Amber Alert
Yesterday, while driving on the interstate, Glenn and I saw an Amber Alert for a missing Tennessee family. They were found last night minus one member. Here is what might have happened. I wonder what was going on with this family?
Update: The wife in this saga has confessed. Little surprise that this is what a church member said about her:
I would have been shocked if a neighbor had said anything different.
Update: The wife in this saga has confessed. Little surprise that this is what a church member said about her:
"They were the perfect family," said Pam Killingsworth, a member of the church and an assistant principal at the elementary school attended by two of the children.
She was "the perfect mother, the perfect wife. She brought her children to school every day. She volunteered at the school," Killingsworth said on CNN.
"It is just not real. In my heart, I can't believe this is happening," she said. "She was not this kind of person."
I would have been shocked if a neighbor had said anything different.
posted by Helen at 11:00 AM
69 Comments:
She converted to Islam?
He was a brute.
Here's my problem with Amber alerts; while I don't see them very frequently, in the Baltimore/Washington corrider, I only remember one that actually helped save an endangered child. The case you describe hardly seems the proper use of the alert. Yes the suspect was found but was there any reason to suspect that the children were in danger?
One time I remember the Amber alert was issued on the result of a plea from a father, who, it turns out, had already killed the child. Another time or two there was a miscommunication. Amber alerts are well meaning; I'm just not certain how effective they are in accomplishing what they're supposed to.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this case. There is certainly very little to go on from the news accounts - but that's not surprising since it just happened.
I'm curious to see if the media keeps up with the story and what direction they choose to lean once facts start coming out. All I can think of is - those poor children.
Along with Teresa, I feel for these children. Hopefully both sets of grandparents can quickly deal with their grief/shock/anger and agree on custody. If I were a member of the minister's family, I would have a hard time letting the wife's parents take custody. Plus, they will have plenty to deal with as their daughter faces trial.
It's tempting to relate this to problems that some ministers' kids have and to wonder if the same may be true of their wives. Certainly ministers and their wives can have problems like everyone else. People in domestic disputes are often highly emotional and feel powerless, and that can be a deadly combination. Sometimes there are issues of abuse involved but, whatever happened here, it's difficult to legally justify killing your spouse in this day and age. There are too many shelters and other resources available to help. Furthermore, if these charges are true, the tragic part to me is that this woman knowingly orphaned her children.
Of course ministers and their families have problems just like everyone else. There isn't any wonderment in it for me since I don't believe their religion anyway. What would your reaction be if it had been a Muslim preacher?
But it is not true that being highly emotional and feeling powerless is by itself a deadly combination. Most people in a bad marriage are highly emotional and feel powerless. What this case shows you is the difference between a bad marriage with a gun in the house and a bad marriage without a gun in the house.
Yes, I know the usual response to this: She could just as well have run him over with the car. Even though everyone liked her and she had no criminal record, she must have been a devil woman who was going to find the means. Yeah, it could have been like that, maybe, but as it happens most spouse murderers use a handgun. I conjecture that Minister Winkler bought the gun for his own protection.
We can juxtapose this with the statistic that I mentioned in the other thread: There are 8 times as many homicides in Tennessee as in Denmark. We can also juxtapose it with the quote from Heinlein: An armed society is a polite society.
She will claim that she and the children were 'abused' in some way.
This site has gone downhill in a hurry over the last 10 days.
First it was People magazine, then it was the Star, now we're all invited to speculate on a tremendous family tragedy we know utterly nothing about.
I feel like I'm being asked to read someone else's mail.
No thanks.
Redman
Greg,
I'm not sure if you responded to my post or to Dr. Helen's post, but I believe it was directed to me. If so, I appear to have said something that bothers you. Would you mind explaining why this bothered you so much?
DRJ: Nothing that you said particularly bothers me. I was just presenting a different interpretation of the same news.
i know jeffrey dahmers neighbours said he was a wonderful lad, and gacy and.. i even bet jack the rippers neighbour would have said he was a wonderful man.
I love the way dr helen covers a lot of different stories, dont forget some of us on here are from different countries, so we dont hear about these things. so i say keep on with it dr helen, and never mind what others say. your doing a Great job
You know, if she hadn't been normal, chances are that the community would have called the police before now . . . its the normal people who snap (or the weird people who seem normal) who don't get caught for something before they get arrested for murder/crime.
Okay, fair enough, Greg.
The gun issues may be worth discussing but my main focus remains the importance of emotion combined with feelings of powerlessness. I don't agree that all unhappy couples feel powerless. I may be unhappy with my spouse but I know I can leave, unwind at work, etc., and I know I don't have to do something drastic to deal with my unhappiness. People who feel powerless often do believe that drastic action is their only resort.
I think I'll stop now since I'm not a psychologist and my statements are not based on any specialized knowlege or training. Can any psychologists here either help me out or (gently) correct me?
Under the circumstances, I don't think an Amber Alert was unwarranted. There are two very real possibilities that the police were facing: first, that the wife and/or childen had been abducted, or that the wife might be suicidal and decide to take her children with her. In fact, the latter case may still prove to be true.
We've had a number of abducted children safely returned to their families as the result of these Amber alerts in our area. Alerts and vehicle descriptions are broadcast on the radio AND posted on road signs along the freeway. I absolutely support the program.
The full story, if and when it comes out, will be of interest to me. When my husband decided at the age of 40 to attend seminary, I was supportive except extracted the promise that he NEVER try to make me a pastor's wife. The pressure on these families to be perfect little clones is beyond belief, and we're more the sort to revel in our unconventionality. They have no privacy either.
For example, note that the church let itself into their home using a key within an hour or two of his not appearing to preach the evening service. The family minivan wasn't in the driveway, and nobody answered the door, so the presumption should have been that they weren't at home.
If Theo Van Gogh had been armed he might still be alive.
anonymous 4:09,
Apparently, you have never dealt with a problem or nutcase in your neighborhood. The police usually don't give a damn if someone is weird or acts abnormally. The community can call the police--but nothing would be done. And people's tolerance for weirdness is extraordinary these days--none of us really know our neighbors well and most wouldn't know or do anything if someone was acting abnormally. Believe me, I can't even get help much for people that I deal with who are potentially violent.
DRJ,
People in domestic disputes tend to kill for emotional reasons (affective killing) rather than predatory (planned and thought out etc.) and people can feel powerless. However, new research (International Journal of Law and Psychiatry) sheds some light on spousal killers (take it with a grain of salt as the studies did look at mainly men). The spouses who killed were not primarily sadistic antisocial, or even psychopathic. They were passive-aggressive, self-defeating and dependent. They were classically overcontrolled. Suppressed rage rather than expressed violence may be a better predictor of spousal homicide (not physical abuse)(in Violence Risk and Threat Assessment, Meloy, 2000). My experience with women who are violent indicate that women who tend to be overllycontrolled with their emotions and suppress their rage and try to appear perfect can become enraged from holding in all of these emotions. Combine this with a feeling of dependency on their husband and they reach a point of tension, depression and a narrow sense of options except to murder. Their worldview is obviously quite distorted--like you mentioned, there is usually a place to go and other options than killing--but sometimes, people do not see that and think that if they just get rid of the problem, it will go away. And to some degree, these types of killings are followed by a period of tenstion relief and the killer returns to a very positive and idealized feeling about the victim. That is why you see so many of these types of killers talking about what how great their spouse was (even though they took the spouse's life).
Somewhat related, I always enjoy reading cops leap to the defense of one of their fellow officers after he gets caught abusing his position.
"He's a good cop!" or "He was an asset to the force." or somesuch.
Just once I'd like to hear "You know, Bob was always a jerk. And he cheated at cards. Guess we should've known."
So taking Dr. Helen's explanation @ 5:16 and the insight of Anonymous @ 4:15, one possibility is that someone in this position (newly hired minister's wife in a small, tight-knit community) might feel so much pressure to be perfect that she became depressed and angry.
Perhaps her neighbors saw her as perfect because that's exactly what she was.
Dr. Helen, thank you for your answer and gentle correction. I like to read your website - I learn something everyday.
Dr Helen said that some research into male perpetrators had demonstrated that, "The spouses who killed were not primarily sadistic antisocial, or even psychopathic. They were passive-aggressive, self-defeating and dependent. They were classically overcontrolled."
I would merely like to add two rather important factors that were **probably** omitted from the 'official' analysis of this purported finding.
1. Women who are unbearable to be with usually have little option but to choose as partners those men who are overcontrolled and dependent. Other men would quickly leave them.
2. Given that many men actually have to put up daily with women who are unbearable (lest they lose their homes and their children in any ensuing divorce) it is hardly suprising that many of them BECOME passive-aggressive and overcontrolled!
Such notions, however, are politically-incorrect, and they would also offend the feminists, so psychologists are unlikely to discuss them - even as possibilities.
Harry
ronin1516: My position is that it's just human nature that some marriages go bad. Sometimes the spouses walk away from each other, but sometimes they don't and anger accumulates. If there are bad fights in your marriage and you own a gun, you should ask whether that gun is more likely to help protect you or help do the opposite. I see no sense in harping on insoluble psychology problems to the exclusion of practical safety.
As for "lunatic leftist friends", frankly I don't have any. I think that Helen is basically correct that American television grossly overplays the victim mentality. As it happens, I looked again at TV news last weekend while I was on travel. (We don't own a TV.) Several TV news channels had tawdry stories about beautiful innocent missing females who may (or may not) have been killed by lecherous male monsters let loose from prison. Obviously the United States is a vast country and they can cherry-pick examples as they please. Without yellow journalism and its fans and dupes, states would not have started these ill-conceived Amber Alert systems. Undoubtedly some of the backers of Ambert Alerts are "well meaning" as David Gerstman said, but remember the saying about what road is paved with good intentions.
Harry,
Are you sure the relationships you describe are cause-and-effect related or could it be that people are attracted to each other because of their personalities and existing behaviors? For example, I assume that people who smoke and drink prefer mates who tolerate smoking and drinking. Contrary to your suggestion, it seems more likely that passive-aggressive people seek out mates who are controlling, and vice versa, as opposed to your scenario that passive-aggressive people are created by their mates overcontrolling behavior.
Hello drj
Yes, you are quite right. Absolutely. That was my point in 1. above. In the case of unbearable women, what choice do they have but to partner overcontrolled and/or dependent men?
Other men would lash out or walk away from them.
There are about 2.5 million women in the USA who have Borderline Personality Disorder. They cause an awful lot of misery throughout the nation; because, these days, they can get away with it.
Men would probably have to be 'overcontrolled' or 'dependent' to quite a large extent to put up with all the aggravation that they continually engender.
(Most women, of course, are wonderful. :-))
Ooops. I forgot to make my point.
A lot of these women get murdered - unsurprisingly - and so it is not too surprising to find that their murderers are overcontrolled and dependent!
Well, another American Rorshach Test, in which we bring out our theories before the data is in...
The data set of spousal murders is small, though there are enough to study it a bit. But the data set of spousal murders in "perfect families" is smaller still. We are a nation of 300M people, and each instance of such counterintuitive violence is given undue weight.
Hello Assistant Village Idiot
Most theories are formulated well before the full data is in.
Didn't you know that?
Yep. That's how science - and, indeed, life - progresses.
In science, they test their theories by getting data.
But the theories come first.
jw
nah, in these cases you have a female perpetrator to show pictures of on the news. That also sells fishwrap. Your point may be true in general, but I'll guess it doesn't hold in these cases.
Given how many American households contain guns, how many bad marriages there must be yet how few spousal murders there are, one might conclude that guns are not a significant variable.
That is the fallacy of subtracting when you should take ratios. If you said "the vast majority of smokers do not get lung cancer", that would be a perfectly true statement. But if you then said, "and therefore smoking is not a significant variable," it would be a non sequitur.
According to a survey, 39% of American households have firearms. However, according to crime statistics72% of spouse murders with male victim are committed with a firearm. That suggests a risk factor of 4, i.e. (72/39)/(28/61) = 4. Of course the data should be studied more carefully to count crossovers in both directions: Non-gun households in which the wife obtained a gun at the last minute, and gun households in which the husband was murdered with some other weapon.
It would also be better to look more specifically at handguns versus long guns, because risk factors seem to be higher for handguns. The media has not yet reported whether Mary Winkler shot her husband with a handgun or a long gun.
AngryHarry,
In science an observation comes first, then a hypothesis explaining the observation is developed. An experiment testing the predictions of the hypothesis yields data. If the data confirm the predictions of the hypothesis, a scientific theory begins to take shape.
I don't usually like to argue by authority, but there are just far too many strong opinions about what does and does not count as science. I have read a lot of real science papers, among other reasons because I am married to a working scientist. Neither experiment nor theory has to come "first"; the important thing is that they hang together. For that matter, one route to bad science is any dogmatic set of rules. A good experiment may follow a strict set of rules; a good scientist's thinking doesn't.
Hello Anonymous
You said, "In science an observation comes first, then a hypothesis explaining the observation is developed."
Well, in most cases, that's not quite true is it? In 'science', it is your theory about something that leads you to perform an experiment in the first place. Indeed, you said it yourself ... 'An experiment testing the predictions of the hypothesis yields data." i.e. hypothesis->experiment->data
Isn't this the way that science is supposed to be done?
Indeed, isn't one of the main criticisms of, say, the theory of evolution to do with the fact that it is not based on experiments which test hypotheses, but rather on a wad of data that comes first, and is then simply 'explained'?
And this is why, for example, the study of history (a mass of data) is not a science.
Amassing data is not science. Science begins when you come up with an idea about something (i.e. a hypothesis or a 'theory') and then test it using experiments which are guided by that hypothesis or 'theory'.
And I think that one could argue that the human brain does something similar as it goes about its daily life!
Harry
No matter how large a percentage of spousal murders is committed with guns, the fact that so many households own guns while so few spouses murder their spouses suggests that widespread possession of guns is not the problem.
I didn't say anything about "the" problem. There are many risk factors for spousal homicide; having a gun in the house appears to be one of them. Fixating on "the" problem is just a way to ignore solutions, because most problems have many partial solutions instead of one total solution. A risk factor of 4 is 3/4 of a solution, which is pretty significant.
I'm willing to be libertarian about this. If other people accept the risk of becoming another Matthew Winkler or another Mary Winkler, that's their business. (Or, for that matter, another Clark Flatt.) It won't happen to me because we don't keep guns in the house. If we did keep guns in the house, they would be locked in a safe in the garage to reduce these risks. It is true that some wives kill their husbands with other weapons, just not nearly as often.
What I don't agree with is endless analysis of the psychology of people like Mary Winkler. Because, frankly, how much have psychologists done to reduce the national murder rate? Sometimes they can help identify dangerous people, but they don't know how "treat" criminal intent. Practical, physical safety is a more effective approach than philosophizing why people "snap".
but is guns the real issue, more women kill with poisons, than by overt gun murders. we have all read of stories of women who claim abuse, after stabbing (the weapon of choice) then poison, then guns.
and greg, have you wondered how much crime there would be if the psychologists werent around. thats a question that no one asks. what have the stopped from happening, by reason of their existence?
in the UK we dont have guns, so gun crimes are less. if we all had guns then would there be more gun crime or less than now..
Greg K;
You said that "Practical, physical safety is a more effective approach than philosophizing why people 'snap'." So, once again, we agree! Our family owns guns because we want to ensure our practical, physical safety, and the odds are much greater that someone outside our home will threaten us. We also practice gun safety and take gun safety courses. You and I simply vary on how likely it is that guns pose a threat tp our households, and I submit that might be a function of the youth of your children versus the fact that mine are teenagers and older.
Perhaps you simply dislike guns and the concept of gun ownership, but I'm glad you are willing to accept that not everyone feels that way. I guess the tie that binds us all to Dr. Helen's website is that we all have a libertarian streak somewhere.
DRJ: Our family owns guns because we want to ensure our practical, physical safety, and the odds are much greater that someone outside our home will threaten us.
I do not know how you estimated these odds, because in the national statistics, there seem to be notably more homicides and suicides connected to the 39% of households that have guns than to the 61% of households that don't. Almost every act of mayhem that Helen Smith has discussed here has fit these statistics. Actually it indicates honesty: it means that she is responding to the news as it comes in instead of deliberately skipping to non-gun crimes.
For that matter, getting killed by strangers is not the most common kind of crime for any group. As I was saying earlier in this thread, this relatively rare crime pattern is ideal yellow journalism because it scares the public and arouses victim sympathy. Helen Smith is completely correct that the victim mentality has done great harm to America.
We also practice gun safety and take gun safety courses.
That's all well and good, provided that gun safety includes the issues of securing the gun and preventing impulsive misuse, and not just things like cleaning the barrel.
might be a function of the youth of your children versus the fact that mine are teenagers and older.
Actually, the incidence of suicide with a household firearm is substantially higher among teenagers than younger children. As I said, I don't plan to be another Clark Flatt.
I guess the tie that binds us all to Dr. Helen's website is that we all have a libertarian streak somewhere.
I accept libertarian principles as one valid side of moral arguments. Not the only side, but certainly one valid side. I have no interest in bending the facts to validate libertarianism.
Do the households with guns experience a higher total number of suicides?
I once read an article that said the combined deaths per 100,000 from murder and suicide in the US were roughly the same as in other western countries with tighter gun laws and lower murder rates.
Does anybody have any real info on this? Since I don't remember where I read it, I don't offer it as valid.
anonymous 7:00: "roughly" is right. If you combine all homicides and all suicides in the United States and compare that with other countries, then you are lumping together many completely different things. The total is roughly the same in the United States as in some other Western countries — but not others. They aren't all roughly equal to each other by this complicated measure. This is really going way beyond just comparing households.
My focus is on teen suicide specifically. After all, from a libertarian perspective, adult suicide is sometimes a valid personal choice. Teen suicide is different; it's a family tragedy that should be prevented whenever possible. According to the data, 70% of teen suicides in the United States are committed with handguns, even though only 29% of US households have handguns. That suggests a risk factor of 5.7. Again, you should look at crossovers, where a teenager in a non-gun household commits suicide with a gun anyway. But these have been studied in some surveys and seem to be rare.
Greg,
What few people talk about when quoting all of the information about how you are more likely to be killed if you have a gun in the house is that the people most likely to use a weapon improperly in these circumstances often use drugs, alcohol and have previous records for crimes etc. All this really tells us is that drunk high individuals who commit crimes shouldn't have access to a gun. What a revelation.
This is a favorite soapbox of Greg's, and he generally can't resist the Tennessee/Denmark comparison. As he has twice not answered my main objection in the past, I will not try again.
I believe your original comment was that this was the difference between a home with a gun in it and one with none. I can't find any other reading of that except that you are suggesting it wouldn't have happened if they didn't have guns. Hard to imagine how you would know that, Greg.
This wasn't originally a gun-ownership discussion, but I'll jump in again, trying a different tack this time. Whether a gun increases or decreases your personal danger depends entirely on the type of society you live in. If you live in an extremely low-crime area, with no threat from outside forces, then adding a gun into your household objects will increase your risk, as the danger from accidents or homicidal spouses will be greater than your marginal increase in safety from outside attack.
If you live in a high-crime area, where folks are having their homes broken into by armed thugs regularly, then a gun adds safety. It is then the increase in accidents and homicidal spouses that is marginal.
One analogy I have read is the Bear In The Woods. If there is a bear loose in the woods, how you should increase your safety depends on what weapon you have. If all you have is a knife, your best bet is to try and just stay away from it and hope it doesn't find you. If you have a gun -- one capable of bringing down a bear, that is -- then going after the bear and shooting it is the safer choice.
Helen: It is certainly true that intoxication and prior criminal records are also risk factors for homicide. But you shouldn't then say, oh they are all drunk, oh they are all criminals, therefore there is no need to think about other risk factors. After all, Mary Winkler didn't have a criminal record and there has been no report that she was either alcoholic or a drug addict. You started this page by asking what was going on with this family. My answer is that even though some risk factors for spousal homicide were not present, two others still were: a bad marriage and a gun in the house.
Even in cases when there is more than one risk factor at play, they can accumulate insidiously in our lives. For example, I'm certainly not alcoholic, but I do enjoy wine and dessert liquor sometimes. Would I become a 100% teetotaller for the privilege of having an unsecured gun in the house? Probably not. Of course you are right that guns and alcohol should not mix; the solution then is to keep guns locked up and out of sight if you own them.
For that matter spousal homicide is associated with domestic violence, and right there you can have a criminal record. "Criminal record" is actually a vague term that can be as narrow as only felony convictions or as broad as all police arrests. Does getting arrested suddenly prompt people in bad marriages to secure their guns? Somehow I doubt it. A serious, lifelong habit of firearm security, and not just casual sure-I-know-how-to-use-a-gun assurances, are a better path to real safety.
The question remains how much gun security there was in the Winkler household. I wouldn't be surprised if she shot him with his own gun, nor if it was just sitting there unlocked and loaded. I would like to see the police report on that though.
Assistant Village Idiot: I believe your original comment was that this was the difference between a home with a gun in it and one with none. I can't find any other reading of that except that you are suggesting it wouldn't have happened if they didn't have guns.
You are right that I wasn't completely precise here. The more precise version is that we do not live in a world of absolutes, only risk factors. As I said above, the data suggests that the risk factor of a household gun for spousal homicide is about 4. So I do not mean that Mary Winkler would never possibly have murdered her husband if they didn't have guns, only that statistically it explains 3/4 of the chance. Of course a more refined estimate would restrict attention to women with no prior criminal record; my conjecture is that pushes the risk factor even higher.
If you live in a high-crime area, where folks are having their homes broken into by armed thugs regularly, then a gun adds safety.
I am sure that you are right that there is some crossover point where the protection from strangers that you might get from a gun outweighs the extra risk that someone in your house might commit homicide or suicide with it. But the question is, where is that crossover? Stranger homicide is not a very common crime, and risk factors upwards of 4 are a lot to outweigh. The crossover could be as far out as Baghdad, for all I know.
Certainly neither Selmer, TN (where Mary Winkler lived), nor Davis, CA, nor New Hampshire are the sort of extreme-crime areas that really justify owning a gun for protection. Of course if you enjoy hunting or whatever, that's fine, as long as you are sober about the risks.
Dr. Helen,
This is really late in the game to be asking this question, but why did you say "I would have been shocked if a neighbor had said anything different" after noting the neighbor's comments about Mary Winkler?
Redman-
"This site has gone downhill in a hurry over the last 10 days."
Well, you should certainly demand your money back!
By the way... Have you achieved anything of note in your life? Is there any reason at all why we should give a flying f about your opinion?
Hi DRJ,
I was being sarcastic--just listen to the news or any account of a description by neighbors or others who know the murderer and all you hear is "he/she was such a nice guy/girl. etc." I even get this at work when I talk with schools etc. about kids who have been violent. Staff will tell me they never have a problem with a kid, or that they were fine etc. Then when you start probing, you find out that the kid has been stealing, threatening etc. In our society, people are so afraid to get involved that they just tell you the person is fine, or the other possibility is that our standards for decent behavior are so low that everyone passes with flying colors. It is sort of like when an employer calls an ex-employer about a potential employee--rarely do you hear anything bad--even if the person had been a thief etc. I guess everyone is afraid of a lawsuit.
Just one time, I would like to hear a neighbor say, ""Wow, my neighbor was really weird and I am surprised he/she waited this long to kill someone." I will be waiting quite a while.
The reason this concerns me is how little most people know about others or how little people can read another person's behavior or how little they care. Case in point: in a recent murder case, a 12 year old was going around knocking down neighbor's fences, breaking items, slashing tires etc. but no one would do anything and he got away with mayhem, but all this time, the neighbors said he was "a fine boy, too bad his mom died." Well, this fine boy eventually escalated his violence to luring a three year old away from the house next door and killed him. Perhaps if neighbors would pay attention to what is going on in the neighborhood and put a stop to it, violence would not escalate to this level. There are people, of course, like the current woman in this case, who probably do put on an air of being normal, but frankly, after seeing this woman on tv, she looked like a nutcase.
Thanks, Dr. Helen. There's always a lot to think about here.
I confess that my thoughts vary when I hear people express surprise at these violent events. Sometimes it seems that the neighbors truly are surprised and shocked by behavior that seems inconsistent with their observations. I know my neighbors well and have known most of them for 20+ years. If this happened in my area, I would say the same thing about my neighbors - except for one person, and I wouldn't want to comment on that person to the press but I would definitely discuss it with the authorities. I've also assumed that there are people who comment who don't really know what they are talking about, so they mouth banalities to the press. Finally, I suspect that some people who say things like this to the press are trying to excuse themselves. They don't want to admit it even if they did notice something. It's comforting to say you didn't know, rather than to admit you knew something was wrong and sat silently while it happened.
JW,
You're right about the media coverage given to the white female victims. I'd add they have to be attractive and between the ages of 18 and 30 to really make it big.
However, I'd say this is a market driven phenomenon. Those are the people viewers tune in to hear about. If viewers tuned in hear about middle-aged male construction workers who are killed, then we would see many more stories about them.
We can also observe there has to be an element of uncertainty in the story. If the body has not been found yet, it can lead the newscasts for days. Then there is the question of the trial. That can go on for months.
What we are seeing are very similar to made for TV movies. Nobody really cares about the victim. They just like a good story and want to watch it unfold.
I have a hypothesis that TV crime shows also have a disproportionate number of victims who are white, female, attractive, and between 18 and 30. When's the last time we saw granny take a bullet?
News is a product just like laundry soap. The marketing is the same.
Dr. Helen,
"Just one time, I would like to hear a neighbor say, 'Wow, my neighbor was really weird and I am surprised he/she waited this long to kill someone.' I will be waiting quite a while."
This is probably as close as you'll get, for some time: We have a murder-for-hire trial going on in our city, right now, which means the defendant charged with hiring a hit man is still legally considered "innocent unless proven guilty"; hence, no names. He was a professional, no longer licensed, I believe.
However, in the earliest days after the killing, the police encountered other professionals who knew the victim and his former partner--the one now on trial. Their immediate response was, "Why haven't you arrested (name withheld), yet?" "When are you going to arrest ... ? He's your man!"
At trial, it's coming out that the defendant had approached first one girlfriend and then another about conspiring to set up the victim either for murder, or for false charges of improper conduct which would have smeared his reputation and potentially cost him his license. The defendant also told more than one person that he "wanted him dead."
I'm not on the jury, obviously, and therefore not privy to all the evidence at trial; but this defendant is getting no sympathy from the community that knew him; no one has stepped forward to say what a "good man" he is. And it was surprising, at the beginning. It is all very sad, though--first, that he was so filled with hate; and second, that no one he approached for help in crime, and no one else who apparently knew he was a powder keg ready to blow, went to the police.
I'm reminded of the guy in the small town in Missouri a number of years ago who was gunned down at noon on main street by a number of citizens. Everyone said he was a no good son-of-a-bitch and deserved everything he got. Although there were many witnesses, and the local police, state police, and FBI have repeatedly tried, they can't get anyone to talk.
Hollywood even made a movie. Brian Dennehy (spelling?) was the SOB who got shot.
I like the point made by Anonymous @ 5:20. That was an amazing case that I believe was profiled on Sixty Minutes. As I recall, few in the media could understand the fear those townspeople felt at being terrorized by this man, nor their relief when he was killed.
Similarly, in response to Vicki's riveting post, there are sometimes more troublesome reasons for this type of witness/acquaintance behavior. In the late 1980's in Midlothian, Texas, an undercover law enforcement officer was put into the local high school to find and prosecute drug use. Students discovered this and planned to kill him, which they did. Before that happened, however, the presence of the officer and his planned execution was widely discussed among many of the high school students. No one tried to stop the students from their planned murder or warn parents, school authorities or police of the plan. These students, many of whom were "good kids", apparently believed it was worse to rat on a classmate than to protect the officer's life. Here's an article reflecting on this true story, and here's the book that tells the whole story.
A footnote to Greg K - This is an excellent example of people who shouldn't have guns.
Second footnote to Greg K - But, of course, the Missouri case was an excellent example of people who should have guns.
Helen: Well, this fine boy eventually escalated his violence to luring a three year old away from the house next door and killed him. Perhaps if neighbors would pay attention to what is going on in the neighborhood and put a stop to it,...
This story sounds a lot like this case that was reported in the New York Times. A 10-year-old boy lured a 3-year-old, then brutalized and killed him. It seems to me that the neighbors, and the Times journalist, did everything that you asked for. They called the authorities several times and they duly badmouthed the kid in the article. No one said that he was a good boy. But how much can the system do in a case like this? They can't lock up 10-year-olds for what they haven't yet done.
It seems possible that Mary Winkler really did seem normal and stable to her neighbors. Sure, she looks like a wild woman now, but who wouldn't in her situation, even someone falsely accused? Either way, I believe in the libertarian principle of minding your own business and not peering into other people's houses. If anyone could have seen this coming, it would have been Matthew Winkler himself. Yet he may have been careless or unsuspecting enough to leave his gun within her reach. If he was that casual about it, then you can't expect the neighbors to have done a whole lot here either.
DRJ: The guy in Missouri was Ken McElroy. I agree that he was a horrible man, but I think that Skidmore, Missouri could have done better than a mob lynching. Is it just an effete liberal precept that two wrongs don't make a right? They shot him in the back even though he had just been convicted and was only out on a three-week appeal. Why couldn't they wait three weeks? Why couldn't they reform the county courts, if justice was not served, instead of taking the law into their own hands? I don't think that street justice makes America a better place any more than it makes Iraq a better place.
On the other hand, I certainly agree with you about Greg Knighten, the thug teenager in Midlothian, TX. He had trouble written all over him, yet his policeman father let him take his service revolver out of the house. Of all people, an officer of the law should understand how important it is to keep guns out of the hands of trouble-minded teenagers, especially their own guns and their own children! Helen's usual take on these cases is that Greg Knighten should have been counseled much more and much sooner. I do not disagree with that, but I think that if Knighten Sr. did not secure his service revolver, then he hadn't yet taken even the first precaution.
Great! Finally, I think everybody here can agree on something!
If you're in a bad marriage, if you're an abusive or philandering asshole, you should lock your guns up and neither you nor your put-upon spouse should drink and tote!
Now, we've got to get the word out folks! To the presses--STAT!
Greg,
I see your point regarding the Midlothian and Missouri cases but, despite my admittedly flippant gun comments, my real concern with these cases is the breakdown in values illustrated in both. Specifically, I am troubled that people in both communities were willing to remain silent and even cover up wrongdoing. In the Midlothian case, high school students remained silent despite knowledge that a murder was planned. In Missouri, many people apparently covered up a murder, although it could have been self-defense. Both remind me of the sensationalized Kitty Genovese case in New York where neighbors did little as Kitty was stabbed to death.
So, really, my point wasn't whether it is better to have guns or not. I think the Midlothian case is a clear example of how unsafe guns can be in the wrong hands. I also think the Missouri case illustrates that some people need guns to protect themselves when law enforcement can't. Both cases illustrate that guns can be misused but, as the Genovese case makes clear, there doesn't have to be a gun involved at all. These cases are troubling because they illustrate a profound breakdown in moral values and not because of the weapons that were used.
DRJ: Since I sometimes teach classes with 100 students or even more, I encounter the issue of moral values a lot, in the form of cheating. In my experience, it is much easier to ask for moral values when people can both trust and fear the system. That means a clear and fair rule of law and good security. Of course if the crime is murder then guns are likely part of the story, but they are only part of the larger point. In Midlothian, TX, there was an unacceptable lapse of security, while in Skidmore, MO, the residents rejected the rule of law. So in both situations there was no way to restore moral values.
I can say two things about the Kitty Genovese case. First, New York City is easily the most densely populated city in America and security isn't exactly easy. But they have gotten a lot better at it in the last 10 years — there is now more security in NYC than in many much smaller cities. As I am saying, with security and fair laws you can hope for moral values, even in big bad New York. Second, the Wikipedia article on Kitty Genovese says that her case was exaggerated, in that very few of the infamous 38 witnesses knew what was really happening.
Let me interject and say that in my experience, there are two kinds of situations--those where people do nothing, despite a person acting in a criminal manner. Then there are situations like Skidmore, MO where authorities were called, the community tried to get help and nothing happened until they took matters into their own hands--I can't say as I blame them if the police would not help ASAP.
When I lived in NYC in the eighties, it was a lawless place where the criminals ran the streets and the police laughed when you asked for help. I know because I was mugged on one occassion at knifepoint and all my friends told me not to bother with the police--they would not do anything--they were correct. In another instance, I was stalked and the police informed me at the time that this was not a crime and did nothing. I was left to fend for myself--I was not even able to legally carry a can of mace at that time in NYC.
The police are under no obligation to protect any one individual, meaning that without protection of any type, one is left defenseless against others. That is why I am an adamant supporter of the second amendment (along with many other reasons).
Greg,
You mentioned that I would advocate counseling only for Greg Knighten. You are mistaken. I have counseled many parents of teens who are troubled to lock up their firearms--that makes good sense. But you are sadly mistaken if you think a locked up firearm will keep a troubled youth from wrecking damage and mayhem on others. Perhaps you have never talked with a young man with such hatred and anger in his heart that he rehearses setting gas stations on fire for the sheer thrill of it. Or maybe you have never talked to a mass murderer who felt that the only way to end their own suffering was to take the life of anyone who happened to be in their path. Once you have, you would laugh at your naivete that without guns, the world would be a safe place.
Helen: Then there are situations like Skidmore, MO where authorities were called, the community tried to get help and nothing happened until they took matters into their own hands--I can't say as I blame them if the police would not help ASAP.
It's just not true that nothing happened. Ken McElroy had just been sentenced to two years in prison when he was murdered. He was only out on bail for a 21-day appeal. And the police "helped" in a more insidious way: The sheriff knew that there had been meetings about what to do about McElroy, but he drove out of town hours before the murder. So it does not look like the people of Skidmore had to take matters into their own hands. Rather it looks like they and their sheriff decided together that the rule of law was not worth the trouble. That is not the path to either public safety or moral values.
When I lived in NYC in the eighties, it was a lawless place...
It is true that New York City had a mucher higher crime rate then than now, but it is a great exaggeration to call it "lawless". Richmond, Virginia has a higher homicide rate right now than New York City ever did in the 80s or 90s. I was in Richmond over Christmas, and while it was not exactly a safe city, it was not by any means "lawless". Baghdad truly is just about lawless. In Baghdad militia men ride along with police and drag homicide victims down the street with impunity. That is real lawlessness, not what New York City had in the 80s.
You mentioned that I would advocate counseling only for Greg Knighten. You are mistaken. I have counseled many parents of teens who are troubled to lock up their firearms--that makes good sense.
Of course I can't know what you really advise people in private practice. In public you have an essay entitled "The Weapon Isn't the Question". If you acknowledge that firearm security is a germane question, even if it isn't "the" question, then great, we agree. See above for my comments about dogmatic use of the word "the": it is important to acknowledge that there are many partial solutions, not one total solution.
But you are sadly mistaken if you think a locked up firearm will keep a troubled youth from wrecking damage and mayhem on others.
Again, I never said that it was a total solution. Unrestricted access to firearms may carry a risk factor of 4 or higher for specific disasters like teen suicide and teen homicide. Of course disturbed teenagers can still do many terrible things without guns — I'm not naive about that. However, homicide and suicide are the two worst outcomes and a 3/4 solution is a big step forward. And, strikingly, it was a precaution that was not taken in the cases of Greg Knighten (the cop-killer in Midlothian), nor Jason Flatt (who committed suicide), nor David Ludwig (who killed his girlfriend's parents), nor Kenneth Bartley (who killed a school official in Campbell County).
Kirk Parker: You are right that a comparison between Denmark and Tennessee has many sides to it and I don't mean it as proof of any one thing. But by the same token, it doesn't disprove any one thing either. Rather if Tennessee has 8 times as much murder as Denmark, it is surely a challenge to Tennesseans to do better! After all, Claire Berlinski warns people about the "menace in Europe", including Denmark. If Denmark is so menaced, what about Tennessee?
What is more to the point is the pattern of teenage homicide and suicide in America, in Tennessee and elsewhere. In one case after another, the teenager just walked out of the house with a family gun, or shot himself with it; in many of these cases there was no firearm security at all. Somehow non-gun households do not appear in most of stories. Sometimes, to be sure, but not nearly as often.
Oh, for Pete's sake, the menace in Denmark and Europe isn't guns, it's terrorism and unassimilated immigrants. And if Tennessee is in danger, it's not because all the local gun owners are going to rise up en masse and start shooting. If we really want to talk about guns, find some credible statistics that tell us how many times guns stopped someone from harming another person so that we can actually compare the worth of guns - how many people they hurt vs. how many people they protect.
DRJ: Yes, I understand that the supposed "menace" in Denmark is immigrant Muslims. Denmark, after all, has strict gun control. But still, how menacing can they really be if Denmark only had 52 homicides in 2001, while Tennessee had 425? (They have about the same population.) I've been to Tennessee lately and I didn't see anything that I would call a "menace". Okay, there was the horrible traffic in Gatlinburg and in Smoky Mountains Park, but that was more a menace to nature and to our free time rather than to life and limb.
Besides, if you really think that guns in Tennessee save lives, how many murders would it have otherwise, if not merely 8 times as many as Denmark? Would it have 15 times as many?
No, of course the gun owners don't "rise up en masse". What they do instead is exactly what gets reported on this site: They leave them lying around where violent relatives can take them and commit homicide.
While the gun arguments rage on, the state of Kansas last week passed a new law allowing concealed carry for adults who take an approved course, pay for a permit, and are neither felons nor mentally unbalanced.
Next door, Missouri did the same last year. The citizens of Missouri are still waiting for the dire predictions of mayhem in the streets. Still waiting...
Where I live last month an Amber Alert was issued for a missing wife no children involved, guess women are now officially children.
anonymous 4:16:
Haven't they always been? Women are always trying to gain rights without responsibilites, isn't this what a child would do?
Just a thought, how about we wait for some information before we start vapid speculation about what happened here. Rather than blame guns or abuse or Christianity or aliens, how about we wait for some information rather than plastering our favorite area of bigotry in as a "reason" the murder.
Just a thought.
Trey
According to the survey Greg K. cited.
Violent Death Rate per 100,000
Denmark - 23.46
France (just for fun) - 22.67
United States - 18.57
People in Denmark kill themselves at nearly twice the rate as the U.S. I wonder why. Could it have anything to do with intrusive government and lack of freedoms?
dadvocate,
You mean Danes are killing themselves without guns? I thought guns were necessary. What clever folks!
Helen said:
"In our society, people are so afraid to get involved that they just tell you the person is fine, or the other possibility is that our standards for decent behavior are so low that everyone passes with flying colors."
I think of it this way... regardless of what we hear in the news or see on television - murder is always a shock to the community. (unless you live in a drug infested slum where it happens frequently)
So the first thing that happens is, you have a bunch of strangers descend on the area - news people sticking microphones in front of anyone who will talk... police, psychologists, etc.
The natural reaction when dealing with strangers in this situation is to express sufficient shock and horror AND not look like a scumbag for throwing around criticisms when you don't know what's going on. Most people are simply trying to be "nice" in their own way. They're afraid too, that what they say could come back to haunt them.
As for statements pubished in newspapers... I'd definitely have to take those with a grain of salt after all the times I've heard about quotes being made up (and yes I know people this has directly happened to).
However Helen, you'd be happy to know that I saw a local news story last night... they're looking for a young man who has disappeared. He was living on a farm with an "older woman" (he is 24 she is 43).... so far no one knows what's happened to him. The news hounds interviewed one of the neighbors - an old lady. She said, oh yes, that woman is certainly strange. (no murder yet - but there you go *grin*)
Jumping in here one second, and I know I'm a little late to the commenting. The gun that was used to kill the undercover cop was never established to be a gun of Greg Knighten's father. Maybe it was in the fantasy land of Innocence Lost, if that is your source. The Texas Rangers confiscated a gun of his dad's, but that gun wasn't proven to have been the weapon.
Also,"In the Midlothian case, high school students remained silent despite knowledge that a murder was planned." This should read: Midlothian PD kept him in the school after his cover had been blown months (MONTHS) prior.
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