For a number of reasons, I found this post by Katie Granju deeply disturbing.

There aren't too many things more disturbing to contemplate than the horrific Christian/Newsom double torture murder case, and Ms. Granju (a local news reporter who had written about the case since the beginning) does not spare the details. Nor should she. For not only is it horrible beyond belief, but it occurred right in her neighborhood. Forgive the lengthy quote, but I think it's well worth reading:

...the thing I'd been unable or unwilling to think about previously was the fact that in those 24 hours in January of 2007, someone's beloved children were being tortured and murdered in unspeakable ways while I happily went about my life in my own house only a few blocks away. I know it's irrational, but I found myself feeling as if I should have known, or sensed somehow that someone was being hurt so terribly over a prolonged period of time so very close to the place I consider the warmest and safest in the world - my own home. That sense that I was oblivious to that level of suffering and cruelty over those many hours taking place so close to me has given me more than a few nightmares in the past year - generally the same nightmare. In my dream, I hear someone's daughter screaming for help, begging for help, and I am frantically running up and down streets in our part of town, knocking on doors and trying to find her before it's too late, but I always fail, and I wake up feeling sick and sad.

The other thing that I finally allowed myself to think about after my visit to the scene of the horror was the fact that the terrible, sick, predatory individuals who did it almost certainly DID drive by my house, likely on multiple occasions, as that's the route they would have taken from their rental house to a major thoroughfare, and the interstate. Were my children playing in our front yard,? Did they consider hurting one of them, just because they were an easy target, like Chris and Channon? Did they ever see me standing outside my car on our city street, perhaps fumbling with my keys, and consider carjacking me? Did we pass one another in the aisles of our shared neighborhood grocery store? Did they case our street to consider possible home invasion targets? These are the thoughts that now come to me, now that I understand in a meaningful way the very real geographic connection between my home and that house.

As the details of the case have become even clearer with the police investigation and judicial proceedings, I am, of course, horrified by the brutality of the men who did these things. You hear about sexual sadists - and that's surely what these guys are - on TV and in true crime books, and you pray that you don't have one of this relatively rare but incredibly dangerous kinds of predators living in your own neighborhood. But what are the odds that we apparently had three or four men who all knew one another capable of this level of depravity living basically up the street? Three or four men capable of something that went far, far beyond the "ordinary" criminal behavior of robbing, killing or even of raping a woman in an opportunistic way. And not only were there three or four of them who were capable of doing something savage like, they were capable of doing it over and over and over for at least 24 hours, hurting Channon Christian, leaving the house for groceries or to visit friends, and then coming back to hurt her in new and unbelievably horrific ways. This brutality wasn't carried out in a brief time frame - in a sexual or murderous rage or frenzy, or while under the influence, or during a psychotic episode - this was a conscious, willful brutality over a prolonged period of time. The fact that that many people with that level of evil perversion and willingness to cause pain to another human being over that period of time were here, right here all the time, chills me in a way I can't quite express.

The last thing that I really struggle with is the issue of the women, at least one (she admits it) and probably others, who knew that there was another young woman, just about their age, hogtied, blindfolded and bleeding in the bedroom at their boyfriends' rental house, and yet they went about their lives inside and outside the house during the day or more that Channon was being held captive. They did things like prepare sandwiches for the men between their individual forays in and out of the bedroom to rape that other young woman. At least one of the women has children of her own, just like Channon's mother. At least one of them knew that Channon's mouth was washed out with household cleaning chemicals in a bizarre and horrible attempt to erase evidence of rape. But these women, who could have ended Channon's suffering and saved her life DID NOTHING. And there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this was a case where the women in question were "brainwashed" or had any sort of battered women's syndrome or that they even felt actively threatened by the men during that period of time. They weren't strung out on drugs and incapable of thinking clearly. No, they were just without consciences, and part of a trashy, thuggy subculture that's both incredibly sexist - everything caters to the men, and to getting and keeping these worthless men who father their children - as well as very self-absorbed. But as a woman and as a mother, I just find it incomprehensible that other women, another mother, could stand by and let this happen without making any attempt whatsoever to make it stop.

Unbelievably, Katie Granju found herself descended upon by racist commenters angry at her for writing what I think is a very articulate expression of how the crime has personally affected her. (And for not subscribing to their theories, of course.)

The most important two words in the entire piece are "without conscience." These killers are clearly psychopaths, and in that sense, the case reminds me of the 12 year old murderer in Detroit I recently posted about. Children tend to be without consciences, and fortunately for all of us, eventually the vast majority develop them.

While there are certainly racial overtones to the Christian Newsom murder case (which I have discussed before at length), most of the people who want to make it about race strike me as angry over the fact that had the races been reversed, all hell would have broken loose, and the case would have been front page news everywhere, for a long time. That is undeniably true. However, it is an abuse of logic to say that it makes the crime racially motivated. Whether, say, the white psychopaths who dragged James Byrd to death were motivated by race has no bearing on the motivations of other pyschopaths, absent some sort of retaliatory motive (which has not been found here). Similarly, whether or not the killers of Matthew Shepard (or the fact that the case was widely reported) were motivated to kill him because he was gay has no bearing on crimes committed by gays.

There is no question that there is a double standard for hate crimes, and in the case of black on white hate crimes, the authorities tend to bend over backwards not to see them as hate crimes. However, that double standard should have no bearing on whether a black on white crime is a hate crime. It either is or it isn't. Retaliation for unfairness should not have anything to do with it.

But then, I don't believe in hate crime theory anyway. I only want the torture-murderers executed. Somehow, though, I suspect that many of the people screaming the loudest about this case would not be paying nearly as much attention had the victims and the torture-murderers all been black. Is that a form of racism?

There is nothing racial about the psychopathic personality, and I think applying the hate crime standard to them misses the point completely.

For God's sake, they're psychopaths! By definition, they have no compassion, nothing resembling ordinary human feelings. Hate and love mean nothing to them.

Barbara Oakley wrote a great book on the subject, which I discussed here. She also observed that despite a growing body of evidence for a psychopathic gene, there is widespread opposition to the idea that they could be born that way. I've noticed that those who don't believe in evil genes have no problem embracing other genetic theories, and as I explained, I think it constitutes genetic cherry picking, driven by a political agenda:

the inconsistencies never cease to intrigue me. It completely escapes me how it can be that sexual preference is genetic (and homosexuals are said to be "born that way"), but yet there are absolutely no differences between the male and the female brain. That physical size and strength can be inherited, but not mental ability. The idea that IQ might be inherited is almost a heresy in the same circles which would fight like tigers to defend the idea that homosexuality is. It makes no sense unless you consider the possibility that they're more concerned with the consequences of the particular application of the theory than the theory itself.

What they're doing amounts to cherry picking. If they like the result, they allow for the genetic theory. If they don't, why, genetics must be ignored, and it's all to be blamed on the environment. This is often grounded in political considerations, and it is not limited to the left. It has long baffled me how many social conservatives will maintain that pedophilia is innate and cannot be cured, but homosexuality is a choice which can be. They might selectively cite scientific studies in support of their arguments, but there is nothing scientific about agendas driven by politics.

So does applying a racial standard. I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than looking at the race of Jeffrey Dahmer or that of victims. Or Charles Manson's, or John Wayne Gacy's, or Ted Bundy's. Psychopathic criminals themselves would probably love the racial analysis, though, as psychopaths are very quick to blame factors outside themselves in the hope of gaming the system.

Some people are just born bad. Their malevolence is a product of what Barbara Oakley called "evil genes."

It is not surprising that just as some of them are white, some of them are black. And some of them look like Manson, while others look like Bundy. (Was hippiedom any more responsible than Brooks Brothers?)

If 1 out of a hundred are born with the psychopathic gene, why should it surprise anyone that it crosses all racial and cultural lines?

I guess because that's not what some people want to believe.