Peak: The continuing saga of The Parkway West Rock Thrower

Yesterday I posted about state police arresting The Parkway West Rock Thrower and the mysterious circumstances surrounding this particularly vile villain. If you haven't been following this ongoing tale of criminal intrigue, I suggest you peruse my post on the topic.

Well, while it is notable that state police took down this terrible thrower, this hurler of horror, this proverbial large stone of fear that flies in the night, it now appears that the apprehension of The Parkway West Rock Thrower is even bigger than I once thought.

Like I said yesterday, Channel 2’s Ralph Iannotti informed us that the arrest of The Parkway West Rock Thrower on Thursday was the result of "an aggressive investigation”. As it turns out, not only was this investigation aggressive, it was also career-making, since the state police have now promoted a lieutenant involved in the investigation.

That’s right: according to the Trib, “Lt. Sheldon Epstein was promoted to captain and assigned as director of the Safety Program Division in Harrisburg.” Epstein (he's the officer pictured above) had previously served as station commander at the Moon Township base and he has served with the state police since 1981. That’s a long time to spend with the state police, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to call The Parkway West Rock Thrower the culmination of his career. This was the big one, the case Epstein waited 26 years for.

Apparently it was a bit of a red ball, too. That’s the only way I can explain 1) the devotion of man hours to the investigation, which included night vision cameras and troopers hiding in the woods, and 2) the promotion of Epstein, which came one day after the arrest of The Parkway West Rock Thrower. (If you’re unsure about what a "red ball" is, it’s a term that originated on the TV show Homicide: Life on the Street, and it denotes a case of high priority that commands the attention of an entire police force. A red ball demands a certain amount of urgency, and the high-end of red balls demand the utmost urgency. Therefore, I would think that closing a high-priority red ball case could lead to promotion; hence Epstein’s new rank of captain.)

However, I want to make it clear that the promotion of Lt. Sheldon Epstein to captain is no accident. As reported in the Trib’s article, Epstein, a 1977 graduate of Carnegie Mellon, heightened his investigative prowess by attending the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va. He graduated from Quantico in 2001, and in the past year he put his expertise to work in the case of The Parkway West Rock Thrower.

We should all be thankful that Pennsylvania's Finest employ someone with Epstein's qualifications, so that when the good people of the Commonwealth are threatened by a dastardly villain like The Parkway West Rock Thrower, Captain Epstein and his men can be counted on to crack the case.