How would you think about this if youre child was raped,killed and thrown away like a bag of garbage?
I don't know if people know HOW they would feel. Most people will be lucky enough to live thier whole life without ever losing a loved one to murder, thankfully.
I know how I feel, however. I was pro-death penalty before this happened, but after......well, no doubt afterward.
I grew up in a small town with a boy who went to the same church. When you live in a town that small, (and especially if you attend the same church) you know the other kids like your brothers and sisters. You know their siblings, their parents, when they get in trouble, when their grandparents pass away.....You know them like the back of your hand.
This boy was as nice and kind as good be. The whole family was nice. The dad died when we were in high school and that was hard on them. The mom had been a SAHM and had to figure out how to take care of the family financially. Like most moms, she kept her head above water for her kids. They pulled together and went on. He graduated and went to college. We didn't have a super high percentage of kids that went on to college, so of course that made his mother proud. I went on to college a year later.
He got a job to help pay his way through. He was going to be either a youth minister or music minister....I can't remember after all these years. Like I said, a GOOD guy. Never gave anyone a minute's trouble and would have been a huge asset to society. I was at college and watching the news when I heard the report of the murder. I don't think they gave his name....I seem to remember someone from home called me and asked if I had heard about the murder. Considering how far it was from our hometown, I wondered why they even knew about it. Then they told me he had been one of the people killed. I could not believe it. That kind, gentle guy I'd known since elementary had been slaughtered at his workplace during a robbery, along with several coworkers.
His mother fell apart. She had lost her husband and now her only son. Her DD said her mom spent hours at the grave. The robbers got precious little money, BTW. We heard that of all the victims, his throat alone was not slit. More than one of us figured, knowing him, that he was praying out loud as it was going on and even those killers might have balked at slitting a praying man's throat. But we'll never know. I don't know anything about the other people murdered. My friend had just started work there a few days earlier, I believe.
If you add up every one of the killers involved, their lives in total we not worth that of my friend. As good as he was, they were bad. As much as he would have contributed to society, each of them took away and more. I don't think they all got the death penalty, as some were under 18. But some did. And some have been put to death. I know because I followed the case for years. I had to know they were GONE.
I am not joking when I say I would have flipped the switch myself on any of them. They were pure evil and devasted the families of all those they murdered. All for a few dollars. I think about him from time to time. He'll never catch up with me at a homecoming and show me pictures of his wife and kids. I'll never run into his mom when I go back home for a visit and have her mommy brag about his church work. Who knows how many people he would have helped over the years who were robbed of that?
I was already pro-death penalty, but in their case I was beyond pro death-penalty.
