we saw that...

**FLASH** richard lee mcnair talks about viewing solitary mermaid blog and wst... while on the lam

link to audio download page

richard lee mcnair is the federal inmate who escaped from the the united states penitentiary (usp) in pollock, grant parish, louisiana, a "high security institution housing male offenders," on wednesday, 05 april 2006. he was captured in campbellton, new brunswick, canada on thursday, 25 october 2007.

mcnair is now incarcerated at the the administrative maximum (adx) facility (aka supermax) in florence, colorado. it "houses offenders requiring the tightest controls."

as you can imagine, during his 568 days on the lam, mcnair, used the internet as much as he could.

at the beginning we posted about the escape several times; our most notable post is this one, because it contains the dashcam video.

sometime after friday, 11 august 2006, we noticed, probably from referral logs, that an anonymous, female canadian blogger, "solitary mermaid," had linked to that post.

we've often wondered and it was only recently that we learned, for sure, that mcnair had indeed visited wst... as well as the solitary mermaid blog.

while we're anxious to find out what mcnair writes about it, in the letter he mentioned in the above audio clip, that he is mailing to byron christopher this week, we can see where there might be some confusion about the mysterious "comment - link(s)" from wst... to solitary mermaid.

we refer to them as "mysterious comment-link(s)" now because if anyone who hears the above clip or if by chance it's included in mr. christopher's book and then visited the 06 april 2006 post or any other of our richard lee mcnair posts, they would not find any comment from, nor link to, the solitary mermaid blog. so wtf?

it looks like that on 26 october 2006, we registered with and installed the haloscan commenting system. we used haloscan until they went out of business in early 2010.

the thing about replacing the blogger commenting system is that you lose all those blogger comments. actually they're not lost, just covered over.

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internet archive, wayback machine snapshot from 14 april 2006

whether or not he viewed it from wst... or even viewed the video that we had uploaded is, at least for now, pure speculation.

so, in short (kinda), when we installed haloscan we lost the backlink to the solitary mermaid blog. a couple of weeks ago when mr. christopher mentioned mcnair's referring to a blog post from a woman who offered to put him up, we instantly recalled it but without that backlink and it being nearly five years since we had viewed that blog + we had ignorantly neglected to link to it in the body of one of our blog posts, irrespective of a dodgy backlink feature, so that it would have been preserved -- we didnt have a clue how to locate it or even if that blog was still online.

we thought that a seahorse was associated with that blog. seahorse ... mermaid at least we were in the ball park.

finally, yesterday morning we were able to locate that blog.

so after viewing all of solitary mermaid's richard lee mcnair posts, we couldnt find where exactly she had stated an offer to take mcnair in.

it's possible that we misremembered that or solitary mermaid could have thought twice about what she wrote and edited a sentence or two out of the post but according to mcnair that was his impression of the post as well -- guess we'll have to wait and see.

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after we found her blog we were able to get her email address -- its publicized on her blog -- and search our gmail account for it.

we found the record of her comments and a forgotten email exchange we had with her:

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as you know mcnair was captured on 25 october 2007 but it was only about 3 months ago that he had his telephone privilege restored.

mcnair is now allowed one telephone call per month no longer than fifteen minutes in length. the first two calls, naturally he called his folks.

saturday evening, 20 august 2011, mcnair made his third call this time to byron christopher. this is the first time that mcnair has spoken by voice to a news reporter. -- in late 2008, mr. christopher and mcnair began a postal mail correspondence that consists so far, of 153 letters from mcnair containing over 2,000 handwritten pages.

mr. christopher has generously shared with us a pretty good bit of confidential information: (1) about the minot, north dakota, shootings and murder and (2) details relative to cenla and louisiana concerning mcnair's escape and the search and (3) mcnair's leaving louisiana and we can honestly say, that whether or not any mention of wst... in mr. christopher's forthcoming case study makes the final cut, that this is a fantastic story.

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photo credit: richard lee mcnair via: byron christopher upon information kindly furnished by michael soucy

Here is a shot of McNair's stolen white GMC Savanna van, as seen in the reflection of a Ford dealership he was scoping out at night.

This was shot on October 4, 2007.

McNair was captured on October 25th. ~ photo caption: byron christopher

screen grab from a video made by richard lee mcnair in rimouski, quebec, canada, at medaillon ford on leonidas avenue -- released to wst... by byron christopher, 20 august 2011. the dealership has since moved and changed names.

salle de montre translates into english as showroom.

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see also

the richard lee mcnair label

in the footer of this post

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related posts

a wst... global exclusive: case study: the richard lee mcnair file

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