We had another bizarre murder in the Madison area of late. A 23-year-old woman, Ashley Robinson, two months pregnant, was the victim. A Brandon Skinner, 24, has said he shot her in the head, at close range, with a shotgun, by accident, and then shot her again to put her out of her misery. Four other people, ranging in age from 27 to 18, are accused of conspiring to murder the girl. The story is that they threw the victim's body in the Ohio River: it has not yet been found. The five people have been locked up without bail. The incident is said to have occurred in a remote river bottom that I drove to once, a place that I thought was a little bit of paradise -- instead of the hell these people turned it into.
I said "another" bizarre murder. I'm still haunted by the Shanda Sharer homicide in the 1990s, perpetrated on that 12-year-old girl by four other girls. They tortured this child one night, all night long, sodomizing her with a tire iron and setting her body afire. These children, now women, will actually be eligible for parole not so long from now. Not fair: I am an opponent of capital punishment but I do believe in life imprisonment without parole for certain people, based on how heinous the crimes they have committed. The two most culpable of these women should never be in a free society again -- ever. I fear for the lives of my loved ones should they come back here.
As a once-upon-a-time psychologist, I never understood the nature of evil -- not the kind involved in these two crimes. And I've never been impressed with the explanations of profilers and great psychologists. Why are we so indifferent to the suffering of our fellow human beings?
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