Some people are simply beyond human redemption

 

Two ghastly crimes caught my eye among the news headlines this week.

Murfreesboro man sentenced to life for rape of 5-year-old boy

Dad who drowned 3 kids to spite estranged wife pleads guilty: ‘If I can’t have them, neither can you’

I won't publish details of them here.  If you want to know more, click on either headline to be taken to the article concerned.  Be advised, the details are not safe for work, family or children.

I saw a lot of that kind of attitude when working as a prison chaplain.  An individual with that sort of mindset - "What I want is all that matters;  if you won't let me have it, or won't do as I say, I'll destroy you" - is as unsafe to handle as old, sweating dynamite.  Anything can prompt an explosion, and there's no telling when or where it might happen.  There's no sense of morality on the part of the perpetrator except "I want it, therefore I have the right to take it/do it/make it happen, no matter what the cost to you".

I wrote about a man like that in one of the "Convict To Chaplain" vignettes in my prison ministry memoir.  WARNING:  If you're squeamish or easily triggered, you don't want to read any further.

Yeah, you ain’t seen me before ’cause I just got transferred here, Chaplain. Why am I inside? I killed two old ****s. Didn’t mean to, though. It was their own stupid ****ing fault. Should never have happened.

**** it, man, I needed a car to go see my woman, and they had one. I jumped ’em as they stopped at the corner. Hadn’t even locked their doors, the dumb ****s! If they’d only listened and showed sense they’d have been all right, but that old **** started acting up when I hauled his woman out in a hurry. ****, he musta bin eighty years old, a real feeble old ****er. I punched him. That’s all — I just hit him. He fell down and hit his head on the curb and went real quiet. Out like a light. Then his damn fool bitch started screamin’ and hollerin’ that I’d killed him. I had to shut her up — people were startin’ to look outta their windows. I tried to put my hand over her mouth, but I musta twisted her neck somehow. There was this funny crackin’ noise, and she went limp. I didn’t stop to check, man — I dropped her and jumped into that old car and burned rubber outta there. Damn thing even smelt like old ****s inside.

The cops stopped me before I got halfway to my woman’s place. Those ****ers were mean, man! They ****ed me up real good. Rights? What rights? If the cops want you, they park their cruisers so those dash cameras don’t see ****, and they walk you down the road a bit so the mikes won’t hear the noise, and they go ape**** on your ***, man. They took me back to town and threw my *** in a cell, still bleeding and hurting bad, and those ******s wouldn’t even get me to a doctor for almost a whole day. Mother******s!

****in’ DA charged me with murder and I drew life twice. Murder? **** no! I didn’t mean to kill either of ’em. Those two old ****s were on their last legs anyway. I only did what they made me do with their damnfool hollerin’. Hell, I probably did ’em a favor! No pain, no waiting to die while their minds went crazy — just a quick, easy out, both together, no mess, no fuss. At worst I shoulda got five years for each of ’em. It’s all they had left! ****in’ judge an’ jury didn’t see it that way, of course.

I’m twenty-five years old, and they tell me I’ll live another fifty years or more in here. No way, man. I’m not taking this **** for the rest of my life. I’ll be outta here one way or another. Either I’ll escape, or they’ll kill me when I try. They’ll have to, ’cause I’ll sure as hell kill them if they try to stop me or bring me back here. No other way, man. You watch. You’ll see my name on the news one night. I’ll be dead, or I’ll be out — and either way I’ll be ****in’ free.

Now, what about that phone call, Chaplain? I gotta talk to my woman. Word is she’s goin’ with some other ****. Can’t have that, man, her dis-ree-spectin’ me like that. If she don’t listen to me, I’ll have to get my homeys to take care of the bitch — and her new guy. I mean, you unnerstan’, right? A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Right, Chaplain?

Want another example?

Finally, let’s take Howard. He got drunk one night and began to smash the furniture and fittings in his uncle’s home. His uncle tried to stop him… a fatal mistake. Howard beat him until he collapsed, then for two days and nights drank himself into a stupor, periodically getting up to kick and stomp his uncle as he lay moaning on the floor. Howard eventually passed out. He was found next morning, unconscious at the table, with his uncle dead on the floor beside him. He’d been in enough trouble with the law on previous occasions that this crime earned him a life sentence without parole. He’s still a relatively young man, and still just as violent. He’s been known to get bombed out of his skull on prison hooch (of which more later). When he gets that way, everyone steers clear of him, even the prison ‘hard men’ — all except the reaction squad, who have to subdue him and put him in the Hole to sober up. He’s quite capable of killing anyone who crosses him.

Howard’s eyes scare me. They’re pitch-black and utterly lifeless. When one looks into them, one strives to detect a spark of life, of humanity, of the person inside the body… but it’s not there. I’ve never looked into the bottomless pits of Hell, but I’ve got a good idea what they must be like after working with Howard. He’s one of the few convicts who genuinely frightens me. I take care not to show it, but I also try to have support available if I’ve got to see him about something. He could snap at any moment (and has in the past). I want to make sure that if he does so while I’m around, I have the best possible chance of coming out of it relatively unscathed.

There's no point in my saying, "Don't get involved with people like that".  All too many victims do, because such people are past masters at hiding their warped, twisted, self-centered evil until it's too late to avoid crashing headlong into it.  Please join me in praying for the mother who's lost all three of her children, and the five-year-old boy who's had the innocence of childhood ripped away from him.  They may never recover from such trauma.  A lot of people don't.

As for the guilty . . . we're supposed to leave open the possibility of Divine intervention, of repentance and genuine conversion.  However, in my experience, once one is so steeped in evil, it's almost impossible for the person concerned to turn around.  It's not altogether impossible - I've seen a few conversions that I can only regard as miraculous - but it's very, very difficult and, sadly, very, very unlikely.

You'd be horrified to know how many people like that are out on the streets around you every day.  I'd guesstimate that at least one out of every hundred people is a genuine danger to those around them, and perhaps one in a thousand is so psychopathic as to resemble the individuals mentioned in the headlines above.  In a United States with about 330 million inhabitants, that works out to three million, three hundred thousand seriously dangerous criminals, of whom three hundred and thirty thousand are psychopathic and/or potentially violent to an extreme degree.  I'd say the odds of any one of us running into one of them at some time are so high as to be almost guaranteed, over the course of a lifetime.  The fortunate among us won't even realize their presence, and will go away undisturbed.  The unfortunate . . . not so much.  Go click on those headlines and read for yourself.

I've said for years that the most die-hard opponents of the right to keep and bear arms should work behind the walls of a high-security penitentiary for just a day or two.  They'd come out with a completely different outlook, and head straight for the nearest gun shop to equip themselves for defense, because their eyes would have been opened the hard way.

Peter