To say that I am shocked is an understatement. I have just seen online that one of Wisconsin's most famous folk heroines has passed away today at a hospice in Portland, OR of liver and kidney failure. I can't imagine a more piss poor horse shit ass way to die!!! Laurie "Bambi" Bembenek. OMG, this poor woman had enough baggage to move to Mars with. And Wisconsin has seemed to have the weirdest love/hate relationship with her imaginable. A former Playboy club waitress, former Milwaukee police officer that was fired under questionable circumstances, a twice convicted murderess, a prison escapee that accomplished international flight to Canada and the subject of two movies, she both enraptured and enraged the citizens of Wisconsin.
Shortly after being fired from the Milwaukee police department (and in the process of suing their shorts off) she was accused, arrested, charged and eventually convicted of murdering her husbands ex-wife. On the hinkiest evidence imaginable. With his police revolver. Somehow disguised as man twice her size. Her trial was like something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie at best. Milwaukee has a police department as corrupt as New Orleans. And they played their part to a degree that would win an award at Sundance!!!!
As a model prisoner that was always vocally adamant in her innocence, she actually managed to escape from prison and live for short while in Canada, working as a waitress in a small roadside dinner in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She was recognized by a traveler from the States, again arrested and brought back here. Again, things got hinky. Although out on bail pending appeals, three in total, the state of Wisconsin turning all of them down, she was moving onto the Supreme Court to reopen the case and hopefully clear her name.
And then a couple of years ago she faced her biggest battle. Her body declared war on her. Multiple organ failure. Liver and kidneys. Three strikes and you're out!!! She died today at the age of 52 while under hospice care. Her name still unredeemed, her charges still unreversed, her case still pending and her legacy still tainted. I have never believed she was guilty of what she was convicted of and tried so hard to overcome. What the hell happened to our "Kinder and Gentler Nation"??? We have pardoned some of the lowest forms of life imaginable in my memory. For crimes of mind-boggling scope. This is a travesty...
"Bambi", go quietly into that good night and know that many of us here are sorry for this injustice. Y'know what is truly strange about this whole thing? She died on the first day of deer hunting season here in Wisconsin. Odd, yes. But true...
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