Sondra London (Angel Maturino Resendiz)

Sondra is RealPoetik's correspondent to death row and the minds of serial

killers. Those interested are invited to visit any of the web sites

below. We include the Resendiz 'fragment'/'found work' as well as

London's commentary on the piece, death row journalism, various aspects

of making a living as a writer.

She can be reached at sondra@sondralondon.com.

http://www.sondralondon.com/angel/991230d.gif

Letter from Angel Maturino Resendiz

Subject: Letter from Angel

December 30, 1999

Tloque Naquake

1 The eternal energy of God

2 A dress made of ice

3 An eternity to charm a soul

4 Chandeliers made of ice

5 They are and are not there

6 A love stronger than passion

7 A fire of eternal ice

8 A dance that does not stop

9 A charming dance of ice

10 A Warm of fire not wanted

11 A love stronger than ice

12 The ice of eternal love

13 The fire that does not stop

14 The ice that does not consume

15 The soul to be charm

16 An eternity to love in ice

17 No energy, no health

18 Passion drives the Fire

19 No life, no death

20 The eternal Fire of ice

21 Come light my Fire

22 Set the ice on Fire

23 Let the ice be the Fire

24 Love, Passion, ice

25 The sun is not forever

26 Love, passion, ice

Forever love you

The Angel of God

_________________

http://www.sondralondon.com/angel/index.html

ANGEL OF THE RAILWAYS: Angel Maturino Resendiz

COMMENTARY by Sondra London

In August of 1999, Cynthia Hunt at Houston's KTRK-TV reported a letter

that she had received from Railway Killer Angel Maturino Resendiz.

Originally known as Raphael Resendez-Ramirez, the 40-year-old Mexican

national had been charged with four murders in Texas, two in Illinois

and one in Kentucky, and had been named as a suspect in two other Texas

killings. After a vast nationwide manhunt, he had surrendered peacefully

to the Texas Rangers in El Paso on July 13, 1999 and at the time he

wrote the letter, he was awaiting his first trial in the county jail.

''My wife has a fluorescent black light,'' Maturino wrote to Hunt. ''We

turn off all the lights, on the black light. I was so afraid as never

before as I look in the mirror, my enemy was me in a different light. I

have been fighting this creature all of my life, and now I know it is

me, so I fear, yes I fear and shake.''

On October 15, 1999, Richard Connelly of the Houston Press released

Cynthia Hunt's letters to the accused slayer. Apparently Maturino had

forwarded the toothsome young reporter's letters on to her rival

journalist.

Eyebrows were raised throughout the politically correct set, as Hunt's

letters revealed how this poised professional had been cultivating what

might almost be called a ''unique and special relationship'' with the

so-called ''Railway Killer.''

One is led to speculate that, like any red-blooded American journalist,

Cynthia Hunt hoped to profit from accounts of crime by publishing the

confessions of this serial killer in his own words. One might even be

tempted to accuse her of trading pain for profit by daring cash her

paycheck after releasing his statements.

My impression of Maturino was that he had a message for the society he

had attacked; he wanted to tell his story, and would find it frustrating

that after carefully scribing a 13-page letter, only a one-liner would

be released by the television reporter Maturino described as ''good,

real good looking.''

Like most novice celebrity criminals, the serial killer I call the Angel

of the Railways is having to learn the hard way that the mainstream

press will only give the most minimal exposure to the point of view of

the killer himself. Instead, they prefer striking righteous poses and

mouthing hypocritical platitudes. Their profession calls for them to

keep those advertising bucks rolling in, while appearing to inform the

public of important events - but only in such a way that will prepare

the audience to be receptive to that all-important commercial break.

As I observed Maturino's efforts to come to terms with the mass mind, it

became clear to me that once again we see how violence has been used to

send a message that society does not want to hear. We refuse to

recognize it when it is phrased in a civil or tentative way, and remain

unresponsive until we have to decipher the message encrypted in blood

splashed across our tranquil landscape by the likes of this little brown

man slipping unnoticed through this big white country.

'If it bleeds, it leads,' and if it bleeds enough, it leads on America's

Most Wanted. Then when the fearsome felon is finally captured - all

credit due, as always, to heroic efforts by all the right people - when

at last he begins to speak, the mass media only releases portions of his

message in a reformulated presentation calculated to be most conducive

to the consumerism cultivated by the sponsors. And so we the people

don't get to digest the entire message for ourselves, to interpret it as

we are able.

It has become my purpose to provide a communications medium for this

special class of the disenfranchised. Even though their message may be

badnasty, profane, filled with rage and dismay, sacreligious, obscene,

blasphemous, tasteless, incoherent, even utterly repugnant - still, it

is exactly what we need to study if we hope to heal the social disease

that breeds random violence.

Even the most offensive or unintelligible material is not without

relevance to one probing the mind of the modern serial killer. It is my

belief that we cannot help revealing who we are with every word we speak

or write, every action we take, and every gesture we make. As an

authentic product of a diseased social process, it is not inconsistent

for such output to be neither pleasant nor uplifting. It's the toxic

thought syndrome.

But regardless of its content, each individual message is only part of a

long-term interactive process. If the forum is provided, and the message

faithfully relayed to the world, then over time, the message may become

more relevant. With proper development, what starts out frivolous might

become quite substantial. Crimes might even be solved. It happens.

At the bleak dead end of Murder Road, many of the guilty find it

unpalatable to cooperate with law enforcement. Instead of keeping their

guilty knowledge to themselves, along with the difficult and painful

story of the insults and injuries that made such violence possible, we

would hope that for reasons of their own, they might seek relief in

talking about their life and crimes to a sympathetic journalist.

And so I contacted the serial killer I call the Angel of the Railways,

offering to establish a website for him on my top-ranked true-crime

domain. Considering l'affaire Hunt, the only thing I asked of him was

that he not send out my letters to anyone else. However, before long a

killer groupie reported that one of my letters was in his hands. And

thus my interest in this criminal and his crimes was virtually

extinguished before it began.

The scope of this website, then, is limited to Maturino's letters and

enclosures, and those of his groupies - including the Happy Face Killer,

Keith Hunter Jesperson. Two excellent shots of a railway crime scene are

among the photos furnished by Maturino, along with pixx of his infant

daughter and Cynthia Hunt's chihuahua, who, he allows, ''looks nice

too.''

Law enforcement has no application for this sort of material, as nothing

can be learned about the crimes from it; but the student conversant in

abnormal psychology can glean considerable insight into the mentation of

this accused serial killer from his letters, just as the sociologist

might learn something from the way a high-profile crime figure handles

journalists. The curious are free to make of this material what they

will.

Even though there are no confessions here, and no long-term, in-depth

case study, still this brief correspondence provides an impressionistic

self-portrait of a serial killer of the classic disorganized type, Angel

Maturino Resendiz.

Sondra London