Post by Nalkarj on Dec 11, 2018 20:17:06 GMT
Fascinating case that you at first think is open-and-shut…and then turns out to be something else entirely.
From Reddit:Open-and-shut, right? Joanne Chambers was never prosecuted–and, inexplicably, still teaches at another elementary-school in Pennsylvania.
From Reddit:
Joanne Chambers was a first grade teacher at the Coolbaugh Learning Center in Monroe, Pennsylvania.
Over the summer of 1993, something strange happened. Chambers began to receive threatening letters, the first in what would be a long and harrowing series of increasingly bizarre gestures from an unknown person who apparently really had it out for her.
These letters were arriving at the school where Chambers taught. Despite targeting Chambers, the letters and packages were addressed to the principal.
The letters were alarming. Some involved sexual content, and others threatened violence. Still others made serious defamatory allegations against Chambers.
One claimed that Chambers had brought pot into school and shown it to the faculty room just like it was some big joke.
Chambers had no idea who it could be. Her first guess was a disgruntled employee.
Soon, letters began arriving at Chambers’s home, as well as the school. These were addressed specifically to her.
Here’s an example excerpt: “I can get you in one try. No one will ever prove it, they may not think so, but I’m smarter than all of you, you stupid bitch.”
The letters were relentless. They came to Chambers’s home, as well as the school. Some were addressed to other teachers at the school, and were popping up in their inboxes in the faculty lounge.
Who would do this?
Chambers was a pretty normal, stable person, by all accounts. She was well liked by her students and co-workers, as far as she was aware. She was married with a ten year old son. Children, parents, and other teachers had nothing but good things to say about her.
She wasn’t the kind of person you’d expect to be targeted by a hate campaign. She had no known enemies at all.
One of the many letters read: “Look in Chambers’s desk, and you’ll find that she seems to like Jack Daniels.”
Sure enough, when Chambers looked in her desk drawer, there was a bottle of Jack.
Someone had put it there. She also noticed that some of her personal items were missing, including a photo of her son.
Along with this incident, it was noted that many of the threatening letters alluded to events and activities going on inside the school – something not just any random weirdo would know about.
This led police to suspect that it might be another teacher sending the letters. Did a co-worker have a secret grudge?
One letter snidely referred to the school superintendent as “Colonel Plink” [sic–for Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes].
It happened that one of the other teachers, Paula Nawrocki, had been overheard in the past calling him that.
Nawrocki was shocked. She had doubted the letters had even come from someone inside the school. None of the employees seemed like the kind of person who would do this kind of thing.
The letters continued to come in, all of them vicious and threatening.
But that wasn’t all. The next incident was shocking. One day, Chambers came into class and sat down at her desk.
The underside and chair were smeared with feces.
At this point, things were getting pretty serious. The letters were sent for investigation to the FBI. The only forensic evidence they found on the letters were some partial fingerprints.
Around this time, one of the letters warned of possible poisoning: “I had four chances to drug your coffee this week. Or did I drug your coffee?”
Soon after this, however, cameras set up in Chambers’s vacant classroom showed several other teachers come into the room.
One of them removed Chambers’s coffee cup from her desk. It was none other than Paula Nawrocki, the very same teacher potentially implicated by the “Colonel Plink” reference in one of the letters.
Soon afterwards, a photo stolen from Chambers’s desk was cut and pasted onto a nude photo of a porn actress. Copies of this doctored image was then distributed across the schoolyard, mailed to parents’ homes, and even taped to the door of a local store.
These images were accompanied by anonymous phone calls to parents, alleging that Chambers was a lesbian, that she had AIDS, and other outrageous claims.
By this point, the letters had been coming relentlessly for over ten months.
The FBI, who were investigating the case, had Chambers undergo a lie detector test to validate her claims.
Hoping to clear her name, Nawrocki also volunteered to take one.
There was one key question both were asked during the polygraph tests: whether they were involved in creating or sending any of the letters.
Chambers passed the test. Nawrocki failed.
Nawrocki was now the primary suspect in the case.
But Nawrocki was shocked and confused by the test result. She maintained that she had nothing to do with the letters at all.
But what about that coffee cup? According to Nawrocki, Chambers had asked her to get the cup off of the desk.
Chambers, of course, denied this. The video, however, did show that Chambers and Nawrocki had left the room together shortly before Nawrocki returned and took the cup.
Police searched Nawrocki’s home, with her permission. She was eager to comply, hoping to clear her name. The police took an old typwriter from her home, along with paper and envelopes.
It was determined that Nawrocki’s typewriter was not the one used to type the threatening letters. Same with the envelopes and paper.
Of course, that didn’t completely rule her out as a suspect. But why would she send those letters at all?
Police suspected that her motive was jealousy. She and Chambers had different teaching styles, with Chambers being a little more laid-back and “fun.” They suspected that Nawrocki, being a “by the book” and strict teacher, was both jealous and angry at Chambers’s more freewheeling teaching style – as well as her popularity with students.
Fearing for her safety, the district allowed Chambers to transfer to another school.
But this didn’t stop the letters. One day, a pink wrapped box appeared at the doorstep of the new school where Chambers was now working.
Inside the box was a Barbie doll. The doll’s throat had been slashed with a razor blade, then covered with red paint that looked like blood.
The doll was wearing a dress strikingly similar to one that Chambers often wore to work. The doll’s hair was cut to resemble Chambers’s hair.
According to Chambers, one day in November 1994, as she was driving, another car tried to aggressively run her off the road.
Chambers reported that after she pulled off the road, she saw the face of the driver, looking straight at her.
The driver was none other than Paula Nawrocki.
Chambers immediately called police to report the incident.
Paula Nawrocki fervently denied the allegations, insisting that she was not the driver. However, she was arrested and charged with over 100 counts of various crimes.
Nawrocki was suspended with pay from her job.
After the arrest, the letters stopped.
Over the summer of 1993, something strange happened. Chambers began to receive threatening letters, the first in what would be a long and harrowing series of increasingly bizarre gestures from an unknown person who apparently really had it out for her.
These letters were arriving at the school where Chambers taught. Despite targeting Chambers, the letters and packages were addressed to the principal.
The letters were alarming. Some involved sexual content, and others threatened violence. Still others made serious defamatory allegations against Chambers.
One claimed that Chambers had brought pot into school and shown it to the faculty room just like it was some big joke.
Chambers had no idea who it could be. Her first guess was a disgruntled employee.
Soon, letters began arriving at Chambers’s home, as well as the school. These were addressed specifically to her.
Here’s an example excerpt: “I can get you in one try. No one will ever prove it, they may not think so, but I’m smarter than all of you, you stupid bitch.”
The letters were relentless. They came to Chambers’s home, as well as the school. Some were addressed to other teachers at the school, and were popping up in their inboxes in the faculty lounge.
Who would do this?
Chambers was a pretty normal, stable person, by all accounts. She was well liked by her students and co-workers, as far as she was aware. She was married with a ten year old son. Children, parents, and other teachers had nothing but good things to say about her.
She wasn’t the kind of person you’d expect to be targeted by a hate campaign. She had no known enemies at all.
One of the many letters read: “Look in Chambers’s desk, and you’ll find that she seems to like Jack Daniels.”
Sure enough, when Chambers looked in her desk drawer, there was a bottle of Jack.
Someone had put it there. She also noticed that some of her personal items were missing, including a photo of her son.
Along with this incident, it was noted that many of the threatening letters alluded to events and activities going on inside the school – something not just any random weirdo would know about.
This led police to suspect that it might be another teacher sending the letters. Did a co-worker have a secret grudge?
One letter snidely referred to the school superintendent as “Colonel Plink” [sic–for Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes].
It happened that one of the other teachers, Paula Nawrocki, had been overheard in the past calling him that.
Nawrocki was shocked. She had doubted the letters had even come from someone inside the school. None of the employees seemed like the kind of person who would do this kind of thing.
The letters continued to come in, all of them vicious and threatening.
But that wasn’t all. The next incident was shocking. One day, Chambers came into class and sat down at her desk.
The underside and chair were smeared with feces.
At this point, things were getting pretty serious. The letters were sent for investigation to the FBI. The only forensic evidence they found on the letters were some partial fingerprints.
Around this time, one of the letters warned of possible poisoning: “I had four chances to drug your coffee this week. Or did I drug your coffee?”
Soon after this, however, cameras set up in Chambers’s vacant classroom showed several other teachers come into the room.
One of them removed Chambers’s coffee cup from her desk. It was none other than Paula Nawrocki, the very same teacher potentially implicated by the “Colonel Plink” reference in one of the letters.
Soon afterwards, a photo stolen from Chambers’s desk was cut and pasted onto a nude photo of a porn actress. Copies of this doctored image was then distributed across the schoolyard, mailed to parents’ homes, and even taped to the door of a local store.
These images were accompanied by anonymous phone calls to parents, alleging that Chambers was a lesbian, that she had AIDS, and other outrageous claims.
By this point, the letters had been coming relentlessly for over ten months.
The FBI, who were investigating the case, had Chambers undergo a lie detector test to validate her claims.
Hoping to clear her name, Nawrocki also volunteered to take one.
There was one key question both were asked during the polygraph tests: whether they were involved in creating or sending any of the letters.
Chambers passed the test. Nawrocki failed.
Nawrocki was now the primary suspect in the case.
But Nawrocki was shocked and confused by the test result. She maintained that she had nothing to do with the letters at all.
But what about that coffee cup? According to Nawrocki, Chambers had asked her to get the cup off of the desk.
Chambers, of course, denied this. The video, however, did show that Chambers and Nawrocki had left the room together shortly before Nawrocki returned and took the cup.
Police searched Nawrocki’s home, with her permission. She was eager to comply, hoping to clear her name. The police took an old typwriter from her home, along with paper and envelopes.
It was determined that Nawrocki’s typewriter was not the one used to type the threatening letters. Same with the envelopes and paper.
Of course, that didn’t completely rule her out as a suspect. But why would she send those letters at all?
Police suspected that her motive was jealousy. She and Chambers had different teaching styles, with Chambers being a little more laid-back and “fun.” They suspected that Nawrocki, being a “by the book” and strict teacher, was both jealous and angry at Chambers’s more freewheeling teaching style – as well as her popularity with students.
Fearing for her safety, the district allowed Chambers to transfer to another school.
But this didn’t stop the letters. One day, a pink wrapped box appeared at the doorstep of the new school where Chambers was now working.
Inside the box was a Barbie doll. The doll’s throat had been slashed with a razor blade, then covered with red paint that looked like blood.
The doll was wearing a dress strikingly similar to one that Chambers often wore to work. The doll’s hair was cut to resemble Chambers’s hair.
According to Chambers, one day in November 1994, as she was driving, another car tried to aggressively run her off the road.
Chambers reported that after she pulled off the road, she saw the face of the driver, looking straight at her.
The driver was none other than Paula Nawrocki.
Chambers immediately called police to report the incident.
Paula Nawrocki fervently denied the allegations, insisting that she was not the driver. However, she was arrested and charged with over 100 counts of various crimes.
Nawrocki was suspended with pay from her job.
After the arrest, the letters stopped.
Insisting that she wasn’t the one sending the letters, Nawrocki hired both a lawyer and a private investigator.
Nawrocki’s defense wanted to check for DNA on the letters. Eager for a chance to prove her innocence, Nawrocki agreed to pay over $7,000 out of pocket for the testing.
A stamp that had been licked was tested.
The DNA was not Paula Nawrocki’s. She was not the person who licked the stamps.
Paula’s Defense wanted to find out whose DNA was on that stamp. If it wasn’t Nawrocki, then who was it? Who wrote and sent those awful letters?
A new possibility arose: what if Chambers had written and sent them herself?
Investigators learned from local police that Chambers had an odd history of calling 911 to report various threats and incidents – burglaries, fires, and more.
Supposedly, she had been a victim in the past of a weirdly high number of various crimes.
At one point in the past, she’d even made a similar claim about feces on her classroom chair. That had been years before the letters started in 1993.
The Defense suspected that Chambers might have “stalked herself,” as an attention seeking mechanism.
To get DNA, items like used straws and q-tips were obtained from Chambers’s trash. Two DNA profiles were found from household members.
One of the two matched the DNA on the stamp.
DNA evidence suggested that it was Chambers who sent those letters all along.
At this point, the Defense wanted all charges against Nawrocki dropped. The Prosecution refused.
Chambers voluntarily provided a blood sample for further testing.
Sure enough, she was, in fact, a match.
Chambers continued to maintain her innocence, insisting that she was sure she had seen Nawrocki in that car that ran her off the road.
The prosecution continued to refuse to drop their case against Nawrocki, despite the new DNA findings.
The chances of the DNA samples matching Chambers’s profile, but being from another person, were actually significant enough for there to be a small possibility that the match was coincidental.
It was a chance of 1 in 14,925. So it was within the realm of possibility that it was someone else’s after all.
Chambers and the prosecution offered an explanation for the presence of her own DNA, if in fact it was hers at all.
Chambers testified under oath that she had been left alone with the evidence, including the envelope in question. She said that the stamp had fallen off the envelope, so she licked it to reattach it. She said she had then used a gluestick instead, because licking it did not work.
No gluestick residue was found.
The jury didn’t buy it.
Nawrocki’s defense wanted to check for DNA on the letters. Eager for a chance to prove her innocence, Nawrocki agreed to pay over $7,000 out of pocket for the testing.
A stamp that had been licked was tested.
The DNA was not Paula Nawrocki’s. She was not the person who licked the stamps.
Paula’s Defense wanted to find out whose DNA was on that stamp. If it wasn’t Nawrocki, then who was it? Who wrote and sent those awful letters?
A new possibility arose: what if Chambers had written and sent them herself?
Investigators learned from local police that Chambers had an odd history of calling 911 to report various threats and incidents – burglaries, fires, and more.
Supposedly, she had been a victim in the past of a weirdly high number of various crimes.
At one point in the past, she’d even made a similar claim about feces on her classroom chair. That had been years before the letters started in 1993.
The Defense suspected that Chambers might have “stalked herself,” as an attention seeking mechanism.
To get DNA, items like used straws and q-tips were obtained from Chambers’s trash. Two DNA profiles were found from household members.
One of the two matched the DNA on the stamp.
DNA evidence suggested that it was Chambers who sent those letters all along.
At this point, the Defense wanted all charges against Nawrocki dropped. The Prosecution refused.
Chambers voluntarily provided a blood sample for further testing.
Sure enough, she was, in fact, a match.
Chambers continued to maintain her innocence, insisting that she was sure she had seen Nawrocki in that car that ran her off the road.
The prosecution continued to refuse to drop their case against Nawrocki, despite the new DNA findings.
The chances of the DNA samples matching Chambers’s profile, but being from another person, were actually significant enough for there to be a small possibility that the match was coincidental.
It was a chance of 1 in 14,925. So it was within the realm of possibility that it was someone else’s after all.
Chambers and the prosecution offered an explanation for the presence of her own DNA, if in fact it was hers at all.
Chambers testified under oath that she had been left alone with the evidence, including the envelope in question. She said that the stamp had fallen off the envelope, so she licked it to reattach it. She said she had then used a gluestick instead, because licking it did not work.
No gluestick residue was found.
The jury didn’t buy it.
