Somebody Knew Something

This is a blog post that I sincerely hope will provoke you to think about a few things just a bit differently. It is based on first-hand witness experience, and as accurate as I can recall it. A few essential factoids were verified (if one can do that) via Google-searching – but I didn't really find enough to claim irrefutable verification about any of it. So bear with me.

Most people still brush off conspiracy theory. Even though I am a conspiracy "buff," and possibly see intricate webs of deception where others see, oh, a few extra nuts in a Snickers bar, it doesn't mean that intrigue is non-existent. Here are a couple of examples of real-life mysteries that still "haunt" me in a contemplative lunchtime kind'a way.

NO, NOT 9-11.

Try twenty-one months earlier; December 19, 1998 to be exact. For some reason out of the blue, the U.S. Military decided to hold a simulated "attack" on an American west coastline. Namely Monterey, California, where reside the Naval Postgraduate School, the Defense Language Institute (where Lee Harvey Oswald learned Russian) and the Monterey Presidio.

This "urban warfare experiment" involved squads of armed Marines and Coast Guard prowling otherwise quiet oceanfront neighborhoods, waving on old grannies and college frumpkins walking their dogs, a few FedEx trucks, and the Amway lady tootling around in her rusty Dodge Colt station wagon.

Personally, my paranoid concern, as a resident of said neighborhood, was making it to my car in the morning for work without being mistakenly strafed by rubber bullets.

In some ways the event seemed somewhat logical – the Monterey Peninsula was and perhaps still is ripe for the type of foreign assault that was only pretended at, that day. The above mentioned locales of strategic interest – back then – sat literally unguarded. The Presidio was open and free to civilian auto traffic, using it as a shortcut across town. The gates were shut tight on September 12, 2001.

Just the memory of camo-suited guards suddenly present there, just off the street, casually hefting black metal, seems a bit surreal and disconcerting.

There was a time long ago when the vast Pacific Ocean was considered adequate defense against someone else's army. We at least had the technology in place to see or hear them coming. That was yesterday's "conventional wisdom."

It became apparent that someone, somewhere, in 1998, thought it was time we reevaluated. Monterey was not the only place where simulated combat situations were staged. And yet in retrospect, something was odd.

Such training simulations, at least one on this invasive scale and far reaching magnitude, had never bothered with little old Monterey before.

Twenty-one months later... September 11, 2001, we really were attacked, on our own – east coast – soil. By air, from a foreign power, for the first time ever since Pearl Harbor.

The military has never held a simulated "invasion" here, since. Why not? Wouldn't 9-11 have ramped up the call for regular training runs?

Maybe in 1998, someone knew that something was coming. And currently they believe that nothing like it is due in the near future?

THE GHOST OF SANTEE

Now this one is even a tad scarier; a case of the jim-jams coming home to roost on a personal level. Consider it a warning.

For those who have lived on the Monterey Peninsula since the late 1990s, the name Christina Williams has a certain meaning. Her kidnapping and murder led to an exhaustive search with bizarre twists, turns and a Twilight Zone conclusion, that all served to galvanize the population in the process.

Christina was the perfect post-modern girl next door; Eurasian, raven haired, pencil-slender and of course cuter than cupcakes. Out walking her dog one evening. At just thirteen, perhaps this was not an ideal place for her; alone, out along a boulevard near a military post where lots of young men with raging hormones tend to cruise around, sometimes fueled by adult beverage. But there she was. An almost stereotypically perfect opening scene for a documentary about a kidnapping, that of course fades out with "never to be seen again."

The public notice of Christina's vanishing was immediately more than just any typical missing persons case. Fort Ord was still federal property then, and a kidnapping on government land wasn't any mere felony, but a potential breach of security. The story grabbed the front page and stayed there for weeks.

A beach-combing hobo found floating face-down in the bay would be lucky to make the next morning's police blotter.

Christina Williams became everyone's little girl as the massive search began. Celebrities like Mariah Carey, Reggie Jackson and Clint Eastwood each made public appeals for help and prayers for the Williams family.

A most bizarre twist was the sudden presence of the lowrider community, who taped photocopies in their back windows, of Christina, and the police sketches of the two individuals whose low-slung car she was seen getting into. Were they genuinely concerned about finding the girl, or was it a gesture to symbolically eliminate themselves from the suspect list?

Every inch of the Peninsula was searched, especially the trails in and around the expanse of Fort Ord – searched and searched again. And again.

About a month into the case, a body turned up fifty miles north, that seemed to match Christina's description. Tests were performed. The entire county held our breaths.

No. It wasn't Christina. It was a woman much older, but whose petite framed body gave the impression of a teenager's. Someone else's case. Though it was not exactly reassuring, it gave pause for hope; the longer Christina didn't turn up dead, there was all the more reason to believe she could still be found alive.

At this point in the story, is where the headlines crept their way into my own day-to-day life. During this time, I worked at Monterey's daily paper, The Herald, which was then owned and operated by Scripps-Howard, Inc.

I worked as an advertising designer and compositor. One morning an ad insertion order came in from a walk-in client. I was given the raw copy to typeset. It only took me a minute to realize that this was no ordinary newspaper ad.

For one thing, it wasn't an advertisement for anything. A full page in size, it was a random pastiche of the client's prattling personal manifestos. A laundry list of bumper sticker "truisms."

"I won the Superbowl more times than the 49ers, so where's my money?" and "I don't waste time picking lotto numbers, I just want the girl." are two of the gems I recall from this huge, rambling "word quilt."

The sales rep handling the client excused herself. Her calm walk to the back office became a gallop once she was out of the client's eyeshot, straight to the publisher's office to scream for help.

The client refused to give his name, but insisted on being referred to as "The Ghost of Santee."

I decided I had to get a look at this person. When I walked out front, I discovered him chatting up one of the Classified Department sales reps. I chose to just observe, and moved on after a few loiterous minutes.

He was slicked back, every hair in place like a swatch of chestnut corduroy. A waxed mustache and goatee of the same color. What stood out most was his attire... a custom-looking suit with pants and coat made of the same silvery fabric, only the coat wasn't a standard suitcoat, but more of a priest's frock, with no buttons I could see.

He seemed weighed down with gold chains and various neck-worn ornamentation. Every finger had bling. A pair of highly polished snakeskin boots completed this strange "cosmic wild west chaplain" ensemble.

After he left, the publisher decreed that The Herald would not run such an ad. I wonder if the verdict would be different now, when anyone coming in with an open checkbook is treated like royalty, regardless how good-n-nutty they are.

Later, the salesperson who handled the account told me some of the off-planet comments that TGOS had made while placing his goofy ad. He tended to steer conversation toward the subject of... Christina Williams.

He was amazed that nobody else, especially at the city newspaper, already knew the identity of Christina's murderer. This was still before a body had been found, and hope still lingered that she was alive.

TGOS said that "everyone" knew who offed Christina. He then, incredibly, predicted that her body would be found in exactly a week. He left before going further with his "insider info."

Christina Williams was found... dead. A week later. Two miles from her home, on Fort Ord land, along a trail near Imjin Road – a location that had been covered, and covered again, thoroughly during the search. Who ever had possessed Christina's body for the months prior to its discovery, had recently placed it there.

It was quite easy to conclude that The Ghost of Santee was Christina's killer, coming in to place an ad that he thought would taunt authorities – like The Joker, leaving a baffling public clue to goad Batman. But strangely, nobody else involved ever mentioned TGOS afterward – as if he'd never appeared at The Herald office.

Nobody, including the editorial staff with its clan of supposed advocates and champions wanted anything to do with the incident. It became a forgotten anecdote, and nothing more.

But, I kept saying to myself, THAT had to be the guy. Am I crazy? Doesn't anyone else see it?

Out of curiosity, I wondered what hidden meaning might be contained in the title "Ghost of Santee," and Googled it. It turns out that Santee, California is a paranormal "hotspot," with ghost sightings considered somewhat of a tourist attraction. One of the most prominent ghosts of Santee is an adolescent girl who is usually witnessed before dawn, "meditating."

Over a decade later, Christina's killer is still technically considered to be at large. Marina, California rapist Charles Holifield, currently serving a life term in state prison, however, is believed by the FBI to be a suspect. They try, ongoing, to coax a confession out of him, to no avail as of this writing.

But if you take Holifield's photo, and pencil a mustache and goatee on him... well... maybe. I wonder if they'd get anything out of him if they asked "have you ever referred to yourself as a ghost?"