Tired of Dead People

In the news business, you get to cover a lot of fun stuff like people being killed, AWESOME! For the most part, the deaths we cover are generally spaced out, but lately I have had to cover 4 high profile murders and it is starting to take a toll. I am tried of it, it's not fun and you have to be serious. Day in and day out we have covered these local deaths with very little breaks. Being on nightside it is magnified, because 11pm producer wants something new. I don't blame her, it's just we have a limited number of night side crews and with the luck of the draw I'm covering one of the deaths.

You joke around about it, you try not to think about it, yet it is still there. Today I covered a vigil almost three hours away from the station. All the people there did not even know the girl, she didn't even live there. The only connection was she was found there. After four weeks of death I need a long break from it. Luckily, I have a vacation coming soon and hopefully after all the death stories will have passed

Pregnant Military People Might Want to Stay Away from North Carolina

For the second time within a year I'm covering a pregnant military person being killed. The first was Maria Lauderbach the Marine that was allegedly killed by Cesar Laurean in his house near Camp Lejune. Now I'm covering the death of Megan Touma in Fayetteville, NC near Fort Braggs. Both murders were creepy and oddly enough have a lot of similarities:

• Both were pregnant


• Both were from Ohio (Lauderbach Dayton area and Touma Cincinnati area)


• Both were having affairs with married men (Touma may not have know that)


• Both murders were grizzly in nature (one was burned and barried in the back yard the other was found rotting in a hotel room)


• Both murders happened in North Carolina


• Both outside predominate military bases


• Both had gone missing and no one reported anything


• Both families contacted the military wondering where their children were

Then there are the strange outside events like the fact that The Serg and I have covered each event and were forced to stay over night.

This latest murder has me a little creeped out, after the murder a note was sent to the Fayetteville Observer by someone claiming to be the killer and he in fact has killed in other states and is taking on the call sign of the Zodiac Killer, there was a symbol of the Zodiac Killer supposedly in the hotel room. For the most part police think it is not a serial killer, but a well crafted rouse to pull them away from the real killer.

Then the military is keeping REALLY quite about this one. It's not like we normally get a lot of info out of the military to begin with, but it's even worse. They actually called a press conference to say they can't say anything. The reason I used "person of interest" earlier is that no one is allowed to use the guys name even though every media outlet has it. I think the Laurean/Lauderbach case got to the military and they would rather say nothing and hope that everything will go away.

Fayetteville police are stuck in the middle here, they have to deal with the military so they can't give the media any information on tape, but also they don't want to have what happened in Onslow county and have to do a presser every 3 hours. Instead the investigator will give out "some" info but has to stay tight lipped a little. He's got a tough job, dealing with hundreds of us media members calling or camping out waiting for any piece of information we can get and trying to get answers to a murder.

While covering these stories it gets a little nutty for us. We get so close to it and we have to joke around to keep out sanity, I Won't go into them, because people will chastise me for being insinative, all I will say we are going to burn in hell for some of the jokes we are saying. I'm just hoping that another murder like this will not happen and if it does that it is far away from North Carolina or has zero Triangle connections.