"This is supposesd to happen in LA or New York" (stolen fetus)

[Proud2BAmurkin]

<snip>

Many customers were surprised to hear the infant was only a day old, Sage said. She knew an Amber Alert had been issued for a baby missing from Missouri but did not realize the Montgomerys' infant was connected until hearing from a reporter on Friday.

"You read about this stuff,'' she said. "It blows you away when it's here. This stuff is supposed to be in New York City or Los Angeles.''

[jjtss]

1. Stolen Fetus'

There is an article in the Washington Post about the rate of such crimes against pregnant women. Very worth reading. Makes one rethink the Peterson Case. Hope they don't kill him because he very probably is innocent.

[MADem]

6. Ya think?

I think he's guilty. I'd rather see him sentenced to a long life of "hard" time, but we don't have that. It's either death row or a curious, disciplined/undisciplined, overcrowded, sub-cultured prison life.

But now, the hot case is Robert Blake, though Michael Jackson is battling mightily for the honor. Anything to keep the media from reporting on the war in Iraq, I guess.

[realisticphish]

22. my votes not in on peterson

in all likelyhood, he did it; HOWEVER, it seems to me that the prosecution did NOT provide enough evidence to prove his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. i think the jury let their emotions shortchange the law. i still think hes scum, but in america, even scum deserve a fair trial


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[Bunny]

35. Shadow of a doubt is not the standard and never has been.

The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. I continue to be amazed at the level of ignorance of this point that has been demonstrated here since the Peterson verdict.

Now, exactly how was his trial unfair?

[Pachamama]

7. Violent Crimes/Assaults against pregnant women are extremely high & very

worrisome....but just because that is the case does not make me think for one moment that Scott Peterson didn't kill his wife. However, that said, I am not for the Death Penalty except perhaps in extreme extenuating circumstances and certainly not when there is no witness to the crime and only circumstantial evidence...I actually think the Death Penalty for Scott Peterson in this case "saved his life" because I believe if he was in General Population with a life sentence, he'd be gang-raped, beaten regularly and dead within a year.

Meanwhile regarding the situation in MO/KS with the murder of this pregnant mom and the woman who did it, I can only say that she is certainly very mentally ill and I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't part of the defense. One big question that remains is whether her husband was in on it. If that is the case, then it wasn't mental illness and was pre-meditated cold murder & kidnapping. If she acted alone, it was planned and pre-meditated, but with mental illness?

Either way, what a sick, sick crime....that poor woman and the trauma that baby had to experience in being cut open and ripped from the dying mothers womb....sick, sick, sick....having just had a baby this year, it sickens me to think about this crime....

What is even more amazing, this woman Lisa Montgomery has two other children...so its not even as if she was infertile and had never had children...scary...

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[Warpy]

14. I think he was convicted of being a rotten husband

I didn't hear of any forensic evidence tying him to the crime. He'd had a bit on the side before, so that was hardly a motive.

I think people got carried away. I sincerely hope it's overturned on appeal. I don't think there was enough for a DP case. If they insisted on convicting him of the crime, it should have been manslaughter on the evidence presented. At least that way, he'd be locked up and prevented from being a rotten husband to somebody else.

[Book Lover]

29. Link to the WP article

It's one of three they're doing this week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10074-2004Dec18.html

Their killings produced a few local headlines, then faded, each a seeming aberration in the community where it happened.

But pregnant women like them have been slain in Maryland and Mississippi, in California and Kansas, in Ohio and Illinois. Jenny McMechen, 24, was shot in a friend's home in Plainfield, Conn., and Kerry Repp, 29, was shot in her Oregon bedroom, and Tasha Winters, 16, was shot in Indiana the day she told her boyfriend about the baby. Ardena Carter, 24, was found dead in the Georgia woods, and Kathleen Terry, 22, was run over in Idaho, and Melesha Francis, 26, was strangled in New York, and Thelma Jones, 21, was shot sitting on her back steps in Louisiana -- the day her mother ordered a cake for her baby shower.

A year-long examination by The Washington Post of death-record data in states across the country documents the killings of 1,367 pregnant women and new mothers since 1990. This is only part of the national toll, because no reliable system is in place to track such cases.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. Oh yeah, not in that town, the town where a bully ran the place

for several years before being gunned down in broad daylight on the main street with dozens of witnesses, none of whom saw anything.

Or the girl who dissapeared and was found to be stomped to death by her boyfriend.

Or the guy who had just vanished recently.


All true stories from that little town in Missouri.

I feel much safer in Brooklyn, thanks.

[Walt Starr]

15. And that is with a 2000 population of 342!

Somebody should run the stats on violent crime, they may outdo Baghdad!

[MADem]

3. A lot of kinky and sick stuff goes on in red states, too

"In Cold Blood" (Truman Capote's outstanding and disturbing work) happened in rural Kansas. Andrea Yates killed her kids in the red state of Texas.

Ya oughta link to your quote, for context.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

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[Catherine Vincent]

4. It amazes me the comments people make when something tragic

like this happens. They all say it, "this is a peaceful, quiet neighborhood, that's not supposed to happen here". What they are saying is it is only supposed to happen in the low income neighborhoods. It makes me made sometimes when these people say stuff like that. Violence has no boundaries!

The old guy that was quoted in Yahoo about the lady that was arrested, he said something like there is more to the story because she was pregnant! I think he doesn't want to believe that this small town, church going woman wouldn't do such a thing.

[Eric J in MN]

18. is that a real photo?

Did Chelsea have to sit next to W?

[Catherine Vincent]

19. Yes, it is. From Clinton's library dedication.

There were several threads discussing all the pics from that. Did you see the photo where Bush tried to squeeze thru the door at the same time with Clinton? He looked like a schmuck!

[Eric J in MN]

25. yes, I saw that (nt)

nt

[Kansas Wyatt]

21. I grew up not to far from there....

Like most small towns, their main source of income came from the family farms, but that way of life was mostly wiped out in the 1970s. Most of the people living in these small towns are low income now, unless they commute to major population centers (if they can) for work to survive. There was a time when these small towns were like the Andy Griffith Show and life was very good, but now these towns are just decaying and they are no different than anywhere else.

There was a time in this country that with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, you could be successful and make something of yourself. Corporate America now dominates so much of our lives, and there are a lot of people in Red and Blue States barely clinging on to hope.

[annabanana]

5. I heard several of the locals, when interviewed, say this..

"This kind of thing happens all the time in the big cities, but we're not used to it out here"

Actually, the freakiest things seem to come out of the most remote places. Like some manifestation of cabin fever...

They most assuredly are NOT run of the mill in them big scary cities, you damn yokels

[Skittles]

11. wonder if they have ever heard of Ed Gein?

:o

[devilgrrl]

20. Charles Starkweather...

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/starkweather/index_1.html

[Skittles]

23. or how about this current gem

from a "tiny town" in North Carolina

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1941428p-8299574c.html

[devilgrrl]

27. Then there's these folks from rural Ohio

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lundgren/index_1.html

[Ian David]

12. Serial killer demographics

She says most serial killers are motivated by "an abnormal sex drive, an urge to exercise power, loneliness and anger towards their current circumstances". Most serial killers come from the lower classes of society and have suffered neglect and abuse in their early childhood, Annadale added.

The south's status as a site for serial killings dates back to the 1920s, when De Melker, the first such killer to be convicted in a South African court of law and the only female member of the club, went on her murderous spree. De Melker gained notoriety and attracted media attention in 1932, when she was found guilty of the murders of two husbands and a son, apparently for economic gain. Her weapon of choice was arsenic or strychnine, poison which she bought from a chemist in Turffontein.
http://www.joburg.org.za/dec_2002/dec2_killers.stm




A hunter goes where there is ready game...

No continent except the frozen wasteland of Antarctica has been entirely spared from serial murders, but some regions are clearly safer than others.

http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkiller_insight/articles_g.htm

North America has produced some 80 percent of all known 20th-century serial killers, with the vast majority of those active in the United State.

One thing is clear from any global survey of serial murder: the United States, with 5 percent or less of the world's total population, has produced 76 percent of all known serial killers in the 20th century (close to 85 percent since 1980). Serial murder is clearly a national problem in America - none of the 50 states is unaffected - but once again, some districts are more dangerous than others. Geography is another area, as in choice of weapons, where serial killers deviate from the American norm.

* In an average year, 43 percent of all reported murders are committed in southern states, while the West, Mid-west and Northeast average 20 percent, 19 percent, and 18 percent, respectively.
* Serial killers are less parochial:
o 25 percent strike in the South
o the West runs a close second at 24 percent;
o the Midwest and Northwest lag behind with respective figures of 17 and 16 percent.
* The five most dangerous states in terms of serial murder cases reported since 1900 are:
o California (with 134 cases - nearly 10 percent of the world total this century)
o Florida (78 cases)
o New York (74)
o Texas (47)
o Illinois (45).

[noamnety]

13. Makes me want to start a counter campaign

When stuff like that happens in Detroit, we should start telling the press "I can't believe it happened here; this is the sort of thing you'd expect in some rural town down south."

I'm not serious, it's not good to push any stereotypes; I'm just sick of folks like Rush trying to pin these morals on the blue states.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

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[Walt Starr]

17. Sorry, mental illness doesn't square with the facts

IMO, she was cold and calculating.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

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[Walt Starr]

32. That's why I would never buy the "mental illness" defense on a jury

You definitley would not want me on a jury if the defense was insaniity. IF you murder somebody, of course you're insane!

I don't buy it. This woman deserves the death penalty every bit as much as Peterson.

[Skittles]

10. they need to read the police blotters in their own rural newspapers

drunks, druggies, wife beating, etc - non-stop

[catzies]

16. A cliche turned on its head. This Left Coaster would say the opposite.

What do you expect, in the flyover?

Please don't flame my weak Read State/Blue State criticism.

[knitter4democracy]

24. I grew up in small-town America

The town my mom lived in is where the Burning Bed took place, where a woman walked into the bar in broad daylight and stabbed her cheating husband twelve times and walked right out with no one stopping her, where feuding families would set trailers on fire and then block the road with gunmen so the volunteer firefighters couldn't put the fire out, and where drug dealers were known to sell right on the other side of my grandmother's pond (let alone the dealers downtown at the four corners). The stories that come out of small towns can be quite amazing.

[ReadTomPaine]

28. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

Holmes: "They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

Watson: "You horrify me!"

Holmes: "But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser."

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - the Copper Beeches

[Blue_Tires]

33. oh, FUCK THAT SHIT

Translantion: "Horrible crimes are only supposed to happen in generally liberal/minority communities"

hideous crimes happen in 'neckville and God's Country too, sweet cheeks...I along with many posters here have seen it firsthand

[Dulcinea]

34. "This stuff" can happen anywhere.

That said, this story sickened & horrified me & should never happen anywhere to anyone! :cry: