Profiting From The Murder Of Innocents

I was a street cop for more than 24 years. In that time I investigated basically every crime imaginable, from the minor to the horrific. That includes the depredations some are so capable of inflicting on those weaker than themselves.

I ran across this article on some websites that are auctioning or otherwise selling and profiting from the works and scribblings of the most vile and evil amongst us.

I understand the nature of the market about as well as any other ignorant line dog layman. Find or create a product or service. Create a business and marketing plan. Sell your product/service for what the market will bear. Expand your inventory and customer base and grow your business. Make money. Get rich. It's the American Way.

But.

I find it beyond contemptible to profit from the death and suffering of the innocent. I've been there. I've seen the blood and horror and the ugly death. I've seen the torn bodies and the tears of inconsolable family and loved ones. I've looked stone cold killers in the eyes and seen the evil, the dispassion, the total lack of remorse. Eyes, not of predators but of scavengers. Jackals who kill the sick and weak and then only when the Lion isn't around to teach them the lesson of who the true predators are.

Those who sell the 'memorabilia of murder' are doing more harm than just making a buck from the suffering of past victims, they're advertising those murderers. Their product is the lunatic ravings and disturbing effects and images of those who have committed the very worst crimes imaginable. They're offering them up as if they were no more than a signed baseball or an autograph from the latest celebrity fad. They're keeping them in the public eye and presenting them to us as something worthy, even desirable.

Whether you support the death penalty or not (I do. I think it does more good than harm) clearly even those not scheduled for an appointment with the executioner deserve to do their time in darkness and anonymity. Their memory should fade as their lives tick away in a cell. Their writings, images and thoughts should die with them. Forgotten and dishonored. We, as a civilized society, owe it to those we failed to protect and their loved ones who must endure every day with the memories of the departed and the circumstances of their death. To keep the memory of these sadistic and depraved murderers alive is spitting in the face of every innocent victim touched by their evil.

They are in fact our monsters. In them there is nothing to admire. Nothing to inspire. Nothing that should endure. Every thing they have done, every thing they have produced, every thing they have touched should be destroyed and they should be utterly forgotten by a nation that abhors them. To do less is to stamp their actions with a seal of approval and inspire others to emulate them so they too can become famous.

May they and those who would celebrate them suffer as they have caused suffering.

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