Bad seeds and the imaginary line........

We like to check up on old friends and people we knew back when. Most of you probably check Face Book, or My Space, or maybe Reunion.com. I check Dept of Corrections Inmate search pages and the Obituaries. While doing that very thing this weekend, I ran across a couple of guys I knew pretty well, one was a guy I considered a friend or as close as my old life allowed. The other guy I was anything but friends with. We will get back to these two in a minute.



People read some of the things I say and feel compelled to straighten me out, question my motives, point out where I'm wrong, and that's a good thing. I'm not knocking anyone for disagreeing with me, I will always welcome those comments and respect the opinions even if they differ from mine. Lately I've received some comments and a few emails taking me to task for my narrow views about young people who commit some pretty atrocious acts. The basic theme has been a lack of compassion on my part. A recent example would be the girl who decided to drown her newborn in the toilet. I got two emails calling me a hypocrite, an idiot, and a misogynist. I'll cop to the first two, but women have been busting my plums all my life and I'm still a fan. Some others felt that the baby killer wasn't totally to blame for what she did, that her environment and parents were culpable. The gist being that she wasn't born a killer, circumstance made her one. Now back to those two guys in the first paragraph.



I met Tony about 6 months in to my bit, he was a tall, awkward kid from Springfield Missouri. I'm pretty sure he was doing his time for auto theft. He was one of those guys that could still go either way when he got out. I always figured he would get out, get a job, raise his kids and be none the worse for his experience. Unfortunately I was wrong. I found him on the Missouri dept. of Corrections website. He is in the Crossroads in Cameron serving a life sentence. Seems he was out for a few years and became a chemist and consumer of his own product. On Google I found an appeal he filed which gave me a little more info. Long story short he took a shot at a cop and that's all she wrote.

The second guy I knew back in the 80's, and already knew he was locked up. Kevin is serving a federal Life sentence for murder and an ongoing criminal conspiracy or Rico act. The reason I stumbled upon him was because he is still filing appeals even though he has been locked up since 1990. His appeal is here. Kevin had a short career as a professional boxer, maybe 10 fights. He got his start in tough man competitions, which he won a few of. He was always a mean spirited prick, so he fell naturally in to his role that would earn him an all day long life sentence. He ended up killing a big time weed dealer. The details of his crime are in the appeal and its worth a read just for the back stabbing that goes on between the cast of characters. The long and short of it is that Keven killed the dealer so his boss wouldn't have to pay him. Keven's boss also tried to get another guy to kill Keven after he killed the dealer to make it look like a drug deal gone bad. High drama, and a good example of the snakes that populated the drug business.

Both of these guys came from decent families. They were both average or better intelligence. They both committed reprehensible acts. The thing is they made choices, one tried to shoot a cop and one killed someone for 10 grand.They had something in them that bypassed that small voice that tells us dont do it, that taking a life isn't like taking a car or beating up a guy for not paying his drug debt. Much like This Guy who I knew and wrote about, the live of others was something to be traded for their own gain. We like to explain away the really horrible shit that people do by blaming it on environment, poor parenting, poverty, lack of breast feeding , or countless other excuses. Excuses is the key word.

People want to believe that humans are somehow above acting on primal urges, that our humanity prevents us from taking a life simply because it suits a purpose. When they are proven wrong time and again, they fall back on the excuses I listed earlier. These people while well intentioned usually are clueless. They haven't lived with the type of people who place so little value on the lives of others. If they ever brush up on one of these types, if someone kills or harms one of their family or friends the attitude and sympathy suddenly dissolve. The person they once considered a victim of their childhood or mental illness becomes a rabid dog deserving death or life in prison. It's all a matter of perspective.

I've got my own theory. I think some of us are just born bad. Something is missing, the wiring is all fucked up. A battalion of shrinks and social workers cant fix whats broken. There is a line that most of us wont cross, we wont kill just because we can, or because we want to. Some of us can cross that line without hesitation or concern over the consequences. It doesn't matter if the line is crossed at 30 or 16, once its crossed there is no going back, there is no making amends or redemption. Some of us just need to be put away or put down. Both of these guys fall under that category, so did the girl who killed her child. Prison is full of people who would kill you just because, and they also walk among us. It's easy to try to blame it on circumstance and environment until they reach out and touch someone close to you, or you personally. Then all bets are off and the psychiatric theories and compassion disappear.