with a quote. In honor of Veterans Day, I will end it will several quotes I find fitting.

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave." - Elmer Davis


"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." - Jose Narosky


"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." - Cynthia Ozick


"I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot." - Gary Hart


"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain

Who do you like more, local politicians or local reporters?

Were you satisfied with the outcome of your local election yesterday?
Were you satisfied with the coverage of your local election yesterday?

It was a chaotic day for sure. Mose of us here at The News-Herald went out to the polls and got some crowd reaction. I went to Trenton, where a huge mayoral election was going on. There were campaigners everywhere, mostly for the same candidate. I talked to some of them and they were adamant about their candidate winning, and she did.

(For a full list of the election results Downriver, click here).
In my hometown there was a huge election, too. I went to vote just before the polls closed. (Luckily everyone I voted for won!)

Then I came back to wait around for the results to come in. I found out via Facebook (of course, social media triumphs all) who won in Trenton. I didn't have the numbers but I knew it was by a landslide that former City Clerk Kyle Stack won.

All of the reporters were trying to get results and post them as quick as we got them. People were asking via email and Facebook for specific results. Some cities had such close races, they didn't come in until close to midnight. Gibraltar's Mayor won by nine votes. Close one if you ask me.

Despite the nagging from people for results, I was so happy to see people so interested in local politics. It made our rushing around and bugging the city clerks' so much more worth it!

It's an amazing feeling for a journalist to feel like what she (or he) is working on is something that is anticipated. It's great to know people were coming to us for the election results because they knew we would have them available as soon as possible.

The most relieving thing is that it's over. The drama of residents constantly bickering about who should be elected is over for now. There will never be a way to make everyone happy, but hey, remember that you and your community had the opportunity to make it the best it can be - and hopefully you did!

Being educated on candidates is important as is voting for them. There's a story out of Montague (western Michigan) in which a candidate who is deceased received the most votes. Really, residents? How do you not know he is dead? I blame the media for that, too. If we had an elected official die before the election, the coverage would have been immense. But still, with social media taking over the world the fact that the man is dead and still won the race shocks me. And the poor opponent, it must really suck to get the least amount of votes but still have to take office knowing residents would rather have a dead man in office.

For once, I'm giving you the opportunity to vent. HOWEVER, if you didn't vote then please don't comment. If you are unhappy with your elected officials, spill your heart. Ready...set...let's hear it! Are you happy or angry about the outcome? Pleased or disappointed in the news coverage of the election?

And remember this: "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote," - George Jean Nathan 

I used to work the polls on election days in the city I lived in. It was always a long day, but definitely entertaining. People take local elections very seriously, as they should. I talked to a few of my friends who worked the elections with me and a few people who have worked at precincts in other cities about the things that we witnessed. 

In honor of Election Day being one week away, here are the ten funniest experiences of working at a local election precinct:

10. Forgetting to hand a middle-aged man a sticker and having him get offended and say he misses his old voting precinct because they gave him as many stickers as he wanted in a timely manner.

9. Having someone walk outside with a tape measure to make sure all political signs are at least 100 feet away from the precinct entrance, then watching someone move all of the signs closer for the pure sake of aggravation.

8. Having an elderly man say that only old women work elections, and if a young woman is working one she must "be looking for a sugar daddy."

7. The ladies working the first station, where IDs are checked, and hearing them ask all of the men, "Can I see your ID, are you single?"

6. Watching a PTO member grow very angry because she wasn't allowed to sell baked goods in the voting area and threatening to call the school board, then cooperating after her tantrum.

5. Having numerous people refuse to put the ballot in the machine because they insist that it is a paper shredder.

4. Telling a man that his 7-year-old son cannot fill out the ballot for him, no matter how good he is at filling in circles.

3. Explaining to an angry man that you must vote in the city that you live in, not just any city, because the ballots are different for each since there are different mayors, etc. Then having him ask how to get to the city he lives in.

2. Having a man refuse to take his ballot out of the folder to put it into the machine because of the built-in cameras in the school cafeteria (where the precinct is located) seeing how he voted.

1. Telling a woman that those who are working can't discuss political opinions and having her unzip her coat to show off a shirt in support of a school board candidate and that all who don't vote for said candidate are full of "horse manure."

These stories were gathered from real election day experiences in three different cities from four different people, including myself. If you have ever witnessed something of the sort at a precinct, email me at eperdue@heritage.com!