Amato: Some similarities between Ruthton shootings, sniper attacks

By Larry Magrath
Independent Staff Writer

The dark side of local history writing was recently revisited in a lecture at Southwest State University about the 1983 murder of two Ruthton bankers. Professor Joe Amato, author of "When Father and Son Conspire," discussed the murders and touched on their similarities with the Washington-area sniper attacks this fall.

The talk was part of a broader discussion about the importance or writing local histories and what makes up a community.

"We probably don't know ourselves at all," Amato said. We don't know all the kingdoms or inner chambers of our own heart and we don't even know all he demons that walk up and down the streets of our own selves."

The same idea applies to society not knowing itself, Amato said.

"When you live in a changing neighborhood somebody might be dealing drugs and you thought they were selling insurance," Amato said. "The world is much more pock-marked and dimpled and has many rougher surfaces than we suspect."

A basic tenet of community is when the individuals share common fears and suspicions, both of which tend to run wild when there's a murder.

"The world around us is sort of a world of suspicion, a world of expectation," Amato said. "One reason we read the newspaper is to discover the hidden. 'Oh I didn't know they were broke. The were pretending they were a legitimate business all along and here they were broker than I am.'"

"We read the pages and we also sometimes scour the obituaries. Must have aides. He came back home to die."

Relating to the Ruthton murders, Amato said the comparisons with the Washington-area snipers are inevitable.

"On the snipers, I think you see some very similar things," Amato said. "You see two men enrolled around weapons, enrolled not just with weapons, but bombs, karate. We have a military overlay."

James Jenkins, the father involved in the 1983 murders, bragged of his service in the National Guard. John Mohammed, the older man charged in the sniper case, is a veteran of the Gulf War.

"You find the enrollment of two men on the lam," Amato said. "The can't get on with women. They don't have anything but each other and in this case (sniper case) it's quite open that they drag each other into the story of their ability to hurt others, their ability to be killing or hurting machines.

"In this case they get more symbolic. They add an anti Jewish element to it and then they add an anti American element to it. Now in their case their killing is more symbolic or ideological in that they carry it to Washington. It's more intense that they carry it out day by day."

The Ruthton-area murders took place on a farm a few miles from Ruthton where the Jenkinses once lived. Banders Rudy Blythe and Deems "Toby" Thulin were shot after getting out of their car. Authorities believe that they had been lured to the site by Jenkins on a false pretense as a prospective buyer. Both bizarre murder stories show how lost and aloof people can get

The most obvious similarity among the two cases was what most intrigued Amato on the subject of the Ruthton murders.

"I was just hooked by what was the relationship like. I have two young sons, younger at the time. If I'm going to murder someone, am I going to take them along?

"I wondered what kind of father and son went together on a murder. What good do you do your son if you take him on a murder. What good does it do your Dad if you take him on a murder."

Amato said he believes the Jenkinses "got too close" and lived lies.

"It gets very dangerous if we lie to one another. Some of us are lost to begin with and I have a very sad feeling that the father to a great degree and the son to an extreme degree lived their lives lying to others," Amato said. "They were captured in a greater set of lies. That was a local story that may leave a question or two and obviously delivers us to the threshold of this strange father, stepson in Washington."

The cases are similar also because the younger of the two in both cases was quiet about his involvement. In the sniper case, the story that is emerging is that the younger suspect had more involvement than originally thought.

"I know I heard right away, 'oh it's the older guy who just corrupted the younger kid,'" Amato said. "I'm very suspicious. My instincts tell me that adults are stronger than teenagers most of the time. I'm not convinced that the older guy can kill as easily or with as much energy as a younger guy."

Only recently did Steven Jenkins Anderson, the son convicted of the Ruthton murders, admit he shot the two bankers. The confession came last year in a nationally-televised documentary on the Arts & Entertainment cable network.

"It was the right time to confess because they are never going to let you out unless you say you're sorry," Amato said. "He did say how the dad died. He rushed to say he didn't kill him buy nobody asked him.

"The people (at A&E) were so excited that they got the kid to confess they didn't ask the two questions they should. Why are you confessing now? Why did you wait so long? Secondly, why did you bring your father up? We didn't even ask you. But they were so delighted they got eh confession, off they went."

Amato said his belief in various theories about what happened between the Jenkinses changes from time to time. Still, one of the most pressing questions in the case remains how the father died in Texas. Did the elder Jenkins kill himself? Did he kill himself only after his son refused to kill him? Or, did his son kill him?

"At one time I would just say it's 50-50, which is probably where you should leave a good story."