September 26, 2003
Motivations
Hey, you can't say no to the almighty, so go ahead - be like the woman who starved her 11-month-old son to death because god told you to. Alternatively, you can always emulate this man who used his interpretation of the bible to justify raping teenage girls. Alternatively, if you want to be a supervillian, you can join an Islamic cult whose leader says he can kill people just by looking at them and that he's invulnerable. If you think that's hard to believe, then consider the police officer who "downplayed the idea that the dead cats carry any religious connotation" after dismembered cat limbs, paws, and heads were used to form a pentagram and other symbols on a gravesite.
Stupefaction has the utmost respect for the police and the criminal justice system, but comments like that - and that Georgia officers "believe foul play was involved" when two bound and gagged bodies were found dead in a house that burned down aren't helping their image. Perhaps these are media distortions, but when a man killed his family and himself one day after being arrested on domestic violence charges (he was out on relatively low bail due to his work record as a prison guard), well, then that's pretty clearly a shortcoming in the system.
Two Kentucky kids who beat an elderly man to death and stuffed him in his attic couldn't have left more clues without wearing t-shirts saying "We did it!" Not only did they steal his debit card and use the money they got from it to buy crack, but they also tried to dispose of all of the bloodstained towels and clothes involved in the murder, which the police easily recovered. Only slightly less stupid is another Kentucky pair (this time a husband and wife) who downloaded child pornography on the computers they rented from Rent-A-Center and then returned the computers without deleting the files. There are still a lot of unanswered questions in the apparent bizzare murder-suicide of two teenage girls. What's going on in the Bluegrass state?
Sometimes, you just can't figure out what the hell motivates some people. Cases in point - a man who beat his 3-year-old son to death as punishment for an incorrect answer to a question on a flashcard, a rock band that plans to have someone commit suicide onstage during one of their concerts, and a mother who finally killed her 3-week-old baby on the 5th attempt (and only received a 15-year sentance).
There's no shortage of intentional cruelty; you can always find stories about entire families being executed, or news items like dismembered human remains found behind a gas station in Detroit, or every so often a person's eyes getting gouged out in India.
Still, there's no comparison between any of those incidents and the story of a trio of would-be thugs who tried to rob a man that they had targetted because he'd recently received a cash settlement due to the death of his son in a car accident. As if that weren't horrible enough, during their arbortive home invasion the theives managed to fire a stray shot which hit and killed his girlfriend's 5-year-old son. The description of the child's last moments, from a neighbor, are heartbreaking:
"There was a big hole in the side of his head, but he was conscious. He knew what was happening. His eyes went to me, and then to his mother. He was breathing, but he didn't say anything. I don't think he could talk. He was trying to cry, but he couldn't make the noise. Tears came from his eyes."Posted by stupefied
09:52 AM