About as Tragic as it can Be

Here in San Antonio, a most horrific and gruesome crime took place. A young mother either sometime Sunday the 26th or Monday the 27th used a couple of swords and a knife to mutilate, decapitate and cannibalize her newborn son. I believe the newborn, named Scotty, was only four weeks old. If I heard the report on the news correctly, she also skinned him as well. So grisly was this crime that the police chief said he needed to call in counselors for the officers who had answered the call.



Now certainly this sort of crime is not the first to have taken place in America or anywhere else, at least as far as a father or mother killing his own. Still, we will be hearing about the mother's grave condition before the crime occurred. We will be subjected to the constant theories and facts about the obligatory Postpartum Syndrome and how it may have affected her a la Andrea Yates (I think her husband divorced her, so I don't know if that's still her name but will still refer to her in that name) from a few years back combined with undue stress and that we as a society should have recognized the signs and quickly done something about it.


In that case (Mrs. Yates'), we were bombarded with her condition and how she got there. That friends and family thought she should not have been having anymore children. That her husband (at least the press made him seem such) was not taking into account her awry condition and should have realized that she should not be giving birth anymore. The media made it seemed like Mrs. Yates was a sex slave. (Mr. Yates may or may not have been culpable to a certain extent. Still. . . He did not kill his children. His wife did.)



Whether all that was true as far as that devilish syndrome is concerned, I can't say. Don't know if I ever will. But should it matter? Whether Mrs. Yates and the woman here in San Antonio were the "victims" of their condition and finally succumbed or whether it was a perpetration of a major con just so murder could be committed and possibly major judgement eluded, the main focus must be on the victims--the children killed.



I still can't imagine how and it's a deep infringement upon my very being to still think about how those Yates children died. The terror they must have felt as their mother was chasing them around the house knowing that she was intending to drown them. The mere horror they must have been feeling as their lives were expiring in a tortuous, gruesome way. Their tiny lungs gasping for that life-giving breath. Unimaginable. Unfathomable.



My main concern is and has always been that these mothers who kill their children someway, somehow finagle their way out of death. I still can't believe how Mrs. Yates somehow--and it may not be such a big surprise--received just life and not death. I suppose in a country and society where the mere stigma of aborting babies in the womb is practically passe' because of the embracing of the death culture. We basically have been numbed by these continuous, egregious acts and seemingly kowtowed into believing that we cannot properly or rightly judge these murderers because either we don't always know the facts of their past, their current condition, etc. and thus we have no right to impose death upon them.

So where does this end as far as allowing murder to continue without due justice for those who can't defend themselves?. . . Who in many cases cannot speak up for themselves.