"who is j.t. colfax, anyway?"
|
This site concerns the plight of incarcerated writer and corpse photographer James Michael Thompson, aka J.T. Colfax. an NYC artist who is currently setting a two year sentence in the Boulder County Jail in Colorado for stealing the morgue log bearing the name of JonBenet Ramsey, an act that branded him as a suspect in the now infamous murder. He also recieved two years probation for an attempted arson at the vacant home of John and Patsy Ramsey in June of 1997. He is a brilliant and prolific writer with a number of notable artistic undertakings to his credit. J.T.Colfax is well known in NYC art circles; and throughout the past decade has enjoyed considerable, if intermittent, publicity. One of his most widely publicized undertakings was "The Clarksburg Project" a letter writing campaign that extended from Dec 21, 1994 to Dec.31, 1995 and entailed Colfax's writing at least half of the 18,000 random residents of the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia letters detailing his often sordid down and out urban existence. The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and several other like publications covered his stories, as well as his "Wall Of Shame" project, which entailed Colfax's collecting snapshots and bios of rejected NYU actors and actresses out of a dumpster, blowing them up to poster size, writing a "reason for rejection" beneath each photograph and plastering them on a conspicuous Lower East Side wall. In a final insult, he arranged the poster sized headshots and resumes to spell out the word, "REJECT" and outlined these letters in black spray paint. Colfax was employed in the mortuary/body transport business for a number of years, and is best known in the Denver metro area for his bizarre association with the Ramsey case and for snapping pictures of corpses with hand lettered signs propped on them bearing captions such as "Getting fired isn't the end of the world" "Happy Birthday" and "Just wanted to let you know I won't be home for Christmas this year" His current project is the Colfax Diaries, a website maintained by friend and former cellmate Lance Matthews, who has become increasingly involved in publicity surrounding the JonBenet Ramsey case and is best known as a late night radio talk show host with Dave Lucas at WROW 590 out of Albany, NY. From the Boulder County Jail, Colfax sends Matthews and myself his daily diaries, which are posted on the internet and include inside Ramsey case tidbits gleaned from jail and colorful antecdotes about the death biz. The press coverage surrounding this has been considerable and continues to grow: for not only is Colfax "about the most active of the first generation of inmates on the web," as he says, but also to the best of my knowledge, the first artist in history (and most notably in the history of the underground subculture) to conduct an experiment, so to speak, from jail. J.T.'s website is of interest primarily to Those interested in good writing and bizarre subject matter. Inquiries and comments can be directed to J.T. at [email protected]. These will be sent to him via snail mail by his webmaster. It is J.T.'s request THAT, if you are not familiar with him or his writings, you visit his website or at least read The Sorry Saga of J.T.Colfax by Richard Fleming, editor of the Boulder Weekly. |
custom websites for unique individuals