Via Pam’s House Blend…  The Gay Panic Defense raises it’s head once again …

First it appeared that this young man, Scott A. Libby of Raymond, ME, died as the result of a horrific  accident:

February 20, 2009 9:14 AM

BETHEL, Maine (AP) – Officials are investigating a fatal accident in western Maine in which a freight train crashed into a car that was parked on the tracks.

Ed Foley of the St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad said the westbound train came upon a car that was parked on the tracks at least 200 feet away from the nearest road in Bethel at about 2:35 a.m. Friday.

Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr identified the victim as 25-year-old Scott Libby of Raymond. He said Libby apparently turned onto the tracks and then turned off his lights.

Carr said the train was traveling the posted speed of 25 mph and hit the car with all its force from behind.

But little by little, more details have been emerging. What’s now being revealed shows a far too familiar story of robbery after alledgedly sexual advancements were made, but with a few twists.

In a nutshell: Libby had told his parents that he was going to see a man to get paid back for a loan he’d given in exchange for some of the man’s property as security.  The man, Agostino Sampson, was living in a hostel near the tracks where Libby’s car was hit.  As police medical examiners determined that Libby had been killed before the car was hit, they questioned Sampson and his story began to fall apart.  Now it appears he beat Libby over the head with a cast iron pan handle, and as that seems not to have been enough, strangled him with a belt.

Surprise, surprise…Sampson is claiming Libby made a sexual advance…

A man found dead in his car on railroad tracks in Bethel last month may have been beaten with a cast-iron pan and strangled with a belt before a train hit his vehicle, according to a police affidavit.

Police believe Scott A. Libby, 25, of Raymond was beaten and strangled to death after making sexual advances to a former employee.

Libby’s body was found sprawled across the front seat of his 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt after it was hit by a slow-moving train on Feb. 20, police said.

The car was covered with blood inside and out and the bloodstained handle of a cast-iron pan was found in it, police said.

Libby and Samson had known each other for about seven years, and Samson had worked last summer for Libby, who had a landscaping business in Raymond.

Libby met Samson at the Bethel Hostel late on Feb. 19 to collect $400 he had loaned Samson more than a year ago and to return a watch and silver bracelet held as collateral, Maine State Police Detective Herbert Leighton wrote in an affidavit filed in Oxford County Superior Court.

Although Samson initially told police that the transfer of money and jewelry had been completed without incident, he later said Libby "made sexual advances toward him, placing his hand onto/in the area of his groin," Leighton wrote.

"Agostino said he punched Libby in the face two times, causing Libby’s nose to bleed," but Libby still persisted in his sexual advances and offered to pay him money."

The detective noted that the autopsy showed no injuries to Libby’s nose.

Dr. Marguerite Dewitt, deputy chief medical examiner for the state, said Libby died of "asphyxia due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head."

The blood on the pan handle matched Libby’s, according to the detective, and the handle was consistent with two pans that were recently missing from the hostel, the affidavit said.

A woven leather belt that appeared to be damaged was seized from Samson’s room at the hostel, Leighton said. Red-brown stained business cards belonging to Libby and "several apparent bloodstain patterns" were found about a quarter-mile south of the hostel on Westwood Road, a private way that abuts the hostel.

Leighton also noted that when Libby’s body was found, his pants pockets were turned inside out and there was no money on him.

Police photographed contusions on Samson’s hands, which Samson said he received after a box fell on his hand at work; he later said the injuries were a result of punching a refrigerator at work.

Emphasis in the Pam’s House Blend article.  You know what else I think is non-existent here?  The sexual advance.  The only word we have for that, is the word of Libby’s killer.

That’s the way it often is with the Gay Panic Defense.  The only evidence that a sexual advance was made is the testimony of the murderer, which police seem eager to accept at face value, whenever the victim is gay.  But in this particular case there is no evidence of that…at least not in the news stories.  Sampson however, seems well aware of the effect of telling the police that he, and not the man he beat with a cast iron pan and then strangled with a belt, was the victim.  He grabbed my dick and kept on trying to grab my dick even after I punched in twice in the nose…

Here’s what I think happened, based on the newspaper accounts:  Libby went to collect the $400 he was owed by Sampson, a man living in a hostel near the railroad tracks…a man clearly without a lot of money to his name.  Libby arrived at the meeting with Sampson’s jewelry, but Sampson either did not have Libby’s money, or was determined to get it back from him after Libby gave him his property back.  Sampson arranged for them to meet outside the hostel in Libby’s car.  Perhaps he told Libby that if his neighbors in the hostel saw them holding $400 and his jewelry they might rob them.

He armed himself with a cast iron pan handle that he’d somehow managed to cut off one of the hostel pans.  There are two pans missing and my hunch is he botched it the first time.  On the second try he managed to make himself a nice little cast iron blackjack he could stuff into his pocket and Libby wouldn’t see until it was too late.  When Libby gave him back his property Sampson beat him unconscious with his makeshift blackjack, and then he strangled Libby with his belt just to make sure.  Then he drives Libby’s car onto the railroad tracks with him still in it and walks away, figuring the next train to come along will take care of the evidence of murder and make it seem like an accident.  Now he has the money, and his jewelry, and probably whatever else Libby had on him.  Libby was found later, with his pants pockets turned inside out.

Then the police came knocking at his hostel door.  First he tells them nothing happened.  Then he tells them there was an argument, and yes he may have hit Libby a couple times over the head, but there might have been another guy in Libby’s car and maybe he did something to Libby afterwards. 

The police aren’t buying it.  But then Sampson reaches for his trump card.  The trump card the lawyers for Matthew Shepard’s killers, and ABC News, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Lawrence King’s killer, and Lawrence’s own father, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Timothy Bailey-Woodson gave him.  The trump card lawyers for murderer Raymond Carlisle, Amber Ladner and Cynthia Umstead, gave him.  The trump card every judge, every lawyer, every jury who ever excused bloodshed on account of the victim’s sexual orientation gave him.  He claimed Libby made a sexual advance. 

If that’s not a get out of jail free card, it’s almost certain to be a reduced sentence card.  Whatever crime he might have been convicted of had he not claimed to have been sexually assaulted, he will now almost certainly avoid, provided he sticks to it.  In Spain recently, a nation with legal same-sex marriage, a jury excused the brutal slaying of a gay couple by a man who stabbed them multiple times, robbed them, then tried to burn their house down to hide the evidence, on the killer’s sole testimony that they had propositioned him.  They let him go.

This is what decades of pulpit thumping about the homosexual threat has brought us.  In the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, a corrupt policeman tells detective Philip Marlow that his client need not worry too much about being prosecuted for killing a man "…as long as he wasn’t white."  But you can claim anyone is gay if you need an excuse for killing them.