Missouri serial killer faces charges

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_re_us/cape_girardeau_killings;_ylt=Aie2maeLIvsaVnH8Yn7cyUdbIwgF

A man who has confessed to murdering nine women in the 1970s and 80s is scheduled to go on trial for five of the murders. The murderer is described as frail-looking, now in his 60s. When he wasn't out killing women, he spent most of his adult life in prison on sex crime charges. The county sherriff views him as an "animal." But he's not an animal. Despite what he's done, he's human, which makes him and those like him even more frightening. When Richard Speck, murderer of eight student nurses, was captured after days on the run, as one journalist said, "We expected him to have horns growing out of his head." But all the public got to see was a poor alcoholic who had just attempted suicide. It's what's commonly called the "banality of evil." The monstrous deeds committed in a society are not committed by supernatural evil beings, but by those who look just like us. Who could have picked former law student and Republican party insider Ted Bundy or church council member and loyal family man Dennis Rader out of a crowd as vicious murderers? In the book I'm currently reading, The Human Stain by Phillip Roth, the narrator talks about the wish of societies to "put one face" on evil. But that's impossible. Evil comes in many faces, often those we trust. One of the most dangerous people in the world is a man whose wife has just asked for a divorce, at least if crime statistics are taken into consideration.
On the same topic, it's also almost impossible to predict whether a child is a future serial killer. Even if they come from an abusive family or enjoy hurting animals, this isn't a guarantee that the child will be violent as an adult. Most little boys grow out of burning ants with magnifying glasses and don't escalate to human targets. At the learning center where I work, there's an eight-year-old boy who appears to have many signs seen in the childhoods of violent criminals. I can't say for certain if his parents are abusive, but my boss told me that the kid's father dropped the f-bomb several times during a conference, and the mother seems to keep him on a short leash. He's unruly, often disruptive, makes threats (which we don't take too seriously) and appears to be obsessed with fire. If he also tortures animals and wets his bed, he would have the violence preindicator trifecta mentioned by John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit. Still, none of this means that this little boy will grow into a serial killer. As my boss and my coworkers have told me, this kid can sometimes be nice and quite charming, which also calls to mind the more cunning of serial murderers. Supposedly, he has a manipulative streak, which could just mean he'll turn into another clever narcissist, often found in the otherwise prestigious law, political and business fields.
More sad news for my favorite club Bound; Felix has kicked us out. The exact reason isn't clear, but according to some reliable sources, one of the owners got freaked out by the gay/lesbian vibe he saw the last time Bound was there. If they were hosting a fetish club, they should have known what to expect. Or maybe they expected some glamorized porno version of a fetish club, hot girls getting spanked with their boobs hanging out. Of course that can be seen, but it's not at all representative of the diverse Bound crowd, which includes gay, bi, lesbian, transgender, and many others that defy categorization. If that's too much for the owners of Felix, we can't force them to change, but we can let the DC club-going public know what happened, and let them decide if they want to support a venue run by this philosophy.