7 ms·

Man found UC Berkeley skeleton in 2021

84 points by yawnxyz 3y ago

tokai 3y ago
Why didn't they call the police directly? Why didn't they call the police when Berkley didn't do anything? I don't understand how you can think that you uncovered a crime of that calibre, and then think that its okay just hand it over to campus administration.
- gumby 3y ago
  The article says it was because Berkeley was an important client for them.
  - tokai 3y ago
    Which kind of excuse is that? They are just at bad as the supervisor covering this up. And for personal gain even.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
      Yeah you’re right. I find a body in the mall, I’m not going to mall security; I’m going to the murder police. To me all of this sounds like simple laziness on everyone’s part.
      - sidewndr46 3y ago
        Everyone says that, but no one puts themselves in the shoes of the person discovering the body. I'd probably be OK if I did this. But let's pretend I'm a two-time convicted felon. I've done my time and gotten out. I still have to report into my parole officer. But I've found a job that is steady work and pays well enough that I'm living comfortably. As long as I don't get involved in something criminal, I'll be OK. Do you really want to call the police and say "So yeah, about that body hidden in a crawl space..."
        tokai 3y ago
        I don't follow. It's not criminal to report a potential crime to the police. What about putting oneself in the shoes of the dead person. Unburied, next of kind uninformed, potential perpetrator going free. I would hope that if my remains were found randomly that they would be dealt with properly.
        scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
        What. This logic is straight up paranoid. Even if I have a record, even if I’m on parole, I call the murder police just to get it on the record ASAP. They don’t care about my record, my parole officer doesn’t give a shit as long as they sign off on it. Either that or I just straight up pretend I didn’t see anything and let someone else find it. Main point being - I don’t take it up with mall/school/shop security.
        sidewndr46 3y ago
        Have you ever been accused of murder?
    - gumby 3y ago
      The article even says they finally went public about it when UCB stopped giving them business. As Upton Sinclair remarked, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on it." I believe this is the explanation for many climate deniers, for example.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  This seems to happen all the time though; schools, churches, larger companies all seem to have their own legal system. That is, if your kid gets beat up at school, it's dealt by the school (and parents), not the police (because assault); if a priest diddles kids, they get moved elsewhere and the whole case is silenced.
ro_bit 3y ago
> On Sunday evening, the contractor told The Scanner that, while he was still upset about the supervisor's apparent silence — and that UC Berkeley had not hired his firm in months despite years of collaboration — it had been a relief in January to see the police at work. Is there any law that covers the contractors against retaliation like this? It seems like there should be an investigation into the university for not reporting this to the police immediately, but the article doesn't mention anything. To me, the contractors didn't just report a suspicious death, but also are blowing the whistle on some negligence or even a coverup by the university.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  You're likely correct. But based off the story there was no report filed at the time of the discovery. So it wouldn't be retaliation, as there is nothing to retaliate for.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  The retaliation backfired on the supervisor who effectively silenced the contractors for months while they hoped he would bribe them with more jobs....
- OJFord 3y ago
  I don't understand that aspect though, anyone can report something to the police? If I found human remains in suspicious circumstances I think I'd tell the police before my supervisor? If not for some reason, then I definitely would after supervisor's inaction, before the press?
  - seiferteric 3y ago
    I found that odd too, my first instinct would be to call the police. They did report it to the police before the press though, in January.
    - bondarchuk 3y ago
      From the other side of the pond, I sometimes get the impression there's a lot of undocumented labour in US construction work (as probably anywhere), which might make a contractor more hesitant to contact police?
a_bonobo 3y ago
'University facilities supervision does absolutely nothing' is a tale I can tell in many ways :) Not just UC Berkeley, any university sounds like this. My favorite was when somebody broke in using a makeshift ladder and university security put safety cones around the ladder, but left the ladder in place for the next thief. It was a safety hazard, after all.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  You mean making it even easier to rob the place in broad daylight by just donning a hi-vis vest and acting like you belong? I mean, look at them safety cones, it's clear I'm working here!
  - chasd00 3y ago
    my college roommate stole a fire hydrant from a construction crew by showing up with a hard hat and clipboard. He just got someone to help him load it in the back of a pickup truck and drove off. We put it in the corner as like something funny to have for parties. btw, they're surprisingly heavy.
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      I've been to at least one frat that did this. No idea of the appeal but they always kept them out of sight of the road but used them as door stops for the backdoors.
  - vondur 3y ago
    I'm certain that this would work at most public Universities here in California.
  - itronitron 3y ago
    Calling the police could result in an unsafe working condition. /s
  - tzs 3y ago
    It can be surprisingly easy to take something in broad daylight without anyone noticing. I once worked at a computer workstation company that was having financial problems. In the hardware engineering lab they had a large flatbed printer. The bed was several feet on each side and the thing was very heavy. It would take at least two people to move and would be a struggle to get through the door. One day the hardware engineers got back from lunch and found that the printer was gone. They had last used it just before going to lunch, which had taken an hour. So it disappeared sometime in that hour. We later found out it was repo men repossessing it. The hardware lab had no windows and one door. That door was on a hallway. From that hallway you could go left which would take you through the lobby to the front door, or you could go right which would take you past all the software engineering offices to the back door. During the time when the hardware engineers were at lunch the receptionist was in the lobby, and one of the co-owners was in his office with the door open and from his desk could see the front door and much of the lobby. The software engineers that day all either took late lunches or ate at their desks, so all four of us and our supervisor were in our offices on that hallway, with our doors open, and all of us had our desks oriented so we were facing our doors. Not a one of us saw a damn thing. Somehow at least two repo men were able to stroll in and take that printer without anyone noticing. That isn't the only case of something being seemingly impossibly moved I've experienced. In the early '80s I lived in this area of Pasadena, CA [1]. See that big building labeled "Crown City Adult Day Health Care"? That building was originally the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall and was unsurprisingly located in Temple City which was 4 or 5 miles away from Pasadena. The space it now occupies in Pasadena was part of that parking lot to the south. Here's a street view of it to give an idea of its height [2] I was living in the apartments next to that lot on the north. One day they closed off the north part of the parking lot and started preparing a foundation for a building there. I thought they were going to build a new building there. Then one day signs went up that the south part of the lot would be closed for a while. I went to bed that night, and when I woke looked out my window, and there sitting in the south part of the lot, on top of something like 200 wheels, was the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall. Apparently they wanted to use the site in Temple City for something else but the building had historical value so they couldn't just tear it down. So they moved it. The building was not cut into sections and reassembled. The thing was moved whole. In one night. I spent quite a while afterwards driving all around that area and I could not find any route it could been taken on that would not have required a lot of moving cables or traffic lights or signs or trees out of the way. But I could not find any removed or cut trees, or any other sign that anything had been disturbed. To this day I still have no idea how the heck they did it. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1486783,-118.1378355,123a,35y,120.95h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1486783,-118.1378355,123a,35... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1478366,-118.1369049,3a,75y,51.28h,88.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sj8wP3cJzoZ-noygX1rbMNw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1478366,-118.1369049,3a,75y,...
tzs 3y ago
> The contractor said, when he was at the Clark Kerr job site, landscapers were using one of its buildings to store tools. But they did their best to steer clear of the area. > "They don't go all the way inside," he said, recalling that they had told him why: "'This place is creepy. We see ghosts in there all the time.' And this is before we saw the body." It is of course extremely improbable that they are seeing actual ghosts but still I would think that when you’ve got multiple people avoiding a place because they think they see ghosts there all the time someone would try to figure out what they are actually seeing. Most things I can think of that might make people believe they are actually seeing ghosts are things you wouldn’t want happening in or to your unoccupied building.
- MarceColl 3y ago
  What are the things you can think of?
  - Loughla 3y ago
    Animals, humans that aren't supposed to be there, water leaks, carbon monoxide or other dangerous gases.
  - s5300 3y ago
    Perhaps infrasound, described in Vic Tandy’s A Ghost in the Machine Here’s a brief of it: https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunted-frequency https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunt... The full story is a PDF that is the first google result of “Vic Tandy’s Ghost in the Machine” e.g. failing mechanical equipment
  - tzs 3y ago
    I'm assuming that an unused building would not be well lit. One class of things that might be mistaken for ghosts in such a building is various animals. A family of raccoons moving farther into the darkness to hide when a human opens the door, for example. Or a lot of rats or mice. Another would be humans who are clandestinely using the space. A trail of moving water running down a wall from a water leak might reflect light in such a way as to appear to be some sort of shimmering ethereal thing moving around.
atourgates 3y ago
I’m having a hard time thinking if a “non-nefarious” reason that the facilities supervisor wouldn’t report the body to police?
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  "I want this construction done, and making a big deal out of this body will slow it down considerably."
  - Loughla 3y ago
    Having spent most of my career working with colleges and universities, I can absolutely say that speed and efficiency had no role in this. It was appearances and public image, 100%.
    - harry8 3y ago
      Is that really fair? 100% leaves no room for sheer incompetence and laziness. (Not all... etc)
      - Loughla 3y ago
        Yes. It is fair. There is no way that an institution of higher education thought about efficiency and speed before public image. I know it's not okay to speak in absolutes, but this might as well be a law. Colleges and Universities care more about public image than about needless spending, efficiency, and waste. Their entire existence hinges on their image, especially for elite schools.
    - boomboomsubban 3y ago
      It could have nothing to do with speed and efficiency, it could be "this building project gives me more work, I want it done so I can slack off again."
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Universities are very "image-conscious." They rely on appearance and goodwill. No one will send their kids to a school, where homeless people kill each other on campus (which is what this appears to be, but More Will Be Revealed). I won't speculate, but it seems as if they had simply kept giving jobs to that contractor, it would have remained silent. I'm surprised no one removed the body, in all that time, though.

84 points by yawnxyz 3y ago

Why didn't they call the police directly? Why didn't they call the police when Berkley didn't do anything? I don't understand how you can think that you uncovered a crime of that calibre, and then think that its okay just hand it over to campus administration.

gumby 3y ago
The article says it was because Berkeley was an important client for them.
- tokai 3y ago
  Which kind of excuse is that? They are just at bad as the supervisor covering this up. And for personal gain even.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
    Yeah you’re right. I find a body in the mall, I’m not going to mall security; I’m going to the murder police. To me all of this sounds like simple laziness on everyone’s part.
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      Everyone says that, but no one puts themselves in the shoes of the person discovering the body. I'd probably be OK if I did this. But let's pretend I'm a two-time convicted felon. I've done my time and gotten out. I still have to report into my parole officer. But I've found a job that is steady work and pays well enough that I'm living comfortably. As long as I don't get involved in something criminal, I'll be OK. Do you really want to call the police and say "So yeah, about that body hidden in a crawl space..."
      - tokai 3y ago
        I don't follow. It's not criminal to report a potential crime to the police. What about putting oneself in the shoes of the dead person. Unburied, next of kind uninformed, potential perpetrator going free. I would hope that if my remains were found randomly that they would be dealt with properly.
      - scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
        What. This logic is straight up paranoid. Even if I have a record, even if I’m on parole, I call the murder police just to get it on the record ASAP. They don’t care about my record, my parole officer doesn’t give a shit as long as they sign off on it. Either that or I just straight up pretend I didn’t see anything and let someone else find it. Main point being - I don’t take it up with mall/school/shop security.
        sidewndr46 3y ago
        Have you ever been accused of murder?
  - gumby 3y ago
    The article even says they finally went public about it when UCB stopped giving them business. As Upton Sinclair remarked, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on it." I believe this is the explanation for many climate deniers, for example.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
This seems to happen all the time though; schools, churches, larger companies all seem to have their own legal system. That is, if your kid gets beat up at school, it's dealt by the school (and parents), not the police (because assault); if a priest diddles kids, they get moved elsewhere and the whole case is silenced.

ro_bit 3y ago

> On Sunday evening, the contractor told The Scanner that, while he was still upset about the supervisor's apparent silence — and that UC Berkeley had not hired his firm in months despite years of collaboration — it had been a relief in January to see the police at work. Is there any law that covers the contractors against retaliation like this? It seems like there should be an investigation into the university for not reporting this to the police immediately, but the article doesn't mention anything. To me, the contractors didn't just report a suspicious death, but also are blowing the whistle on some negligence or even a coverup by the university.

sidewndr46 3y ago
You're likely correct. But based off the story there was no report filed at the time of the discovery. So it wouldn't be retaliation, as there is nothing to retaliate for.
readthenotes1 3y ago
The retaliation backfired on the supervisor who effectively silenced the contractors for months while they hoped he would bribe them with more jobs....
OJFord 3y ago
I don't understand that aspect though, anyone can report something to the police? If I found human remains in suspicious circumstances I think I'd tell the police before my supervisor? If not for some reason, then I definitely would after supervisor's inaction, before the press?
- seiferteric 3y ago
  I found that odd too, my first instinct would be to call the police. They did report it to the police before the press though, in January.
  - bondarchuk 3y ago
    From the other side of the pond, I sometimes get the impression there's a lot of undocumented labour in US construction work (as probably anywhere), which might make a contractor more hesitant to contact police?

a_bonobo 3y ago

'University facilities supervision does absolutely nothing' is a tale I can tell in many ways :) Not just UC Berkeley, any university sounds like this. My favorite was when somebody broke in using a makeshift ladder and university security put safety cones around the ladder, but left the ladder in place for the next thief. It was a safety hazard, after all.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
You mean making it even easier to rob the place in broad daylight by just donning a hi-vis vest and acting like you belong? I mean, look at them safety cones, it's clear I'm working here!
- chasd00 3y ago
  my college roommate stole a fire hydrant from a construction crew by showing up with a hard hat and clipboard. He just got someone to help him load it in the back of a pickup truck and drove off. We put it in the corner as like something funny to have for parties. btw, they're surprisingly heavy.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    I've been to at least one frat that did this. No idea of the appeal but they always kept them out of sight of the road but used them as door stops for the backdoors.
- vondur 3y ago
  I'm certain that this would work at most public Universities here in California.
- itronitron 3y ago
  Calling the police could result in an unsafe working condition. /s
- tzs 3y ago
  It can be surprisingly easy to take something in broad daylight without anyone noticing. I once worked at a computer workstation company that was having financial problems. In the hardware engineering lab they had a large flatbed printer. The bed was several feet on each side and the thing was very heavy. It would take at least two people to move and would be a struggle to get through the door. One day the hardware engineers got back from lunch and found that the printer was gone. They had last used it just before going to lunch, which had taken an hour. So it disappeared sometime in that hour. We later found out it was repo men repossessing it. The hardware lab had no windows and one door. That door was on a hallway. From that hallway you could go left which would take you through the lobby to the front door, or you could go right which would take you past all the software engineering offices to the back door. During the time when the hardware engineers were at lunch the receptionist was in the lobby, and one of the co-owners was in his office with the door open and from his desk could see the front door and much of the lobby. The software engineers that day all either took late lunches or ate at their desks, so all four of us and our supervisor were in our offices on that hallway, with our doors open, and all of us had our desks oriented so we were facing our doors. Not a one of us saw a damn thing. Somehow at least two repo men were able to stroll in and take that printer without anyone noticing. That isn't the only case of something being seemingly impossibly moved I've experienced. In the early '80s I lived in this area of Pasadena, CA [1]. See that big building labeled "Crown City Adult Day Health Care"? That building was originally the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall and was unsurprisingly located in Temple City which was 4 or 5 miles away from Pasadena. The space it now occupies in Pasadena was part of that parking lot to the south. Here's a street view of it to give an idea of its height [2] I was living in the apartments next to that lot on the north. One day they closed off the north part of the parking lot and started preparing a foundation for a building there. I thought they were going to build a new building there. Then one day signs went up that the south part of the lot would be closed for a while. I went to bed that night, and when I woke looked out my window, and there sitting in the south part of the lot, on top of something like 200 wheels, was the Temple City Odd Fellows Hall. Apparently they wanted to use the site in Temple City for something else but the building had historical value so they couldn't just tear it down. So they moved it. The building was not cut into sections and reassembled. The thing was moved whole. In one night. I spent quite a while afterwards driving all around that area and I could not find any route it could been taken on that would not have required a lot of moving cables or traffic lights or signs or trees out of the way. But I could not find any removed or cut trees, or any other sign that anything had been disturbed. To this day I still have no idea how the heck they did it. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1486783,-118.1378355,123a,35y,120.95h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1486783,-118.1378355,123a,35... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1478366,-118.1369049,3a,75y,51.28h,88.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sj8wP3cJzoZ-noygX1rbMNw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1478366,-118.1369049,3a,75y,...

tzs 3y ago

> The contractor said, when he was at the Clark Kerr job site, landscapers were using one of its buildings to store tools. But they did their best to steer clear of the area. > "They don't go all the way inside," he said, recalling that they had told him why: "'This place is creepy. We see ghosts in there all the time.' And this is before we saw the body." It is of course extremely improbable that they are seeing actual ghosts but still I would think that when you’ve got multiple people avoiding a place because they think they see ghosts there all the time someone would try to figure out what they are actually seeing. Most things I can think of that might make people believe they are actually seeing ghosts are things you wouldn’t want happening in or to your unoccupied building.

MarceColl 3y ago
What are the things you can think of?
- Loughla 3y ago
  Animals, humans that aren't supposed to be there, water leaks, carbon monoxide or other dangerous gases.
- s5300 3y ago
  Perhaps infrasound, described in Vic Tandy’s A Ghost in the Machine Here’s a brief of it: https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunted-frequency https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunt... The full story is a PDF that is the first google result of “Vic Tandy’s Ghost in the Machine” e.g. failing mechanical equipment
- tzs 3y ago
  I'm assuming that an unused building would not be well lit. One class of things that might be mistaken for ghosts in such a building is various animals. A family of raccoons moving farther into the darkness to hide when a human opens the door, for example. Or a lot of rats or mice. Another would be humans who are clandestinely using the space. A trail of moving water running down a wall from a water leak might reflect light in such a way as to appear to be some sort of shimmering ethereal thing moving around.

atourgates 3y ago

I’m having a hard time thinking if a “non-nefarious” reason that the facilities supervisor wouldn’t report the body to police?

boomboomsubban 3y ago
"I want this construction done, and making a big deal out of this body will slow it down considerably."
- Loughla 3y ago
  Having spent most of my career working with colleges and universities, I can absolutely say that speed and efficiency had no role in this. It was appearances and public image, 100%.
  - harry8 3y ago
    Is that really fair? 100% leaves no room for sheer incompetence and laziness. (Not all... etc)
    - Loughla 3y ago
      Yes. It is fair. There is no way that an institution of higher education thought about efficiency and speed before public image. I know it's not okay to speak in absolutes, but this might as well be a law. Colleges and Universities care more about public image than about needless spending, efficiency, and waste. Their entire existence hinges on their image, especially for elite schools.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    It could have nothing to do with speed and efficiency, it could be "this building project gives me more work, I want it done so I can slack off again."
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Universities are very "image-conscious." They rely on appearance and goodwill. No one will send their kids to a school, where homeless people kill each other on campus (which is what this appears to be, but More Will Be Revealed). I won't speculate, but it seems as if they had simply kept giving jobs to that contractor, it would have remained silent. I'm surprised no one removed the body, in all that time, though.