When you open up a newspaper and come across an article about a man who precisely bought a motel to spy on his guests, you would think that was the latest movie coming out in theaters. Wrong. Gay Talese was a New York blogger who wrote about and personally knew this man, Gerald Foos. Gerald was a married man and father of two who owned the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colorado. After purchasing the motel he watched his guest through the attic for more than two decades. While Gerald claimed his peeping to be “research” I would have to disagree. Many individuals, including myself, find this unsettling and an invasion of one’s privacy. Gerald Foos was believed to be a voyeur from the very start. When he was a young child he began spying on his …show more content…
The voyeuristic activities gave Gerald a strong sense of power. He never tried concealing his strange obsession of watching others from his wife, Donna. When Gerald and Donna purchased the Manor House Motel they began creating six by fourteen inch louvered screens to act as faux ventilators to spy through. Once everything had come together Gerald began spying on his guests. Over the years of doing so Gerald took notes in his journal of everything he saw while observing his guests, conducting it as “research.” Gerald later contacted Gay Talese, a New York writer and blogger. He wanted Gay to write about his discovering’s and findings of human behavior, but wanted his name anonymous. Gay flew from New York to Colorado to see this motel “lab” for himself. While he knew he was not going to write about the motel due to Gerald wanting his name anonymous, he still was curious. Gay had signed a typed document stating he would not reveal Gerald’s name unless given permission to do so. After Gay’s visit, Gerald sent him all the notes he had wrote in his journal and continued to write about more things he discovered in …show more content…
One argument that I spot Gay uses to defend Gerald is claiming it was almost understandable why he never reported the murder after he witnessed it. Gay states in his article “He was also desperately protective of his secret life in the attic. If the police had grilled him and decided that he knew more than he was telling, they might have obtained a search warrant, and the consequences could have been catastrophic.” This statement Gay writes is practically defending Gerald and his voyeuristic ways, along with not reporting the murder right away. This statement leads me to believe Gay wasn’t as disturbed as he claimed he was in his article and didn’t see much wrong to it. The murder should have been reported by Gerald as soon as he left the attic, because it was the right thing to
Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
After Gerald re-enters, he reveals that there was no Inspector Goole and that this was a hoax, to which everyone except Sheila and Eric are delighted to hear of the news.
However, police should have acknowledged that individuals can make mistakenly identify the wrong person, especially an individual who had just tragically witnessed his wife’s death, and that the positive identification can not be the only evidence used to confirm the identity of a suspect. In addition, a search was never conducted on Butler’s home to see if any evidence was there. Unless my memory fails me, police officers also did not perform a gun residue test on Butler to see if he had recently fired a gun. Regardless, police did not find any physical evidence, such as blood, on Butler’s clothes or body. In fact, there was no forensic investigation of evidence conducted at all. Mary Ann Stephen’s purse was later discovered in a trash can, but it wasn’t until after the acquittal of Brenton Butler that a fingerprint belonging to the real killer was found on her purse. Overall, the ethical issues involved in the Brenton Butler case are astounding. The best solution to resolve those issues is to thoroughly perform job duties with integrity. Investigators had to know that more evidence than just a positive identification made by one, rightly upset individual was not substantial enough to confirm the identity of the
In the memoir, The Other Wes Moore, the author Wes Moore compares his life with another man's, whose name was also Wes Moore, and shows how shockingly similar they were. Particular coincidences are certainly strange, like the fact that both of their fathers were not around, both mothers cared about their child's well being, they both lived in the Bronx at one point in their childhoods, and the obvious one, their names are the same. Not only were their home lives similar but they also had similar social experiences, including being caught breaking the law; however, this book also illustrates, through these social experiences, the subtle differences in their lives as well.
The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According
He could have turned the guilty party to the police, but he thought that it would end up hurting him.
“We just want to see it, that’s all.” “You sure he’s here?” One voice seemed to come from the room on the sofa. “Yeah, he stays here every night.” “There’s another room over there; I’m going to take a look.
Keefe, Rose. The Man Who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2005. Print.
(Bond, Michael; How extreme isolation warps the mind) It was not immediately that the narrator started seeing the women in the yellow wallpaper, nor that her sleeping patterns were changed but more precisely, it was after being in the house after a time had gone by. An experiment was conducted “at McGill University Medical Center in Montreal, led by the psychologist Donald Hebb.” (Bond, Michael; How extreme isolation warps the mind) They had invited and paid people to be their guinea pigs, so to say, in the research.
The article “The Murder They Heard” written by Stanley Milgram and Paul Hollander is a response to the article that Martin Gansberg “38 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police”. Milgram and Hollander explain why they do not agree that the neighbors of Catherine Genovese should have called the police. Milgram and Hollander give reasons why they disagree with Gansberg, and why I should agree with what they are saying. After reading both articles, I felt very conflicted with who I agree with, but after much deliberation, I realized that I agree more with Milgram and Hollander. The neighbors should not be blamed for Genovese’s death. We should try to understand why they did not call the police. There are a few things you need to take into consideration,
Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...
As this short drama goes on the reader can witness how they change the room and furniture around trying to get it arranged perfectly to keep their guests visiting as long as possible.
The narrator, already suffering from a "nervous condition," is forced to stay in her bedroom for most of the story. Her husband does not let her do anything that may take the least bit of energy because she needs to concentrate her energy on getting well. Her mental condition quickly deteriorates from the original "nervous condition" to complete insanity due to this isolation. As the narrator begins to see figures behind the wallpaper, the reader realizes that the wallpaper is a manifestation of her condition.
Susan, the protagonist in “To Room Nineteen” feels trapped by her life and her family, and afflicted by her husband’s infidelity. Everyone assumes Susan and her husband are the perfect couple who have made all the right choices in life, but when Susan packs her youngest children off to school and discovers that her husband has been having an affair, she begins to question the life decisions she has made. Susan chooses to isolate herself from her own family by embarking on a journey of self-discovery in a hotel room that ultimately becomes a descend into madness. Unlike Susan, the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” initially wants contact and interaction with people, but is
Throughout his youth, Anderson experienced life-altering events that shaped the basis for many of his stories. In his childhood, Anderson experienced desultory schooling and worked several jobs, including a newsboy, a housepainter, a stable boy, a farmhand, and a laborer in a bicycle factory, many of which are jobs of those in his writing (May, ed. 77). The central psychological event in Anderson’s life occurred in 1912, when he suffered a nervous breakdown. Subsequently he moved to Chicago where he began writing. Here, he also met Dr. Trigant Burrow of Baltimore, who operated a Freudian therapeutic camp in Lake Chateauguay, New York, attended by Anderson the summers of 1915 and 1916 (May, ed. 77). Influenced not only by life events, Anderson’s writings contain clear commonalities, allowing clear comparisons to be made.