I actually had a rather well read and thought out essay on this which I lost when the program I was using to compose it crashed. OUCH. That will teach me (again) to save my work as I go. That, however is neither here nor there. The subject is the crime reported below... as horrible a crime as was ever committed. The victims... a young man who came to America at the age of 10, enlisted in the Marine Corps, served in Iraq with honor, and came home marry the woman he loved. His bride held a master's degree from Cal State San Bernardino. She aspired to be an anesthesiologist, and worked at the Riverside County Black Infant Care Center. Why did were they targeted and so viciously abused and treated? 

Marine Sergeant Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his bride Quiana were robbed, tortured, and murdered in their own home. Quaina Pietrzak was raped by at least one of the killers, another killer has confessed to cutting off her clothes. Their occurred on October 15, 2008 at their home in California by four Marines, two of whom served under Sgt. Pietrzak. 

Before I go any further, I will state what the pictures below make obvious. The Pietrzaks were an interracial couple, he white, she black. The killers, all of whom have confessed, are black.

The politically correct and.... I absolutely hate to use this word in this instance...acceptable motive, which is being spewed forth by official sources, is that the entire event was part of a robbery... a robbery gone bad.

NBC News.... whose journalistic standards lie (pun intended) somewhere below the National Enquirer and Mad Magazine... stated at 4:56 PM PST, Thursday, November 6, 2008 that "Investigators said they believe the motive was financial in nature."

This is nonsense. The Pietrzaks were not rich, moreover, their circumstances were known to their killers, who worked with them. The Pietrzaks were targeted because they were an interracial couple. Quiana Pietrzak was raped and killed because she married a white man.

This won't my called a "hate crime". The killers will not be prosecuted for "violating the civil rights" of Jan Pawel and Quiana Pietrzak. 

Which is rather odd, don't you think. This crime...or collection of crimes, to be more precise... surely wasn't done out of love and tolerance. I'm sort of the opinion that torturing, raping, and killing a married couple in their own home is about as much a violation of someone's civil rights as there can be.

"Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina, told cops he threatened Pietrzak with a shotgun to get into the house. He said he bound and gagged the couple and then debated with John whether to kill them."

The italics are mine, by the way. That aside, wouldn't a transcript of that debate be telling? It's a pretty strange coincidence, on October 15, 2008 another debate was going on, at Hofstra University in New York, between the honorable John McCain and the well-financed Barack Obama.  

If the the victims had been a gay couple, married or not, and the four killers heterosexual... this would be prosecuted as a hate crime. If the Pietrzaks had both been black or Hispanic, and the killers white, this would be prosecuted as a hate crime... and would be the subject of discussion on 85% of the broadcast and print media in the United States and Europe. Sad to say, if the Pietrzaks had been Asian, no matter who the perpetrators were, no one would talk about it. What is truly bizarre, hypocritical, and in the end utterly disgusting is that because the because the Pietrzaks were an interracial couple and their killers black, there has been and will be a rush to declare the motive purely robbery and to silence any discussion as to the brutality of the crime being due to racial hatred on the part of the killers. 

For the record, according to the local district attorney's spokesman, the four perpetrators were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder and special-circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders, committing the crime during a robbery, and rape by instrument. 

California Penal Code Section 289(k)2 defines "instrument" as "any part of the body, except a sexual organ." What was done to Quiana Pietrzak is more than I want to think about.

Before the month is out, the killers will be in some circles portrayed as victims, hailed as heroes, and, God help us all, be celebrated in a rap video or recording. As Joe Isuzu put it...don't you who are old enough to remember those commercials so wonderfully put it... you have my word on it.

Oh, for those of you who would like to know where I get my insight...why I would dare to pontificate on such profound subjects, being that I'm not an employee of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, MSNBC, the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Nation of Islam, Jeremiah Wright or Oprah Winfrey... I was the "white half" of an interracial relationship and marriage for fourteen years, which ended amicably in 2004. Ninety-nine percent of the grief we caught over the years was from blacks. That's hardly a scientific statistical sample of modern America, but it IS the truth as I've experienced it. 

One other thing, well worth noting. For daring to comment on this, I will be branded a racist, a hater, and all sorts of other stuff which I could care less about. Standard Operating Procedure and Methodology of the intolerant Political Left: When the argument cannot be disputed by fact, smear the messenger.  

Phillip Cohen
November 8, 2008

Riverside CA Press-Enterprise - Friday, October 31st, 2008

Love story cut short by slaying in Winchester home

BY TAMMY J. McCOY
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

A Winchester newlywed couple had everything they could want from life, but not for very long.

The love story of Quiana Faye Jenkins-Pietrzak and Jan Pietrzak ended when they were gunned down in their home on Oct. 15.

Jenkins-Pietrzak had prepared thank you cards for those who attended their Aug. 8 wedding in Temecula's Wine Country. She was waiting until she could include wedding pictures with her handwritten notes of appreciation, said her mother, Glenda Faye Jenkins.

The wedding photos were not ready until a week after the couple's death, Jenkins said.

The thank you cards have yet to be mailed.

Riverside County sheriff's investigators say the couple was killed in their southwestern Riverside County home by someone they knew, but few details were released about their death. No one has been charged in connection with their deaths.

Marine Sgt. Jan Pietrzak, 24, was based at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. He served in Iraq about a decade after his family came to New York from Poland.

Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, worked for Riverside County Public Health's Black Infant Care Center and held a master's degree from Cal State San Bernardino. She aspired to be an anesthesiologist.

Loved ones are grappling with unanswered questions: Who killed the couple, and why would anyone want them dead?

"They worked. They studied. They were a perfect example for anybody," said Jan Pietrzak's mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, now living in Pennsylvania.

The couple had recently gone to the Big Bear area to raise money for the families of fallen Marines, said Glenda Faye Jenkins and her husband, Roy.

'Would Never Date a Marine'

Jan Pietrzak grew interested in Quiana Jenkins while she was at San Diego State University getting her undergraduate degree. But Jenkins didn't pay much attention to him.

"She swore she would never date a Marine," said her friend Jackie Townsend.

Jenkins was an attractive girl, a high school athlete who lettered in basketball.

She was put off by the Marines reputation, her friend said.

Pietrzak returned from his overseas tour and the two met again at a welcome home party in February 2006. He asked his mother for advice about how to woo a reluctant Jenkins.

"She didn't want to date anybody," Pietrzak-Varga said.

He persisted and she finally agreed to go out with him, loved ones said.

The couples' parents knew the relationship would last.

"When he looked at her you could tell," Glenda Faye Jenkins said. "This was someone who loved her as much as I did."

He bought a ring, asked her parents' permission, then proposed in Balboa Park in San Diego on May 19, 2007, a year after their first date.

He purchased their Winchester home a year later and they wed in August.

Jenkins wore her trademark Converse sneakers, which were white and decorated for the occasion, Townsend said.

Poland to Winchester

Jan Pietrzak was a sickly child born in Bielawa, Poland, his mother said.

The family came to New York in 1994, when he was 10 and his health problems seemed to evaporate, Pietrzak-Varga said.

The family lived in New York when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Jan Pietrzak said he wanted to join the Marines.

"I talked him out of it. A year later he signed up," she said. " I asked him why and he said, 'A man's got to do what a man's got to do.' He felt like this is the time when men need to respond."

He was 19 at the time.

Jan Pietrzak was a helicopter airframe mechanic with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 164, Third Marine Aircraft Wing. In May, he purchased a five-bedroom house on Bermuda Street and used his re-enlistment bonus to put in hardwood floors and new carpet, his mother said.

Jan Pietrzak grew up loving dogs and movies like "Rambo." When Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak picked out a white Maltese puppy, he named it Rambo.

The dog was the last topic of conversation between mother and daughter when they talked, about 9 p.m. on Oct. 14.

"She was all excited because the dog had come down the stairs for the first time," Glenda Faye Jenkins said.

New York Daily News - Friday, November 6th 2008

Brooklyn Marine sergeant & wife tortured, slain in Calif.; 4 of his men are arrested

BY CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A Brooklyn-raised Marine sergeant and his new bride were tortured and killed execution-style in their California home - allegedly by four other Marines under his command.

Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak, who was raised in Bensonhurst, and his wife, Quiana, were found bound and gagged in the ransacked house, each shot in the head.

Pietrzak was the suspects' sergeant at Camp Pendleton, Quiana's mother said Wednesday.

"They're monsters," Faye Jenkins told the Daily News. "They're monsters."

Pietrzak's mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, said she had prepared herself "for the possibility that my son could die in Iraq."

"But to die like this, in their own home?" she told The News. "They were good kids. They didn't deserve to die like this."

Investigators said the motive for murder was "financial gain." Neither mother believes that.

"When I found out what they did to them, it was like they killed me, too," Pietrzak-Varga said.

A spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney's office would not comment on reports that Pietrzak was killed by his own men.

Detectives also did not divulge what the accused Marines were looking for, but the suspects were tied to the crime by items found in their homes and on the military base.

Born in Poland, Pietrzak was 10 when he moved to the U.S. and enlisted after the 9/11 attacks. He was named Jan Pawel, which means John Paul, after the Polish pontiff.

A mechanic who worked on helicopters, Pietrzak, 24, met his wife three years ago at a party for Marines being deployed to Iraq.

Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, who worked for the county's Black Infant Care Center, was reluctant to date a Marine. But Pietrzak wooed her, and they were married in August.

"They were in love," her mother-in-law said. "It didn't matter to them that they had different skin colors."

The bride wore her favorite white Converse sneakers, and she was still in the process of writing thank-you cards when she was killed.

"She was our only child and my best friend," Faye Jenkins said. "He was like my son. He was so proud to be a Marine. But when he was off the base, he was my son."

The Pietrzaks were not rich and purchased their five-bedroom home in May through a foreclosure, said Waldemar Piasecki, a New York-based Polish journalist and family friend. He used his reenlistment bonus to replace the hardwood floor and carpet.

"They were hardworking young people," Piasecki said.

On Oct. 15, deputies were dispatched to the Pietrzak home in Winchester, an exurb of San Diego, when the Marine did not show up for work.

When they arrived, the deputies found the Pietrzaks in the living room and evidence that the robbers had tried to cover their tracks by torching the house.

Charged with murder and other crimes are Pvt. Emrys John, 18, of Maryland; Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina; Pvt. Kevin Darnell Cox, 20, of Tennessee, and Pvt. Kesuan Sykes, 21, of California.

Lawyers for the men could not be reached for comment.

Pietrzak's mother said she can't understand how Marines could have committed such a crime.

"Don't the Marines screen out people like this?" she said. "Didn't they know they had murderers under their roof?".               

Hartford Courant - November 6, 2008

4 SoCal Marines charged in Riverside County with robbery, murder of fellow Marine and his wife

By GREG RISLING | Associated Press Writer

10:03 PM EST, November 6, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Four Marines, including one known as "Psycho," told investigators they robbed and murdered a fellow Marine and his wife last month after breaking into their Riverside County home in search of valuables and sexually assaulting the woman, according to court documents.

The four were charged Wednesday with the execution-style slayings of Sgt. Jan Pietrzak, 24, and Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, who were found gagged, tied and shot in the head on Oct. 15 in the living room of their home in Winchester.

The home was ransacked and jewelry and other items were taken, investigators said. A fire was set, apparently in an effort to destroy evidence.

Pietrzak's mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, told The Daily News of New York on Wednesday that she had prepared herself for the possibility of her son dying in Iraq.

"But to die like this, in their own home?" she said. "They were good kids. They didn't deserve to die like this."

Jenkins-Pietrzak's mother, Faye Jenkins, called her daughter's killers "monsters."

Murder charges were filed against Lance Cpl. Emrys John, 18, of Maryland; Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina; Pvt. Kevin Cox, 20, of Tennessee, and Lance Cpl. Kesaun Sykes, 21, of California.

John and Miller worked for Pietrzak, who was a helicopter airframe mechanic at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego.

Miller told a sheriff's investigator that he forced his way into the home by pointing a shotgun at Pietrzak, according to an affidavit from a sheriff's investigator. Miller said he and the others went to Pietrzak's home to rob him, and they tied up the couple and discussed with John whether to kill them.

Cox and Sykes, known as "Psycho," acknowledged they went to the home to rob Pietrzak. All four said his wife was sexually assaulted, the affidavit said.

The document also said shoes found at the barracks where Cox and John lived matched prints left at the crime scene, and items believed stolen from the house was found at Sykes' home.

The men were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder and special-circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders, committing the crime during a robbery, and rape by instrument, district attorney's spokesman Ryan Hightower said Thursday.

John, whom prosecutors believe shot the couple, also was charged with a special-circumstance allegation of using a firearm to inflict great bodily injury or death.

Prosecutors had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

"Marines are supposed to be brothers," Pietrzak's mother told The Riverside Press-Enterprise earlier in the week. "What kind of brothers are these? They killed them in cold blood."

Sykes, who lives in the Fallbrook area in San Diego County, was arrested on Sunday. The other three Marines lived at the Camp Pendleton base and were held there until they were transferred to a Riverside County jail on Wednesday.

All were being held without bail Thursday. Their arraignment was postponed until Nov. 20.

Pietrzak, who was born in Poland and raised in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, joined the Marines in 2003 and served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006.

Robert Jablon in Los Angeles also contributed to this report.

NewYork Daily News - Friday, November 7th 2008, 1:31 AM

Confession in torture, slay of Brooklyn-raised Marine sergeant and wife

BY NANCY DILLON IN MURRIETA, CALIF., AND CORKY SIEMASZKO IN NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

The four Marines charged with murdering their Brooklyn-raised sergeant and his bride confessed they were looking for an easy score when they burst into the couple's California home with guns drawn, court papers revealed Thursday.

Three of them ratted out Pvt. Emrys John as the triggerman who ended the torture of Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak and his wife, Quiana, by shooting them in the back of their heads.

All of the suspects say that Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak was sexually assaulted, but each says it was the other three who did it, the papers say.

Shackled and dressed in prison orange, the Marines avoided looking at each other during their court appearance Thursday. They did not enter pleas.

"John is the shooter," Riverside County prosecutor Daniel Delimon said. He said all four are "eligible for the most severe punishment.

John's site on MySpace offered a window into the sick mind of the 18-year-old private from Baltimore.

"Chillin waitin 4 da killin," was the caption under a photo he posted before the newlyweds were executed on Oct. 15.

Elsewhere on the site, John - an admitted collector of knives and swords - wrote that "shooting s---" and "blowin s--- up" was a great "stress reliever."

Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina, told cops he threatened Pietrzak with a shotgun to get into the house. He said he bound and gagged the couple and then debated with John whether to kill them.

On his MySpace page, Miller referred to himself as a "Cripgeneral." Investigators are now checking whether he had ties to the violent Crips street gang.

Pvt. Kesuan Sykes, 21, of California, is nicknamed "Psycho" and admitted that he "cut" off Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak's clothes, the court papers state.

The fourth Marine was identified as Pvt. Kevin  Cox, 20, of Tennessee.

John and Miller worked for Pietrzak, who was a helicopter airframe mechanic at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego. Sykes lives near the base. The other Marines lived at Camp Pendleton.

Detectives found stolen items like Pietrzak's digital camera and his wife's engagement ring in the barracks, sources said.

Pietrzak, 24, was born in Poland, raised in Bensonhurst, and joined the Marines in 2003. Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, was black and from the San Diego area. They met at a party before Pietrzak was deployed to Iraq in July 2005.

"When he came back, she was there," his mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga said. "I accepted her like my daughter and her family accepted him like their son."

The grieving mother insisted again that robbery could not possibly be the motive. "I can't believe it's about money," she said.               

New York Post - Saturday, November 8th 2008

A FEW 'BAD' MEN
RACE EYED IN MARINE DUAL SLAY

BY CAROLYN SALAZAR and ADAM NICHOLS

Four Marines accused of breaking into a Brooklyn-raised Iraq veteran's California home, sexually assaulting his wife and executing the couple could face the death penalty amid speculation the mixed-race couple was targeted in a bias attack.

All four confessed to a role in the brutal torture and killing of Sgt. Jan Pietrzak, 24, and his bride, Quianna Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, according to court records.

The Marines were stationed at the same military base as Pietrzak. Two of them were under his authority in the same unit.

Cops believe they targeted Pietrzak for "financial gain," but the soldier's mom, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, said from her Bensonhurst home yesterday, "I don't believe that.

"I don't know what happened. All I know is I lost my son, and I don't think that happened because of a robbery.

"Everything I hear, I hear from the newspapers. I want to know the truth."

A family friend, who asked not to be named, said Pietrzak-Varga had mentioned racial bias could have been a motive. Pietrzak, who was white, was married to a black woman. All the accused killers are black.

"She was such a beautiful woman," said the friend. "The family is certainly wondering if there were some jealousy issues."

Cops charged Lance Cpl. Emrys John, 18, Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, Private Kevin Cox, 20, and Lance Cpl. Kesuan Sykes, 21, with murder and rape with an instrument.

John and Miller worked under Pietrzak, who was a helicopter mechanic.

Miller told cops he forced his way into the home in Winchester, between LA and San Diego, by pointing a shotgun at Pietrzak, according to an affidavit filed by a sheriff's investigator.

The four, who Miller said had planned to rob the couple, tied them up and talked about killing them.

All four said the wife was sexually assaulted, although none claimed responsibility for the attack, the affidavit said.

They then shot Pietrzak and his wife in the head and started a fire in an effort to destroy evidence, cops said. Police found their bodies last month after being asked to check on the Marine when he failed to report for work.

The alleged killers were charged on Wednesday.

Court documents said shoes found at the barracks where Cox and John live matched prints left at the crime scene. Property taken from the Pietrzak house was recovered at Sykes' home.

Pietrzak's mom said her son was born in Poland. The family moved to New York when he was 11.

Always obsessed with the military, he joined up, she said, shortly after 9/11.

"He said, 'Mom, we live in this country. We have to be patriotic. We have to give back,' " she recalled.

He met his wife at a party three years ago, and they got married just two months ago.

"They hadn't even got their wedding pictures back yet," his mom said, weeping..