Snowdrift Crater: A Surprising Desert Destination • D1 Thursday
• October 29, 2015
www.magicvalley.com •
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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS
The headstones of Laura and William Trueblood, far left, Edward Meyer, Loraine Dooley and Billy McHaffie, back right, are seen Wednesday at the Twin Falls Cemetery. The Truebloods’ daughter Lyda Southard was found guilty of killing Meyer — her fourth husband — and also was suspected of killing her daughter, Loraine, and McHaffie, her fifth husband. The grave of Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Deputy Virgil Ormsby, who solved the Southard case, is just off camera, to the left.
The Story of Twin Falls’ Serial Killer, Lady Bluebeard “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
Editor’s note
This is the fourth in a series of urban legends and haunted happenings that will run through Halloween.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
TWIN FALLS | Six seemingly unrelated graves lie clustered under a row of evergreens in the Twin Falls Cemetery. But the graves are all connected to one woman. Lyda Southard, arguably the most infamous woman in Idaho history, is said to have poisoned her daughter, four husbands and a brother-in-law, all by the time she was 27.
Mychel Matthews Hidden History
Three of her victims lie next to each other in the cemetery, along with her parents and the Twin Falls County deputy who chased her down nearly 100 years ago.
$9.8M Plan Provides All-day Kindergarten JULIE WOOTTON jwootton@magicvalley.com
TWIN FALLS • The Idaho Board of Education is considering a new proposal to offer all-day kindergarten to struggling students. Under the $9.8 million plan, kindergartners who score “below basic” on the Idaho Reading Indicator in the fall would be eligible. Education officials say early literacy skills provide a strong foundation for students to be more successful later in life. “Full-day kindergarten is very beneficial to all students, not just those who come in with low scores,” said Teresa Jones, elementary programs director for the Twin Falls
School District. But if the proposal is approved, all-day kindergarten would be an option — not a mandate, said Idaho Board of Education spokesman Blake Youde. Parents would decide if they want extra help for their child. Plus, school districts could offer different interventions instead. State legislators would also have to sign off on the proposal and allocate funding. State superintendent Sherri Ybarra said in a statement Friday that her public schools budget reflects a commitment to early literacy. But full-day kindergarten
Most Popular Girl in School The story of the Twin Falls woman’s dirty deeds and her eventual capture and conviction captivated the nation. Lyda’s story still appalls and fascinates today. Some said the pretty little thing was the most popular girl in high school. Alan Jaffe, a magazine
writer who profiled Lyda in Argosy magazine, said she had an “indefinable something, a spark giving off a light that draws men, by physiological and chemical attraction.” Men “hung around her like flies about a honey pot,” Jaffe wrote in 1957, when there were still people around who had known her as Anna Elizabeth “Lyda” Trueblood.
Jaffe interviewed a neighbor who described the Trueblood family. “They wasn’t so wealthy. Just so-so,” said Mrs. Larrabee Hanson. “But they were all church-going people, devout and cleanliving. Lyda went to church every Sunday without fail.”
Dropping like Flies
In 1912, at the age of 21, Lyda Trueblood became Mrs. Robert C. Dooley. Her brother-in-law, Ed Dooley, lived with Bob, Lyda and their infant, Loraine, on their farm outside Twin Falls. Ed Dooley died suddenly is 1915, after taking
out a life insurance policy payable to Bob and Lyda. Bob Dooley died several months later, after taking out a life insurance policy payable to Lyda. Both Dooleys had succumbed to typhoid, Lyda suggested and doctors agreed. Loraine, then two years old, died under suspicious circumstances in the same year. In 1917, Lyda Trueblood Dooley became Mrs. Billy McHaffie. Supposedly distraught over the earlier deaths, Lyda convinced McHaffie that they should move away. Please see BLUEBEARD, A9
13 Years Later, Accidental Shooting Victim Still Recovering
Please see PLAN, A10
STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS
Oscar Vera shows his scars Tuesday from sixteen surgeries performed after he was shot 13 years ago. He still has more than 50 pieces of shrapnel in his body. ALEX RIGGINS ariggins@magicvalley.com
JOY PRUITT, FOR THE TIMES-NEWS
Daryon Contreras, a kindergartner at Lincoln Elementary School, draws spiders in a counting book on Wednesday in Twin Falls. If You Do One Thing: Teen Halloween Party for students in sixth through 12th grades, 4-5:30 p.m. at Twin Falls Public Library, 201 Fourth Ave. E. Free.
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TWIN FALLS • Oscar Vera went to watch a movie at his best friend’s apartment on a Friday night in the summer of 2002. Soon after, a sawedoff 20-gauge shotgun was pressed against his forehead. Vera, 16 at the time, knew how
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dangerous the situation was, even if the other 16-year-old holding the gun, Jose Cruz, insisted it wasn’t loaded. “I was terrified, I was shaking,” Vera recalled Friday at his Jerome home. “I didn’t know what his intentions were, I just wanted to make sure he didn’t pull the trigger.” Cruz just smiled, Vera said, and thought it was funny to see Vera
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squirm on the couch. Vera placed both hands around the barrel and moved it slowly away from his face and down toward his chest, but with Cruz standing above him, he couldn’t push the barrel away from his body. The gun was pointed below his abdomen when Cruz pulled the trigger.
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Thursday, October 29, 2015 • A5
Shooting Continued from A1
The gun fired. “Jose believed the gun was unloaded and was extremely surprised when the gun went off,” a police report detailing the incident said. More than 13 years after the shooting, Vera, now 29, is still recovering, though the only outward signs of his health problems are a slight limp in his right leg and the scars of 16 surgeries that cover his torso. He continues to deal with physical complications from the shooting and surgeries. He still has dozens of shotgun pellets in his body, and he has a cyst that pushes against his intestines and needs to be drained two to three times per year. He has found that little help or support is available for victims of firearm accidents. A spokeswoman for the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office said she didn’t know of any fund or group that’s set up to help victims or shooters in the case of a firearm accident. “There are certainly services available for crime victims, but if it is ruled accidental, they wouldn’t qualify,” said Lori Stewart, the victim’s assistance coordinator for the sheriff’s office. Help is also not readily available for victims in terms of medical expenses. “Both parties would need to access their private insurance,” Stewart said. “Or possibly home owners insurance if it happened there.” In Vera’s case, that was a big problem. His parents brought him to the U.S. from Mexico as a young child without documentation, so at the time of the shooting he didn’t have insurance, and he still doesn’t. At last count his outstanding medical bills tallied $2.8 million.
Recovery and Consequences In the car ride to the hospital, Vera remembers, he
thought he was in a dream. “It didn’t hurt, I was just in shock,” he said. Vera’s best friend, Joey Torrero, who was in the shower at the time of the shooting, rushed Vera to the hospital. “I was putting pressure on the wound, but I was getting really sleepy as we drove,” Vera said. “I knew I was going to die. I told Joey to tell my twin sisters I loved them.” When they reached the hospital, Vera got out of the van’s passenger side door and looked at the seat he had just been sitting in. “There was a puddle of blood and flesh and tissue,” Vera said. “I panicked. I grabbed a handful of blood and tried to put it back in the wound.” At his family’s apartment, the phone rang shortly after Vera was admitted. His older brother answered, and then told his mom her son was in the hospital with a gunshot wound. “At first I was mad,” his mother, Rosario Castrejon, said. “I thought he had been shot in the hand or the foot. I never imagined it would be so bad.” The shot ripped a gaping wound in Vera’s stomach and tore apart his intestine, urethra, rectum and testicles. Doctors told his mom the priority was to save his life, but there was only a 30-percent chance he would ever walk again. Vera knows he’ll never be able to pay off his bills. Though he’s currently working as a restaurant busboy and server, employers tire of him quickly because of the hours he misses for doctor visits and surgeries. He spent two years after the shooting – from August 2003 to August 2005 – having reconstructive surgeries in California. More complications forced him back to California for another round of surgeries about two years ago. He can now defecate normally thanks to those operations, but he still needs a catheter to urinate, and using a catheter makes him extremely vulnerable to bladder infections, which
STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS
Oscar Vera, who was accidentally shot 13 years ago, on Tuesday at his home in Jerome. Vera’s unstable health from the accident has prevented him from holding down a steady job.
in the leg with a .40 caliber handgun. In April, a 7-year-old Aberdeen boy was hospitalized after his nine-year-old brother accidentally shot him in the left arm with a .22 caliber firearm. In March, Israel Briones, 15, of Caldwell accidentally shot and killed himself inside his home while showing a handgun to friends. And last Dec. 26, Veronica Rutledge, 29, of Blackfoot was shot and killed inside a Hayden Wal-Mart by her two-year-old son, who reached into his mother’s purse, unzipped the gun from a special protective pocket and shot Rutledge in the head.
only adds to the medical expenses. Surgery that would use tissue from inside his cheek to reconstruct his urethra is considered optional and will cost $30,000; he recently s ta r te d a G o Fu n d M e account to try to raise the money.
Recent Firearm Accidents in Idaho Life has been difficult for Vera, but he counts himself lucky to be alive, especially considering other recent firearm accidents involving Idaho children and teenagers. The most recent happened earlier this month in Meridian and was similar to the shooting that injured Vera. David Provencio, 18, shot and killed Tristan Fenton, 15, inside Fenton’s home. Provencio thought his Glock 19 handgun was unloaded when he pointed it at Fenton’s head and pulled the trigger Oct. 17. In August, a 16-yearold in Mountain Home was hospitalized after he accidentally shot himself
Accidental Shooting Statistics It’s hard to quantify exactly how many children and teens are shot in accidents each year in the U.S., but one of the most thorough studies was done by researches from the Yale School of Medicine. They determined that in 2009, there were 2,149
children and adolescents hospitalized nationwide because of shooting accidents. Those accidents accounted for 29 percent of the 7,391 total hospitalizations for children due to firearm injuries in 2009. But that study included only hospitalizations and did not account for children and adolescents pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting. Another hurdle in figuring out how many firearm accidents occur each year among children and adolescents is that accidental shootings are often reported by coroners as homicides. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an average of 62 children age 14 and under were accidentally shot and killed each year between 2007 and 2011. But an investigation by the New York Times and a separate report by Every Town Research Group show that the federal statistics are much lower than the actual statistics because coroners often rule that any deadly shooting, accidental or not, is a homicide. The New York Times found that in four of the five states where data was available — California, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio — there were about double the accidental killings than were reported in the federal data. In Minnesota, the fifth state where data was available, there were 50 percent more accidental gun deaths than reported by the federal data.
Gun Safety for Kids and Adolescents For those who choose to keep guns in the home, the American Academy of Pediatricians says “scientific evidence shows the risk of injury or death is greatly reduced when they are stored unloaded and locked, with the ammunition locked in a separate place.” “Parents play a key role in developing safe practices and are ultimately responsible for the behavior and safety of their children,” the National Rifle Association says.
The NRA, through its Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program, teaches that if children come across a gun, they should stop and remember all safety instructions; do not touch the gun; run away to remove any temptation to touch the gun; tell a parent, guardian, or other trustworthy adult. Oscar Vera simply wants young people to know they shouldn’t play with guns. “Before, I used to ask, ‘what’s my reason for being here?’” Vera said. “But the more I talk about it, I feel like I can change something, help raise gun awareness. Maybe parents will talk to their kids so this doesn’t happen to them.” But Vera hasn’t always had the courage to talk about what happened to him. When the accident first occurred, Cruz and the owner of the shotgun, Federico Perez, convinced Vera and Torrero to lie about what happened and say he had been shot by a stranger while walking to the gas station. Cruz couldn’t be reached for comment about the incident. Once the truth came out and the four admitted to police what happened that night, Vera said, he was scared of what the other boys might do to him. And then two years ago, Vera went through one of his darkest times. A debilitating pain shot through his body every time he defecated. He told doctors about the pain, but according to Vera, doctors accused him of lying about the pain to acquire pain killers. “If I had a gun at that time I would have shot myself,” Vera said. “The pain was so bad.” Doctors would later diagnose the cyst, and after it was treated Vera started feeling better again. But that August night in 2002 when Oscar Vera was accidentally shot will always be with him. He’s only 29 years old, but when he wakes up, he feels like he’s 80. “This didn’t just affect me,” Vera said. “It affected my family, my friends. It’s been tough.”
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