Woman Tortured to Death
 

I read this article and found myself weeping before I finished. Simply can not believe anyone could treat another human being in such an inhumane manner.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080321/...HL6Zcxk10E1vAI

It's hard to feel that people capable of such things are part of the same species as the rest of us. I can understand violence and aggression, but this kind of cruelty seems far far more alien.

Man, I couldnt even finish reading that.

Agreed. I read this earlier and tried to formulate a reply, but this is one of those rare situations where words have failed me completely. I don't even know how to react to this; right now I'm not even feeling outrage so much as stunned incredulity and a deep melancholy. I hate even thinking that anyone is capable of this sort of thing. I just don't know what to say.

TM - why did you post this? I feel awful now.

Nasty, but I think I was expecting even worse like Charlie Manson or something.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens with some regularity to the mentally handicapped, the aged and kids.

I didn't click the link. I mean if a puppy being killed made me go off so much I almost got myself banned, I can't imagine what this could do.

I'll just go on record saying that I tend to agree with Tully, Strange, Mango, Mars and Jazz on most things, so yeah this is almost certainly bad news. I'll also provide some typical psycho-babble and say that the guilty party is quite possibly mentally ill and it's a shame that we don't have trained professionals in school that could recognize early warning signs, diagnose, and treat people who may someday pose a serious threat to society. Not necessarily looking to expand the thread in that direction, just my two cents.

I'm going to go work out now and thankfully not think about any horrible things in the article, which I didn't read.

What can I say, I'm a dick.

How......:no:

It bothered me how the article kept comparing the situation of this woman to prison. Surely, prisoners are treated with more dignity and respect.

I worry for those children, encouraged to participate in crimes so horrific.

It might have been referring to prisons generically. Not all prisons are civil.

Find out what makes them tick. Go deep.

read the begining of the article. just lost my apetite. and normally, I'm always hungry...

thats just horrible!

some people are just sick.

Sadly, I read the article and my personal feeling is they should all face the death penalty for this.

You know, I don't usually support capital punishment. I'm intensely uncomfortable with the idea of the State having the power to kill, in my name. This is especially true considering that high proportion of falsely convicted Death Row inmates in the US, if Amnesty International and The Innocence Project are to be believed.

However, in this case, I think getting a little old-school could be beneficial. Breaking On The Wheel sounds good, or maybe Lingqi. In public. Let the blood and bone and cauterized, detatched flesh spray the crowd. Maybe let the victim's family do the honors, with the option of forgiving and releasing the condemned beforehand, the way Muslim countries do it.

I think the death penalty would be poorly applied here. They should all be institutionalized so they can be treated and studied. What good would they be dead? How could we learn about their behaviour unless professionals can interact with them to know why they did such a thing?

If you want to prevent things like this from happening in the future, if you want to learn about the human mind and what makes us tick (and what makes us do terrible things), then why should they all be executed? There is a lot to learn here: group think, youth thought processes, adult/youth interactions, etc., etc. This is a case for our time. We can learn much about human psychology, and it's all right here.

The death penalty is just sweeping it under the carpet. Many believe suicide is the easy way out for an individual. Isn't the death penalty the easy way out for the state?

I am a social worker for capital punishment, one of the rare few. In my opinion the death penalty is the slow mind fuck of realizing your demise is coming and having to suffer the anxiety of that fateful day. In a way it is mind torture, which is surly less agonizing than what this poor woman was put through.

Maybe I'm the sick one, I don't know but I do know that I think those who show no remorse or regard for human life deserve exactly the same.

(bolded by me)

The only truly 100% effective way to prevent the guilty parties from harming other people is to end their existence. Period. Life in prison does not offer that same guarantee. Escapes happen. Clerical errors happen. Violence against inmates and prison staff happens.

The only thing worth keeping the guilty parties alive to study, is how they would react to having the same thing done to them.

I think we can all agree that an eye for an eye mentality certainly comes to mind here. I also believe it's not wrong of us to THINK about giving what was given in kind, but acting on that thought and not acting on it is what separates us from the animals who commit such heinous acts in the first place.

Personally, I think they should be publicly executed in quick and certain fashion. Death by firing squad for all to see, so everyone knows they paid for their crimes in full, and what can be expected for any further such crimes in the future.

BBs through the eyes. Bullets through the joints. Decapitation.

Studied by doctors? As far as I'm concerned, these creatures aren't human and don't deserve to be treated as such.

So you don't think profiling or other applications of information has any value? You don't see the value of psychological case studies for further understanding? What we know now of psychology, criminology, etc., was learned from study, not executions.

This sounds disingenuous. Is this an emotional response or do you think this would be a benefit? Would you carry out such a study? To be monstrous to the monster?

So one must become a monster to deal with a monster? How is that a benefit to society?

Humane. Dignified. Again, we must become the monster to deal with it?

This is a cop-out. They are human. The suggestion that they aren't is a Romantic ideal. I had hoped by now that we are done dealing with the hangover we've suffered from that period. Can we please move on to something productive? It's the 21st century already. (And doctors have come a long way since hacksaw amputations, leeches, and bloodletting.)

Upon reflection, I have concluded that there is some merit to studying the mind of an animal capable, and apparently willing, of such cruel treatment of another human being for no sane reason imaginable. So I propose you isolate them in a high security mental ward where they have no chance of escape and no interaction with anyone but the medical staff doing the studies, have your studies to your heart's content, THEN shoot them when you're done. They have lost their right to life in my book.

Who gets to decide that? Who makes the decision of which people are deserving of life and which ones aren't? These are human beings. We don't want to think of them as such, because we want to disassociate ourselves from the kind of creature that could do something like this, but like it or not it's what they are. Despicable, contemptible, evil, but human. What makes them more or less deserving of life? Liberty, no. They have proven better than I could have imagined possible that freedom of action is a burden they're not capable of shouldering and this poor woman has paid the price. But to take away their life?

I know they did horrible things. It makes me sick thinking about it. I'm not outraged though. I'm saddened by this, depressed. Both because it forces me to face the knowledge that this is what my fellow man, my species, my people are capable of, and also because of the reaction.

A woman died. She was subjected to horrible, unimaginable suffering. And while we're not the ones who inflicted this on her, the burden of it is ours. These people, there's something wrong with them. Normal, compassionate people don't do things like this. They're broken in some fundamental way. And we can drag them out back and shoot them like a pack of dogs gone feral, or we can acknowledge that we can learn something from this. We can learn how they're broken, learn to recognize it, maybe even learn to fix it. We can take real steps towards preventing this kind of thing from happening again. That's far more important to me than any lust for vengeance.

I was going to trot out the old 'where do we draw the line' argument regarding capital punishment, but frankly I just don't have it in me. Thinking about this is just too much for me. These are my thoughts, make of them what you will.

First of all, I think there are enough of sadistic murderers already incarcerated to keep the "studiers" occupied without adding the guilty parties here to the payroll. Second, what exactly do we know about psychology, criminology, etc, from hundreds of years of study, that benefits, Dorothy Dixon?

It would benefit the guilty parties by teaching them personal responsibility. And maybe they are completely unaware of the fact that torture is pianful. So what better way to learn than first hand experience.

Now I'll turn your question back on you. Would you be willing to carry out your proposed studies........in your home? Is it important enough to you to find the "answers" that you that you would be willing to expose yourself and your family to them and become there caretaker? Because a sanitized clinical study wouldn't be nearly thorough enough. One would actually have to be able to observe the interacting 24/7 much like Jane Goodall did with the animals she studied.

double post

Get back to me when humans have come a long way from barbarism, then we'll talk about being humane. Nothing has changed since thousands of years ago, so why should the punishment methods change?

Humans have and always will be animals. The only thing that separates us (hell, not even all of us) from people of old is a layer of societal mentality that represses our urge to dominate and kill. We just find the outlets in different methods, but the urge is there and always will be.

I would carry out the studies suggested if it were within my expertise to do so, but I don't know why you suggest doing so in my home. It would be of benefit to do so in an environment conducive to such a study.

A sanitized clinical study is what we have to work with; I say work with it. You say torture them. I simply disagree.

Humans are animals, yes. Humans are capable of suffering and causing suffering, yes. But we have changed over the years. If you think life now is like it was even in 1008 A.D., you are probably mistaken. Do you know what it's like living under a monarchy or imperial rule? Are you familiar with the caste system? Feudalism? You shouldn't undermine modern democracy and other social advances. Our genetic makeup might be relatively unchanged, but our social minds have made leaps and bounds. But this was not borne out of repression of basic instincts, it was based on our ability and desire to reason: a need fulfilled of the establishment and stabilization of wider societies. If things were as you say they are, our language would not have grown past the Old and Middle Languages, and we wouldn't understand one another for regional dialects. It would be a much more fragmented world.

While you might see the benefit of publicized drawing and quartering, many contemporary minds view that as unnecessarily and historically barbaric. Most would rather post-Freudian methods or modern incarceration practices.

I agree that a relative urge to dominate and kill remains within us, but I choose not to give up on the progress we have made in spite of it. The fact that we all have this capacity should encourage us to learn more about ourselves, which is why I take the stance I do.

I could not support the hanging of women or children - even for crimes as atrocious as this.

I believe that it should only be lawful to execute by capital punishment an adult male.

Yep, agree. They are animals. We cage animals to study them.

I still believe they should have the choice to donate their bodies for science.

[irony]You could always give the women testosterone therapy and simply wait for the children to come of age.

There's a solution to every problem.[/irony]

Well, maybe it sounds sexist or old fashioned, but its how I feel.

The State sponsored taking of a life is not something to be undertaken lightly. It is very serious.

recreating the disembowling scene in braveheart sounds to me like an appropriate punishment.

[irony]I know, I know....women and children are precious, and sperm is cheap.[/mygod,howdoyouturnthisthingoff?!]

Why focus solely on that?

They should be taken from the courtroom, "stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse to the [Alton town square]. [They should be] hanged, drawn and quartered — strangled by hanging but released while still alive, emasculated[/castrated], eviscerated and [their] bowels burnt before them, beheaded, then cut into four parts [each]. [Their] preserved [heads should be] placed on a [pikes] atop [the Clark Bridge by the Mississipi]. It [should later be joined by the heads of everyone else guilty of such crimes in Illinois]. [Their] limbs [should be] displayed, separately, in [Chicago, Aurora, Rockford, and Naperville]."*

[/irony, dammit! /IRONY]

I happened to see the mugshots of the people in question.

Its pretty much what you would expect, sort of the typical cast you would expect out of one of those 'car broke down in the country' horror movies. Kinda 'Squidbillies' come to life.

[non-irony] You're hilarious! Bet you could get a job with The O'Reilly Factory. Also bet he wouldn't get the joke. [/non-irony]

Feel the same. Can't really relate at all. My mind immediately classifies the crimes as acts committed by alien species.

I believe that has, and always should be, left up to society as a whole. You know, that whole "we the people" sort of thing when it comes to deciding what is right for ALL of us who obey the generally accepted rules of being ALLOWED to thrive / survive, in a lawful manner, within this community.

Technically, yes. These .. "human beings" .. have also earned another classification that separates them from the rest of the sane, law-abiding human beings (you know, "normal people") who have to live with these kinds of lunatics in their midsts. We liberal minded folk call them "animals". When an "animal" in our society takes the life of another citizen in our community, we put them down. I'm not suggesting you torture these animals, that would be inhumane and lower our standards, I'm merely stating that I firmly believe in my heart that they should be executed .. immediately.

It has been suggested in this thread that there is a wealth of knowledge to be learned from these animals that could benefit our society's future. Alright, perform your studies, learn what you can in a reasonable amount of time, then kill them, and let the rest of society get on with their sane existence.

Rightfully so. Their very actions clearly demonstrate their differences between the acceptable norm of human behaviour and those of crazed animals who cannot abide by / reside within the accepted boundaries of the law of the land and refrain from inhumane practices on their fellow man.

Human, yes. Deserving of the right to survive amongst the rest of the human population after such heinous acts .. definitely not. They have already proven to what lengths they are willing to go in proving just how inhumane and cruel they can be to an innocent and defenseless, mentally challenged expectant mother. You want me, the general public, to accept anything less than their lives to be extinguished as punishment for their despicable, contemptible, evil acts? You want me to vote for their lives to be spared for the sake of human rights, the very same rights they have demonstrated no regard for? I vote no.

Reread this entire thread and the submitted link that states how they brutally tortured and unceremoniously killed an innocent woman and her unborn child. Not one innocent life, but technically two, taken without remorse or sane reason. I am somewhat surprised you needed this one clarified.

They have proven far more than just that to me, my friend. They have proven a high level of societal deficiency. Low moral integrity. Animalistic tendencies to the highest degree of inhumane proportions. They have proven that they apparently don't know right from wrong. They have proven that the death of an innocent woman and her unborn child is less important to them than their twisted, perverse desires to torture and humiliate her relentlessly.

You should be sickened by this, any decent human being would be, I should hope. I, personally, am outraged that more people aren't coming forward and crying out for their executions.

You are absolutely correct here. What was done to this woman is ... unthinkable. Inexcusable. Unforgivable. And yes, we are the ones left to speak for her, to see that her death is not dismissed, nor excused, nor forgiven. We have to mete out the punishment of those in our society who break the very rules we live by. Torture and murder being list toppers in my book. You're also right in that they are abnormal, broken on a fundamental level. These are not the type of people .. these animals .. that any of us want living in our midsts. That is why we have laws against such acts, and harsh punishment for committing such heinous crimes. The hope is that we never have to dole out a sentence of death for anyone who is willing to commit such wickedness, but we must when the need arises. That is our cross to bear in this and we must be vigilant in carrying out our task. We cannot allow such acts to go unpunished, and anything short of execution, in my book, is simply not punishment enough.

I'm not proposing that we, as a society, lower to the level of the accused in this matter. There is no sane reason why they cannot be executed in the most humane fashion possible, lest it offend your sensitivities and those like you. And I mean you no insult by saying that. It's just a simple matter of differing perspectives in this from where I stand. I believe they should be executed publicly, say by firing squad, so that the rest of society knows right off, this is what you get for torturing and murdering our innocent members of the community. I think that would be far more productive in hindering the spread of the type of behaviour in our society, than holding the animal's hand while we stuff them full of drugs or gases to make them take their eternal dirt nap in a most peaceful nature. Personally, I'd rather they shit themselves in fear at the sound of the bullet being fired at their lunatic skulls, knowing with distinct finality that this is what their evil led them to, but that's just me.

I believe in cases like this one, where there is no "reasonable doubt" that the accused are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, most certainly quite guilty, their execution should be public, it should be today, if not sooner, and it should be referred to as a demonstration of our resolve to put an end to this kind of atrocity in our society. This way, the victim's loved ones do not have to suffer the years upon years of waiting for justice to finally be served, wondering if there is going to be some reprieve for the monster who took their baby away from them, some loophole that gets him released on a legal blunder (technicality), or that the criminal might escape and seek further retribution on his victim's family .. you know .. just for sick, twisted spite and all.

Now I know there are those cases where the "accused" is actually quite innocent and erroneously charged, and I believe there should be extenuating circumstances and procedures to separate those cases from the ones where there is more than enough solid proof of guilt to proceed right to execution, but I'll save that passionate rant for the proper thread.


In closing I will say, you seem like a decent enough person to me. You're in a state of shock and/or dismay over this situation and I honestly feel compassion and remorse for how this has made you think and feel. But this is the society we live in, and we're in this kind of position because monsters like these stated here are not more severely punished for their heinous crimes to begin with. If we executed murderers expediently, and without all the red tape of second guessing our decisions to execute them in the first place, more of these lunatics might get the impression we mean business when we say "thou shalt not kill".

Kahn, what is the difference between one monster, three monsters, or a whole society of monsters? Is it because we make our executions ceremonies? We parade the damned around from court to court and until the final moment when they get their meal.

I cannot recall the exact story but it is fitting here. An entire village (I recall 1000) must kill their lord and they each decide that each of them will take a bite out of him. No single bite was the cause of his death so no single person could have been blamed, and the emperor could not do anything to them all. In modern society we don't have to brush our teeth after the executions.

Yes they don't deserve the life they have... but now they can't live it freely. They should now be required to benefit society in every way they can.

I think you may be confusing the term monster here just a bit. The "monster" is the bad people who take life without justifiable cause or sane rationale, NOT the good people who must find some form of suitable punishment for said heinous crimes.

You propose to me some equally suitable form of punishment such as the current WIDELY accepted form (the death sentence) and I'll rethink my current stand on this atrocity. I can't personally think of anything more fitting. If, however, you wish to suggest that I stomach the notion that these brutal, lunatic MONSTERS be allowed to live out the rest of their natural born lives in captivity under any conditions that do not include the road that leads to their extermination (such as years and years of medical research to answer the question "why did you do it?"), I'm going to have a problem accepting it.

You see, these animals relentlessly tortured (for how long??) and killed an innocent woman and her child. This isn't some sad fairytale in a storybook, nor some dramatic scenario in a TV show or slasher movie. This really happened in our society. Now we must decide whether or not these people are going to be allowed to continue living in our society, in any capacity.

What's even scarier to think about is, if they are not executed within a reasonable measure of time, and instead given the opportunity to continue living, in confinement or otherwise, they will more than likely kill and or torture someone again. It's already been proven that this is their very nature, which we can all agree is extremely abnormal and quite unacceptable. Only this time, it will be a state or government paid medical staff member or prison guard, or maybe even some unsuspecting inmate. It happens all the time, and we know it does, and still we seem to have a problem with removing this cancerous breed of animal from our gene pool, and all because it makes us feel dirty in our deepest secret places.

I don't believe there is much benefit to our society, in this day and age, that can be gained by the life of an animal capable of doing the things done to this woman and her child. If they are allowed to live, they will live each waking moment striving for the opportunity to get free and continue living as they have thus far. Not bettering themselves or anyone else. Not atoning for their crimes. And certainly not making our society better for letting them live.