It was a sweltering late summer day in 1996 when a new kind of menace was first loosed on the traditionally quiet suburbs of Atlanta. The excitement which engulfed the city during the Olympic Games had finally died down, the anomalous and disturbing outbreak of syphilis in upper-middle-class white teenagers in Rockdale County had been contained, and the whole metropolitan area was settling in for what would be the calm after the storm, the general malaise which inevitably follows great events, like the discovery of a dormant star on the edge of the Milky Way. However, brewing underneath the placid surface of the metropolis's demographic was a movement so subversive and so isolated that many casual observers would have passed it on as abysmally normal activities and yet something more was at work.
Madeline Horsheft, a career homemaker in Dekalb County was one of the first
witnesses to go on record as a witness to the strange behavior.
"Well, I was driving down our street, we live in a nice neighborhood, near the community church and not that far from the local science center, and I happened to see a young man standing quite casually in front of our neighborhood post box reading a rather large book. I thought it quite curious, you see, I didn't recognize the person from any of the church socials or community events so I assumed that he was lost or had arrived at the spot by some mistake or perhaps was waiting for the post man in order to inquire about something he may have dropped in the box by accident. The young man looked rather normal by all accounts, his clothing was of the same fashion I would buy for my boy if he were at that age, so I felt that he must be a respectable person and therefore approachable under the circumstance. As if to further bolster my confidence as I came closer I noticed the book he was reading was Vital Dust, a favorite of my husband’s, so I slowed my vehicle, rolled down the window and asked if he needed some assistance. Well, he looked at me for a moment and then very politely said 'No, thank you, I'm just loitering." He then smiles quite sincerely and I was so impressed by his courteous and reserved air that I wished him a good day. It was only as I was driving away that I found the whole exchange to be quite odd because, looking in my rear view mirror I saw the young man remove a camera from his pocket, make a hand gesture rather like an O.K. but with his index finger and thumb more tightly closed, and he took a picture of himself holding the book aloft with the hand that was not gesturing. The whole thing happened so fast I couldn't be quite sure what was going on. It didn't seem vulgar at all, just odd. As I think back on it though, it was such a random event that it kind of shook my confidence for a few days after in such a queer way. My predictable world seemed to be infiltrated by some thing rather, well, weird."
Descriptions similar to Mrs. Horsheft's became more and more prevalent in the
subsequent years culminating in what amounts to the current explosion of the
phenomenon in the South.
"We never took many of these complaints seriously until recent years, specifically 2003;" comments Fulton County deputy sheriff Scott Burnaby. "I mean, it is procedure to file reports on all formal complaints lodged to the department, but we don't aggressively pursue complaints concerning jay walking or loitering. Most of the time the person lodging the complaint can't even site any specific behavior about which to complain. The odd loitering is about the most serious offence. For the most part the behavior is only subtly bizarre. Once there was a vandalism complaint in the Gresham Terrace subdivision off of Ponce De Leon, some guy egging a house and taking pictures. When our patrol arrived the guy was still hanging around reading Isaac Asimov or something. We would have brought the guy in but as it turned out it was his own home he was egging and obviously he wasn't prepared to press charges against himself. We just wrote him off as an odd ball and many others until the state's county police departments' records were consolidated into one database in March of 2002. That's when the magnitude of these events really hit us. There were literally thousands of complaints. All were concerning what could be considered barely criminal activities, hard to trace or even string together. There were masses of loitering complaints and wanton jay walking, suspected breaking and entering charges where the perpetrator was actually breaking into his/her own house, driving under the speed limit on the freeway (only complaints are listed for that one – no moving violation was ever issued), and so on and so forth, these being only accounts of urban, Atlanta area reports; you get into the rural areas and you got even more peculiar activities involving grain elevators and such. All petty crimes on par with a parking ticket and none of these individually being of much interest, but then we started seeing the common denominators in an alarming bulk of these offenses. Science fiction, courteous, yet aloof behavior, an age range of approximately 24- 35, dominantly but not exclusively male, and what is most significant to me, the uniform presence of homemade clothing is in every complaint. That is when we saw that these activities were organized and deliberate and that is when the shock hit us that for seven years, maybe more, an organization had been strategically assaulting our system of order. It is almost as if they have found the vacuum in our justice system. The drug pushers, pimps, racketeers, and car thieves got nothing on these guys if you ask me. Sure the crimes are more severe, but the enormity of this group's activities outstrips them all and the man hours it takes to examine and compile these complaints is snowballing as we speak. Crime is hard enough to fight on its own, but it gets a lot harder when you have a bunch of borderline lunatic Einsteins bogging you down with the grog of the penal code."
Officer Burnaby's comments illuminate the epidemic that the south is now facing from this mysterious menace, twenty-something individuals with a penchant for astronomy and science fiction who commit minor crimes and make there own clothing.
Detective Curtis Jackson of the Atlanta Police Department offers further
embellishment:
"To be frank I didn't think much of the claims that these infractions amounted to much. All the talk of organized crime or gangs or conspiracy seemed like a lot of guff to me. That was until we got several consistent reports in which the clothing featured prominently in the witness’s description. It seems that in a number of cases the witness could not determine the dress of the perpetrators with any certainty. It was not that the clothing was unusual, kahki pants and oxford shirts seem to be the clothing of choice, but the witness could not specifically identify a recognizable brand name or cut to the clothing only that it was normal on first blush and then somewhat disconcerting in some vague way. That excited my interest. You see gangs as such have a certain dress code which identify themselves to other members, like head bands, or a manner of buttoning a shirt, or the way in my younger years you used to see the kids in leather and slick hair all James Dean-like, or the blacks and their satin jackets with embroidery all across the backs. Well, I was really puzzled as to how the clothing figured into all this until finally we got a big break; one of our witnesses, a long time employee of a Sue-Anne Fabrics store, testified with great conviction that the shirt and pants of the young man she saw assaulting himself with a rather large tome of the Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World were rather impressive renderings of Buttrick patterns 12-0093 and 31-7645, both featured in the company’s year 2000 line. After that we followed the clothing angle more closely. We signed on the previously mentioned individual because of her expertise identifying the origins of these clothes and we have set up quite a book of “mug shots” comprised of patters distributed by major do-it-yourself clothing companies from the last seven years. The results have been startling. Without exception the clothing in these cases has been of a style that is homemade, not manufactured. That, more than the fascination with space, was what convinced me that what we were dealing with was indeed a gang of some odd contrivance. Since these discoveries we have focused on trying to infiltrate the group and gain a better understanding of the motives and hierarchy present. So far we have run into a bog. The group seems to be completely nebulous and the vernacular of the members, if they can even be called such, is so cryptic that we can’t get our foot in the door. We tried bringing in some astronomy students from Emory and UGA as undercover informants but they were of no help, it was almost as if they were already part of the group and that their willing assistance was some sort of smoke screen. I tell you, the department is at a loss and we’re getting matching reports from further and further afield. We’ve had detectives from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and the Carolinas contacting us. The Feds claim that it is something out of the North, up New York way, and by God I believe them. I’ve never heard of such craziness as this coming from any God fearing Southern person.”
An anonymous FBI source offered the following brief synopsis of compiled data on
the subject:
“A “gang” on the Eastern Sea Board going by the moniker, Walking Target has gained prominence in recent years concerning itself with relatively petty crimes that individually are negligible but in mass amount to a rather significant but ambiguous threat to the nation. The origin of the organization is unknown, though it is suspected that the group was founded in the metropolitan New York area. In recent years bureaus in Southern states have witnessed a rash of Walking Target activities and have met little success in pin pointing the source or motive of the groups operations. The organization appears to be a highly dynamic and ever changing entity. No apparent hierarchy appears to be present. No uniform or rigid system of operation is apparent. The gang’s personality is highly influenced by the region in which it is observed making it a highly camouflaged in the overall criminal landscape. The gang’s activities seem to be unified only by the quality of crimes committed and the presence of literature heavily based on astronomy, physics, black holes, quarks, and other such varieties of astronomical phenomenon. The grasp of these concepts though do not seem to be essential or even understood by the group in their full scientific nature. Rather, they appear to be topics of some mystical or superstitious fascination to the group. Another defining characteristic of the organization is the wardrobe of exclusively hand made clothing. The precision of the clothing’s make varies from member to member depending on the number of years a person has been involved with the gang. The choice of fabric varies regionally but the patterns are consistent with those available in local fabric stores. Generally the colors and detailing of the clothing is not extraordinary; much of the more advanced member’s garments could easily be mistaken for an average department store’s blander fair. The choice of clothing makes the members of the gang extraordinarily hard to pick out of even the smallest grouping of citizens. Hand gestures and cryptic slang are components of the gang’s persona but the proverbial Rosetta Stone of these modes of communication have yet to be found. No arrest or interrogation of a member has ever been successfully conducted. No attempt at undercover infiltration has ever been successfully conducted. In light of the Administration’s focus on Homeland security and the threat of terrorism, Walking Target investigations have been place on a low level of importance and are considered by the Bureau to be concerns best dealt with by respective State authorities.”
Clearly the phenomenon of the Walking Target gang is one that eludes explanation by current knowledge. What is certain though is that it is a real, tangible example of the evolution of the modern gang and the inventive spirit that crime on all levels seems to inspire. While the motives and foundation of this group remains unclear, the impacts of its subtle, plodding actions are beginning to be felt in force in the South. The number of gang members in Georgia alone is suspected to be in the hundreds and climbing. The innocence of petty crime seems now to have been harnessed and no longer is even the most rural backwater town safe. Many people have begun to ask if this subversive movement is a kind of new interstellar confederacy, the vanguard of the South’s rise to power. The presence of the gang in the north discounts this, but what we are seeing may be something more disturbing – there are strangers in our midst, a group with questionable intent and even more questionable customs. They are the every-man and no-man simultaneously. Above all the members of this gang should be considered walking targets to all law-abiding citizens of this nation.
More installments of this expose will follow as more information is compiled
concerning Walking Target.
Submitted by Grant Matthews, Southern Regional Correspondent.
Dear Earth-bounded,
