May 14, 2007

The Monster of Atwater

A TIMELY RECAP OF EVENTS, four years in the making, as opening statements begin today in the trial of Timothy Joseph McGhee.

From the LA Daily News:
"A Latino homie with an Irish name, he goes by the street handles 'Huero' and 'Eskimo.' His tattoos include an eagle eating a snake - symbolic of the Mexican flag - emblazoned on the back of his shaved head, a place that skin artists say is the most painful spot to be tattooed.

"His spiral notebook of rap lyrics depicts McGhee as a 21st century American psychopath, devoid of conscience, who used the Atwater Village area as an urban killing field...

"McGhee, after all, is believed to have killed one young man - 16-year-old Ryan 'Huero' Gonzales in 2000 - simply because he thought Atwater Village wasn't big enough for two people with the same nickname.

"It is the kind of violent rampage for which McGhee came to be called in his neighborhood 'the Monster of Atwater.' Some cops even compared his murderous nature to that of Charles Manson..."

8 comments:

Sahra Bogado said...

That article is a horrible piece of yellow journalism.

The guy probably killed a few people - but we aren't allowed to find out about the victims, or the circumstances of those murders. We don't even get the most cursory investigation into who this guy is.

This guy is made to look like a hip-hop super-villain. I think the real criminals are the reporters and police officers who inflate the reputation of the people they report about to make themselves look cool.

Amy said...

ubrayj02, I don't get your comment. Are you saying that it would matter who he killed? Like if they are involved in a gang their life doesn't matter? I mean "probably killed a few people"???? Isn't that bad no matter the who what when why of the situation? I don't need to know who the victims were to know killing a "few people" makes you a whack job that needs to be behind bars for life. Am I missing something?

mjs said...

A couple of notes:

#1: That image on the top of your page is so beautiful I could eat my teeth. Vis a vis the Army Corps of Engineers: Would it have been so dangerous/awful to keep the banks of the river green through our neck of the woods, knowing that the river bottom in these parts is too muddy or alluvial or just plain mushy to pour their miracle cement over anyway? What purpose did the "slabbing" of the riverbanks actually serve?

#2: Tony Castro, in his Daily News article about McGhee, stated the following:

"It is a wave of terror that, on the surface, seems incongruous in Atwater Village, which is heavily middle class and dotted with warehouses and $300,000 homes north of Los Feliz Boulevard between San Fernando Road and the Los Angeles River." I wrote to him stating that we hadn't seen homes in that price range around here in quite some time. He wrote me back:

"thanks. i had half a million in the copy. someone on the desk claims to have a real estate source who said it was too high and they
changed it. some source, huh! they also changed some wording on the
lead. it originally read "oppressed, sad-assed and sorry..." family newspaper bs."

Not sure what Tony was driving at here in his last line--snark or lord-knows-what. But I had sent him an easy to find link (there are many) that detail the current market prices for our area. Google isn't very hard to utilize, nor is it exclusive, so I have no idea why someone would write a falsehood (be it a journalist or an editor) wherein a statistic is glaringly off the mark (and comes from an anecdotal source, rather than public records, real estate sites, etc.).

Lastly, I for one am happy when a day goes by and someone isn't killed by gunfire. Alas, in this world there has been no such day.

+++

AVN said...

Make me think I ought to put together a Guide to North Atwater Village. Housing prices, though perhaps less than Central AV, can't possibly all be in the 300-500K range. And "dotted with warehouses?" The residential and industrial (and equestrian!) districts are really quite distinct.

Brian said...

I had a blog at Atwater Village City Council about Mcghee and it was taken down but lots of people who said they knew the guy said the police are lying and the guy was made a scape goat. But the family of the victims such as myself are waiting to hear the trial facts. I can say in my sons and his girlfriends case which were killed on Los Feliz at around 11pm in front of lot of people that Mcghee guy was not even pick up for questioning even after we were told by police they suspected Mcghee but the police would watch him yet more people were killed and it seems that parolees do not have any checks from officers I mean how can a guy run a organization deal drugs ect ect and stay on the loose go on killing sprees and thumb the nose at police? unless the police wanted this guy to fall hard at the cost of people. This guy Mcghee came to kill another member of our family after he had killed my son and his girlfriend a neighbor pointed him out from pictures yet the police had told us that
Mcghee was not to be worried, now by this trial we read he is a serial killer, Whats up with that? And then the police would not even tell the community there was a serial killer on the loose, Whats up with that? ect ect ect...

Unknown said...

Your fucking stupid this mf has destroyed hundreds of life's including mine your dumb ass

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

He's made mistakes he can never make it right ...But it's not our place to judge him ...