Scary Log

[+suz55tbird]

A brand-new cache that I adopted...GCR9M9...here's a log:

 

November 13 by Shoops (125 found)

Found this cache with no problem. I've driven most of the roads out there on the Monzano express highway. Most of the roads lead to some where in the foothills of the Manzano Mts. Close to where the cache is was a murder site that happen with in the last 6 months. So there was some notorious history as well! Does anyone remember Kurt Zamora of Belen, Los Chavez??? He was the one who kill a women in the area of the cache. Just to the north of in about a quarter mile.

 

Should I ask Shoops to edit out some of this stuff???!!! I'm freaked out! I go caching by myself all the time, and am careful where I go...would this prevent cachers from coming to this cache?

 

Should I archive this cache? Should he edit out stuff about the murder? Or just the NAME (OMG) of the person accused??? PLEASE give me your opinions QUICK!

[+Yamahammer]

You can edit the log yourself if you own the cache. ... maybe add something to caution others but take out the sky is falling thing.

 

This may be too cautious but maybe you can contact the local authorities and inquire to activity in the area of the cache.

 

[+cachew nut]

Why would you edit it? Would you rather have people going there and not know what happened? Are you trying to rewrite history?

[+The Leprechauns]

As a cache owner, you cannot edit the contents of a log. You can either delete the log, encrypt its contents, or write the owner and ask them to edit it.

 

I saw nothing wrong with this log. It conveys facts about something that happened in the area. Since our hobby takes us into remote, secluded areas, it's only natural that the paths of criminals and cachers will cross (hopefully not at the same time). Geocachers have found bodies. And many geocaches are placed in commemoration of a historic crime scene nearby!

[+BlueDeuce]

I don't think it's a big deal, but it's your cache. You can certainly discuss editing with the poster.

[+suz55tbird]

OK, thanks for replying so quickly...my heart's not beating as fast now...I certainly don't want to hide anything, it just seems like such a negative log for the first log (after the original find). I do like people to search for my caches and not be discouraged from searching.

[+The Leprechauns]

I am sure your cache is just fine, and this log would not dissuade me from seeking it. I can recognize the murder story as a random chance event. It could happen anywhere.

 

What keeps me away from caches are logs that mention heavy drinking/partying in the area, "cruising" areas and so forth. These are persistent, ongoing problems as opposed to isolated incidents. And I appreciate reading honest logs.

[+Renegade Knight]

The log is fine, the cache is fine. I'd like to know if there is any interesting history about a spot. It's not the site of former murders that people worry about. It's the present possiblity. If your spot was dangerouse would you have placed the cache there?

[+Teamhawaii1981 & blueicyrose]

Geocachers have found bodies.

 

Really? Wow. Any specific logs or articles, It's morbid but would be an interesting read if you have the links.

[+AuntieWeasel]

I've got one in a suburban park that is a locally notorious murder scene. It's a pretty park in a safe neighborhood and the perp (a nutcase loner) has been in jail for some time. I was a little startled when someone mentioned it in a log. I hadn't even thought about it being close to the scene.

 

I recently wandered badly off-path doing a cache and mentioned it in my log, only to have the hider email me that a body had turned up in that spot not long ago.

 

It happens. Probably a lot more often than we realize.

[+Jester2112]

Here's a log that just made my day: Frank Nelson Park Cache (GCPR7W) for 2 reasons. First, I own the cache. Second, porcupines...in Florida???

[+hukilaulau]

I've got one in a suburban park that is a locally notorious murder scene. It's a pretty park in a safe neighborhood and the perp (a nutcase loner) has been in jail for some time.

Yipes! There's a 50-50 chance I've done that cache. Knowing about the murder would not have stopped me from hunting it, but I might have changed my usual geocaching disguise, which is "Nutcase Loner." No, wait... that's my NORMAL dress. I might have tried "Nerd with a clipboard."

The point is, I do sometimes try to dress based on details of the cache.

 

"We see by our outfits, that we are both cowboys

If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy too."

 

--Streets of Laredo as performed by The Smothers Brothers.

[+edscott]

Geocachers have found bodies.

 

Really? Wow. Any specific logs or articles, It's morbid but would be an interesting read if you have the links.

Found a murder victim while mapping an area in SE Penna for Orienteering about 10 years ago. She was never identified. I still pass the spot often and wonder about her and her family. You can pass the spot, depending on your route choice, when doing my multi at French Creek.

[+Nerves]

I've got one in a suburban park that is a locally notorious murder scene. It's a pretty park in a safe neighborhood and the perp (a nutcase loner) has been in jail for some time. I was a little startled when someone mentioned it in a log. I hadn't even thought about it being close to the scene.

 

I recently wandered badly off-path doing a cache and mentioned it in my log, only to have the hider email me that a body had turned up in that spot not long ago.

 

It happens. Probably a lot more often than we realize.

Great...NOW you tell me! I'm going to have to check your profile Auntie to see which of your caches I've done. Aren't geocacachers sometimes "loners"? How would we know which person is a real geocacher and which is a murderer? They both dress rather oddly with furtive behavior around other people. Did the perp kill the person there or elsewhere and transport the body to the park? Cheesus....now my anxiety level has gone up a notch and I"ve got nothing better to do than worry and listen to squirrels! Criminy...maybe you can save me the bother and just let me know which infamous park it was.

 

As to your cache, suz55tbird, I'd be glad to know the history, relieved that the murderer is in prison and probably hunt for the cache with another person. I say, 'don't delete or edit the log'.

[+the hermit crabs]

Knowing about the murder would not have stopped me from hunting it, but I might have changed my usual geocaching disguise, which is "Nutcase Loner." No, wait...  that's my NORMAL dress.

 

Mine's slightly more complicated: Nutcase Loner Trying To Pass As A Normal Person.

 

Not sure how well it's working, though.

[+VegasCacheHounds]

I'd be a bit more concerned about the next log on that cache, the one mentionong the blue tarp wrapped around dead animals just near the cache

[+suz55tbird]

OMG--I'm really freaked now. An out-of-stater dropped this cache here and asked if I'd adopt it (and submit it). I didn't know or see any of this stuff when I went out to find it, and I searched quite awhile because he gave the coords and said it was within 0.1 mile of them. It's not even an interesting cache; I'm thinking about archiving it, or moving it to an entirely different location...

[+Nerves]

OMG--I'm really freaked now. An out-of-stater dropped this cache here and asked if I'd adopt it (and submit it). I didn't know or see any of this stuff when I went out to find it, and I searched quite awhile because he gave the coords and said it was within 0.1 mile of them. It's not even an interesting cache; I'm thinking about archiving it, or moving it to an entirely different location...

Yeah, I don't like the log about the dead animal wrapped in the tarp. That's awful! I'm sure some scumbag dumped the poor things there.

 

So, maybe you should move it somewhere interesting...

[+reveritt]

OMG--I'm really freaked now. An out-of-stater dropped this cache here and asked if I'd adopt it (and submit it). I didn't know or see any of this stuff when I went out to find it, and I searched quite awhile because he gave the coords and said it was within 0.1 mile of them. It's not even an interesting cache; I'm thinking about archiving it, or moving it to an entirely different location...

If you're not comfortable with owning the cache, you can offer it up for adoption, or archive it, or just never go there to maintain it.

 

So how many murders have happened at that spot--one? No big deal, and no reason to be uncomfortable.

 

Many years ago, I was on a murder jury. We viewed the scene of the crime, which was an apartment. Ten years later, I moved into that same apartment (no particular reason--it was available). I never gave the murder another thought.

[+AuntieWeasel]

Criminy...maybe you can save me the bother and just let me know which infamous park it was.

Infamous murder, not infamous park. It's actually a very nice park in an upscale neighborhood. And, shoot, I've only got two hides.

 

It's an interesting story, if you like true crime. If not, I'm going to bore you with it anyway. Sitting comfortably...?

 

A couple in their seventies lived adjacent to the park, and walked in it every morning. She like to stroll through the wooded part, and he liked the open grass, so they usually separated toward the end of their constitutional. This morning, when the wife didn't rejoin her husband at the usual time, he walked up the path to find her her stabbed and bludgeoned and rather severely...bitten. It was an exceptionally gruesome job of work.

 

The police turned out with dogs, one of which dashed up the path to one of the neighbors, whose house also bordered the park. He was a loner, an unemployed handyman, a bit strange. His house was falling to bits and full of junk, including a number of cats, some dead in the freezer. His elderly mother lived with him, well but somewhat neglected. They filled dumpsters out of the house. I drove by twice a day and saw them at work. He gave conflicting stories, lied about being in the park that day, and a famous forensic dentist testified that the bite marks were "consistent with" his. He was so scrood.

 

Some time after his arrest, the DNA results came back from saliva samples -- and they didn't match. The police were incredulous. In fact, they continued to hold him for trial, and looked for his accomplice. In the end, however, there wasn't enough evidence and they let him go. It became officially unsolved, though many local police remained convinced he was the one.

 

A few years later, a man from the town was arrested and charged with bringing a woman home from a bar and doing away with her in much the same kind of flailing nutjob frenzy. The last I remember reading, they hadn't tested his saliva, but he was definitely a suspect in the Bird Park murder. A quick google didn't turn up the end of the story. I've gone to the park often, both before and after the murder, and it never occurred to me the cache hide would be near the spot until somebody mentioned it in the logs.

 

So, remember kids -- no dead cats in the freezer! Sweet dreams!

[+suz55tbird]

I'd be a bit more concerned about the next log on that cache, the one mentionong the blue tarp wrapped around dead animals just near the cache

Interestingly, that log has been edited! Guess I'll wait and see what the next cachers (if any!) have to say, but I'm leaning toward moving it out of that area...

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

As a cache owner, you cannot edit the contents of a log. You can either delete the log, encrypt its contents, or write the owner and ask them to edit it.

 

I saw nothing wrong with this log. It conveys facts about something that happened in the area. Since our hobby takes us into remote, secluded areas, it's only natural that the paths of criminals and cachers will cross (hopefully not at the same time). Geocachers have found bodies. And many geocaches are placed in commemoration of a historic crime scene nearby!

I much agree with Leprechauns. Why would you wish to remove a totally true and factual entry of a real event which happend nearby from the log? Why the need to sterilize reality? And, while the OP seemed to intimate that the logger "accused" a man of the crime, the reality is that the story of the man's arrest appeared in all the local papers in that area of NM at the time; it was the police and the courts who accused the man of the crime, and not the OP. In any case, as others have iterated, you, as cache owner, cannot edit a log.

[+Harry Dolphin]

This log didn't stop us from hunting the caches in Inwood Park:

"Inwood Hill Park in one of my favorite nature areas in NYC. It is the only piece of Manhattan that still contains a forest. It is also the place, where almost a year ago, that geocaching and a murder investigation intersected. Here is a snippet from a recent article in Newsday.

 

NEW YORK -- One afternoon last May, Sarah Fox set out for a run in a serene, wooded section of upper Manhattan _ an unlikely setting for the scene of a vicious crime.

Fox, a 21-year-old Juilliard drama student, never returned from Inwood Hill Park. A year after her nude and decomposing body was found in the underbrush, her slaying by strangulation remains one of city's more perplexing unsolved homicides.

 

Detectives have serious questions _ about a man known in Fox's neighborhood known for his quick temper, about whether the New Jersey native was sexually assaulted and about tulip tree petals found scattered around her body.

 

But police also say they don't have enough evidence to make an arrest, and last week renewed pleas for public assistance while publicizing a $27,000 reward.

 

It was a horrible crime, that highlights the danger of not being cautious in urban environments."

 

Nor this one off the Palisades Parkway (and we did see a bag of dead chickens here):

 

"and actually quite ironic - seeing all the "stuff" left for those who visit. It was nice to see that the satanists decorated for Christmas . This was a very cool area with lots to explore. I left my calling card. Thanks for the hunt!"

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

Satanists, bags of dead chickens and "other stuff" decorate the place?

 

Oh yeah, if this was in Alabama we'd hunt it at midnight on a full moon with no flashlights!

 

[+reveritt]

...He was a loner, an unemployed handyman, a bit strange. His house was falling to bits and full of junk...

That figures. It's always us strange, shack-dwelling loners that get suspected of everything. One or two dead cats in the freezer, and you're being hauled off in irons.

 

This is why I give out dimes instead of candy on Halloween. If somebody poisons one of the darling little extortionists, the cops won't come knocking on my door. (Also, I will not eat all the leftover dimes.)

[+Team Perks]

Wouldn't deter me from going to see that cache. I don't see anything creepy in the log at all.

 

Actually, knowing the gruesome history surrounding the area might make me *more* likely to visit the area.

[+suz55tbird]

The cache finder changed his log. I know I rec'd some email from local cachers about the log(s), I wonder if people reading the cache page emailed the loggers too? Anyway, I really appreciate everyone's take on this; it (obviously) sent me into panic mode when I first read the log, and I'm all "whatever" now. The forums are a wonderful source of info/opinion/perspective. Thanks again!

[+CurmudgeonlyGal]

As a cache owner, you cannot edit the contents of a log. You can either delete the log, encrypt its contents, or write the owner and ask them to edit it.

...

I much agree with Leprechauns. Why would you wish to remove a totally true and factual entry of a real event which happend nearby from the log? Why the need to sterilize reality?

I'm with those guys.

 

Don't change the log/ask the person to edit... but if it bothers you to own a cache where atrocities were committed, adopt it out. No harm. No foul.

 

 

Completely and totally OT:

 

Vinny... put the other avatar back.

[+sept1c_tank]

Satanists, bags of dead chickens and "other stuff" decorate the place?

 

Oh yeah, if this was in Alabama we'd hunt it at midnight on a full moon with no flashlights!

 

I like your attitude, TAR.