So. I found out last night that an old friend--not a dear friend, not a close friend, but someone I worked with and liked and had several heart-to-hear talks with--stabbed his elderly mother some 30+ times.
He's not the first frightening felon of my acquaintance. I had another friend I worked with, liked, and had several heart-to-heart talks with, who suddenly got arrested one day for buggering a 14-year old boy. Whips and chains were involved, although supposedly the 14-year-old was willing, so that made it okay I guess. I made the mistake of publicly defending the man, too, and wish I hadn't. But that's another story. Fact is, this was inexcusable felon #1. Now Harold is #2.
Does everybody have people like this in their backgrounds? I have definitely lived a more interesting life than most people, but not near as interesting as some others. I have to hope I'm not some sort of "strange attractor" to scary people, ya know?
Back in high school, I dated two felons. One went to jail for armed robbery while we were dating and the other was arrested and convicted of trying to run down his ex-girlfriend. While I was dating him.
I work for the court system here and at least once a month, a criminal file will come across my desk and I'll look at the name and say "Hey! I know this person!"
"Does everybody have people like this in their backgrounds?"
No.
'Course I used to work for the police in my home town (gingerprints were my game). I did manage to put about 3,000 people away before I got bored with the job and moved on.
When it comes to people that are likely to be felons there's usually just .....something. I dunno what is is. People in law enforcement pick up on it right away and other people don't.
Anyway. don't like 'em, don't hang out with 'em, and they try to avoid me. Everybody's happy.
James
Just off the top of my head, I know three murderers (including the one you know) and I'm related by marriage to at least one more.
That's not counting the felons I know professionally, of course. :)
I went to high school with a guy who is now serving time for murdering a child. I knew him passably well, well enough to occasionally have lunch at the same table. His nickname was “Arnie” because of his obvious use of steroids even though he participated in no organized sports, preferring the solitary challenges of the weight room. Looking back, he demonstrated none of the violent or aggressive tendencies associated with steroid use. He was otherwise a fairly obtuse non-jock jock.
A few years later, his name was in the papers. Apparently he came home from his job as a janitor at an industrial facility and insisted on feeding his infant son that night—something he’d shown no previous interest in. His wife was suspicious enough to recognize that the formula in the bottle looked different from the baby’s usual food. Turns out he had put caustic cleaning solution in the bottle and if he’d gotten away with it, his son would surely have died a horrible death.
“Arnie” moved into a trailer park in Ypsilanti after four years in a state mental health facility and took up with a neighboring single mother. After knowing him for less than a month she left him in charge of her three-year-old daughter. When she returned home “Arnie” explained the multiple bruises and contusions covering the little girl’s body claiming she had fallen out of bed. The officials at the hospital where the child was DOA didn’t buy that explanation.
“Arnie” is now doing time in a place I hope is cold, dark and full of bigger guys anxious to make him their bitch.
Ever since I first heard about the last incident I’ve tried to find meaning in it. It has been thus far a fruitless quest. It made me question the nature of evil, part of a paradigm I’d thought (to paraphrase Roosevelt) I had grown beyond. Evil was supposed to be obvious, it had a cheesy moustache, it crashed airplanes into skyscrapers, it was oozing, black and foul smelling. It wasn’t the guy you only half paid attention to in high school.
I often wondered if this potential lurks in all of us just waiting for a subliminal trigger or the permission of the mob to manifest itself. Answers are elusive and I have neither the experience nor the hubris to make definitive pronouncements regarding such weighty conundrums. Yet the term Hannah Arendt coined to describe Eichmann—the banality of evil— kept coming back to me through all my machinations. Because if there was ever anyone who I’d call banal it was “Arnie”.
Convicted? No. No convictions.
James: I'm not sure you would have picked out Harold. He was well into his 40s, with no record of violent behavior to speak of. He was once a successful businessman, until a motorcycle accident tore off his leg. The pain pills and whatnot he had to take from then on seem to have taken their toll. Not that that's an excuse, but he had gotten rather unstable. It was still a surprise.
I have gotten more cautious as I've gotten older. Less cynical, mind you, but more trusting of my instincts.
Paul: M. Scott Peck's book People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil is probably the one book I've ever read which, to my mind, effectively defines evil in a fairly objective and reasonable way.
It essentially involves putting your own ego ahead of anything and everything else. It's not megalomania, mind you, although one could say that megalomania would be a subset of it. It's one of those books I've read which has stuck with me years after reading it.
Dean: I have to hope I'm not some sort of "strange attractor" to scary people, ya know?
Jeez, Dean, you're a scary person.
~8^\
You'd better believe it. >:-)
James,
What about those in law-enforcement who become felons? Do you think that they recognize the criminal element in themselves?