Five Things that Concern Me About Casey Anthony

Photo of Casey Anthony Partying

It’s hard to avoid coverage of the Casey Anthony trial if you live in the United States.  I mean, what a story, right?  Death is never a happy thing, but the senseless murder of a child is one that hits most of us on a visceral level.

And when you add in the possibility that said child’s mother killed her in cold blood, it grows ever more disturbing.

The nearly three-year-old Caylee Anthony disappeared in June of 2008 but was not reported missing until mid-July.  Noteworthy is that the missing child report was made not by Caylee’s mother but by her grandmother.

Before June of 2008, Casey and her young daughter lived in her parents’ Florida home.  After they moved out, Casey made excuses ranging from a busy work schedule to Caylee spending time with a nanny to keep …

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Death Stops Elderly Father from Death Penalty Activism

Photo of Death Penalty Activist George Cullins

In situations of murder, those affected ripple outward from the victim like rings in water.  The closest of those proverbial rings is almost always the immediate family of the victim, and the savage 1984 strangling of 24-year-old Janette Cullins is no exception.

The perpetrator, Dean Carter, was a real gem.   Strangling Janette Cullins and sticking her body into a closet in her San Diego home,  was not his first crime.  In fact, he’d killed three women just the day before in L.A. and had a history of raping women who didn’t exactly think he was Rico Suave.  Sick.

Anyway, this douchebag went to trial in 1991 and was convicted of all four murders and two rapes.  He was sentenced to death for his desecration of Janette …

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An All-Grown-Up Elizabeth Smart Testifies in Captor’s Trial

Photo of Elizabeth Smart

I have never been a big television person, mostly because … well, there are so many great books to be read. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, though, my coping mechanism was to watch the news with an obsession that was almost unhealthy. I knew Fox News’ entire lineup (Fox was way more alarmist than CNN, so I figured I’d get any sort of bad news right away). Through the …

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Trial Underway for New Hampshire’s Resident Psycho Killer

Photo of Kimberly Cates

Kimberly Cates, a 42-year-old nurse from a quintessential small New Hampshire town, was murdered last October by a group of angry, isolated, outcast adolescent boys. Now the alleged ringleader of the group—and the one who wielded the machete that left over thirty wounds on Cates’ body—is on trial for first-degree murder.

That would, of course, be Steven Spader of creepy-letter-to-local-newspaper-to-make-his-rantings-public infamy.

And while it’s not the three ring circus personified by the trials of Charles Manson and O.J. Simpson, coverage of the carnage perpetrated by kids robbing homes and killing a woman and seriously injuring her daughter just for kicks (Spader’s accomplice Christopher Gribble, whose first-degree murder trial is scheduled for February, told authorities that he “had wanted to kill someone for a long time and was disappointed he didn’t feel any emotion following the Cates killing”) is really pretty disturbing.

While video clips show Spader steepling his fingers and trying to stare down prosecution witnesses, I can’t help but be disgusted by the fact that Kimberly Cates, who literally …

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