Linda Carty march is cancelled, but the gullible march on

Verity Rhiannon Mackworth-Praed is one hell of a double-barrelled name. Rhiannon is a prominent figure in Welsh mythology. According to the SongFacts database, she inspired the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name. Though there is nothing mythical about this modern Rhiannon, her gullibility is rapidly becoming legendary.

According to a local media report last month, Guildford student Verity was given permission to organise a rally on behalf of this lost cause in London’s Hyde Park. Now, Verity has delayed that momentous event because of a two-fold problem. In her own words:

“the papers have consistantly [sic] been refusing to touch the story, because they (incorrectly) believe the case of Linda Carty to have been covered to exhaustion. Until they get their ‘new angle’, this, it seems, is going to remain their position.”

And

“there is still a lack of information as to the details of the case itself. Human inquisitiveness requires basic questions to be answered; the sort of questions that I have been faced with when trying to get people on board, and been as yet unable to answer. Specifically about details such as the car, and other details such as how it is that such a gross miscarriage of justice was even allowed to happen.”

Alas, all the above claims are untrue; the great tragedy is that Verity has been blinded by her idealism; a while ago she read a press report – perhaps several – about how poor, innocent Linda was first framed by wicked drug dealers and then failed by a useless lawyer. All these reports simply parrot Carty’s lies with the added spin of the London-based Reprieve organisation whose staff of lawyers and activists are so committed to opposing the death penalty that they have no hesitation – certainly not in this case – of supplementing Carty’s lies with distortions of their own.

A resumé of the case against Linda Carty can be found here, but to deal with Verity’s new claims: the papers have consistently been refusing to touch the story, is simply not true. Carty is one of many prisoners on death row in the United States, but because of her tenuous British connection, the fact that she is a woman, and the bizarre nature of her crime, her conviction received some limited publicity here. Two years ago, Carty received considerable publicity when Reprieve hit on the gimmick of putting a cardboard cut-out of her on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square and playing a tape of her whining about being stitched up for murder. This appears to be when Verity joined the fray, but now she says it has been covered to exhaustion. This may be true, but is it because the British media are exhausted with injustice, or with Carty’s lies?

Now, what are we to make of: “there is still a lack of information as to the details of the case itself.”

Verity, Verity, Reprieve may not have publicised these details, but just for you they are a click away — here!

What are we to make of Verity’s further claim that “by keeping Linda Carty silent on the issue that the prosecutors are able to feel secure that her side of the story will never really be heard, until it is too late, and thus their methods of prosecution never truly be put under the spotlight.”

Since when has Linda Carty EVER been silent? Haven’t you seen the Reprieve page? The YouTube videos? The interviews?

There are things about which Carty has been silent, for example, she was silent about her British citizenship, lying both to the courts and to her lawyer; it was only after she had been convicted and was looking around in desperation for some sort of technicality on which to appeal that she mentioned it.

Even worst is yet to come: “I have decided to travel over to Texas, with the view to making a documentary, about the whole trial, start to finish. I am hoping to visit and interview Linda Carty, to give her the voice she deserves”.

Verity doesn’t say who is going to sponsor this trip, but little girls who have double-barrelled names often have rich daddies too. Again, she could save herself or her rich daddy the plane fare simply by reading the judgment, but if she does intend to visit Texas she might as well take in Dealey Plaza where no doubt she will also uncover the missing link in the Kennedy Assassination.

If this sound whimsical, the reader should bear in mind that like Linda Carty, Lee Harvey Oswald was condemned by literally overwhelming evidence, yet what do the true believers remember? Oswald’s claim that he was just a patsy. Forget the rifle which he bought and posed with, forget his fingerprints all over the crime scene, forget the mysterious package he was seen taking in to work that day, forget his cold-blooded execution of the police officer who challenged him on the other side of town, Lee Harvey Oswald says he was framed, so he must have been.

Similarly, forget the evidence against Carty which Verity claims did not exist:

“No one claims Linda Carty was ever at the scene of the crime.”

Wrong — she was outside the first crime scene from which the victim was kidnapped, and she was physically present at the second crime scene where she personally smothered Joana – not Joanna – Rodriguez with a plastic bag.

“The only pieces of ‘evidence’ presented by the prosecution - that they claim prove that she organized the murder – are a pair of round-nosed (i.e safety) bandage scissors, and a hire car”.

And the cellphone evidence, and the baby clothes which the police found at her hotel room – sorry, that evidence was not adduced in court because Carty’s supposedly so useless lawyer applied successfully for it to be suppressed (excluded, as we say here).

There is more where that came from, but if the reader is not convinced by now he never will be. Verity, wake up and smell the coffee, your poster girl is as guilty as Oswald.

If like this other Walter Mitty character she had murdered a President, she would still be hogging the limelight, but because her victim was only a young mother, a person of humble origin like most of us, she has had her fifteen minutes and the world has moved on, as will Texas when the Governor signs her death warrant, which could be any day soon.

There are though some people who find it difficult to move on, like the father of baby Ray, who along with his cousin was beaten up during the robbery in which his son was kidnapped. And Ray Rodriguez, who will soon be a teenager, a young boy growing up with only photographs and other people’s memories of the mother he never knew.

[The above op-ed article was first published July 17, 2011. In the original, Carty was alluded to as a murderer rather than a murderess. This was probably altered by Silverberg. For some years and for some reason, murderesses have been alluded to as murderers, and actresses as actors. Carty is both. Sadly as of March 2021, she is still awaiting the gurney.]

To Linda Carty and the march of the gullible
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