Intimate Murderers
Trudy W. Schuett
I see today that Darren Mack got lots of jail time. IMHO, that’s the least of what he deserved, but nobody asked me. I think he well may have killed somebody else that got in his way sooner or later, divorce or no, and the particular situation was coincidental. Some of the others that have killed wives, children, and/or others are the same – all they needed was the appropriate trigger to set them off.
I do believe, though, there is a different group of men who may not have gone off the deep end and killed in a rampage had their situations been different. Certainly I do not excuse their actions, but what if something could have been done to prevent these kinds of killings?
As someone who at one time communicated extensively with divorced and divorcing men, I’ve heard a lot of their stories and have seen all kinds of similarities. The divorce stories took on a pattern to the point where I can now just about predict what a guy will say. How he handles his situation takes a different turn, however, when physician-prescribed psychogenic drugs come into the picture.
Of course not every divorce spawns a murder or even domestic violence of any kind; but what I’ve seen are radical changes in behavior by some men taking these drugs. Most often they’re just odd little quirks that seem perfectly ordinary to the guy at the time, but as an outside observer I find disturbing. Some past killers were on these drugs.
This is something I wish someone like Dr. Helen would look into. As someone with no initials behind my name, all I can do is suggest. And hope.
There have been men who phoned or e-mailed that I knew were just idiots, and it was all I could do to keep from saying something like, “Well, if you’d just stop being an asshole, then maybe life wouldn’t be so tough.” If anyone thinks I always take every story at face value, then you need to know I don’t. There is a clear and obvious difference between the assholes and the guys caught off guard; forced into a situation not of their own making.
What I’m sure about is that there are men who can suck it up and go on with their lives. Most of them do, and quite often the children and sometimes even the ex-wives wish it had gone differently. Very few men erupt in radical violence, but there are now enough of those who do they no longer make national news. If you check regional and local news sites every day, you’ll find a sad trend.
This death scenario is happening everywhere, and yet, most of the news stories proclaim nobody can imagine why John Doe picked up the gun that day.
Are we as a society so vengeful and misandric it’s more important for us to see bad men behind bars or executed, and then “put the horror behind us” than it is to examine these incidents objectively to determine why they happened, and perhaps save the lives of some innocent people in the future?
Right now, I just don't know.
Take this for what it is worth. I personally don't give a 3 ringed coon shit about some murderer, and as far as being misandric and wanting to hang murderers for their crimes, that seems laughable to me as far as meting out punishment. Far more emend commit murders than women.
More race car drivers are men and die in crashes.
Society doesn't hate men because of that statistic.
And it makes pansies out of men to let them escape the consequences of their own behavior on some theoretical assumption that they are oppressed.
However as far as your point goes about preventing such crimes, then I'm all with you.
The only real Justice is prevention.
And I've seen all kinds of people do all kinds of things on drugs and alcohol, things they wouldn't have had either the balls or inclination to do otherwise, so I'm the last one from experience to say that if drugs aren't a motivation (and they never are a real motivation) then they can at least modify behavior enough to cause real harm. (That's no excuse, it's just a fact.)
And drugs in our society, like every form of quick fix or escape or entertainment, tends to be rampant in infiltration and plentiful in supply, from the illegal to the overprescribed.
So if you can get someone to investigate then I'm all for that because if it prevents murders in the future then that's good and that's Just, and if it proves out there is nothing to it, then at least you know that had nothing to do with it, and then you can move on to something else.
But just because you're not degreed in something, or not an "expert" don't let that discourage you at all form taking action in some way.
Your qualifications to make an important discovery are not limited by your expertise and more often than not, experts don't make discoveries, they just write about them. The modern preoccupation with expertise is ridiculous in many respects, and should never stand in the way of attempting smoothing worthwhile. (Within reason of course - if you're not well versed in handling high explosives you probably shouldn't be experimenting til you get some expertise.)
But if you're right then you're right no matter who you are, and if you're wrong then you're wrong, no matter who you are.
But you can't know either way til you try and there is no shame at all at being an outsider who is right, or in being an insider who is wrong, long as you learn from what you find and don't let it blind you to the truth.
God gave you a brain and the capabilities to use it and to have insights, some of them wrong, and some of them right, but in either case you have to investigate to really know.
Men just give out degrees and in many cases nowadays those are just a dime a dozen and not very impressive to boot.
So as long as your degrees are hovering right about normal body temperature then you got the right to find out anything you wanna know.
And maybe even the obliagtion to if you feel it is important enough.
It appears that both "liberals" and "conservatives" fall into it, too.
Check the FBI statistics, or even your local ones, for solved murders, not prosecutions. Then check how many of those murders were committed by men.
Or check the VICAP files about how many convicted and wanted murder suspects are men versus women.
It won't leave a lot of doubt.
I got in a rather philosophical disucssion yesterday with a grad student about capital punishment where he suggested that execution is BAD because innocent people might (will probably) be killed. I told him if the State releases a convicted murderer who kills again, the State is just as complicit as carrying out a good-faith sentence based on a jury of peers where the executed person is eventually discovered to have been innocent.
Until we are capable of providing justice for "proven" murders, not sure that we could project enough faith to take a real, active role in preventing murder that impacts someones life when they haven't actually done anything.
I'm not necessarily defending that argument, but it's one thing that people seldom think of.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.