{"id":46353,"date":"2012-09-09T17:34:56","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T01:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46353"},"modified":"2012-09-10T05:56:40","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T13:56:40","slug":"death-row-inmate-michael-flinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46353","title":{"rendered":"Death Row Inmate Michael Flinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nctimes.com\/news\/local\/article_f8a00054-d9a1-5c7a-8b64-316ab25a2535.html\">From NCTimes.com, Oct. 23, 2003<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nEL CAJON &#8211; A landscaper who took out a $500,000 insurance policy on his fiancee and an ex-employee he hired to kill her were convicted today of murder and special circumstances that could lead to the death penalty.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Flinner, 36, and Haron Ontiveros, 30, were found guilty after deliberations that began Oct. 9.<\/p>\n<p>Separate juries heard the cases against the two men.<\/p>\n<p>Flinner, the fiance of 18-year-old Tamra Keck, and Ontiveros &#8211; also known as Juan Delatorre &#8211; were convicted of murder and special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and lying in wait. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On August 1, 2012, Michael Flinner (<A HREF=\"http:\/\/deathrowinmate.org\">Deathrowinmate.org<\/a>) writes me:<\/p>\n<p>Shalom, <\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I&#8217;m a 45-year-old Jewish former landscape contractor from San Diego, writing to you from the haunting empty confines of Death Row at San Quentin State Prison&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Just weeks prior to my Bar Mitzvah while in our &#8220;esteemed&#8221; commmunity rabbi&#8217;s study, I found myself at the tender age of 12 1\/2, standing before the only authority figure I had ever known (or recognized) outside of the comforts of home, naked from the waist down, huge hungry hands grasping each side of my ass, and a tallit wrapped completely around the rabbi&#8217;s head and shoulder as he orally copulated me, chanting some sort of Hebrew prayer and professing that God uses him and other rabbis as vessels to secure a place in Heaven (by planting a seed) so that when we died, I and all others who have carved their paths unto adulthood through Torah, may live on&#8230; Once is all it took to literally spin my life into the downward spiral that has resulted in poor decision making and a complete disregard for any authority.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty years is a very long time to wait for anything, much less to harbor that degree of pain from having my youth stolen from me &#8212; somehow being so stupid as to become someone&#8217;s victim.<\/p>\n<p>The event manifested itself over the years into what I define as an insatiable appetite for sex, an unruly addiction to cocaine, and a true nonchalant attitude toward life&#8230; I actually caught a case in the last part of 1990 with my (now deceased) son&#8217;s mother and took my first trip to state prison for almost nine years. She (Pamela) was bi-curious which for obvious reasons from the mindset of an addict, was a welcome alternative to the monogamy game we&#8217;d been playing. Many women found their way in and out of our bed but it wasn&#8217;t too long thereafter, until that too just wasn&#8217;t good enough. Drug use prior to and during these encounters would end up nearly tearing our entire family unit apart. Secrets were divulged and one just wouldn&#8217;t stop haunting me &#8212; Pam had been date-raped by a former ex-lover. Despite that it occurred prior to our union, I saw the ruin in her eyes and I couldn&#8217;t let it go. Emotions acting without the benefit of intellect, I set out to avenge her pain. After I got that out of my system by nearly killing her rapist, she and I would later be accused of a sex crime ourselves. There were drugs and poor judgment, but no crimes ever took place (that I recall) behind our bedroom doors, unless quasi-savage sexual indulgence constitutes acts that are later deemed to be less than consensual&#8230; I accepted a plea agreement for several of the trumped up charges in exchange for Pamela and my infant son (now nearly 23) being given immunity from prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Even prior to going to prison in 1991, I was a trusted and loyal comrade of the late <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Irv_Rubin\">Irv Rubin<\/a> of the JDL. With an on-call role when he would travel south of San Juan Capistrano, I became his handler. Both he and Earl Krugel were friends of mine long prior to their murders (and yes, they were murdered) in custody &#8212; Irv while awaiting trial and Earl just a few days into his 20 year sentence in the Feds.<\/p>\n<p>I met Irv by accident. I came upon him and his then toddler son (Ari) in a grocery store parking lot in Encino. I happened upon them by God&#8217;s will which enabled me to prevent them from an armed assailant who held a large knife in hopes of cashing in for Thanksgiving (it was a rainy November in 1988). We became fast friends and looking back today in spite of my passion for Judaism, I wish I would&#8217;ve just shook his hand and walked away. Instead, I allowed him to shower me in approval, showing me off to his colleagues, and telling everyone how I had simply walked up on his deathbed and stuffed a handgun in his would-be assailant&#8217;s mouth. This all occurred long before the first trip to prison, but at that point, I was already buried in the criminal element. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m too loyal to the people I love. That&#8217;s how I finally came to rest in this dungeon, letting my emotions act without benefit of intellect. <\/p>\n<p>While living a peace-filled life (post-prison) and having moved on and into bigger and better things, my amazing live-in girlfriend Tamra got herself killed by one of my employees. Upon arrest, he told the cops that I had hired him to kill her. I did not kill anyone&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after I began putting my memories on paper, I learned that my abuser (Rabbi Frankel) had died. When I was his pupil, the shul (Temple Beth Shalom) was in Chula Vista, California. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From NCTimes.com, Oct. 23, 2003: EL CAJON &#8211; A landscaper who took out a $500,000 insurance policy on his fiancee and an ex-employee he hired to kill her were convicted today of murder and special circumstances that could lead to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46353\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46353"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46355,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46353\/revisions\/46355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}