Published in the Oct. 17 Leader newspaper.
Who knows where the human mind leaves the trail of reality and heads off to parts unknown?
For Jeffrey Weinhaus, that path is headed toward prison, at least for his physical person. Whether his mind goes along is anybody’s guess.
The former Jefferson Countian Weinhaus, aka the Bulletinman, was convicted last week on four of eight charges connected to a 2012 confrontation with law enforcement in Franklin County in which Weinhaus, 47, was shot four times.
The officers said he unsnapped the holster on a sidearm he was wearing and appeared to be going for his gun. They shot him on a parking lot of a gas station. He was seriously wounded but recovered to stand trial last week.
Weinhaus’ journey into whatever you want to call it began at least 17 years ago when he began publishing his Bulletin.
His publication was an 11-by-17-inch sheet folded into four pages, front and back. My earliest recollection of the Bulletin was that it was mostly aimed at family members with whom he was feuding and at the local newspapers and radio station, which he charged were corrupt and on the take for not printing “the truth,” though he never pinpointed what that was.
Oddly, not long into his publishing career, Weinhaus called one day and offered to sell the Bulletin for $100,000 along with the promise that he would be out of our hair as a competitor forever.
I declined.
Not long after, Weinhaus moved to St. Francois County, then several other counties in east-central Missouri. He kept printing and, coincidentally, always found corruption and conspiracy wherever he went.
A newspaper publisher in one of the towns Weinhaus invaded called me one day to ask just who he was. My advice was to not worry too much and enjoy the show before it left town.
As the years went on, the tone of the Bulletin got much darker. It evolved into a mostly two-theme publication – the law enforcement community and legal system were the main targets. Those criticisms were frequently flavored with quasi-religious references to salvation and comeuppance. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines to predict how police agencies would react to an encounter with the Bulletinman.
In his most recent years, Weinhaus took to the Internet and YouTube with long-winded, seemingly spontaneous rants about all that was wrong with the world. He tried to develop followers and implored them to join him in defeating the forces of evil.
After the shooting, a rumor immediately circulated that there had been a recording of the encounter and that it would be bad for the police when it came out.
It turned out that before he went to the prearranged meeting with the cops, Weinhaus had strapped on a wristwatch that contained a tiny video camera. The images were used by not only the defense at trial, but by the prosecutor to help put him away.
That revelation added a bizarre, cloak-and-dagger element to the proceedings. Conspiracy, secret recording gadgets and confrontation all fit right in with the Weinhaus portrait.
As for his followers, one reporter who attended the trial said eight or nine supporters showed up. The reporter said the assemblage might have been at home at a Star Trek convention.
Weinhaus is an intelligent person with the gift of gab so vital to any flimflam man. The man is an artist – a baloney artist – but an artist nonetheless.
Obviously, his mind is in working order on that level.
Assuming that the world is not ending soon and that not every police officer, sheriff, judge and lawyer is crooked, it’s a tougher call on his relationship with reality there. Maybe his lawyer should have considered an insanity defense. He might have had better material to work with.
Even if Weinhaus started off as one of those characters who just craves attention, a line got crossed long ago when he began threatening cops and predicting calamities for those in authority. Coming armed to an arranged meeting with police officers who were already leery of him was close to suicidal.
Most people would agree that isn’t what a normal person would do, not what a person with an ordinary sense of danger or risk/reward would do. But that’s what Weinhaus did. Now he’s looking at 30 years or more in prison.
It was the end of a path that’s hard for most of us to understand.
The day after Weinhaus’ conviction, a Cedar Hill man named Shawn Nims shot and wounded two sheriff’s deputies attempting to serve him a warrant. A predictable manhunt ensued – for six hours.
Cornered, Nims came out of a window of a different house that he knew was surrounded by armed officers. He had an assault rifle and refused an order to put it down.
Police shot him dead.