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Double murder: Not just faces on TV

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizenNews.com

Most of us will never understand murder.

We’ll read about it in magazines or books, both fiction and non-fiction, watch televised programs concerning both real cases and imagined, and pay to see movies where murderers are on the verge of winning only to be defeated by a renegade cop or a plucky teenage babysitter.

But when a real murder occurs, especially one close to home, we just don’t get it. We can’t fathom how anyone could take someone else’s life and even imagining it is enough to chill one to the bone.

After a murder, we’re left wondering why it happened — and even if there are tearful confessions, we’ll never really understand why murder became the ultimate solution.

We understand the emotions, whether it is jealousy, shame, anger, desperation or fear, but most of us will never know how someone can click off something in their brain and say, for example, “If I can’t have you, nobody will.”

After a murder, we also become a little frightened, and rightfully so. This recent tragedy happened on a street you may pass while driving. You may know the victims from church or even have passed them in the grocery store or a restaurant.

The suspects may have been at a movie you went to or in a line behind you at the fair.

These are real people that aren’t just faces on the news, which then makes you realize that for every face you do see on the news, there is a community just like ours that feels the same as we do now.

After a murder one question rises above all others, “Was there any way that this could have been prevented?” Sadly, the answer is no.

It seems that the Colliers had tried everything to reach their granddaughter and nothing worked.

There is something that every one of us can do to try to prevent future tragedies like this from happening, though, and that is to get involved with the local youth.

Whether you serve as a mentor, Big Brother or Big Sister, coach or youth group leader or you decide to teach a class or start a club, you would be reaching out to kids and would serve as an example of what it means to be a person who cares about his or her community.

I did this a few years back. I started a sketch comedy troupe that featured kids from several local high schools, none of them in any danger of becoming killers (I don’t think), but it was a way for me to get involved and it gave them something to do outside of school.

It wasn’t a large club, but it doesn’t have to be. It was something that I found interesting and if others found it as interesting as I did, they were free to join.

So, if you really want to have an impact and know that you’ve done something positive, I urge you to get involved.

What should we do with murderers in general? Is life in prison adequate punishment? I don’t think so.

I’m sure prison is a terrible place to be and forcing a person to live in a cell and undergo the same routine day after day can be torturous, but these criminals are still alive while their victims are not.

That’s why I am for the death penalty, especially in cases where there is absolutely no doubt who the killer is.

People would no longer have to worry about the murderer killing again and they wouldn’t have to have their taxes going to pay to keep these savages alive or to build more prisons to house more of these killers.

I know some people say that the death penalty is not a real deterrent, but so what? It may stop a few people from committing a murder and if not, the problem person is permanently removed.

Wouldn’t the guards in California love it if they didn’t have to deal with Charles Manson every day? Wasn’t there a bit of satisfaction when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered by his fellow inmates?

It’s good to know that bad things sometimes happen to bad people and if you believe in Heaven and Hell, you have to believe that God will treat murderers accordingly, whether they spend a lifetime in prison or not.

If you give the death penalty to murderers, you can leave pedophiles in prison for life, instead of letting them out so that they can mess with kids again, which a very high percentage of them do.

Jail overcrowding is a big problem, so let’s thin out the herd instead of building more and more jails. Instead of paying for a bunch of criminals to attempt to be rehabilitated, why not spend that money trying to educate and enrich the lives of citizens so that they don’t commit these types of crimes in the first place and end up in jail.

Some people say that the death penalty is just another form of murder, but I disagree. Murder is often a crime of passion, something savage and wild, but the death penalty is not something that is rushed into.

It should be seriously considered and if it is decided upon, it should be meted out as punishment. Not because we want to or like to, but because we have to.