John Berry… By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

January 19, 2012 Whitney Farmer 3 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and still has questions.

A serial killer was captured last Friday in Anaheim after fleeing the scene of the murder of his latest victim, John Berry.  The suspect, Itzcoatl Ocampo, is believed by law enforcement to have begun a series of thrill killings of four middle-aged homeless men in December that culminated in the death of John Berry near a dumpster behind Carl’s Juniors. Witnesses are credited with chasing down Ocampo for a half mile while simultaneously calling 911, leading to his arrest.

I knew it was going to happen.

The week before, John had been pictured in a feature story in the L.A. Times that also included an interview with him. In it, it was reported where John typically stays, and the picture included a panoramic view of an area which could have been easily identified by someone who wanted to figure it out.  I was shocked when I saw the picture and read the story, knowing that he was now in danger because he would be a perfect target for a killer who wanted to be famous. What a follow-up story…but I didn’t do anything. I got distracted by some crisis that in the end won’t even matter. I don’t even remember what it was.

When I heard about John’s murder, I was at the club during a show. It took me awhile to get myself together, and then I went on the floor to tell Angel. He has a heart for the homeless and has a unique second job near downtown. Working security, he is required to keep a busy open air shopping center free of transients. But he has been able to work towards removing the problem entirely by helping people get connected to resources like housing and job placement instead of just brushing them away like debris. One elderly man, who had become homeless when his wife recently died, came to see Angel after he was helped by him in securing affordable housing. When Angel had originally found him, he was sobbing in a wheelchair, ill, and too weak to move.

I told Angel that they might have caught the killer. Then he realized why that day the shopping center had been different. The transients were back to their normal life of fighting against a slow death rather than against a brutal one.

I had a cloud over me for not doing something about what was going to happen until yesterday, until I read that John had told people who had known him that he was being stalked since the story ran and that he was frightened. Because of this, he had filed a police report and asked for protection. He had gone to the agencies that I should have gone to anyway, and it didn’t change the outcome.

A new article described the assertions by Orange County law enforcement that John had been selected and stalked by the killer because of his appearance in the L.A. Times news article. But it also included pictures of people weeping near a memorial for him. One man who could have been John’s age but looked like he had the benefits of a stable life, faced the camera with sobs of grief visible. And the article talked about what kind of a man John had been…

He was a neighbor, not a nuisance, reading quietly in the sunshine and saying ‘no’ to money if he didn’t need it. Once, someone gave him $20 on a bus, and he used the money to buy a woman a Bible. She said that it was the most important thing in his life, and that she had been changed by having known him. He would embrace people and speak blessings over them, encouraging them in their lives that on the surface appeared so much richer than his. The day before he died, a child told reporters that John had asked for his prayers because he was scared. A veteran of Vietnam, he knew what he was facing even if others thought he was just another crazy one.

John was one of the Walking Wounded, wrestling against PTSD, who had found no safe haven. And the man who is said to be his killer, Itzcoatl Ocampo – Iraqi War veteran – battles against the same demons. But where John had chosen to remove himself to find peace, Ocampo (if guilty) has chosen to become what he had been trained to do. He has become a murderer rather than someone who has been trained to kill.

“…They were put on trains with no supervision, the name of their home town or state pinned to their tunics, others were left to wander about the countryside until they died from exposure or starvation…” reported Richard A. Gabriel, a consultant to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees and one of the foremost chroniclers of PTSD. He described the treatment of veterans not of Iraq or Vietnam, but of the Civil War. Substantive improvements in how a grateful country now honors its protectors are difficult to document. It is estimated that there are 300,000 veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts who battle PTSD. It is not a new condition, but it only was identified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorder (DSM) – the blueprint for psychiatric practice – in 1980.  Before this time, it has been known by many names that have been confusing and often judgmental.

In WWI, it was known as ‘shell shock’, the theory being that the concussion created by modern artillery created brain trauma that led to the condition. ‘Battle fatigue’ was the name given during WWII, despite the truth that symptoms became worse over time rather than better, even after extended rest.  Herodotus wrote of it occurring in Sparta and Athens. Combat veteran Hori in ancient Egypt wrote, “You determine to go forward. . . . Shuddering seizes you, the hair on your head stands on end, your soul lies in your hand.”

300,000 sufferers from a generation trained up in video games that make war into entertainment encountered no protection when confronted with the real thing.  There are few predisposing factors to PTSD. There appears to be no correlation between age, experience, or personality traits that are more/less risk averse. Officers have lower occurrences, but this has been linked not to stronger moral character but to amount of involvement in actual combat personally rather than by delegation. When Patton heard that a soldier was hospitalized for nerves and slapped him across the face for it, the general should have been court-martialed for the sucker punch he issued from his privilege.

The expression ‘in the trenches’ refers to WWI trench warfare and not an agricultural project. Surviving horrors is rarely simple. In the presence of a survivor of trauma – whether war or disaster or crime – shut up and figure out how to help. Get better at silence combined with action instead of foolish words without any solid finishing moves. I’m talking to me…

With John and his killer, both wars that they represent have now just tallied new casualties.

Props to Steve Bentley for his March/April 2005 feature in The WA Veteran “A Short History of PTSD: From Thermopylae to Hue
Soldiers Have Always Had A Disturbing Reaction To War
Article Reprint Date, January 1991”.

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Quote of the Blog, from my niece Keeley, daughter of a different John Barry: “Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted.” (Say it out loud…)