World Enough and Time

how can killing that many women be unplanned?

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time enemy action-? By the time there are six dead women, it doesn't look particularly casual.

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No, it doesn't. Not at all, from this POV.

I've got some ideas on what he needs to do to make an insanity plea work, but I don't think he'll like'em. Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and the ghost of Cesar Romero won't like'em either, if you get my meaning...

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Jack Nicholson? Heath Ledger? What movie are you thinking of?

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Two movies, one of which hasn't hit the theatres yet...and a TV show.

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abrakadabrah.livejournal.com

How is it possible that the conviction was not for 1st degree murder?
Why is the jury wimping out?

Under Canadian law, life imprisonment's the worst that can happen, right?

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How is it possible that the conviction was not for 1st degree murder?
Why is the jury wimping out?

I suspect Canadians from one coast to the other are wondering the same thing. If that isn't first degree murder, what is? and why isn't it?

Under Canadian law, life imprisonment's the worst that can happen, right?

Well, we don't have execution or torture, if that's what you're asking. Pickton has more murder charges to come - I've no idea why they separated them. One assumes he will never be free again. Or at least... one certainly hopes. After the Karla Homolka fiasco (do people know about that in the States?) one wonders.

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abrakadabrah.livejournal.com

Um, why the crack about torture?

Myself, however, I have no problem with the death penalty
for gruesome serial murderers. If anyone deserves it,
they do.

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I was trying to think what would be worse than imprisonment, besides execution. It wasn't meant to be a crack. And yes, it's hard to believe that someone like Pickton deserves to live - that he isn't too dangerous to life.

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mmegaera.livejournal.com

Some of us who watch Canadian TV on occasion know about Homolka.

And I know what you mean about fiascos -- Gary Ridgeway, aka the Green River Killer, who terrorized western Washington for more than a decade, is serving life in prison on a plea bargain (they gave him life in exchange for the locations of more of the women he murdered). If ever anyone deserved the death penalty...

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It seems horrific that the law makes deals with killers in exchange for the truth. It's like - justice loses, whatever the outcome.

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mmegaera.livejournal.com

Yes. Someone needs to come up with a way (other than torture) to make criminals give the information that the law needs other than bargaining away the punishment those criminals deserve.

Too bad nobody's invented fast penta yet...

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Yeah. Fast penta would help a lot.

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Indefinite imprisionment, if he gets tagged "dangerous offender"...

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And surely if ever an offender was dangerous, Pickton is?

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Him, and a few others.

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tavella.livejournal.com

What I found extraordinary was that apparently Pickton had a group of party pals who frequently walked in on him with a body, or were informed by him that he had killed someone, and shrugged and partied on. Or so was my impression from the bits of testimony mentioned in the wrapups.

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Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Were they as bad as he was? Or did they just pretend they didn't know, and shrug it off, and delude themselves it wasn't happening?

Truth can be scarier than fiction.

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To my mind, as I have followed this situation, the greater crime is (and continues to be) the fact that no one did anything even after the people in the neighborhoods where he found his victims began to see what was happening and asked for help from the authorities. Just because many of the women were sex workers, or lived in poverty, or otherwise were not the "right" kind of people? It broke my heart to read the comments of a shelter employee who had known one of the missing women (who later was identified among the dead); this humanized that woman for me, and made me realize how great an oversight there had been by the police and other authorities in the situation.

In Columbus, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the early part of the 20th century or else in the latter 19th, someone was killing people and putting them into trunks which were then found near railroad yards. None of the dead were ever identified, and no killer was ever caught -- even though he sent at least one letter to the police, saying that he was doing it to show that the police ignored a certain segment of society and that these people were basically invisible to higher society. As none of them ever had names on their gravestones... he was quite right.

(And actually some have conjectured who this killer was, a specific individual whose other behavior was known, and have also guessed that he quit killing people in the railyards here because he moved to Los Angeles, and killed the "Black Dahlia." Just a thought. People strive mightily to solve upsetting mysteries, no?)

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he sent at least one letter to the police, saying that he was doing it to show that the police ignored a certain segment of society and that these people were basically invisible to higher society.

What segment was it? Homeless women and prostitutes? (Seems to be the usual target.) Drug addicts and winos? The poor?

he was quite right.

He certainly was. And I don't think that's changed in the least.

I don't know the "Black Dahlia" story but this reminds me of the movie The Watcher.

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What segment was it?

Transients. And nominally homeless people, with no extended families.

The Black Dahlia was a woman with that as a tattoo on her back or shoulder, found murdered and cut into pieces, in Los Angeles in the relatively innocent 1930s. There was a TV movie made in the 1980s, and I think a theatrical movie more recently. People are so fascinated by such things....

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Fascination with murder seems only normal, I think: there but for the grace of God, it could be any of us.

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Yeah. I think of that now and then. Can't even trust a cop, how bad is that?

I spent several years studying serial killers, and actually came to feel satisfied that I understood them. It would take pages to discuss what I concluded, but... I no longer feel the need to spend a lot of time thinking about such things.

Also, regarding "there but for the grace of god"...: Think of this -- how much effort does our society put into making things stay the same all the time, hm? Traffic laws, rules of conduct, even business hours of shops and so on are all standardized, so that daily life can be utterly predictable, if one so chooses. On the other hand, it deprives people of the unexpected -- and, when you think of needing to catch a train to make an appointment in the city and the train schedule is all haphazard and your only available train leaves two hours before you arrive -- well, that "unexpected" is indeed to be avoided. On the other hand, think of a child who wants to linger and play in the water instead of simply washing her hands and face and then getting back out to do whatever it is the adult wants her to do. Is it not a good thing for the child to play with water and learn for herself, through her natural scientific curiosity, something about fluid dynamics and so on? yes, I say. On the other hand, it throws off the adult's schedule -- bad, bad, bad! And things are not predictable. And the child is punished. But--!

This sort of slavery to daily expectation might end up depriving people of their innate ability to learn to think critically in unusual situations.

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Can't even trust a cop, how bad is that?

My ex-husband used to say that the personality profile of a cop is pretty much the same as the personality profile of a criminal - they just express it in different ways. I would agree that there are overlapping character traits.

I think it's all part of the eternal balance between order and chaos. As an adult, one gets to choose - every minute of the day - which one prefers at any given time. I'm the kind of person who in many ways prefers chaos - it's seductive - but order is much better for me.

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