We were watching an episode of Evil Lives Here on ID the other night. (If you haven't seen that one, it shows the events surrounding a murder or murders from the perspective of a family member of the suspect or some other person peripherally associated with the case.) In this particular instance, they were speaking with the wife of a man convicted of murdering and raping a 17 year old girl.
They got him and he's doing life without parole. Which is always good.
Anyway, after he was in prison, his wife and her friend finally opened up his locked shed and found all manner of disturbing stuff inside, including what one could assume were trophies from his other crimes. Throughout the show, they'd hinted that maybe the one girl wasn't his only kill. So, it made sense there would be other trophies.
What didn't make sense was near the end of the program when the wife said something to the effect of 'well, he's already doing life without parole, what else can they do to him?'
Derp. It's not about what they 'can do to him'. It should be about justice.
They could provide closure for the families of all the other women he might've killed. They could close out some cold cases. They could bring justice for those other victims.
I mean, the first thing we couldn't figure out was why the police never opened up that damn shed during the investigation of that man and the wife ended up opening it after the conviction. Umm, police work a little maybe? Holy shit.
They talked about all the 'gifts' this guy had given to his wife and their daughters that could've been taken from his kills. Nothing was done about that either. (I know. I used the google-fu and checked around to see if he'd ever been tried for anything else. Nope. And sure enough, they said that at the end of the program. He's NEVER been tried for other crimes.)
Argh.
And it wasn't like he only committed crimes in the state where he was originally convicted. He was a long-haul trucker. He could've committed crimes in multiple states - which, unless I miss my guess would make this federal - but no one has done anything. Yeah, they can't add more years to life, but that isn't the point. They could find a crime he committed in a death-penalty state and use the treat of that to get him to pony up the details of his other crimes, but no. Not doing that either. He's just sitting there, getting older, wrapped in the knowledge that he got away with murder(s).
This happened back in 1994. 23 years. 23 more years of people never knowing what happened to their sisters, their daughters, their loved ones. Imagine their pain.
Then imagine how, with the technological advancements of 2017 vs 1994, all of those trophies could help investigators figure out how many other women this dude raped and killed.
But nope.
I know the end of that thoroughly pissed Hubs and I off. It was a whole WTF, jaw-dropping thing.
Oh, wait a second... That's right... His victims were supposedly hookers and runaways. (The girl he was convicted of killing was a runaway.) I guess someone assumes they don't deserve justice. Umm, yah.
That's messed up.
What do you think?
The general attitude seems to have been (to be?) that women don't deserve justice. I've heard there are tens of thousands of untested rape kits in Texas alone. Now someone is trying to get a bill through to allow people to donate money via a checkbox when you visit the DMV - just to raise funds to get those kits tested. No one else cares enough to appropriate the money. Umm, isn't that law enforcement's job? To check the evidence?
ReplyDeleteDon't even get me started! Sadly, too many people feel this way, even in 2017. Even women about other women. And that's all I'm going to say because this is a very angry day for me...I'm so far beyond "hangry" that not even a bag of Snickers will make it better.
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