The Sage Grouse

Depths of Depravity

Wyoming might get more than its statistical share of sexual sadists; I don’t know.

Dale Wayne Eaton kidnaps lovely Lisa Marie Kimmel in 1988, does unspeakable things to her over several days, kills her, throws her body off a bridge and buries her car.

Lovell MD Dr. John Story, exploiting the natural tendency of violated people to conceal the fact that they were violated, got away with a sophisticated pattern of rape of  his female patients  for decades before he was convicted and sent to prison in Rawlins.  You might recall that the community of Mormons and Baptists was deeply polarized over the accusations.  Story was a prominent Christian; one can only imagine what prayers he privately intoned to Jesus after a day of assuring women that his “new more comfortable examining instrument” was harmless.

The 21st century brings us Craigslist, an internet service designed to sell goods which has been turned into a sex solicitation site, and now a violence solicitation site.  I can understand going to Craigslist to look for an antique canoe, and, given changing mores, even going there to look for sex.  But going there to look for victims?

A moderately disturbed person might be titillated by an ad inviting a masochist to become a home invader and rapist; I don’t think I know anyone who would find such an ad anything other than revolting and worthy of reporting to the police.  But, then, to actually respond to such an ad?  And develop a plan to carry out an attack?  That’s beyond moderately disturbed.  Superlatives fail.  What defective thought process leads a rapist to believe that reliance upon a Craigslist ad gave him license to brutalize a human?  I conclude that his former participation in Sunday school was counter-productive.

And then to carry out the attack in a fashion which redefines brutality, in this state at least.  Sadly these attacks occur all the time in Darfur, and did occur in Bosnia; there is a bad gene somewhere.

But in Casper, Wyoming?

I commend Judge David Park for his recent hard sentence in the Craigslist rape case.  He overruled or gut-wrenchingly disregarded all of the letters about how these perps were once Sunday school students, and put them away where they will never threaten women again.  However, I question the judgment of the people who wrote letters in praise of the convicted rapist’s character.  There are people in the world who deserve mercy; these disgusting reptiles are not among them.

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