Not-so-funny Games
Mike Smith
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The city of Roswell, New Mexico has long been known as a home for unusual happenings—as evidenced by the amazing number of far-out stories that originate there.
And as of the night of Monday, April 21, 2008, that number went up by two.
The time was just before 11 p.m., when a knock sounded at the door of eighty-four-year-old Roswell-resident Miller Ray Van Eaton. Upon opening the door of his bright pink home, Van Eaton saw two "teenagers"—a boy and girl; the boy about six feet tall and 110 pounds, blond-haired and blue-eyed; the girl about 5’4” and 145 pounds, and looking either pregnant or just kind of paunchy. The teenagers asked Van Eaton if they could use his phone, he passed the cordless handset out to them, and then the two left, taking the cordless phone with them.
Moments later—according to an article posted on April 22, 2008 on the Roswell Daily Record’s website, from which much of this piece’s information is derived—they returned, and rang his doorbell.
"She kept the phone but she insisted she wanted to come in the house, and I said, 'No way,'" Van Eaton told KOB-TV's Roswell Bureau, for an April 24 news segment. "The young man jumped up on the porch and said 'Give me all your money,' and I said 'No way.'"
At some point, according to the aforementioned Daily Record article, the pregnant-seeming girl told Van Eaton she was hungry, and demanded that he feed her. The elderly Van Eaton later told police he responded by bringing the girl a helping of “weenies and bread.”
Which is kind of funny.
The aggressive youths then tried to push their way inside Van Eaton’s home, but he closed the door on them, and pushed them off the porch,after which he retreated inside and locked his door. The boy grew angry, shouted, and then smashed the glass out of Van Eaton's screen door, with a golf club.
Which is not.
The article, by reporter Brent Ruffner, did not say if the teens ultimately took any money from their victim, but it did mention they stole an estimated “$100 worth of electronic equipment”—the phone?—that they left the old man physically unharmed, and that the Roswell Police Department responded to a call from the man at 11:03 p.m.
(The accounts of KOB-TV and the Roswell Daily Record do not entirely agree with each other, and neither seems entirely correct; the Record botches Van Eaton's name, and KOB-TV put three robberies, not two, on the night of April 21. There are other inconsistencies as well.)
Immediately after concluding this frightening attempted home invasion, the "teens" then apparently left Van Eaton’s house at 1525 N. Union Avenue, and—after a drive of about 2.35 miles southwest across town—switched locations to the home of a ninety-something-year-old man and woman—at 3109 W. 8th Street.
Here, the two again knocked on a door—or, sure, two other kids precisely matching their physical description and using a nearly identical modus operandi did—and once again bullied their way inside. Armed with a golf club, they forced the man to write them a check, and the boy even struck the old man on the chest with the golf club, bruising him.
These victims' names have not been released to the media.
These crimes, it would seem, might have been inspired at least in part by a recent movie, Funny Games, which had been widely released only a couple of weeks before, on April 8. In that film—a remake of a 1997 Austrian film of the same name—two young men force their way into a family’s house and refuse to leave, growing increasingly threatening and increasingly violent, and going so far as—in an event that might have suggested the Roswell duo's choice of weapons—using a golf club to kill the family’s dog, break a cell phone, and break a family member’s legs.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 A Clockwork Orange, with its glossy cinematic depictions of rape and other “ultraviolence,” purportedly inspired a number of tragic copycat crimes across England, as well as a murder in Pennsylvania, in 1989—and Oliver Stone’s 1994 Natural Born Killers, the saga of two star-crossed serial killers, has been credited with inspiring numerous murders, including Colorado’s infamous 1999 Columbine High School massacre—so such imitation wouldn’t be unprecedented.
Another thing it wouldn’t be would be cool.
Or original.
Seriously.
If this strange evening out was inspired by Funny Games, then not only are the crimes an anemic copy of something the criminals saw in some movie—fortunately less violent, and yet in a way even more pathetic for preying on older and more defenseless victims—then they are not just a copy, they are a copy of something the criminals saw in a Hollywood remake of a foreign film, a copy of a copy. Lame!
But regardless of their motives, these two wannabe actors won’t likely be performing any encores. A more recent article in the Roswell Daily Record—also by Brent Ruffner, and dated April 25, though it seems to have only just now appeared on the paper's website—reported the arrest of two likely suspects.
“Karolynne Archuleta, 25, and Andrew Bertram, 18, were both arrested and charged Thursday with two counts of attempted robbery, two counts of burglary, two counts of aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, forgery and conspiracy,” the article said.
The two had allegedly forced their way into three homes of three different senior citizens, and knocked at the doors of five others with the same idea.
Tuesday, April 22, the day after the first two invasions, they had also allegedly broken into another house and stolen the purse of an eighty-three-year-old woman. They were arrested on Thursday, when they tried to cash a check at the School Employees Credit Union—the same check, it seems, that they had forced their second victim to write earlier in the week.
No mention was made of any potential cinematic inspiration, only that “Archuleta told police she and Bertram were both ‘high and were driving around and needed more money for drugs.’"
Archuleta also stated that their choice of victims had been random, and their motive had only been robbery.
These two don’t seem to have ever had very many good ideas—and they certainly didn’t have very many about how to avoid getting caught. They are currently in jail, hoping without hope for someone to pay their $75,000 bond.
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Reader Comments (4)
If they can't be original- they should learn who to copy.
Prisoners get ten times at least the privileges our veterans get!
When are we going to just whack these little nonentities and be done with it?