Yesterday two men were arraigned in a Hingham, MA court for the beating deaths of two homeless men, William P. Chrapan and David P. Lyons. One of the suspects had "I hate you" and "SS" tattooed on his forearm; they were known to have partied under a Nazi flag in one suspect's mother's basement. The two were caught in part because they severed a hand of one of the victims to show it off at a party.
Hellooooo?!!! Where is the mystery in all of this senseless murder? I need only say "SS tattoo" and "mother's basement" to send a chill down the spine of any right-thinking person. Did no one see something like this coming? Surely their mothers or fathers noticed?
Unfortunately, as with most of these cases, to notice something potentially violent in the offing you have to be a) paying attention and b) the kind of parent who might give a sh*t. Clearly, these men had nothing but people making excuses for them. One mother said, "I've never asked my son what happened; he's just told me, 'Mom it wasn't me...' I said, 'I know you could never have done this. I know your heart, and you couldn't have done it." And then comes the part of her "defense" that implicates more than her son in the tragedy (and that made me laugh out loud):
"She said she was not sure why her son has long displayed the Nazi flag in the basement of her house."
Friends, I think it is safe to say that if your son has Nazi tattoos and a Nazi flag IN YOUR HOUSE, has a friend with the word "killa" tattoed on his neck, and that he met that friend while awaiting trial on charges that he stabbed a man repeatedly just a couple of years ago, and you think he doesn't have a heinous crime "in his heart," perhaps your credibility as a character witness might be a wee bit diminished. And perhaps your (im)moral complicity in a heinous crime is increased.
All I'm saying is that if you let your kid hang a Nazi flag in your basement and you never ask him why, never demand that it be burned, never follow up to see who he's hanging out with, you really have no grounds on which to say you know your kid's "heart." You simply should know that yours is the heart that is lacking.
1 comment:
That mother is probably caught in a time-warp where she recalls her sweet little 6-year-old cherub's heart before it rotted out. See no evil etc. The blindness of mothers to their kids' bad hearts...it is epidemic. Guess it might make her seem a bad mother if she acknowledged that her son was less than good (maybe she didn't do a good job raising him). Some kids just grow up bad despite parents' best efforts. It is hard to concede this fact from the inside or the outside of it. (not that I'm saying these guys' parents did their best...don't really know)
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