Stupidity, Incompetence or Malice?

Hanlon’s Razor advises that one should never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity.  A corollary is that one should not attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.

In some cases, however, it becomes consistently clear that these default propositions should not be blindly applied.  The investigation by Jefferson County, Colorado into the actions of mass murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in 1999 is certainly an exception to these “rules.”  A dozen local Jeffco officials, most of them in senior positions, held a clandestine meeting a few days after the massacre to discuss the sheriff’s files on Harris and Klebold they had been sitting on for a year.  Including an affidavit for a search warrant for the Harris home where Eric was said to be building pipe bombs.  No one did dick on this information and April 20, 1999, proceeded unabated.  Meeting attendees were told not to discuss any of this information and the file on Eric Harris would soon go missing.  This obstruction of justice held for five years until a detective at a grand jury proceeding finally told the truth about what was being withheld and lied about concerning prior knowledge of Harris and Klebold.

If you always believe officials do the right thing (especially in a murder case!!) or just make innocent mistakes; if you believe Hanlon’s Razor always applies, read Columbine by David Cullen.   The Washington Post described the book, 10 years in the making, as a “staggering work of journalism.”  It is.

The OCCK investigation has likewise passed the point of blind reliance on Hanlon’s Razor, but in so many more ways.  Let’s take another look at the POS Greg Greene.

In the previous post we debated the mugshot with Greene wearing eyeglasses.  Was the date 8-17-77 or 8-17-72?  A reader provided more insight (thank you) but it still involves questions we will never have answered and therefore, speculation.

Let’s assume for a minute that it is August of 1972.  Compare the 1969 mugshot below for a seemingly similar vintage:

I can’t explain the absence of eyeglasses in the various other mug shots.  Nor can I explain the top set of photos seemingly dated 1-2-6-77 (WTF?), of shitty quality and Xeroxed to boot.  Greene was arrested in Flint on 1-25-77.  This longhair version above seems to be dated 1-26-77, and is very similar to this mugshot of Greene (taken on 1-25-77?):

Same dead eyes as Chris Busch

The reader also provided this from the FOIA documents:

Greene has arrests in 1970 and 1974 in Huntington Beach, California.  So who’s to say this monster doesn’t make a swing back to Genesee County in 1972?  What is that arrest for in August 1972 (assuming that’s the date)?  And how come nobody ever mentions it in Greene’s 1974 and 1977 forays in the criminal justice system?  It doesn’t take too much to guess what that arrest was for.  Maybe it’s a traffic infraction.  POS.

Where’s that file?

I’m going with malice.  But you knew I would.


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5 thoughts on “Stupidity, Incompetence or Malice?”

  1. Maybe he was arrested in Flint (where he is 53314 in both mug shots), transferred to Genesee, and they allowed eyeglasses in the mug shots? His number is 3870 for Genesee, is there any way to find out if that number is more in line with a 1972 arrest or 1977 arrest?

  2. Inmates do not lose or change their inmate numbers . It is like a social security number.

    1. I understand. To me it appears that the Flint Police number was 53314 and Genesee County he was 3870. I was wondering if those numbers would be tied to a particular year, particularly the 3870 for Genesee. (So if the glasses photo was 1972, does 3870 correlate with that? Or, is that around the number used in 1977?)

  3. One other thing… in reading about Greene more, I came across Douglas Bennett, who was arrested with Greene and Busch in Flint. Did they ever collect DNA from him or give him a polygraph? I have not heard much about him at all.

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