Shawn Ryan Grell
My duties as both the editor and a writer for People You’ll See In Hell force me to view the dark side of life, and I see more than my share of the evil that lurks there. Hey, it’s all part of the job, right? In a way all the child murders and abuse cases and the taking of life over reasons as mundane as money and jealousy have hardened me to the point that I’m not touched by a lot of the things I see and read about. The evil men do seems to have lost the shock value it used to have.
But this case, man, this is the kind of evil that takes you breath away. It’s the kind of evil that, after you absorb the horror of it all, changes you forever.
Meet thirty-five-year-old Shawn Ryan Grell. Shawn was one of those kids who grew up hard and mean. He killed his family’s cat, set fire to their dog, and even burned down the house they lived in. In 1988, when he was thirteen, police arrested Grell after he fondled a young girls breasts.
Grell was sent to a juvenile facility after the incident, where he continued to get in trouble. Incidents like assaulting staff and other inmates earned him a reputation for being an unstable kid whose “assaultiveness” needed to be controlled. He was tested and was diagnosed as borderline retarded with an IQ somewhere between 70 and 80.
Grell had a pretty lousy home life, and he spent the rest of his youth bouncing in and out of that juvenile facility, committing offenses like disorderly conduct, shoplifting and assault.
Things did not improve for Shawn Grell with the passing of his eighteenth birthday. By 1992 he had been convicted of assault and sent to prison. In 1995 he was back in 
jail for robbing a convenience store. Grell was granted parole, but his Parole Officer violated him when he was caught possessing drug paraphernalia in 1998.
During the three years or so that Grell was out on parole, he had managed to find himself a steady girlfriend, Amber Salem, and when he ask her to marry him in 1998, she accepted. He also became a father. Kristen Salem was born in 1997, and by all accounts was a happy, well adjusted little toddler by the winter of 1999. All three had moved in to Amber’s parents home by the time Shawn violated his parole and was sent back to prison.
After Grell was released in 1999, he tried to walk the straight and narrow, but his criminal record made it difficult for him. Because of his felony convictions, companies would either not hire him, or, if he lied and didn’t tell them about his record, fire him in a couple of months after his background check was completed.
His inability to remain employed caused a great deal of conflict in the home, especially between Grell and Amber Salem’s parents.
Grell was at home December 2nd, 1999, when his girlfriend’s mother found out he’d lost his job once again. Amber Salem then called to meet Grell for lunch. Grell cashed his last paycheck, put in some job applications at Desert Sky Mall and met Amber outside the food court. She told him how upset her parents were, and that they were threatening to throw Grell out of the family home.
When Amber returned to work, Grell bought some 32-ounce bottles of beer and drank in her car. He went to a bar in Phoenix, then met Amber for her break about 2:45 p.m. After that, Grell said, he decided to pick up two-year-old Kristen and drive out to visit his sister.
Grell picked up little Kristen Salem at the daycare she attended, then took her to McDonald’s for a hamburger. They ate in an apartment complex parking lot, then cruised around for a while, looking at Christmas displays.
Kristen started whining.
”I just got tired of it and slapped her in the mouth. After she stopped crying a few minutes later, she said, ‘Sorry, Daddy,’ and then she started being good, and then she just went nuts again because she wanted to see her mom again.”
Grell snapped.
He took Kristen to the Target store and purchased a red plastic 3-gallon gasoline jug for $4. He filled it at a gas station, then he drove around the desert for about 45 minutes until he found a ditch on the side of the road that appeared to be just what he was looking for.
“Kristen was already asleep, so I got out of the car, then I picked her up out of the car. I said, ‘Kristen, Mommy’s here. Let’s lay down,’ so I laid her in the dirt next to the car. “I took the gasoline and poured it on her.”
Even Kristen’s screams and pleas of ”No, Daddy, no!” weren’t enough to stop him.
“I took the match and threw it on her.”
Detective Donald Walsh of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office testified in court that Kristen was lying on the ground when the blaze began on the front of her body. She got up and ran about 12 feet, walking in circles at one point as the flames spread upwards to her face, he said.
The heat was so intense, Walsh said, that a barrette on the left side of her head melted, the plastic running down her face. She finally collapsed face-first in a ditch and died.
In my mind’s eye I see a little child, running with that stumbling gate that two-year-olds have, screaming in abject agony, her face blistering, then melting away.
God help me.
Grell drove back and forth until he couldn’t see the flames anymore. Then he went back, got out and walked over to Kristen.
‘I just looked at her.”
Six hours after he burned his daughter to death, Shawn Grell was pulled over in downtown Phoenix for suspicion of drunk driving. He was arrested and, during a 30 minute interview 
with police officers, laughed, joked, and even suggested a lingerie bar he thought the cops might enjoy. Not once did he mention his two-year-old daughter.
Two days later, his conscience tearing him apart, Shawn Ryan Grell turned himself in and confessed to the murder of his daughter, Kristen Salem. He plead guilty to first degree murder and threw himself on the mercy of the court.
Judge Barbara Jarrett had sat on the bench for 12 years. During her long and illustrious career, she presided over many cases where capital punishment was an option, but never found cause to use it. Not once.
On July 9th, 2001, in one of her last acts before she retired from the bench, The Honorable Judge Barbara Jarrett sentenced Shawn Ryan Grell to Death.
Sadly, Judge Jarrett’s sentence was not the end of this story.
On June 6th, 2006, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously decided that Shawn Grell did not give up his right to a jury sentencing when he waived his right to a jury trial in 2000 (View The Court’s Opinion). His death sentence was vacated, and it was ordered that a new sentencing hearing be held. That hearing is going on right now.
At the center of the issue is whether the trial court erred by failing to find that Grell is mentally retarded and appropriately weighing that factor in mitigation of his sentence, and whether the execution of a mentally retarded person violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
I’ve been following the progress of Shawn Grell’s sentencing hearing (View Court Records), and will update this story when the jury makes it’s decision
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304 Comments »
i wish hell on anyone who says no
Even Kristen’s screams and pleas of ”No, Daddy, no!” weren’t enough to stop him.
“I took the match and threw it on her.”
Those lines made me just want to puke. This walking sack of human shit deserves the death penalty. I got nothing for this one, except I think I’m going to be sick.
That’s the place where I felt my heart start to break Tito. It shattered as I wrote about what the detective testified how Kristen ran in circles as the flames consumed her little body.
i always felt as if id become dessensitized by all this kinda stuff, but wen i read that i realised how wrong i was… that guy deserves werse than death RIP Kristen Salem
Amber was a very good mother. Shawn was not allowed to pick his daughter up from day care, but the day care released him. The search for Kristen was on at that point. It is such a tragedy. I know Shawn personally through family. His childhood being portrayed as so bad was not true. So many things came out in the resentencing with an agenda toward avoiding the death penalty. They originally had a judge who never gave a death penalty to anyone. This is what they thought would happen. When the just found for death, it was appealed on grounds that a jury can only find death. On July 24, 2009, the jury found for death. They wanted my sister, who was his stepmother but only knew him for three months when he was younger, to testify on the defenses side to save him, and she refused knowing that he knew right from wrong and took this brutal action against Kristen out of anger with full knowledge of the wrongness of his actions. He deserves this as he say when the jury went out in his statement that he would accept the death penalty. Hopefully so and no further appeals and the sentence is carried out. It has been 10 devestaing years for Kristen’s mother Amber who loved her so.
I get that he was mad because she was whining. Whining is annoying. But it passed, like all whining does.
The point that gets me is that she was asleep in the car when he took her out to bonfire her. It’s easy to love kids when they sleep. They’re sweet and un-whiney when they’re asleep.
If you don’t like whiney, you shouldn’t wake your sleeping child to light them on fire. Just saying.
To the girlfriend- your boyfriend just got fired again, he meets you for lunch after he’s been drinking, and you think he’s a suitable babysitter? Clue- your parents were right. Sometimes it isn’t so much that parents are fuddy-duddys and can’t understand ‘true love’. Sometimes they can see that the loser you are will is going to ruin your life in ways you can’t imagine. But then, that’s why they were parents, and you aren’t anymore.
c
“Sometimes it isn’t so much that parents are fuddy-duddys and can’t understand ‘true love’. Sometimes they can see that the loser you are with is going to ruin your life in ways you can’t imagine. But then, that’s why they were parents, and you aren’t anymore.”
Harsh. But so true. That said it all perfectly.
Again, I know this family personally. Shawn was not allowed to pick her up from day care, but they released her to him. We are all thankful that a jury found for the death penalty. His defense team will again try to get it commuted to life trying to say a “retarded” person cannot be executed. Shawn is in no way retarded that is why he would not speak with the prosecution’s new psychiatrist. Believe me, his defense team is not done. Shawn knows right from wrong and did not have any know impulse control issues. He needs to fry.
The piece of shit deserves to be slow roasted from the feet up. Over and over again!
This story gave me chills. I don’t understand why things like this happen… For some reason it seems worse that she was sleeping peacefully and he woke her up to kill her. I can only hope that they uphold the death penalty. If he can function high enough to work and get a driver’s liscense, I’m thinking he knows right from wrong.
This is a prime example of someone who has something wrong with them that can’t be fixed or rehabilitated. Let this piece of work serve as an example to those who defend budding psychos like Cheyenne Cherry.
I never agreed with capital punishment……I do now.
Excuse me – I just vommited in my mouth…
O. . .M. . .F. . .G!!!!!!!!!!
You have absolutely GOT to be shitting me?!?!?!?!?!? Please, PLEASE, say that this is NOT true!!!!
Not only is his crime atrocious, but he is CLEAR as a bell that he knew what he was doing, and acted in a deliberate manner AND that he knew it was WRONG or he wouldn’t have confessed! He bought the gas can, and filled it and drove around with the child for long enough that any retard would have enough time to reason through the out come of their actions! He also drove back and forth and waited to make sure she wasn’t burning anymore. THEN he went to look at her. I bet if she hadn’t been dead the sick fucker would have decided it was time for Round 2!!!
If the death penalty wasn’t tailor made for a crime like this then what the hell IS it for?!?!?!?!
AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!
I agree that if he’s mentally competent enough to work and drive, he’s competent to suffer the consequences of his actions. Also, I wonder how recent the IQ tests are, and how many of them he’s had. IQ tests aren’t the most reliable gage of a person’s intellect, and they also can change from year to year.
On a side note, I want to say that our society has to come up with a solution for the problem of what inmates do when they get out of jail. We expect them to be reformed, and to get a job and earn an honest living–and yet their criminal records follow them around forever and prevent them from ever getting or keeping a job. What are their options, then, really? I think the loss of his job and the pending loss of his housing were the staws that drove him completely over the edge. As long as we continue to put these people in a no-win situation, there will continue to be cases of people who “snap” and commit these unspeakable acts of violence.
Before anyone tears a hole in my ass–I’m not trying to excuse what he did–I think he deserves hell–but our society bears some responsibility in these situations, too!
I totally agree with you. I used to work for a company that did criminal background checks, and even though all I did was basically type in what someone else had found, I often felt guilty. Sure the rapists and child molesters deserved what they got, but what about things that I personally don’t even think should be crimes (pot possession for example). I was sitting there all day basically aiding the system in making an unemployable underclass that was destined to a life of rejection, poverty, and unemployment. People will say they knew what they did was wrong, they get what they get. But which of us hasn’t done something technically criminal. I’ve smoked all kinds of weed personally, just never been caught. It seems weird to me that a person unluckily enough or careless enough to get nabbed has to basically suffer the rest of their life. If we aren’t going to allow these people, rapists or molesters included (I think that little group should be executed or at least warehoused until their lives expire), then we shouldn’t let them back out into society. Ever. They do their time, then they get out and get prevented from reintegrating or even integrating for the first time into society. If you can’t get work you’re not left with a lot of options for a livelihood. You’re stuck with suicide or criminal behavior. It also disgusts me that there are certain companies that own these background check companies, security firms, AND private prisons. But maybe I’m just paranoid.
I agree with you. That was a part of the story that triggered a pet peeve for me. By all accounts of the story, he was trying to make a normal go of it and society would not give him the chance. We say we are civilized and we believe in second chances and yet records follow people around. When you commit a crime, you never stop serving your sentence. I had a buddy get a DV charge for punching a radio. Because it was a violent misdemeanor, he had trouble finding good work. How do we expect criminals to change their ways and walk a new path when they can’t find a good job? Even sometimes housing can be denied them. They are going to turn to the one thing that never discriminates and that is crime.
Now I don’t mean to take away from the atrocious nature of his final acts of freedom. But could it have been avoided if we had a better system in place? What if there were laws against discriminating against convicts? Companies say they don’t necessarily deny employment based on a criminal record, but we all know that they generally do. Not everyone that commits a crime is a criminal for life. Some just need that one break to get their lives totally changed around. But everyone lives in fear of people with records. I think this is a case where society has to except some of the blame. Because based on the story, I don’t think it would have happened if he hadn’t been losing his jobs.
And that kinda goes with the thing I see on this site about doing background checks on everyone you know. I get torn on this. I understand wanting to have as much knowledge as possible to protect you and your loves ones. But what about privacy? What about people who have made a mistake in their lives and want to leave it behind them and move forward in a positive direction? Do they deserve to have those mistakes haunt them for life? Some will say yes, that is one of the consequences of doing the crime. But as I reported in another thread, more and more Americans are doing crimes. People screw up. They make bad judgment calls. I believe in atonement. I believe people can change their lives around for the better if they really want to. And if true repentance means God will forgive a person their mistakes, then shouldn’t we? But then there are those that would abuse a system like that. So, like I said, I get torn on it. I just can’t help but think though that society is helping create these people and not wanting to take responsibility for it.
While I think what you guys are saying is correct in a lot of cases, I wouldn’t have hired Grell either. He was and ex-con with a proven propensity for violence and re-offending. He had two assaults and a robbery beef on his record, all violent crimes. Plus he was arrested for drug paraphernalia, which tells anyone who’s checking his background that he’s a user. He’s way too risky a person to expose my other employees and myself to on a daily basis, IMO.
Ok fair enough. Now let’s assume every employer feels the same way. What is a convict supposed to do then?
I’m only talking about Shawn Grell specifically, but anyone with a record like his has to face the reality that jobs are going to be few and far between. I hate to sound like my mother, but they should have thought about all that before they chose to commit multiple violent crimes. It’s called accepting the consequences of your actions – something every good recovering drug addict and alcoholic (like me) has to learn before they can stay clean and sober. What folks like Grell have to do is just continue doing the right thing, so they can earn back people’s trust. I had to do it, and I did things at least as violent as Grell did – it took years, but I finally earned back the trust and respect I’d given away.
My point is, there’s a price to pay for being an asshole. No one likes to pay it when the time comes when they want to turn their lives around, but that’s how it is.
I get that, I really do. And I agree that they have to pay their dues and earn back trust. But if they can’t make a living and support their family, then what? Their basic survival instincts kick in. Are we, as a society, not better served by having them work with us where we can keep an eye on them and show them what a good example is? Or are we better off having a desperate criminal out there frustrated over the fact that they can’t provide the basic fundamentals of survival for them and their loved ones?
I’m reminded of those laws for sexual offenders that stop them from living withing a certain distance of schools, churches, parks, etc. In some cities, EVERY place in the city falls within the restricted distance of the law. Yet since they are on parole, they cannot leave the city. So what happens? They end up homeless. Now is it easier to keep tabs on a child molester with an established address and job or one that is homeless?
Giving criminals jobs isn’t about rewarding them or forgetting their past. It is about helping to rehabilitate them into contributing members of society. We are helping ourselves by keeping them close and helping them become better people. Is a crying child going to stop if you hold them at arm’s length or pull them in close and show them some love?
There are places that provide jobs for convicted felons including charities I have volunteered for. They pay minimum wage, but they pay and they write letters of reference after only a few months of good service, if good service is rendered. Good parole officers help inmates by either putting them in touch with counselors or providing work counseling. The biggest issue remains not that there isn’t help for a convicted felon finding help, but that they have to both ask and accept that help when it’s there.
Rehabilitation of a former prisoner is a process much like the rehabilitation of a drug addict. If a drug addict does not want to give up their drug, they will not do it. If a convict does not want to mend their ways, they will not do it.
As a final note, and one on a completely different topic, one that holds political significance, there used to be a host of jobs that former convicts would hold. They were dishwashers at restaurants, day labor at construction sites, they did road work as civil servants and they filled the factories to the brim as non-union labor until they could get their rights restored as full citizens and could join the unions in their own right.
There are more partisan arguments for or against “illegal” immigration and I do believe that legal immigration should be easier and even more streamlined–I even believe that many illegal immigrants deserve the jobs they have more than convicted felons, but Mexico has a simple solution for their revolving door felony convictions. When someone can’t get a job in Mexico because of a criminal record, they immigrate here illegally and work here under assumed or falsified identities. Our felons don’t have that capacity and their jobs are threatened by a closing economy that requires more skill and education, and is far less forgiving of those who are documented criminals than those who are not.
Still, there are jobs for anyone who wants a job. Even Lindy England is going to be able to find a job eventually, no matter how much her complaints fall on NPR.
You support a family on minimum wage and tell me how that works out for you. Especially if you have a past of robberies and drug dealing and tell me the temptation won’t come back when your child tells you they are hungry.
Of course there are jobs. But they shouldn’t only be relegated to shady jobs that treat them like crap, or that won’t pay enough to make a living. And what about one time offenders? Do they deserve this life? What about my buddy who punched a radio? He didn’t even do time. Is he a criminal? According to the law he is. But does he not deserve a shot at a real job? What if someone had a conviction because someone lied? That lie should affect their life for a minimum of 7 years?
We tell criminals that their sentence is the time served and any probation/parole beyond that. And that is where their punishment should stop. Society and employers should not continue it beyond that.
I have a friend who spent 3 years in prison for a drug possession with intent to sell(a felony at the amount of LSD he had). He worked his way through the crap jobs and has even applied and regained his citizenship rights. He now makes a decent living, but it required college work and a great deal more effort. He knows it was tough, but he says it was the ticket to ride.
But they shouldn’t only be relegated to shady jobs that treat them like crap, or that won’t pay enough to make a living. And what about one time offenders? Do they deserve this life? What about my buddy who punched a radio? He didn’t even do time. Is he a criminal? According to the law he is. But does he not deserve a shot at a real job? What if someone had a conviction because someone lied? That lie should affect their life for a minimum of 7 years?
Employment is a relationship of trust. Can you trust a criminal with money? If their crime was related to money or drugs, probably not until you get to know them better. Can you trust them with children? Can you trust them with materials of a real world value? Can you trust them to provide quality customer service?
Just like a bad credit report, criminals must rebuild their trust with society. In application forms they list a place to explain any crime you’ve committed. The charity I worked for instructed former felons, working for our charity to put that for the last three months they’d built trust in the handling of currency and the inventory of merchandise since their incarceration for 3 years for “robbery, drug use, etc”.
It was very much like the credit rehabilitation programs we helped them into as well.
Is it tight? Is it difficult? Can they at any time sink to some criminal enterprise and prove that they don’t have what it takes to rebuild society’s trust in them?
Of course it is, and no one should make it any easier than it would be on an addict whose trying to get off drugs, because truth to tell anyone who has done something hard but necessary that something easy and worth half the effort is still a failure to achieve the goal.
I do think it’s harder now than it has ever been before, but I don’t think that it should be easy or that the burden of documentation should not be to warn the public of an offender’s past.
I get what you are saying about things from the employers end. And I understand their thinking completely. And this isn’t an easy issue to make a decision on. However, we have to look at the other side of the coin.
We have criminals who are used to taking the easy road, and now we expect them to change and work hard with no help from us? How successful will that be for the majority? I think our number of repeat criminals answers that question.
And it has become a trust issue. But what about the survival issue? Let’s say they are willing to work hard. And they even have the skill sets. But they can’t get anything but menial labor because of their record? And that isn’t providing enough for their family. Then what?
Do we want them on welfare where we are paying the difference anyway? Do we want them turning to criminal enterprises to make up the gap? Do we want them working numerous menial jobs that frustrate them more and take them away from their family? I think we have valid socially conscious questions that come up in these situations.
And I think it comes down to who is more likely to commit a crime again. The ex-con with a good, solid, stable job. Or the one who is struggling to make ends meet? While both will produce winners and losers, I think the first puts odds in the favor of the ex-con and society.
That’s an interesting thought, and unfortunately the credit statement is the same problem.
Let’s say a brand new 18 year-old freshman gets 14 credit cards on campus and runs up a 40,000 dollar credit card debt he can never repay. At 18 he files for bankruptcy and we demolish his credit for years until the Bankruptcy falls off completely. Meanwhile he can immediately start building credit back up the slow way.
He gets a savings account. He gets an ATM debit card, he gets a small credit card secured with a CD, and he makes his payments religiously. Slowly he builds himself back up and then he can get credit again sometime around age 25 with a perfect credit score.
Through hard work and perseverance, this credit failure fixes his credit and restores the power of his name to buy things.
Now here’s the criminal. He proved to a jury of his peers that the world could not have him running around right now. He was a danger to himself or someone else by committing a crime that destroyed his credit to this world.
When he steps out of jail, every person should suspect nothing but more of the same from him, not because he hasn’t been rehabilitated, but because he’s proved he can break the law, but he has not proved he can abide by it.
For seven long years, he will have to struggle to restore to his name the same level of trust his name bought when he was a brand new citizen. During that time, any slip up will have disastrous consequences, because any slip up resets his counter on that clock he has to maintain basic decency.
That’s a fairly simple paradigm actually, and its basis is on the concept that someone starts out with their name, free and clear of attachment, but that anything he purposefully attaches to his name can only be removed through dedicated service to his own cause.
Now imagine that no banks or credit card companies were willing to extend a line of credit of any amount. How does one re-build credit then?
The ironic thing is banks loved people coming out of bankuptcies as they expect them to have alot of disposable income and little to no debt to income ratio. That was my experience selling cars years ago. Granted that way have changed with the changes to bankruptcy laws since then.
Second chances are fine. Maybe even third chances, under the right circumstances, but 4th? 5th? 20th?
This guy blew it over and over again, and then finally decided that maybe he was wrong. He had a child, and it would be commendable if he decided that finally he was ready to try and make a go of it. BUT – clearly he wasn’t. He may have wanted vaguely to be a good person, but he expended no effort.
Now, I was a business owner and I had an interviewee who was a damned good photographer. But he had a criminal record. His record was for theft and drugs, but I had to think really hard about it, because he would be in contact with my clients. By the way, his situation was similar to this guy’s in that he had recently had a baby, and claimed to have wised up. I gave him the job, with the understanding that he would be watched harder than most employees, and that if anything “happened” he would not be given the same benefit of the doubt that another employee might. After two years with me, he moved on and I gave him a glowing reference, accentuating the honesty and integrity he showed. Last I heard from him he was doing well, and was able to essentially wipe his negative history away.
That’s how you do it. Not by talking the talk, but by walking the walk. By proving that you have changed, one day at a time. If he had balked at the idea that he would be treated “differently” than my other employees, I would not have hired him, period.
I think that many people feel like I do. Huge companies with strict boxes to fill out in the HR department won’t hire him, but that IS the price you pay for making mistakes. Then again, how do you measure success? When you have been at absolute rock bottom, and manage to become the manager of a McDonald’s, that might be considered success.
How can you say he expended no effort? He went to job after job. He was honest about his past. He lied about his past. He tried what he could to keep a job and provide. I would say he made an effort.
And your example proves my point. YOU gave that guy a chance and look what happened. How many of these people just need the chance that they never got? Now this won’t work with everyone, but obviously our current system isn’t working. And it is hard to read this story and not wonder if one of those jobs had kept him on board if that little girl might not still be alive today.
Look – the point is that Shawn Grell was either dishonest or really didn’t do a good job. If he was a hard-working employee, he would not have been fired from the kinds of jobs that do retroactive background checks. (The reason they do them so long after hiring is so they can easily fire a crappy employee.)
Once a person has fucked up, they have to go a long way to prove themselves. They can’t just expect that because they “think” they want to do it right now, everyone will do the happy dance with them. It takes twice as much effort to get half as far, and if they don’t understand that, they have no chance.
This guy GOT jobs, but didn’t keep them. Why not? Was it because he had a chip on his shoulder? Was it because he didn’t show up on time or goofed off on company time? I would bet it was one of those things.
Regardless, I refuse to take the blame for Shawn Grell and his kind. My tax dollars go to see that they are fed, housed and clothed as children. My tax dollars educate them. My tax dollars give these guys every opportunity in the world to rise out of the squalor they are born into – but they have to TAKE that opportunity. This creep didn’t. That’s not MY fault, nor Max’s, and even though you seem perfectly willing to take it yourself – it’s not your fault either.
There is a reason that old sayings are old sayings – because they are applicable, and in this case I think of the old saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Stop blaming the farmer because his horse died of dehydration.
I think you are drawing some conclusions here with no basis. The story said he was fired because of his background. And MANY companies do fire after employment if they discover you lied on your application. No where does it say that he was a bad employee. That is drawing conclusions because you want to hate this guy. With what he did to that little girl, no one wants to admit that maybe it could have been avoided. It is better to fabricate “I bets” based on nothing.
And the article also stated he has a lousy home life. Are tax dollars stopping kids from being beat? Or molested? Or neglected? Simply paying taxes does not absolve society of all responsibility for the actions of its members. Rather than being reactive to stories like this, we need to be pro-active to why people like him exist. What could be done to have made him a better person?
You can say you have no responsibility to anyone else. But how much can you complain about their actions then? It’s like bitching about the president when you didn’t vote. I don’t mean to say they aren’t responsible for their choices. They are. But bad choices are typically a result of bad circumstances in life. Society should be helping to create positive circumstances and showing people how to make good choices.
Most people in America have your stance on the issue it seems. Now read every article on this site and tell me how well that attitude is working out for us. I think, if anything, this site is a sign that it is time to look at things differently and make some changes in society. Because our current system and beliefs are failing us.
I just remembered – you are that argumentative troll who was supporting that pervert school principal. I don’t care to have discussions with idiots. Good day.
Man some of you are truly stupid. And I don’t use the term lightly.
1. You all mis-use the term troll. ALOT. Having a differing opinion does not make one a troll. And standing by said opinion does not either.
2. I NEVER supported the principal. There are numerous posts where I said what he did was gross, repugnant, immoral, etc. Do you only see what you want to see?
3. I’m starting to think this site and snarky comments is an outlet for some of you to seem superior to others. I read the hate mail comments and some of the behavior from the “veterans” to those with different viewpoints is absurd.
I’ve read insults and death threats from members of the so called veteran community. Just because you are not raping kids does not make you good people. We are measured not by what we don’t do, but by that which we do. And being pompous pricks on internet forums isn’t gonna score points in the after-life.
I am not perfect in this department as my buttons have been pushed on here. However, everything I have typed I believe. It is not intended to be contentious. I read the articles, I ponder them, and I write my thoughts. I know I have a different perspective than many. I have also had experiences that most people have not had that has helped shape my viewpoints.
I am beyond having knee-jerk reactions to “Yellow Journalism”. It gets old after awhile. I mean how many times can one read articles such as these and type “so and so should die the worst death imaginable”. I think the editors would like to know that the site inspires some to think beyond this.
Actually Mazzi … I am kinda undecided as to whether thatsmystapler is a troll or not. There were a couple of replies he made that almost had me convinced he was just trying to wind people up.
I think he said in one of his posts on the Principal that he is fairly religious … so his stance on this issue isn’t surprising. I actually to some degree agree with him on this.
IF something had been done back when he burned down the house and killed the family pets maybe he would have led a productive life MAYBE … but basically there are some people out there who just WANT to be scum.
MAYBE if one of the jobs that fired him after he lied about his history had kept him on he might not have done what he did …. MAYBE they would have if he was a good employee in the time he was there … it’s all guessing.
Who is to say that back when he killed the pets, burned down the house and sexually assaulted a girl that he WASN’T given access to counselling etc????? Chances are he probably was.
What I do know is, all other things aside – this POS MADE THE CHOICE to do what he did. There are a LOT of people out there with IQs that place them in the intellectually disabled range who DO NOT kill animals, burn down houses, sexually assault girls or burn babies alive.
Give this piece of filth his death penalty back and stop him from wasting perfectly good air. There comes a point where if you can’t ever be a part of society … why the heel would society want to spend huge sums of money to keep you around?
Sam – according to wikipedia: “In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.”
Per urban dictionary: (among others) “Trolling is the act of purposefully antagonizing other people on the internet, generally on message boards”; “Trolling is trying to get a rise out of someone. Forcing them to respond to you, either through wise-crackery, posting incorrect information, asking blatantly stupid questions, or other foolishness”; and my favorite “Being a prick on the internet because you can.”
This TROLL, did pretty much all of those things to Jason over on John Stelmack’s thread. I wasn’t sure about if he was a TROLL at first and gave him the benefit of the doubt. But, it seems I was wrong. TROLL, TROLL, TROLL.
Oh yeah.. and just wait till the nitpicking about the exact, specific wording of what a troll is begins. He’s probably sitting on his hands at this very moment trying desperately to not do it, since I called him on it. LOL.
Fair enough.
I am not saying that I agree with what he says … he does seem to like being the voice of dissent.
Maybe he DOES truly believe the points he puts forward …. although … that being the case ….. why you would patronise a website called “People You’ll See In Hell” is a mystery to me.
So far it has been kinda enjoyable seeing what he has to say … whilst I can kinda see his POV … I don’t agree with him at all for the most part. IMHO the way of thinking that stapler (we’re on a first name basis ‘cos we’re buds) presents/represents is a fairly big part of the problem with society and the justice system today …. it’s people like that who are making and interpreting the laws. That’s not to say that these attitudes have no place …. I just think that the scales have tipped too far in that direction.
Based on the definition you posted, many of you old-timers are the trolls. I’ve never hurled the first insult. My posts are on-topic. I don’t attack other posters for their beliefs. Hell you can’t even get your information accurate and say I was supporting the principal. THAT right there is troll-ish behavior.
In fact, this whole thread of dialog came about from YOU responding to ME about my post where I agreed with the original OP. So methinks you were trollin me.
Hell your final post was trolling. You set it up so that if I chose to either respond or not, you had both bases covered and could pat yourself on the back. Again, troll-ish.
But if in your little mind you wanna call me a Troll, have at it. I’m not going away. I’ll continue to read and post my thoughts. I am not here to have it out with other members. And I’m not going to be one of the ones you and your little mob chases away for not agreeing with you.
LOL. See ….. don’t know what it is … but I kinda like to see the other side of the argument. I don’t have to agree with him, but how boring would this site be if EVERYONE voted for hell?
BTW … for those who vote NO in cases such as this one … show some guts and post WHY.
Samildanach- To answer your question, I came here for the articles. I find the information interesting and the writers generally humorous in the face of such horror. For the first couple of weeks I didn’t even bother reading the comments. Most comments on most forums(ever read the WoW forums?) are 95% idiocy and I wasn’t in the mood to sift through it.
I also knew that once I started posting, it would be yet another forum for me to monitor as I tend to be an active poster. I had to bite my tongue on one article I read that I felt was a bit soapbox-ish. But then I came across an article where I felt I had to post. And that opened the floodgates.
Oh and as a sidenote, I’ve never voted in one of the ballots. Being LDS, my views of Heaven and Hell are a bit different to begin with. And while I have no doubt that some(if not most) of these people will end up in Hell, it’s not my call.
I’m not one of those crazy religious nuts who thinks no one is or should go to Hell. And that hugs and prayer will fix every thing. There are people that will always choose evil, no matter what. They deserve the consequences of their actions. But I see these kind of crimes as a growing epidemic and it’s time we stopped reacting and started figuring out what we can do before it ends up with yet another person scarred or dead.
And he plays WoW … my new BFF ;)
It’s cool. I read the comments because I do like to see the differing points of view.
I too originally came here for the articles (unlike the Playboy argument it definitely aint for the pictures). I lurked for a fair while before starting to post comments at all …. but I suppose that my general attitudes are pretty well aligned with most of the authors and other posters.
There have been some replies (particularly in the thread about the Principal – another one where we have to agree to disagree) where it could seem that you were deliberately ignoring a valid point just to prolong the argument (to me this generally screwams either Troll or dipshit enabling associate of the subject of the article). But then other posts made me rethink.
In Stapler’s defence (and I seriously don’t want to sound like his chief apologist) a lot of the arguments between him and Jason in that thread kinda read like:
Stapler – Did not.
Jason – Did too.
Stapler – Did not.
Jason – Did too.
Stapler – Did not.
Jason – Did too.
With continual references back to either the exact same piece of legislation or opinion.
Once again no offence to Jason …. I agree with him on that point and think his argument is really solid but the back and forth got kinda repetitive on both sides.
Plus he was a mean old doodie head.
And yeah I like gankin n00bs on the Darkspear server. Let’s give a shout out for the Horde! :D
Hey Sam.. no need to settle for a troll as a BFF. I play WOW too – Horde/Silvermoon, Alliance/Azuremyst. LOL. Seriously, if you ever listen to global chats, there are a lot of absolute morons playing the game. I turn chat off – can’t stand the lame Chuck Norris comments.
Stapler… being an ignorant, semi-veteran poster, I have to say that I’m kind of offended. Now the WoW issue is very OT but since you took it there, I’ll feel free to continue. I play Alliance now because after two years of playing horde on a pvp server, I couldn’t take the assholish nature of 99.9 percent of them and switched to my alliance account. Fortunately only 80 percent of them are complete idiots.
But dear god, you make me want to xfer. I could gank you all day and tbag your corpse. Would you be offended?
In fact, I’m surprised you play WoW at all considering how my converted to mormonism for the love of his wifey Ex from hell keeps trying to tell the court how unholy the game is and how inappropriate it is that I’ve ever even in my wildest dreams considered playing it.
Then again, everything seems to be the devil with him.
BTW: Alliance, Spirestone Pvp
Used to be Horde as well, same server but account is off
for the above reason ;D
WOOT Alanna!
The Horde has better racials.
And Trade chat is way worse than Barrens chat these days.
And I’m pretty certain the LDS church has never taken a stance on WoW.
Oh no, she didn’t go THERE, did she? ……..Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Given the nature of the original article I feel pretty bad about having dragged the conversation into WoW territory.
But I will say (given I have guilt to absolve anyway I may as well add that last touch) – Mazzi – Silvermoon Horde eh? It IS a small world.
Mazzi, I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this one. I don’t think thatsmystapler is a troll, and I agree with many of his points on the subject of our need to revamp our current system rgarding employment opportunities for ex-cons. (I believe my post on the matter launched this particular discussion.) I don’t recall his posts on other articles, so I can’t comment on them…but I don’t think he behaves like a troll on this particular thread at all. He’s not justifiying the POS’ actions in killing his daughter–just addressing a topic that we as a society need to adress.
firstly, what an atrocity. this man is pure evil.
secondly, do you write these articles yourself or copy and paste certain paragraphs? because several times ive found the same article with at least several paragraphs ver batim in other places on the web. just so you know.
About 90% of what I write is my own words, but I admit I do borrow paragraphs now and then from the news articles I use for research. There are times where I just can’t come up with something as good as what the original writer said. I do my best to change the wording enough to keep it from being a blatant case of plagiarism, but I guess that’s kind of like cheating on a high school term paper.
almost speechless….
if you think about the time frame that passed from when he had the idea to do this to his daughter to actually doing it… sounds like about two hours. so if this isn’t pre-meditated… then please tell me WHAT THE FUCK IS? if this doesn’t deserve the death penalty, then what does?????????????
and on another note, after googling this sicko’s name, I found this article:
http://www.8bm.com/diatribes/volume01/002/021.htm
which basically states that his defense argued that he suffers from an ‘organic braindisorder’ which impairs his ability to follow the law. wonderful.
If this guy ever were to get free—God forbid—-who could ever be responsible for a piece of work like this. Organic @@@ bull. I’m surprised they didn’t use the excuse he was drunk AND retarded!
I know this kid. My sister was married to his father prior to this crime. He does not have a brain disorder. This is the defense trying to prevent the death penalty. Shawn did not have as tough a life as they are portraying. Nowhere near as tragic a life as many children have. He was not book smart, because he would not go to school, but he was manipulative. Shawn was able to distinguish between right and wrong. When he was 18 or 19 (an adult) he was charged with a crime as a minor, yes, I said as a minor, because he gave a minors name and DOB. He was able to orchestrate that…hmmm…organic brain disorder, I don’t think so. Shawn was angry at Kristen’s grandparents and that was his revenge. His defense wanted my sister to testify on his behalf at his re-sentencing. Needless to say, they did not have her appear in court. Believe me, Shawn was afforded many opportunities and took advantage of those that helped.
I feel sick… really. I’m going to pretend this isn’t real.
You and me both. Sometimes denial works best.
So…is anyone going to tell me it’s wrong that people like this should just be put down when they start showing signs of being worthless and evil?
“He killed his family’s cat, set fire to their dog, and even burned down the house they lived in. In 1988, when he was thirteen, police arrested after he fondled a young girls breasts.”
OK, so we’ve got two counts of extreme animal cruelty, plus arson and child molestation BY AGE 13. He was well-started down the path that led him to murder before he was even old enough to drive. How many people had he victimized between 1988 and now, a 21 year span?
He should have been executed a long time ago. Ohhhh, but we can’t dooooo thaaaaaat…it’s wrong! He just needs hellllllp…
And what kind of home life did he have? Maybe his actions wee cries for help because of something going on in his life. People are not born evil. Children, especially, don’t have the inclination to do criminal acts by nature.
And the story indicates there was a time when he was able to get his act together. Had he been able to keep a job would he have remained a normal law-abiding person? Or was he always just one bad day away from losing it. Based on the story, I could see it going both ways.
Plenty of people have endured a horrible upbringing and never went on to commit a single petty crime, let alone murdering their own child. This THING showed a taste for killing, a complete lack of a conscience, a tendency for criminal behavior and sexual deviancy while he himself was still a child. Reading on, it’s easy to see he never got any better as an adult. He never became a contributing member of society, he never did anything but commit crimes and victimize people in one way or another until he finally did something so bad as to warrant a death sentence, even under our current permissive bleeding-heart “justice system”. And that didn’t even stick! Now he’s sitting in jail, a guest of every law-abiding taxpayer, being fed and housed and receiving medical care for free while he waits for a new sentence. He might well keep on living on our taxes for another 50 years if he’s given a life sentence this time.
He’s never been anything but a worthless waste of flesh that should have been eliminated long ago.
And as was pointed out, all the writing was on the wall. But was he ever offered help? He showed this inclination for violence and sexual deviancy and did anyone get him therapy or anything? I ask, because I don’t know. But I see comments like this all the time about the signs were all there, and yet rarely does anyone want to step up and do anything until it is too late.
And stepping up to kill them beforehand is not an option.
So was he offered help and was beyond rehabilitation? Or was this another failure of our system where we left someone with problems out there in society waiting for them to cross that line? The story seems to indicate there was a chance of this guy going straight. It may have been a small one, but it was there. If society had stepped up, maybe he wouldn’t be in jail and maybe a girl wouldn’t be dead. I’d say the reward would have been worth the risk of trying to help.
I know it’s a year since you left these comments, stapler, but dear god, shut your sanctimonious pie-hole.
He burned his own child while she was still ALIVE. I am all for seeing both sides of any situation… Children are not born evil… and I am not God and I will not to be the one who judges this man when the time comes… but there are occasions where you should not play devils advocate. This happens to be one.
I totally agree with you if action had been taken during all the other time this POS had shown he was a danger this poor little girl would never had suffered the death she did. This story sent a shudder dome my spine despite the fact that its like 32 degrees outside ! This is one of those things that could have been prevented before it happened !
Hell even a standard death sentence is to good for this ass, he needs his own ditch with gasoline and a match. Nothing will help him, what he did is cruel and unusual and his punishment should be death anyway it can be delivered.
I agree.
Wow. This is one which leaves you asking “why?”. Anyone capable of doing this to any living being, let alone their own daughter is seriously sadistic. He needs to be set on fire, put out, beat up, set back on fire and shanked.
To death. And to hell.
All that you mentioned up there, and it still wouldn’t be enough. He needs to be skinned alive like an animal.
He needs to spend about a week with the “Devil’s Rejects”.
What is really demented about this whole thing is the fact that he got this idea and he makes it seem like the idea originated because the baby got upset and wanted to see her mother. But then you realize that by the time that he did this horrible thing, the baby was asleep and no longer upset. It broke my heart to read that he slapped her in the mouth and that this little one actually apologized to him by saying, “Sorry Daddy.” Then he does this horrible and unspeakable crime to her and she was saying…”No Daddy…No” while he was pouring gas on her. Then he watched her running around burning alive. Fucking psycho! As I was reading this, it made me sick to my stomach because I could envision this happening as I was reading it. PLEASE LET ME PULL THE SWITCH ON THIS FREAK! RIP Kristen!
If he slapped her and she said “sorry daddy” she must have suffered plenty of abuse from this “thing” (can’t call him a person or a man).
Adrea….That’s exactly what I thought also. If he slapped her and she told him that she was sorry, then this was probably something he did to her quite often. Poor little one. I agree that this slimeball isn’t a man…..hell, I don’t think he’s even human. No normal human could do something so horrific to a little child and then watch. I hope he burns eternally!
There are alot of very nice retarded people. He ain’t one of em’. Fry em.
There’s no way that retardation is an acceptable excuse for doing what he did.. It’s like I’ve said before when someone cannot be rehabilitated, they’ve done something horrific to another human being, and would likely do it again, they just need to be put down like a sick animal.. Life imprisonment is pointless in cases like this.. Punishments don’t work for people who are not capable of regret.. If anything they spend their time in prison, or on death row blaming society, and even worse the victim for all of their current “misery”..
They just need to make sure he can’t do this to anyone else.. ever..
Nothing about this man screams retarded to me.
Give him his fucking death penalty back.
Oh hiii guys, I’ve been lurking for like a month and a half now. I love this site, kudos to the people responsible for it :]
Welcome to our little corner of Hell. Admin and I are glad you dig the site.
Why?
How could this help anything? Drunk, delusional semi-retarded, semi-human being. No logic behind this , he should have been lashing out against the state, the prisons board or his parents; whatever but a helpless child is just nonsensical.
Now what to do with him, give him the easy way out the painless humanitarian way to die, we should be giving this rite every citizen who had a terminal disease, lethal injection. What needs to be done is find out what this scum wants and do the opposite, if he wants to spend life in jail, electrocute him, if he wants to die, jam him in a cell wallpapered entirely with pictures of his daughter.
He needs to suffer to the same level.
Mr.Z
I can’t imagine being able to do it after the child is begging for her life. I hope God shows NO mercy on this beings soul. death penalty please.
Just when you think you’ve read the worst story ever, this one pops up! What a dirty rotten son of a bitch! I can envision that helpless little girl burning literally alive…..hell, is not hot enough for this mother fucker!
He makes Satan look like a saint! Kill this piece of shit, but first tear him up limb by limb.
That poor baby girl, and fuck her mother for being ignorant enough to marry this worthless evil bastard!!
This one made me cry. =(
Everytime I read something like this I wonder if Aldous Huxley was right when he said “maybe this planet is another worlds Hell” I can’t come up with any explanation why this kind of horror happen s.. I read once where a philosopher said that the devil will create a personal individual for sinners and that this hell is filled with their own worst fear and horror which will be used to torture them for eternity, I certainly hope the Devil can come up with an appropriate punishment for this cretin- because nothing I can come up with can even begin to punish him as much as he deserves
Retards should be aborted or euthanized at birth.
but that means we’d be denied the pleasure of interacting with people like you. now what fun would that be?
-editor
It was bad enough that he slapped a two year old baby in the mouth (nasty bastard) but knowing what he did next, OMG!!! Burn him at the stake! Evil fucking scumbag!!
Criminal background checks should be completed on anyone before they are hired, not conducted while they’re already working next to a naive and captive population.
Why aren’t certain jobs designated as convict preferred, such as, I dunno’, bull fighting (fka rodeo clowns), medical research subjects (currently fulfilled by college students, of all people), blood donors (if they’re clean), garbage collectors, zoo custodians (not for those who hurt animals), road crews (black top layers), tar roofers, and such? They’re never, ever, allowed near women or children during work.
As for this monster, he deserves to be marched directly to the spot where his daughter perished and made to suffer the exact same fate.
But in our ever increasingly tolerant of criminal lifestyles society, that will not happen.
It is a serious indicator of the fall of our society when we hope that the criminals already in prison will do for us what we don’t have the guts to do ourselves. Not even for our children.
To quote Touché “It is a serious indicator of the fall of our society when we hope that the criminals already in prison will do for us what we don’t have the guts to do ourselves. Not even for our children.” That is truly deep, sincerely. That really got me thinking about the way we as a society handle people like Grell. Endless appeals, countless hours of manpower and resources spent on people that deserve none of it. He’s admitted what he did. He did it. He checked her out of daycare, he bought the gas can, he filled it with a little over a gallon of gas, took his sleeping daughter out to a secluded area in Mesa, took her out of her car seat, placed her in a ditch, poured the whole tank of gas onto her body then lit and threw a match on her. This man burned his 2 1/2 year old daughter alive. She was screaming ‘No, daddy, no!’ as he threw the match. She saw it coming. She felt it. I hate people like this. The great majority of people in this world would never think of doing something as cruel to any living being, much less another human being, and a child for that matter. He was a drain on society before he brutally murdered his baby daughter, and now because of his actions of despicably murdering her he has no reason to continue living. He has proven to the world that he is not worthy of living anymore. He needs to be led into an empty room, and have a .22 caliber shot through the back of his skull. This is no more inhumane than putting down a rabid dog, and is the way that Russia takes care of it’s refuse. We have to This is a great forum, by the way.
Well, now you’ve gone and done it thatsmystapler. I’ve bent over backwards giving you a forum to air your viewpoints, because I honestly believed you were sincere about the things you were saying. But my good friend Mazzi finally pushed the right buttons, and now we get the real you. Arrogant. Superior. Opinionated. (you know the old saying, when you point the finger at other people, remember that there are three more pointing back at you.). But that’s Mazzi for you. she’s been pulling stuff like that on people like you for as long as I’ve known her.
I’ve been watching your comments, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an arrogant, self-righteous jerk who looks for arguments on sites like this one in order to feel superior to all us regular folk who just aren’t as enlightened as you are. Unfortunately for you, for some reason I haven’t figured out, we draw way more than our fair share of very intelligent people, like Mazzi, Jason, Glory Bug, Jessica (to name just a few), who are more than capable of handling people who I’ve dubbed “pseudo-intellectual bullshit artists”.
I don’t like people like you. You think you’re better than all of us, and that you’re going to educate us with your vastly superior view points. You argue the same point over and over just because you enjoy the sound of your own voice. I bet you go back every day and reread each thread and tell yourself, “Boy, I sure told them.” Your words say one thing, and that can fool some people into thinking you’re a true believer, but sooner or later your actions show how much of a hypocrite you really are.
Like alot of people, you look at what we do on this site and feel it’s your duty to inform us of the error of our ways. You call this yellow journalism? I don’t believe you’d think so if you saw how many times I had to stop writing to collect myself. But that’s me, I’m stupid like that, allowing myself to feel for some little kid I don’t even know. There’s alot more going on here than just publishing stories about the evil men do just for the shock value.
We care about victims of violent crimes and their families, and we want others to know about who they were and what they had to endure, so they won’t be forgotten. We want the people that committed those violent crimes to receive the justice they deserve. That’s what this site is about.
When I write a story, or fact-check on of my writer’s articles, I make sure I know the subject matter – I read everything I can find, I search archives, I do my own background checks of criminal and court records. I’ve even called reporters and spoke to them about certain cases, if I have any doubts. When I say I think someone’s guilty, it’s not a half-cocked opinion, it’s an informed decision based on fact. I’ve dropped stories because I found out things about the perp that the media didn’t have that made me feel the accused had mental problems, or there were other mitigating circumstances. So we don’t think EVERYONE who gets arrested is guilty, but I’m fairly confident that everyone who appears on this website is, and there are no legitimate excuses for the things they’ve done.
Personally it’s taken me a long time to become comfortable with my principles, and I try to be guided two simple ideas. The first is to treat everyone the way I want to be treated, and the second is to always be rigorously honest. While I believe I’m a miserable failure at this most of the time, I am sure I do the best I can with what I have to work with. A lot of times that means wanting the best for people who my emotions tell me don’t deserve it, but it keeps me from rushing to judgment the way you accuse the people on this site of doing. Most of our commenters seem to come to the same conclusions I do, so I’m pretty comfortable in saying their hearts are in the right place too.
As for death threats, I know a couple of people who like to talk trough, but I’ve never known any regular commenter to ever make a serious death threat against anyone. On the other hand, I’ve been threaten at least three time myself.
The point is, I’m damn proud of this website and ALL the people who comment here (except for the occasional racist, homophobe or anti-Semite that pops up every now and again), and I resent people who criticize and insult us for having little patience with hard core criminals and the people who defend them. As I’ve said before, if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
Thank you Max. The big problem is that, like you and other thoughtful people, I really do want to hear other opinions and takes that I might not have thought about. Staplerboy sometimes starts out OK… I think “hmmmmm… maybe I didn’t think about that”, but then he seems to slip into the troll persona as soon as anyone disagrees.
And that’s the trouble – there is no give and take to people like that. If you shoot down their argument, they twist words to make it sound like they were saying something different than what they were. They don’t count on people going back and rereading what they said 3 or 5 posts up. And, that’s how you catch them. Because if a person is seriously discussing something, they give specific examples and rationales. And when new facts or ideas come along, they say “oh – hey, I didn’t think of that”. When someone like Staples the Troll comes along, there is a different MO. They tell their personal gut FEELINGS, and expect others to be impressed by it. That’s cool too, but only when you say “hey, my feeling is…….” But when you call him on it, all he does is resort to name-calling.
Anyway, I will no longer respond to this troll. I’m still reading his drivel, but only to laugh at how transparent and hypocritical he is. He should go back to playing with comic books – that’s more his style, I think.
I’m assuming this came from the Yellow Journalism comment. And that is what this site is. It’s sensationalistic. Now I never said that was bad. But let’s call a spade a spade. And I don’t buy into the “we are here for the victims of violent crime”. If that is your goal, you are failing miserably. How is voting on if the criminal is going to hell or not and then commenting on various ways they should die helping the victims? You quote Charles Manson and have a photo of a crazy guy with a knife. These stories are about the criminals, not the victims. You are lying to yourself if you think otherwise.
And there is almost always more victims. What about the families of the criminals? I’ve seen them ridiculed on here on more than one occasion. More times than not, they are victims too. Yet they often get overlooked. No kid can control if their mom or dad is some psychopath.
Based on your(an others) comments, you all think you are actually doing good here. That is like saying a movie about Ted Bundy is doing good. How about making a site that truly focuses on the victims of violent crime and what they have done to overcome the trauma? One with support groups for other victims. What support is offered here? This is nothing more than a place for people to pretend to be better than others because they aren’t child rapers themselves. More and more it looks like a circle jerk. And the fact that you delude yourself into thinking that you are doing something good is laughable.
This site is entertainment value only. And I am entertained. But this site is far from being the benevolent force of good you claim to want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Frank Luther Mott (1941) defines yellow journalism in terms of five characteristics:[1]
1. scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
2. lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
3. use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
4. emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips (which is now normal in the U.S.)
5. dramatic sympathy with the “underdog” against the system.
1. Quoting wikipedia is full of lulz.
2. Yellow Journalism existed long before the definition given there by Mr. Mott. When it first came about after the Civil War, one of the first characteristics of it was the sensationalizing of murders and stuff on the front page in order to sell papers.
3. Congrats on managing to make a post without any insults. Bravo.
1. Citing a source that just so happens to have also been cited in Wikipedia is full of win.
2. The definition for yellow journalism occurred immediately before and during the Spanish American War after a Popular Comic at the time called the Yellow Kid–a Chinese caricature, version of “Simpleton” who used “chingrish” to show how even someone simple could understand why things were the way the publishers of the comic felt they should be. You’re probably referring to the resurrection of “Poor Richard” editorials from the Civil War era, but they are not in fact considered Yellow Journalism–note you won’t find Poor Richard Editorials in wikipedia, but you will find them in a course on American History .
3. Just because I think you don’t research any of your opinions or ideas doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid… at least not anymore. What I know it means is that you’re ignorant and don’t read very well.
3.1 Was that better?
I guess you know more than my history book then.
And while we are on the subject, the Yellow Kid was post-Civil War.
I’m also going to offer a quote from the Wikipedia article you were quoting:
“Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, SENSATIONALISM, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists.”
Sensationalism in the media as defined by Wikipedia:
“The term is commonly used in reference to the mass media. Critics of media bias of all political stripes often charge the media with engaging in sensationalism in their reporting and conduct. That is, the notion that media outlets often choose to report heavily on stories with shock value or attention-grabbing names or events, rather than reporting on more pressing issues to the general public.”
I think we can all agree on the shock value of these stories.
And while many things can be Yellow Journalism, one of the key things was the pre-dominance of crime stories. Since that is ALL this site deals in, and the nastier the crime the better the chance it will be written about here, it meets the criteria for Yellow Journalism. While non-factual things can make up Yellow Journalism, so can factual things that choose to focus on more intense subject matter in order to draw in readers.
Perhaps, is my name in the back? (cheap shot, I know)
Look it up, or better yet read about Pulitzer and Hearst’s papered road to the Spanish American war. If your history book tries to conflate the rags of the Civil War with the New Journalism of the 1880′s to 1910, then you’re missing the point and a fair amount of history. The goal of the Civil War paper was to factually state the intent of the paper through the cited quotes of their honorable columnists and the people they interviewed and sometimes paid for interviews. The most dangerous thing to a paper was the dreaded retraction forced on them by men who would say “I did not say that.”
Hearst and Pullitzer, best drawn in Ayn Rand’s character Gail Wynnard from the Fountainhead were different. Decent historians suggest that Rand, who was famous for her purposeful research, probably was one of his(Hearst’s) best Biographers by making a fictional icon of him. The point was the newspaper men no longer had to kow-tow to the demands of the honest man, because they were so wealthy and powerful from their bully-pulpit with hundreds of thousands of readers, that they could say whatever they wanted to say, and facts be damned. Their blue pen on the fashionable yellow journalism of the day let them say what they felt would enrage the common man and bend him to their viewpoint.
(note none of this is from Wikipedia, it doesn’t have to be, I had to study the Fountainhead decades ago, compare and contrast it to Hearst and loved the book, so I remember things like this, just like I remember these lovely details like stats, the law and a host of other important things you just seem to forget about. I did the same with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Moby Dick, Red Badge of Courage and a host of other novels where I had to deconstruct the historical perspective the author chose to place the world in. Journalism was something I was fascinated by, so journalism was something I loved. Facts are facts, yellow journalism was considered “new” for its time and an important facet of the evolution of reporting that has left an indelible stamp on the world. Douchey or not, I’m right, you’re wrong and you just don’t get it. All you would have to do is stop 5 minutes before you hit submit, and fact check your damn statements before you rattled them off as the truth. Get the egg off your damn face and research before you speak, or at the very least, start reading something that will give you a firm foundation in what you’re trying to talk about.)
The age of the modern fact checker came at the death of Hearst. The war between Fox news and CNN has been likened to the epic struggle between Hearst and Pulitzer for the soul of modern journalism.
I think you make too many assumptions about what you know and what you should investigate. 20 minutes of research can prove to you that everything I’ve said here is factual. Better yet, 20 minutes on the phone with anyone you know who is a journalist and went to a journalism program in college would tell you I wasn’t only right, but that you were mistaken.
And while we are on the subject, the Yellow Kid was post-Civil War.
Uh…. yeah, immediately before and during the Spanish American war would kinda say that… oh wait, I specifically said that. I said you were probably thinking of the resurrection of the “Poor Richard Editorials.” You know, Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to the editorial fire-branding of modern journalism that was resurrected by both North and South to re-brand the enemy’s wants and desires in a “simple” format, without having to resort to fact?
(was that too subtle for you?)
It’s like I’ve done this before…. turned on the light to reveal the weakness inherent in an absent minded pseudo-intellectual who thinks they know better than anyone else and that they have all of the facts without actually citing them?
Where have I seen this before?
3.2 Yes the insults are going to get much worse when you flub something that obviously was a reading comprehension error.
And yet you ignored the rest of the post regarding Yellow Journalism.
All I said was that it came post-Civil War. Not as a result of the war. I remembered studying it(all-be-it briefly) in my American History class last year. The sensational aspect of it stood out to me and I think of it when I read stories like the ones posted here.
All you have done is essentially agree that it was after the Civil War. On this we were both right, although you used more words to say so. And then somehow you tried to turn it into me being ignorant, wrong, etc.
When you can prove that what I said “When it first came about after the Civil War…”(direct quote from me) is wrong and somehow it wasn’t after the Civil War. Or prove that it did not encompass stories such as the ones on this site, then you can say I am wrong on the issue. Since you aren’t going to be able to prove either, I’m not.
Dude, I gave you the definition and you just don’t get it. This site posts facts. Yellow journalism “distorts facts”.
A broad range of journalism can sensationalize or exaggerate, but it’s not in the absolute definition of Yellow Journalism as displayed by the esteemed Frank Luther Mott. He defined journalism and made it a science. This is the father of the term Photojournalism, the great classifier and definer of the science. He’s the Neils Bohr of Journalism. His definition trumps us mere mortals. Again, look him up and figure out why I chose him and why the writer of the wiki article felt his definition was so critical.
Special note, the Civil War ended in 1865. The Reconstruction era lasted from 1865 to 1877(To the Inauguration rather).
In Historical parlance, after the civil war is only reasonable up to and including the next era. The more general term of “anything after” is fine, as long as you don’t know how to be specific and didn’t make a comment like “I guess you know more than my history book then.”
You were wrong, you just couldn’t face it.
The word you’re looking for to describe this site, that you just can’t reach for, isn’t yellow, nor is it sensationalism which has to be atypical in approach, and the hatred of child molesters and murderers isn’t atypical, it’s actually typical, is close to you but not quite there. The cutting word you want is “Shock Site.” It’s not accurate, but if you wanted a word that described the type of content that met your criteria, you’d say that the technique was focused on a shock factor to evoke a common response.
Admittedly this is no Goatse or 4Chan site, but if you were looking for an insulting term meant to cut into a site and cut down on their “reportage,” there’s the term.
Yellow Journalism isn’t here. It’s why all I had to do was post the definition of the authority on yellow journalism to prove you wrong. The commentary that followed was simply to demonstrate for the audience how little you knew and let everyone else see it.
He defined Yellow Journalism 50 or so years after it was already in existence. Not only that, his definition doesn’t include things were considered to be Yellow Journalism at the time.
And sensationalism doesn’t need to be atypical, shocking is the key component of it. See the definition I offered above. And since you said this could be defined as a shock site, it is indeed sensational. And as such, it is Yellow Journalism. It is the transitive property of journalism.(and that is a joke before you come back with some story of how Pythagoras’ ghost spoke to Mott or something)
If you read/posted the entire article on Yellow Journalism, you would see that these types of stories were one component. The title of this site even meets the definition as defined by your beloved Mott.
Transitive property fail.
If A =B and B = C then A=C
or, if A >B and B > C then A> C
You’re attempting to say if A includes some of B and B includes some of C then A includes some of A.
It doesn’t take Pythagoras to beat you down, it only takes you.
“By extension the term is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion, such as systematic political bias.”
Bah, then A includes some of C.
Shock media site = sensationalism = Yellow Journalism
And we have now been reduced to arguing something I said as a JOKE.
Guys, this isn’t a religious forum, last I checked. Can we keep the religious chatter to a minimum or am I asking too much? I’m pentecostal, and have I mentioned it until now? I don’t believe I have used religion in any of my arguments, except when I mentioned something on the Levi Johnston post and maybe one other time. However, the majority of MY comments have been either facetious or pertinant to the article. My eyes water from reading the argument on whose God is whose. But se la vie, you guys are gonna argue about something. I am just respectfully requesting that it be applicable to the article. Thanks all for your consideration.
There you go again, betraying your distaste for the rest of us. Of course, I must have changed my opinion of you because your backhanded insult to me and this website. There’s no way someone as simple minded as me could actually be capable of coming to the conclusions I stated in my comment by straight logic. As if that somehow invalidates everything I had to say in one fell swoop. It’s a brilliant way of not having to deal with someone who might just have your number, I’ll give you that.
Too bad you’re completely wrong about my motivations. While the yellow journalism crack did bother me, it was your insults directed at all the other folks who comment here and the fact the your latest series of comments confirmed that alot of the things I suspected about you were true that really inspired me to finally speak up.
Your inability to consider anyone else’s opinion but your as a truly valid argument, and your thinly veiled contempt for anyone who disagrees with you are starting to grate on everyone’s nerves, but I’m betting you either don’t care or don’t believe it’s true.
I think that is his motivation, Max. I really think that he has some sick need for negative attention and will do whatever he can to get it. Why else would he keep coming back for more?
Seriously, if you stumbled into a board that was diametrically opposed to your beliefs, where the people were intelligent and articulate and pretty firmly seated in their beliefs, would you throw yourself out there to be ridiculed by them? I sure as fuck wouldn’t. I would move along to something that was more aligned with my own ideas. Oh, I might try once or twice to contribute the opposing view, but if the other posters were not interested in my take, I sure as hell would take the board off my bookmarks.
This guy seems to be into some kind of self-flagellation trip. I thought that was reserved for Catholics.
That’s it in a nurtshell Maz – at least with some folks, we’ve been able to come to an understanding to agree to disagree. I don’t think that’s possible with this guy. Our only “hope” is to agree to think like he does. Too bad. I like smart people with unusual viewpoints, because I can learn a lot from them if I keep an open mind. I’m disappointed that things have come to this with thatsmystapler, but such is life I guess.
No one has to agree with me. I could care less. However, I will respond to attacks for what I post. Otherwise believe and think how you want, no matter how wrong or right it may be.
Maybe I am “nurts” for thinking like that.
Making fun of me for hitting two keys by mistake? I expected better from a person of your “brilliance”.
It was a little friendly ribbing, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’ve made plenty of type-os myself.
Mazzi, I feel insulted that you would categorize stapler with the catholic religion. I may not be a good catholic because I totally agree with your viewpoints and am on the same wavelength as the majorities opinions on here -and as catholics are to turn the other check (lol Im to outraged in these cases)- but, this individual is very argumentative and judgmental to be catholic. Although I can understand but not respect the fact that he has alternative opinions about life as you stated, he doesn’t seem to want to even accept the majorities opinions. He has started several arguments and I choose argument rather then debates with several individuals, I tried having a polite conversation with him until he insulted my parenting skills in turn as I take it, an insult to me being a parent and care nothing to have any discussion with him further !
I truly apologize, Jessica. I have many Catholics in my family and I have absolutely nothing but respect for their beliefs (though I don’t necessarily believe the same as they do, LOL).
My comment was about the self-flagellation. My understanding is that extremely devout Catholics occasionally practice this strange form of atonement, but I am no expert.
Anyway, I retract my comment. Besides this troll is LDS. He told us to go look him up, when he first started his shenanigans on another thread. He should stick to playing with comic books, which seems to be his area of expertise.
I don’t think logic is very prevalent in the comments. So no that isn’t going to be my goto line of thinking when it pertains to many here. And that includes you.
If you had the ability to step back and view things unbiasedly you would see that Mazza was tossing around insults here first. All of a sudden because I didn’t agree with her point of view, I was a troll and she went off on a rant about it and that is what opened this can of worms. If you read before that, even though you and I differed on opinions, I said your opinion was fair and agreed with you on many points. So how can you say that I don’t consider other’s opinions?
And I couldn’t help but notice you ignored the rest of my post regarding the site and your intended goal for it. I hope that means at least you are thinking about what I said. Because if that is your goal, it is an admirable one, but that means the site has to do some changes.
Yes, Max. I’m starting to see your point. I’m not sure whether it is more irritating to respond to the families of the criminals who scream, “But he is such a good man!” or thatsmystapler crying “Love the poor, broken perpetrator as you do the victim!”
Yeah because I’ve said that. ::rolls eyes::
I’ve never supported the criminals nor their acts. How many times does that need to be stated?
You can’t win with a pompous self-righteous troll TBS. He will never admit that he could possibly be wrong, because he is smarter than all of us combined. That is why he has the right to insult us all in one fell swoop.
Someday he will grow up. He will understand the danger that people like him have caused for all the rest of us. Hopefully it will not take himself or a loved one becoming a random victim of one of these human entrails for him to learn.
This particular troll is young. And as the old saying goes: A man will be a liberal at 20 if he has a heart, he will be a conservative at 30 if he has a brain. But I am not sure that will curb his enthusiasm at being a troll. He will simply go to liberal sites and spew conservative troll-bait at them.
lol Let’s see here. I’ve been called a pedophile, naive, a troll, a conservative, and a liberal amongst other things Pretty funny.
And what makes you think that I haven’t encountered personal violent tragedy in my life? You might be surprised.
And how young do you think I am exactly?
32, but you are obviously a slow learner.
lol If 32 is young to you, bless you.
And I am having a hearty laugh at the fact that you DID research me. That is awesome.
“pseudo-intellectual bullshit artists”. HAHAHA
I’m SO going to use that one!!!
*laugh* You like that one Ada? I’m pretty proud of it myself – LOL.
p.s. EXCELLENT retort Max
he doesn’t deserve the death penalty… easy way out and looking at his backgrounds i bet that’s what he wanted. he deserves to be burn alive inside his cell while being stapled to his bed by rusty staples in the nuts, after having his eyes ripped off by heated pliers for watching his own blood suffer. death is too easy for him. he needs to suffer for the rest of his life.
This guy is sick. SICK SICK SICK! As are the six IDIOTS who voted no. Stapler, didja click the mouse six times, you troll!?
As mentioned before, I don’t vote on these. And I think this guy deserves some dire consequences. Only thing I said is there were signs pointing to that this tragedy could have possible been averted.
Honestly, I don’t think that baby Kristen cared one way or the other whether her Daddy had a job, was in prison, or was getting kicked out of the house. He took the one person in the world who wasn’t judging him and just loved him for who he was and burned her alive. Kristen didn’t care while she was burning whether her Daddy should have given other chances to prove himself or what the state should do to rehabilitate people like him. His actions caused a little girl a considerable amount of pain and for that he should the worst consequences as possible.
Any reason for keeping this POS alive evaporated when he burned his daughter to death. You don’t just suddenly wake up from a nap and find yourself out in the desert with a two year old and several gallons of gasoline. He thought about it. There is no further logical premise to keeping him alive, other than to make yourself “feel better”, more “noble” and “moral” because you’re too friggin chicken to shoot him in the head yourself or let the kid’s family do it.
And for the people who think children are not “born bad,” you are WRONG. Any experience with breeding animals will teach you that some are born vicious. Some are born stupid. Some are born to be put down before they reach maturity, for the same reason that Shawn should have been locked in a cage at adolescence and never let out again. Out of a litter of puppies, I’ve had eight great pedigreed family dogs and one hell of a mean indescriminate biter that I had to kill when it not only started attacking it’s litter mates but when it started charging members of our family – at three months old. And don’t hand me that garbage that people are so different from animals. If you want to believe that happy-pappy bullshit, feel free; just don’t hoist your ignorant live-and-let-live tripe on society where we can all suffer for your fairy-tale stupidity.
People are not born evil. Have you ever seen an evil baby? Every single one of us that came to Earth did so as innocent people. We are shaped by our environment, those around us, and the things we experience. And when all is said and done, we make our own choices based on that.
And EVERYONE has a chance at changing. You can’t believe in Christ and the Atonement without believing in that. Now part of repentance is paying the consequences for your crime/sin. Even if that includes death as deemed by the courts. But Christ died for all our sins. And no where did it say that certain people were excluded. Everyone has the potential for good and evil in them. It’s just a matter of which they choose to do.
That’s a nice, rosy, Sesame-Street picture you’ve got going there. I’ve not only raised five kids, I’ve baby-sat many more, and substitute taught even more than that. I’m not saying that in every classroom there’s a little Charles Manson. But if you think there are no “little Charles Mansons” born, that children are a “tabula rasa” that can all be molded into “nice people” who “function well in society” directly due to a little “good parenting,” then I can say is you are the most naive individual I’ve met here. Obviously, you’ve never met a real first-class, ball-busting, mean, sneaky, cruel, violent little bastard before. They’re few and far between, buddy, but I can tell you for a fact they’re BORN not MADE.
And how do you explain that the U.S. has more crime than any other country? Society breeds the criminals. Figuratively, not literally. We are as much to blame for these criminals as the criminals themselves. However, they are not born that way. Your fact is wrong.
And even the meanest person has the opportunity to change if they want it.
It’s not naivete, it is faith in God, his plan, Free Agency, and the Atonement. And that will trump a stranger’s opinions on an internet forum any day.
“We are as much to blame for these criminals as the criminals themselves….” Oh, Jesus. If you’re not a liberal social worker, a priest or a university professor, you really missed your calling.
More crime than any other country? We have the largest reported crime in raw numbers, but our per capita number puts us 8th. The UK, which has one of the most advanced mental health support infrastructures on the planet is 6th.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
We’re number 24 in Murder, Russia is 5th, Columbia is First.
For total Reported Crime, Iceland has the highest rate, and they also have one of the highest counseling rates.
Lies, damn lies and statistics, but you can’t believe the hype….
China refuses to participate in these numbers… They have the highest estimated crime rate/volume in the history of human kind.
As to
And even the meanest person has the opportunity to change if they want it.
That’s the important step. They have to want it. They have to want to take the hard path.
It’s not naivete, it is faith in God, his plan, Free Agency, and the Atonement. And that will trump a stranger’s opinions on an internet forum any day.
Facts trump your naiveté. God clearly wants us to get our ass out of a ditch, even on the sabbath. The key is to stop praying and help out yourself. If you know any useful computer skill you can help out by teaching a class in that skill to someone who just spent 30 years in jail for murder and needs basic computer literacy to survive in a world that’s chosen to let them out of jail long enough to hoe a few rows. To this murderer, who set his own child on fire in a ditch, he gets his chance from now until the needle goes into his arm to figure out God’s plan for the rest of his life.
As it stands, I don’t want to give him a chance to kill someone I love, and I’d be remiss to do the same. That’s actually keeping Christ’s most holy commandment better than you might ever be able to comprehend. I do not want my neighbors to die at this man’s hands. I didn’t want his daughter to die the way she did. I want him to die so others will not have to die.
Shake the dust off your clothes on this one.
1. My name isn’t Jesus.
2. I’m way more Conservative than Liberal.
3. I do have the priesthood, but probably not in the manner you meant.lol
4. Being a university professor would be pretty cool.
“Oh, Jesus. If you’re not a liberal social worker, a priest or a university professor, you really missed your calling.”
lmao! Brilliant Bosses Secretary, just brilliant! That’s what I call an insult.
Jason- You miss the point yet again. I’m not saying there is hope for redemption for him at this point. That is between him and God. I think we, as a society, now have to act in the best interests of the majority, even if that means putting him to death.
The point I’ve consistently tried to make is there are indications that this tragedy could have been avoided if society did think differently on things. That if someone had given him a chance at work and redemption, before murder occurred, that maybe he might have changed his life around. There comes a point when it is too late. It wasn’t that point yet when jobs kept turning him away for his record.
That is very true.
I was agreeing with…”it is faith in God, his plan, Free Agency, and the Atonement. And that will trump a stranger’s opinions on an internet forum any day.”
People only change if they want to. And he had chances. Like others have said, if you screw up, you work your way back up the ladder. If that means working at McDonald’s, or convincing someone (with much effort I’d presume) that you aren’t a waste of space because of a felony conviction, then so be it.
Mr. Grell was frustrated. Other people have been frustrated before without setting small children on fire.
I’ve become frustrated with my daughter on many many occasion. What I do is walk out of the room, walk out of the house, call my husband to deal with her for a few, etc. What I don’t do is pour gasoline on her while she is sleeping and watch her burn.
Now I did not have an ideal childhood, you could say that what I had was FAR from it. And I have struggled with my temper and what’s appropriate. I do not beat my child. Again, I am assuming there are many others out there like me. I do not, however have felony convictions, but as others have stated, work CAN be found, even if it is few and far in between. And again, I would like to say that still, I have not set any children on fire.
I do not believe in Christ. I do not believe in Atonement. What I do believe is that everyone brought up within society has an understanding of what right and wrong behavior is within that society. Mr. Grell knew he was wrong. He knew that setting a baby on fire would kill her, and even worse, he did NOT do it in a moment of passion. A moment of passion would have been… oh, say choking her to death at the time where he slapped her in the face. He went and ACQUIRED a gas can, gasoline and watched her burn. AT any moment before her death, he could have tried to stop what was going on. He did not.
And oh yes, unless it’s court ordered, you have to SEEK counseling. It can be done. In fact, many places offer mental health services on a sliding scale (i.e. cheap or free when you’re flat broke). You have to desire and actively WANT change for change to occur. It does not seem like this asshole, nor any of the other assholes like him on this site made ACTIVE effort to change their ways before becoming scum of the earth. Maybe with the help of God or some other deity they can be rehabilitated after death. But at the point where they have descended, they are pretty much beyond redemption in this life time.
And that is one of our problems. We expect people with mental issues to have the foresight to seek help for it themselves. Do we not see the problem with that line of thinking?
YOU are going to seek it for them? Prior to their psychotic breakdown? Mandatory and pre-emptive psychological “therapy” is the province of totalitarianism.
If we order it in response to crimes that have already been committed, then it is merely part of the corrections process.
James…..
No, I don’t really see the problem with that. Even if you ask your god to assist you in changing you are SEEKING that help. Is that not a part of most forms of christianity? Praying to god for help?
Can you not see that by the act of praying, one is asking for divine ASSISTANCE?
Life isn’t perfect. No one helped me when I was struggling with my issues, no one pointed the way. I had to take responsibility for myself, as do we all at some point. Blaming society because this asshole didn’t receive a hand up at the appropriate time that he didn’t ask for is presumptuous, and rather foolhardy.
You just compared repentance to mental issues. They are very different things. A sane person, that believes in such things, will know they have the option of seeking help from OUR god. That is not the same as a mentally-unstable person knowing they should see out psychiatric help.
And whatever you may have overcome in your life, do you have mental issues?
correction: YOUR god.
And I have taken antidepressants, anti anxiety meds… AND had counseling to deal with whatever issues I have in my head.
The funny part of that is the point of what I’m trying to make to you: NOTHING PROVIDES CHANGE EXCEPT FOR THE PERSON DESIRING TO CHANGE THEMSELVES. I could take all the drugs in the world that the doctors have prescribed trying to make my world HALF as rosy as yours, but until I find that little silver lining, I’ll be looking at the world through tar colored lenses… and I’m truly sad that you can’t see that people only change if they want change.
BTW: I Still don’t hit my child, or set her on fire.
I guess I’m somehow one of the few formerly abused who doesn’t? According to what *seems* to be your viewpoint anyway.
Also having read some of your above comments, I have to say that I do not really consider myself a GOOD person, but I’m a person who can honestly say that I’ve never even in my wildest dreams imagined doing half the shit the crazies here have done, some of which they did in the name of YOUR god. Just saying.
No I had it right the first time, OUR God. Whether you choose to acknowledge him or not, he still remains as your God as well.
And I know from experience with my own family that some things are beyond changing until you get on the proper medication. Then once things are normalized, it is much easier to be conscious of the decisions you are making and to make the correct ones.
Stapler:
I could choose to worship the FSM and I’m sure it would feel a little uncomfortable to you if I referred to him as “our god”. Please don’t categorize me as a member of a group that belongs to an invisible, faith based deity.
I have my reasons for this, both logical and otherwise.
Have you researched all teh brain drugs? Did you know that most doctors will prescribe (and not just for mood altering medications) a drug, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, prescribe another? Common sense, right? Process of elimination. Well when they do that, eventually there is one that seems to work. Problem solved! The problem with that is that from what I’ve read, during the time you’ve tried drugs A-F, your body has healed itself of the problem!!!!
I’m not saying that there aren’t people out there with some sort of chemical imbalance, like your family, but I will go ahead and say that the magic pill doesn’t happen for everybody. And secondly, the fact that they went to the doctor in the FIRST PLACE is admitting that something is wrong and they needed change. Looking for help, in other words. Unlike Mr. Grell who basically acted like a large, violent toddler throwing his favorite toy against the wall and breaking it because life wasn’t going the way he wanted.
But unlike a toy, there is no glue in the world that can put that little girl back together from what he did. And he knew that when he set her on fire and watched her burn. If he was capable of performing such an atrocious act on his loved one, do you really think a little more counseling (I’m sure he has had some) after killing the family dog would have changed that? Or was the potential for extreme antisocial behavior already there, waiting for the right moment to ignite?
You can worship how you please and categorize me how you please, that doesn’t change reality. While you may not believe in God(for whatever reasons), he believes in you.
And in my example, they didn’t go on their own. It took family to get them to go. We all knew something wasn’t right. And there was a complete change after the fact. I was even a little put off by it at first, because to me, it wasn’t them. I was so used to how they were before that I thought the medication had changed who they were. Now, several years later, I am grateful for the changes and things have been much more peaceful.
While I do think docs tend to give pills out a little too readily, I also know there are times when they really do work.
In regards to my comment -> June 30, 2009 at 8:25 am
that comment should be posted right here. Sorry for the confusion.
And the irony of the comment made me laugh given that the name of the site is “People You’ll See In HELL”.
No Irony, stapler. I believe the intended purpose of this site was to shock the public with the descriptions of heinous crimes and the idiots who commit them. Hell is not necessarily a religious term. So therefore your “irony” is not there. Reading your drivel is “hell” on my brain.
You can’t really be trying to say that the Hell in the name doesn’t refer to the storied place of flames where the devil lives.
It uses Hell as a place.(ie should so-and-so go to Hell?)
It asks about evil people or perceived evil people and asks if they should go to Hell. Good people don’t go to Biblical Hell, only bad people do.
All the signs are there that the site was referring to Biblical Hell. Whether in satire or not, that was the reference. And the place IS a religious one, and thus your comment remains ironic.
And as for intentions, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. :)
Now since you can’t respect my beliefs, should I respect yours? In my reality, things are quite different when you consider it from the perspective that you are using a illogical idea as a crutch to see you through life.
I don’t go around patting Christians and LDS (*shudder*) on the head saying “there there”, and suggesting a good psychiatrist to get them through. Why? Because it’s ill-mannered and disrespectful.
I find it to be very much the same when people shove Watchtower pamphlets into my hands, and very much the same when some asshole shoves a copy of The Book of Mormon at me. AND when you pompously post about how your god somehow believes in me.
Now let’s talk about tolerance. I married a Christian man. Could you marry an Atheist woman?
Obviously not, because you seem to think, as per your posts, that people who believe things differently than you do are somehow mentally impaired.
I wonder how long your bleeding heart would last if it was your child this man set on fire? Or if it was your mother killed by the Piece of Shit with 20 DUIs? I guess that’s the main point I’ll make here that I’ve made before. THIS COULD BE YOU!
Not everyone ACCEPTS HELP. You need to accept that as well. I personally have tried to assist people (foreign concept, I know, since I am not a “believer” with religion to tell me how to be a good person), giving them food, clothes, filling out paperwork for them etc. Do you know the only thing that has gotten me, in all the people I’ve tried to help? A single success? Nope. Fuck all. Absolutely nothing. A waste of time. And that’s the problem.
Mr. Grell didn’t want assistance. He wanted things to automatically be perfect after everything that he had done. But that isn’t reality. Same thing with the credit report example. NO, the companies do NOT want to extend credit if your credit is screwed. You have to bide your time, work hard, do what you can and wait until you are considered trustworthy.
And by the way, I believe that I read above you wished someone good luck in providing for a family on minimum wage.
ACTUALLY I am here to tell you as well that although money would be tight, having lived in California, illegal immigrant capital of the world, I can say that I’ve seen it done.
People have successfully lived in garages while sending their kids to school without setting the kiddo’s aflame. Do you think that these individuals are any less stressed? Being illegal, could be deported any time, working minimum wage and living in a garage somewhere?
I do respect your right to believe how you want. It doesn’t mean that I will respect them as being accurate. And you seem to be missing that I don’t NEED you to respect my beliefs. Whether you do or not, doesn’t change my beliefs. It doesn’t change reality. My beliefs are based on me and what I’ve experienced. They aren’t affected by what others say or believe.
And no I couldn’t marry an Athiest woman. I have dated them. But I couldn’t marry one since there are things I want to do that I could not with someone that was not of my faith.
And I’m not as bleeding heart as you think. I believe strongly in punishment or reward for one’s actions. I also think that once you have served your time/repentance, you get another shot. As for what I would or wouldn’t do if something happened to someone I loved, you don’t know my life and family life. I have experienced things that I would almost guarantee that no one else posting has. And knowing them would probably give a little more insight into why I believe what I do. I’ve experienced tragedies from many different perspectives and I see the bigger picture a little more clearly as a result. And I’ve forgiven people for some pretty heinous stuff. And I’m working through trying to forgive the rest.
And you can’t say that Grell didn’t want help. There isn’t anything in the story to draw that kind of conclusion. The story indicates he was trying. And that is more than can be said for many ex-cons. Would him having a job have prevented him from ever committing a crime again? Hard to say, he obviously had it in him. But are there indicators that he may have changed? Certainly.
And you aren’t providing for a family with one minimum wage income without some sort of assistance. What you forget to mention is that most immigrant families(illegal or otherwise) live more than one family to a dwelling. They have multiple members out working.
You might not need me to respect your beliefs on the surface, because I am just one person. But what if there were a lot more of me? Say, a nation of people who thought what you believed in your sincerest heart to be a great load of dangerous hogwash and persecuted you for it?
This nation is SUPPOSEDLY based on religious tolerance. And tolerance means to some degree to live and let live. Which is to say, I don’t give a rats ass if you think your god believes in me, because I THINK that if there WAS a god, he would be nothing like the shit the religious fruits and nuts spit out when they slice their children to shreds in gas station bathrooms, drown them in trailer parks because they aren’t good enough, etc. Yes, I have mentally noted all the stories where “god was talking to me”. Why? It amuses me to throw this shit back at people like you when you start spouting off about god. Because according to them, I’m the bad person, whereas the baby rapists and murderers are just somehow misguided or not up on their weekly prayers. THEY CAN BE REDEEMED.
IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT MADE THEM DO IT.
So you wouldn’t marry an Athiest. But what you are saying, essentially, is that they are good enough to fuck. Is that not some sort of hypocrisy? I’m just curious, because unless I’m fully mistaken, isn’t that against your religion?
Maybe you should spend some more time pondering your actions and the intolerance that resides in your heart before you come onto a public forum and start spouting off nonsense to anyone who will pay attention to you.
I’m too old and too tired to continue dealing with people who have their heads shoved so far up their own asses they can’t see the light of day.
Um The Mormon religion DID go through exactly that. Google “Haun’s Mill Massacre”. Governor Boggs of Missouri made it legal to kill Mormons. Why exactly do you think they fled west to Utah? It was to escape the persecution. Not one of out country’s brighter spots and tends to get buried away much like the treatment of the Indians and Japanese internment camps.
And while I personally did not endure that, I have taken flack for the whole Prop-8 thing. I do support it. And have done so in situations where I clearly was the minority. I will always stand up for what I believe in, it is one of my better traits if I say so myself.
And I don’t think you understand the crazies don’t represent God or religion or the truth, regardless of what they say. God is all about loving your fellow human. He allows the things to transpire here because to do otherwise would interfere with Free Agency. But ideally, there would be no killing. Everyone would love everyone as the brothers and sisters we all really are.
And I said I’ve DATED Athiest girls. That is not synonymous with sex. Again, people jump to conclusions. I value my beliefs. And while I am not perfect, I try not to be a hypocrit and follow those beliefs. Since moving to Utah, I don’t date non-members anymore as I am ready for marriage and know I will only marry someone of my faith. So dating anyone else would just being wasting both our times.
Ok Stapler, fair enough. I’m not going to research into legalized Mormon killings, I’ll accept for now that what you’ve said is true.
I don’t care all that much. But when you come down to it, religion has been the justification for atrocities from the beginning. Slavery in the US was partially explained away by religion (“slaves are inferior human beings because they aren’t christian. We are doing them a favor”. No, that isn’t an exact quote, but that is the gist.) Are you now saying that the members of the Catholic church who executed genocide due to differing beliefs, the slave owners, and all the baby killers are not representative of religion? Because on that note, I beg to differ. They may not be a majority, but they surely do represent their religions, just not in the way that you’d like. Much like the illegal child marriages in the FLDS, am I right?
Stapler: “God is all about loving your fellow human.”
If that were so, then why is it so important to be a member of an organized religion? If that is what he is ALL about, he wouldn’t give a flying fuck if someone is a Mormon, a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian or a Budhist. Would an omnipresent deity really care about the minor details so beloved by all the major religions? So you are then admitting your own failing as a human being by saying you would not date a woman outside of your religion. Where is your love and tolerance for your fellow man?
And also, yes, I will go ahead and assume you boned a few non Mormons. I’ve known a few Mormons. Let’s just say they love their fellow man in the biblical sense as much as any other American I’ve known, and sometimes a little more often.
Stapler: “And while I am not perfect, I try not to be a hypocrit and follow those beliefs.”
That’s funny. It is clear that you are not perfect, but not so clear that you aren’t trying to be a hypocritE. I do not believe in god, but I respect that others do. I do not force my beliefs down their throats. Again, married to a Christian? We don’t argue about these things. He has his beliefs and I have mine. We love each other, and isn’t that really all that matters? That is what you say, but not really what you are exhibiting to the world. And again, stating that if there is a god, I think that what exists as far as religion goes is more than likely far afield from what was intended.
Unfortunately people use religion to justify a lot of unsavory things. But I’ve never encountered a religion where the tenets actually endorsed killing those who think or act differently. I know the Bible and Koran don’t. The abuse of religion doesn’t make religion, itself, a bad thing.
As to why it is important to be part of a religion is because we are commanded to perform certain ordinances here on Earth. We are to be baptized for example. Even Christ was. And that cannot be done without the priesthood which is part of the religion. Religion, specifically for my faith, also allows for modern-day prophets and the strength that comes from being around those who share your beliefs. It is much easier to resist temptation when you are surrounded by those doing the same thing.
The reason I would not be married outside of the faith is because I want to be sealed inside the temple. It is an ordinance that bonds families together for all eternity. You must be a member and living the commandments and teachings to enter the temple.
And I’m sorry that the Mormons you have known set the wrong example. It is not indicative of the teachings and most members I know have waited until marriage. That being said, we are all human. We all sin. Some may have a problem with drinking, another with gambling, another with sex. That is where repentance comes into play. We are not expected to be perfect, but to try our best and to never stop trying.
And God expects us to share the truth in any forum or place if the opportunity arises. Now people have the option to accept it or not. But we are never to keep quiet about it and write it off as simply respecting others beliefs. Even Christ went into other’s temples and shared the truth with them. Hypocrisy would be believing that you know the truth and that it is special and NOT wanting to share it with your fellow brothers and sisters.
No, hypocrisy is when you claim to be a member of a religion that has a god of love and tolerance, but you can’t TOLERATE, love, or respect the beliefs of others who choose to believe differently.
Let me get this straight. You say it is important to be a member of an organized religion so that its other members can keep you on the straight and narrow. Isn’t that like an AA meeting?
Am I wrong because I don’t need an AA meeting to tell me not to kill people or cheat on my husband? And by your commentary, does it matter WHICH AA meeting I go to? Which is to say, you mention organized religion. That can be anything from Catholicism, Mormonism, Judaism. Somehow these are all acceptable? IF that is what you are saying, you are the most accepting believer I know!!! But somehow I doubt that is what you are saying. =)
Stapler: “And I’m sorry that the Mormons you have known set the wrong example.”
Is that so? Or is there that little part of you that is glad that my Ex has tried to make my life hell on earth since he joined your religion? Only now instead of beating me, he accuses me of being some sort of unholy Jezebel, unfit to be a mother because I don’t believe in the same shit he believes… only since he can’t come out and say that, he makes a bunch of other shit up, tries to make it coherent to the court (doesn’t work) and punishes me through my child. And no, this is none of your business, but the point I’m trying to make is that he is not the only person who behaves this way under the guise of somehow being very devout. I’ve found that it’s actually quite typical to the fanatic of any organized religion. (Maybe it makes them feel better to have someone to pick on?)
Is this kind of person and this type of behavior really what the world needs more of? And do you really think counseling would have helped Mr. Grell? Or god? Or religion?
Or do you think that had he received a hand up he would have just ended up snapping on some other poor undeserving person so that a couple of fanatical trolls could come to PYSIH and call us all bad people for not praying harder to save a murderer?
Just curious.
Do I think all religions are equal? No. As mentioned, the ordinances have to be performed with the authority of the priesthood, and only one religion has that. However, I think good can be achieved from following any religion as they all promote good things when followed properly. And while some things like not killing are easy for most to resist the urge to do, things like not drinking and having pre-marital sex are a bit more difficult.
I don’t take pleasure in anyone being made to suffer, especially in the name of God or a religion. And regarding domestic disputes, something I learned a long time ago is there are two sides to every story.
And for all the religious fanatics in the world, there are a lot more normal religious people. But let’s face it, they don’t make the news because normal is boring news.
As for Grell, I honestly can’t say if he would have changed. We know he had a bad childhood. What do we do with people that do? Kill them? Write them off? The story indicates that he was trying to get his life together but couldn’t catch a break. He obviously felt enough remorse to turn himself in and confess it all. That is more than most people written about on here do. So do I think there are signs that he might have been able to be brought back from that edge he was apparently on? Yes I do.
We know that NOT trying to help ended up in the death of an innocent little girl. So I would say the risk of trying is worth it. And it won’t work all the time. There will be those that betray that trust and bite the hand that feeds them.
I’m recalling the story on here of the gentleman who used to invite people down on their luck into his home until they got back on their feet. One of them finally turned on him and killed him. However, prior to that, he helped several others who likely would have gone another route without his help. Do you think he would have changed all that if he had known it would eventually be his death? I don’t think so. I imagine knowing that he changed at least one life for the better made it worth it to him.
I disagree, Stapler. I think that if he knew the asshole drug addict that he invited into his house was going to kill him and his dog, I don’t think he would have invited him to stay. That would be common sense, right?
“Hmm… I know this guy is going to beat me to death, but I think I’ll invite him over for cake and coffee.”
Um, no? I don’t care how religious you are, there is a thing called self preservation. You would not invite the guy in blood stained clothes with an axe in one hand to ride with you and your kids to get dinner, now would you? Common. Sense. Obviously the gentleman in question did not see a bloody axe and believed that the shitbag he invited to stay with him could have a decent life with a hand up. Sadly, he was wrong about that.
Stapler: “The story indicates that he was trying to get his life together but couldn’t catch a break.”
That’s life, Stapler. Sometimes the vegetables win. Sometimes the weeds win. And sometimes you just have to eat dandelion stew. From a strictly evolutionary and logical perspective, did we really need this guy around further fucking up society? He clearly can’t roll with the punches, and is contributing, well…. nothing except misery.
And pass on the creepy religious rituals. There’s a little too much dancing naked in the moonlight covered in the blood of young virgins in that secret temple stuff you have going on. As if the rest of the ritualized stuff wasn’t eerie enough without it! I rather prefer to be around people who are good people for the SAKE of being decent human beings, and not because they fear the fiery wrath and eternal torture by a vengeful god to keep them in line.
Again, just because someone isn’t religious doesn’t mean they go hog wild. For example, I don’t do any of the other things you mentioned: I don’t drink, I don’t use drugs, I don’t smoke, or gamble, I don’t sleep with people other than my husband, my child is not beaten, starved or abused… I can keep listing the things I don’t do without a link to organized religion if you want….but it’s clear to me that there must be a few people out there who don’t use church like an AA meeting.
Of course not. If he knew the exact person who was going to kill him, I’m sure he would have acted accordingly. However, if he only knew that his helping others would eventually get him killed, do I think he would not have helped? No. I think he still would have.
As for Grell, he caused a lot of misery. And yet no one wants to step up and do anything to prevent it. Before it happens, it’s not their problem. Afterwards, they then deserve the right to bitch about it.
You obviously have no idea what goes on in LDS temples and we will leave it at that.
And you don’t do any of that stuff now. But what did you used to do? And no you don’t have to answer that, just ponder on it. So you can do some good without religion. You can also do some bad. And those with religion, can do both. Being in a religion is not a guarantee one way or another. You still have to choose to follow the teachings.
Stapler: “So you can do some good without religion. You can also do some bad. And those with religion, can do both. Being in a religion is not a guarantee one way or another. You still have to choose to follow the teachings.”
Then what is the point of the religion? Or counseling? Mr. Grell could have gone to ALL THE COUNSELING IN THE WORLD and still torched his baby girl like a 4th of July Barbecue gone wrong!
I’ll answer to what you said I didn’t have to answer. I’ve NEVER DONE DRUGS. NOT EVEN ONE! Not even weed. Why: What the hell for? I like being in control of my mental faculties. Have I taken meds the doctor has given me? Sure… and they do jack shit. So unless it’s an antibiotic or a vitamin, … or Tylenol for pain, I don’t take it.
Have I ever had a drink? Sure I have. I choose not to, not because god whispered in my ear and said alcohol was the devil’s drink of choice, but because alcohol is a) POISON, b) it’s nasty as drinking shit, and c) what the hell is the point?
Have I had premarital sex? Clearly I have. Would I go back to it? Uh, no, I love my husband, and he would not like it. Besides, what do the men out there have that I want? Nothing. Again, I don’t need religion to guide me on that one.
Have I gambled? Sure, once or twice. It isn’t my thing. See above regarding mental faculties, and you’ll see that I also enjoy being in control of my money. Do I think it’s wrong? Maybe, but then again you could view any waste of possible productive time as wrong if you really think about it hard enough.
But I have to ask, if you think that preemptive counseling and help ups are such a big factor in cases like this, then what are YOU sir doing to help? Do you volunteer your time, emotions and money to help those who have committed violent crimes find their place in productive society? And even more pressing, is what evil disgusting behaviors are lurking in your heart and mind that you are so adamant that organized religion keeps the evil from being perpetrated?
Will we be reading about you in a few more years when your belief in god fails you and you go on a rampage?
I’ve already told you some of the important aspects of religion. As for counseling, it helps people to work through things they have never addressed in their life or gotten closure on. Sometimes they need someone to guide them on how to deal with certain feelings and urges in a constructive manner. And Grell could have still been a killer afterwards. And he could not have been as well.
What have I done? When I was doing the hiring for the company, I based things off my interviews with people rather than their backgrounds. I gave people a fair shake. I’m a fairly good judge of character, can see through BS, and read body language. If they could convince me they wanted to work, I gave them a shot. From an emotional aspect, I fell in love with a girl who had some experiences where many wouldn’t give her a chance. While it didn’t work out, we are still good friends to this day.
And religion isn’t a gate keeping evil inside of me. However, if EVERYONE followed the tenets of my faith, we would live in a tranquil world. For example, imagine if no one had pre-marital sex. Think of how much better off the world would be. Little to no STDs. Fewer AIDs-related deaths. Fewer unwed mothers. Fewer welfare cases. No teen pregnancies. Less men being dogs just to get tail. Fewer women using sex as a tool. Now think about how good the world would be if no one drank?
God is our Heavenly Father. And like any parent, he gives us rules that are for our benefit. He knows the consequences of our bad decisions and tries to shield us from that, like a good parent. Religion provides the manner for these rules to reach us. Now will maybe you decide to follow some of these on your own without religion? Sure. But is there stuff you might be better off doing that you don’t know about that religion could teach you? Yes.
Stapler, you’re assuming that I haven’t tried religion. That is a failure on your part. How could ANYONE taught about god decide it’s all a bunch of lies created to explain the world around us when there was no science to teach us these things, and that religion has often been a tool of the government to keep the masses in line?
Well, I guess I did. I was raised by a Catholic mother, even went to Christian school for a couple of years. So do I know about religion? Yes, I do. Have I read about the interesting history surrounding Christianity since then? Yes, I have. And I reject it. I also reject your assumption that my life would be better with it. Although in some ways it might be: Perhaps if I could convince myself to believe that I had an omniscient being somewhere that loved me and cared about every breath I take on this world, I’d have some comfort. Instead, I choose to believe in myself.
Stapler: “However, if EVERYONE followed the tenets of my faith, we would live in a tranquil world.”
And what a boring world that would be! Besides, like I said, I’ve seen firsthand the bullshit that comes out of the mouths of some of the people that believe in your religion. CLEARLY although your religion may dubiously be sound, not everyone who claims to follow the tenants of your religion do so. And the fanaticism that organized religion seems to breed is poison to society. But it seems to me like nothing is really done to assist those people with the fact that they are fucking nuts. Except prayer. Don’t forget the prayer. That lady that sliced and diced her kids in the gas station? Must not have had enough prayer. That sick FLDS guy who was marrying off little kids? We just ignore that little guy….
I’d like to know what’s wrong with premarital sex?
I’d also like to know what’s wrong with being a single mother?
Better being a single mother than married to an abusive prick, on that note.
And again, I must ask “…what evil disgusting behaviors are lurking in your heart and mind that you are so adamant that organized religion keeps the evil from being perpetrated?”
You seems so adamant that a dose of god a day keeps the evil away….
Alanna, just ignore this troll. Don’t take the bait. Your mental health is none of his business.
I have watched this guy all day as he has been melting down, and at this point all he can do is attack others. It’s interesting – kind of like watching a moth bodyslam against a lightbulb, but it’s getting really sad. Just like that moth he is going to crash and burn, and even though he is an obnoxious jackass, we should have some pity on him.
people are not born evil? that is wholly untrue – and can be attested to by many medical professionals (depending of course on what your definition of evil is) yes, for a majority of the “evil” population it is about their background, lack of education, lack of proper parenting, and sometimes they “snap” (although i find that to be a completely bullshit excuse). There are people who are born evil. Those people are generally later on found to have a sever type of personality disorder. These people (children, grown adults, men, women, from ALL walks of life) might have EVERY opportunity, be raised in a loving, caring household, with a wonderful education, great friends, no bully problems, no medical issues… but they are evil. Nothing needs to be “done” to a child to make them evil, sometimes they just are. Of course as a baby you don’t see that… due to the fact that they are infants they do not have the capacity to communicate effectively.. but yes, there are human beings on this earth that are inherently evil. I’ve seen it before myself having worked with young children… once in a blue moon you get a child you know is destined to be the cause of tragedy – and no matter what you do, what help you give and how much you love them… they are evil little fuckers, i’ve been creeped out by 4 year olds before.. it’s not right, but it is a fact of nature.
We live in a society were we have to adhere to societal norms and the laws of this country. I strongly believe in rehabilitation for those able to be rehabilitated, but there are people out there that no matter how many chances you give them they don’t change. It is not societies fault or responsibility to baby sit them because they can’t behave like a decent human being.
As to your friend who punched the raido.. yes that is ridiculous, and that speaks volumes as to how fucked up our system is. But as for this piece of garbage… he’s where he belongs, in the human trash can.
Also, max, I’m confused about his age, you said he’s 39, which means he’d have been born in 1970, but you said in 1988 he was 13, which would have made him be born in 1975.. not a big deal, I just noticed. :)
EVERY human has the propensity for true evil. The same goes for good. I guess you can say we are all born good and evil.
Yep, you’re absolutely right. I must have made a mistake doing the math – That’s what I get for not using a calculator. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Danesergrrl. That is very true. Some people are just bad seeds. No matter how good and perfect their upbringing are, they turn out to be evil. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopian Communist dictator that killed millions in genocide and famine in the 1980s), Osama bin Laden, Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Lori Drew come to mind. They were born evil.
I’m asking this as an impartial person.. off to the side.. who thinks a really interesting discussion is bubbling just under the surface of all the drama here..
What you’re saying, Stapler, is that no one is born evil, but that some have the potential to go that way under the wrong circumstances, and each individual should be given an equal shake at redemption in the spiritual, and or physical sense, under the .. (ooh.. I’m not a very elequent speaker, so I’m trying.. lol.. forgive me if this doesn’t make sense) precepts for forgiveness presented by the most common christian religions (non-denominational, catholic, LDS, etc)?? ..
Man, I hope that made sense..
On a side note, this is just a general thought.. (most people don’t pay attention to what I type here anyway.. lol.. I’m one of the little voices in the corner).. the Nature V. Nurture debate has been going on for centuries, and is unlikely to be solved on an internet forum.. lol.. But it’s really interesting to see how passionate people are about their point of view.. Pretty cool I think
I’m sorry, but there is nothing about this case to suggest that he did what he did in an act caused by mental retardation. He was clearly in a sound enough state of mind to go to a department store, purchase a gas jug, etc. Hell it is, and I do hope he sees it soon.
I will agree that a toddler can be a very taxing thing… take one right down to the last nerve and fray that as well…….
I even have a cat that I call the “cat hater’s cat”…… she’s pushy & demanding, but I call her our perpetual 2 year old and my wife and I still love her…..
Despite the fact that he’s retarded, it sounds like the child is quite smart and sensitive for her age…….
With all that said, I find what he did below the conduct of any animal, he took a sleeping child, one of the most trusting things God has ever created and put it through a hell far worst than many of us can immagine.
What really did it for me was the possibility of being so on fire while alive that a barret was melting on her while she ran. Also the fact that she screamed “No Daddy” while gasoline was being poured on her… I don’t think she had full knowledge of what was to come, but rather she felt this cold liquid being poured on her warm body ripping her from a comfortable sleep – this hints to me that he’s done some cruel stiff in the past.
Also the fact that his in-laws were thinking of kicking him out….. I don’t think it was “just the job thing”. We have this one woman in he neighborhood and when she’s working she’s actually a pretty cool person & a good cook…. when she’s not working she’s a druggy scum bag that thinks all of us owe her something…… So the job may just be a “hinge” or pivot point between him being someone who is trying to do good and a total scum bag….
He had time to stop, many descions were made, at almost any time he could have stopped…..
Slow and retarded may be an excuse for stupid and negligent, but not for evil.
Barbarque this bastard alive…
He shoud have been locked up in a state hospital long before he had a chance to plant his seed.
Minimally he should have been neutered a long time ago, that way he’d be just another one of those somewhere else… but no judge had enough balls to have his torn off….
Um, this math doesn’t work:
“Meet thirty-nine-year-old Shawn Ryan Grell. Shawn was one of those kids who grew up hard and mean. He killed his family’s cat, set fire to their dog, and even burned down the house they lived in. In 1988, when he was thirteen, police arrested Grell after he fondled a young girls breasts.”
So he’s 39 now despite the fact that he was 13 in 1988. That doesn’t work. If he was 13 in 1988 he would have been born in 1975/1974. That simply means he couldn’t be 39 now. At best he could be 35, maybe 34.
You’re right, I screwed up the math when I figured out his age. All fixed now – Thanks for pointing that out for me.
Anyone with a solid argument and half a brain can disagree, and be respected by most, if not all.
It’s only when you don’t have a foot to stand on when there’s a problem.
One can learn from an intelligent disagreement. one can learn a new set of facts, learn that certain “facts” are wrong or learn to see the same thing from a different viewpoint…..
No, they are only trolls when they are arrogant assholes who don’t agree.
If they are arrogant assholes who agree, then by default they are not trolls – just arrogant assholes. And if they disagree in a respectful and informative manner they are not trolls – just people with differing opinions.
It’s all in the motivation. Is someone trying to enlighten others on a possible point they may not have thought about, or is that person trying to incite others by deliberately posting contentious ideas, avoiding answering direct questions, and twisting other peoples thoughts and words? First = no troll, the second = troll.
This board is primarily comprised of people who are sick of the scourge on society and want to vent about it. Occasionally there are cases which are not clear cut, and one or two people may see another side of the issue. But people who come here and keep arguing against the general group sentiment are doing it only for the purpose of attempting to make others angry.
Those people don’t make me angry. They make me feel pity for them, that their life is so empty and their minds are so shallow – but I don’t get angry. I just poke at them a bit, then ignore them. Passive-aggressive trolls really HATE that shit.
The more you type, the more dense I think you are. The more you try to define me as a troll, the more you define yourself.
Go look at my posting record. I was being insulted and people were rude to me long before anything I said was directed at anyone. And YOU twist my words around to the point that you have said I have supported the criminals written about when I have never done any such thing.
And I think you are more accurate about this place’s description than Max was. This is a place to vent much more than a place to help victims of tragedy. And the point I’ve always attempted to make is there comes a point when you wake up and realize bitching accomplishes nothing and it’s time to start acting.
The pity is felt by me for those that think they are accomplishing something by coming here and discussing how evil others are in the world. For all the superior intellect that some of you claim to have over myself and others, how is it being used to make the world a better place on here? Do you think your comments help convict the criminals? Do they help the victims put it behind them? Does it help prevent future crimes from occurring? It really is nothing more than self-serving. And the fact that you can’t see that is what is sad.
It is power to know what is out there in the world. It is comfort to see that there are others who might feel the same way you do about the crimes committed against humanity. It is powerful to be able to see another viewpoint through the words of another and maybe learn a thing or two about the world.
If you want to help the victims of these crimes, don’t excuse their attackers. Take your time and invest it into making the changes in society that you feel would help future generations… or find a website to donate to either the victims… or the criminal’s defense fund, whatever floats your boat.
Do you really need comfort knowing that others think raping children is bad? Do you think that there are going to be differing viewpoints on the subject?
And I didn’t come here to help victims. I was referring to the reported goal of the site as stated by Max up above. I come here for the sensational stories. But I don’t fool myself into thinking that by reading and posting that I’ve somehow made the world a better place.
Stapler, if you didn’t come to this site to help the victims, then why are you here?
What is your goal in reference to this site? Entertainment value? Information? Communication?
Enlighten me.
Come on thats mystapler.
You dont just come here for the sensational stories. You come here for the stimulating conversation. Or you just come here because you like to argue. That would be my best guess. I am not knocking it, but its bullshit when you say you just come here for the stories. If that was the entire truth, you wouldnt be posting, just reading….lurking…
By the way, what do you expect people’s reactions to be when you come on a site called “People Youll See In Hell” and argue the opposite views? I am assuming that you are not fucktarded so you have to know what reactions your posts are likely to elicit when you are submitting them.
Alanna- As I answered before, I come here for the entertainment. I didn’t come here to help anyone.
poptart- The irony here being is I’ve never once supported the subjects of the articles, no matter what others may say. I’ve just brought up topics regarding bad rulings or indications of where acts could have been avoided. And somehow this has been translated into me being a liberal, dangerous pedophile who wants to give all these child rapers a hug. When all I’ve ever attempted to do is look beyond the surface of “man bad, kill bad man” and look at things a bit deeper and pondering on better solutions. Because as I’ve said before, if this site shows us anything, it is that the current status quo is borked.
Actually, I’m sure we help the victims put the horror of what happened to them behind them. Do you want to know how I’m so sure? Because many of them have either commented here or emailed me and said so. The stories about their cases, and the dozens of comments expressing sympathy for them and contempt for the perpetrator are a major comfort to them. All of them have said in one way or another that just knowing that a bunch of strangers care enough to to run a site like this dedicated to them has helped them get on with their lives. So whether you believe it or not, we know that our stated purpose is more than just alot of empty words. Perhaps if you dedicated yourself to something bigger than yourself you might understand why we do what we do. I guess the odds of that are pretty low, since I doubt you could put anything or anyone ahead of yourself.
So, I hope you’re proud of your attempt to bring this site down, weak as it was. Telling us the we’re full of shit isn’t going to win you any friends, especially when we know it you that’s full of shit. I want to encourage everyone to stop replying to you, because you’re a proven horse’s ass, but why should I attempt to deprive them of the entertainment value of watching you get your virtual ass kicked on a daily basis. You’ve become a joke now, our village idiot, and I know how much fun it is to see you act the fool for us.
And yet I find you to be the idiot for actually believing your own hype. For thinking that this site is actually about the victims and not the perpetrators.
If the site was about the victims, the stories would be about them. The updates would be about the victims and how they are coming along. Everything about this site is to oggle at the evilness that man can achieve.
I don’t see this site promoting hope or the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Instead it broadcasts the depravity of mankind in extreme detail. I see judgment passed, not support offered. And I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a way to pass the time. However, when you try to build it up to be more than what it is, you are deluding yourself.
I do need to correct an error in my previous post. There is the occasional update on a victim.(ie Angel Vidal Mendoza’s son) However, those are few and far between. This is still mostly about those who commit the crimes and where they are at in the justice process.
There is more the site can do to support those in need. A girl makes a dumb choice and kills someone in a DUI. I see plenty condemning her and poking fun at her roots and makeup. But where is the advice to support your local chapter of M.A.D.D.? What is the family of the person killed up to? The story was about her not her victims.
And I would place odds that at least one of you has driven when you weren’t in the correct state of mind and took that risk. People do make mistakes. And what is funny is that you said Max that when you point a finger at someone, you have 3 pointing back at you. What do you think everyone on this site is doing?
That’s a good suggestion Max. Thatsmystapler is simply a troll. And everyone knows the best way to deal with trolls is to starve them. He is a particularly obnoxious one, because he appears intelligent, which makes it hard to reconcile with the fact that he is incredibly ignorant at the same time.
Other than an occasional poke at him, I stopped responding to his nonsense already, and I urge others to do so as well. There’s no point anyway. It’s like beating your head against a brick wall. No matter how many times we expose him as the ignorant, arrogant asshole that he is, he refuses to accept that he could possibly be wrong. And he just keeps coming back for more. Pitiful.
You’re absolute right Maz, and his response to my last comment is the proof. I offered evidence that proves his claims that PYSIH and the people who comment here don’t help the victims of the criminals on this sight are total bullshit. Yet he continues his argument, as if all those comments and letters from victims don’t exist. I guess he thinks if he pretends I didn’t just destroy that part of his argument, everyone will think it never happened – too bad the damage has already been done.
And the saddest part is that instead of being able to show victims that there are a multitude of people standing behind them, publicly demanding that something be done, we are reduced to arguing with a juvenile troll about snippets of phrases that he wants to dissect in some sort of self-aggrandizing sick need. I repeat – pitiful.
Voting results: No, he was just having a bad day. (3.0%, 7 Votes) WTF??
Where do you 7 people live?? I mean I don’t want your specific address, just the cities. I want to make certain that I don’t travel anywhere near them.
Help me out, won’t you?
I wish the state could kill this scumbag, dig him up and kill him again. They should get absolutely *medieval* on him!
Hi James,
I think Ad Hominem is the same person as well, but it was these comments that made the best case.
Rando
http://pysih.com/2009/06/10/cheyenne-cherry/#comment-40980
Yes she must pay for her tresspass, but not the extreme punishment that some people have suggested. Also she requires some anger management. The problem with people like you Jason, is that you can’t see the big picture you’re too busy trying to be a scholar about the small picture which most of the time means nothing to anyone’s survival.
Rando
http://pysih.com/2009/06/10/cheyenne-cherry/#comment-40983
Have you ever done something out of anger and then regreted or not (depending on how much you felt you were justified)? Does she have a history of killing innocent animals to make her a sociopath? You’re such an expert on the girl, that you have even determined that she can not be fixed and you have a dossier to prove it…
To be clear, I am not suggesting that other species should be sluaghtered or mistreated. The topic is about the girl. What we need to do is stop domesticating animal for love and comfort and learn to love our fellow Man and comfort those in need. One step forward for cats and dogs, and one step backward for man.
James
http://pysih.com/2009/04/14/reyna-valentino/#comment-36196
I spent about five minutes trying to decide which of y’ll to reply to …
But poptart, your statements were easily the dumbest, most reactionary, outdated things I have heard or read today.
FIRST OF ALL, nothing I said should be construed as a justification for my doing something, to quote…
But we haven’t taken a single moment to sit a murderer or a rapist or any other “hellworthy” criminal down and spend a few bucks to figure out “WHY?”
James
http://pysih.com/2009/04/14/reyna-valentino/#comment-36197
I suppose I should also clarify that I am NOT trying to justify either person’s actions or say they should be getting off clean as a whistle. They both deserve punishment, but doggoneit make the punishment forced treatment!
thatsmystapler
http://pysih.com/2009/06/27/shawn-ryan-grell/#comment-42131
I’m reminded of those laws for sexual offenders that stop them from living withing a certain distance of schools, churches, parks, etc. In some cities, EVERY place in the city falls within the restricted distance of the law. Yet since they are on parole, they cannot leave the city. So what happens? They end up homeless. Now is it easier to keep tabs on a child molester with an established address and job or one that is homeless?
…Giving criminals jobs isn’t about rewarding them or forgetting their past. It is about helping to rehabilitate them into contributing members of society.
thatsmystapler
http://pysih.com/2009/06/27/shawn-ryan-grell/#comment-42213
Of course there are jobs. But they shouldn’t only be relegated to shady jobs that treat them like crap, or that won’t pay enough to make a living. And what about one time offenders? Do they deserve this life? What about my buddy who punched a radio? He didn’t even do time. Is he a criminal? According to the law he is. But does he not deserve a shot at a real job? What if someone had a conviction because someone lied? That lie should affect their life for a minimum of 7 years?
We tell criminals that their sentence is the time served and any probation/parole beyond that. And that is where their punishment should stop. Society and employers should not continue it beyond that.
lol I assure you that I am not these people. Ask Mazzi, she accepted my invitation and researched me and found me.
But surely you didn’t think I was the only person in the world that looks at things here beyond the knee-jerk reactions? There are those of us that don’t want to continue to simply give people medicine for being sick, but find ways to stop others from getting sick in the future. And by a couple of the responses, it looks like they got the same “warm welcome” as me.
I don’t see anything troll-like about their statements. I find most of it agreeable, except the part of the animals. But that is the animal lover in me coming out. However, I do see the point he was making. If this is what you all are constantly calling troll-like behavior, you really are dicks. Go check out the little gangster wannabe on the Swedish rapper page. That is trolling. Simply having different viewpoints is not.
And if you recall Ad Hominem was posting at the same time I was in the other thread. And Max should have a way to view IPs, I know I did on the site I ran. And you will see the IPs are different. If I had any desire to masquerade, I could use a proxy and I would have used a name that didn’t have years of history attached to it online. But if you want to continue to believe everyone that doesn’t agree with you is the same person, have at it champ.
Stapleboy – First – leave me out of this you TROLL.
Second, I did not accept your anything or research anything, thankyouverymuch. You told us to go look you up when Jason first fingered you as a TROLL, so I did. That does not preclude you from being the other posters. AND, I am nobody official on this site. Max is the editor – I am just a poster.
Third, you most certainly ARE a TROLL. But of course, since everyone elses definition of a troll does not match YOURS, you will ignore that as well. TROLL!
I don’t care who you THINK you are, since obviously your thought process is fucked up and warped. I will tell you who you ARE. A pompous, self-absorbed, closed minded person who feels the need to elevate his little life by making others feel foolish. But it didn’t work here, asshole. None of us feel foolish, we just feel pity for you.
We have continued to respond to you since the knee-jerk reaction to an intelligent poster is that he can actually understand what others are saying (unlike mentally challenged people, who might not have the brain capacity), but no matter what you think, there has been little give-and-take conversation. You have told us all what you BELIEVE, and ignored every hole in your argument. I think even the most generous of us has seen through your transparency by now.
Go back to your comic books and WOW. I think that’s more your speed. LOL.
lol You already used the “comic book insult” once and it didn’t phase me. And you are an admitted WoW player. So you essentially just insulted yourself. Pretty smart in your old age.
I invited you to look me up online. You looked me up online. How is that NOT accepting my “anything” again? Logic isn’t your friend is it?
And based on your posted definition of a troll, YOU are a troll. I’ve given specific examples of it. You are working under the idea that if you call me it enough times, then it will become true. It doesn’t work like that. And I find it amusing you talk about elevating lives since I’m convinced that most of you louder mouths are using these stories to do exactly that.
And you know that swearing is the refuge of the ignorant right? The occasional word is ok. But when you use it as often as you do, it just seems to show that you really can’t put together more than that. In fact, the last bunch of your posts have been nothing more than name calling and swearing. I know you are older because you think 32 is young. Is that really what you have become at your age? I guess if I was you I’d be comparing myself to child rapers too and saying I turned out ok.
This article didn’t actually changed my life at all…
If there wasn’t a legal system where you get thrown in jail or sentenced to death for stuff like this, I could possibly see myself doing this if I had the same circumstances as he did, I mean his life was really crappy he didn’t have much to live for in the first place.
I also wonder if he would’ve ever been caught if he hadn’t admitted to it.
I have no doubt he would have been caught. Once the daughter would have been reported missing, they would have gone to the last person she was seen with which was him. And he isn’t smart, so he wouldn’t have been able to keep things hidden during interrogation. And then there is undoubtedly store footage of him buying the the gas tank and the gas itself on the last day she was seen alive.
Also regarding your comment, if life isn’t worth living you kill yourself not an innocent little kid. Especially your own daughter.
I could never see killing someone simply because my life sucked, regardless if there were consequences or not. I can’t imagine feeling better about my own life watching someone else suffer and die.
What the hell? You can see yourself doing something like this? For God’s sake, get some help!
I said if the legal system wasn’t in place…
In real life I would actually never have the guts to do any of that shit >_>
“I mean his life was really crappy he didn’t have much to live for in the first place.”
Well then he could have lit his damn self on fire and ended it. I’m sure many people wish he’d went that route, but monsters never off themselves, because they are pussies. If you really could imagine doing something similar, I say you should probably seek counseling, but I think you’re probably just an immature (and hopefully childless) asshole looking to stir up some shit.
Max, one question. (I am asking it here instead of private e-mail for the benefit of all) Why are argumentative trolls allowed to continue posting their drivel all over the place? In addition, why are they allowed to try and force their beliefs on other people? I purposely try to avoid posting my personal religious beliefs simply because I am wasting the 8 boring hours of my work day and I am in no mood to get into actual intellectual conversation. Is there anyway to kind of, well, you know, screen the constant stream of bs? I know you look at the comments first, but some of them are just ridiculous
Translation: Can we make it so people only say what we want them to say?
Well everyone is entitled to their opinion. And opinions are like assholes in that everyone has them.
I’m done with the troll now. I think the only way anyone is going to get any satisfaction out of him (including his Significant other more than likely) is to roll a character of the opposite Faction on WoW then t bag him repeatedly until he logs off or deletes.
Not really worth the time, imo.
lol Not that it is entirely relevant, but what makes you think you are the queen of PvP and would win?
Skill is greater than gear. Happily, I have both skill and gear, and have played the same class for the past 3 years, 2 months.
Also I have a secret weapon. =)
What class is that?
And gear would be lost when you created a new character on my server. And you have no idea what my skill level is or even my class.(though to answer your question, I play multiple ones.)
No lie Alanna. I have kicked many a purple-clad little boy’s ass with my blue-clad toons. Skill and mediocre gear pwns the raid geared jerks any day, though it might take longer to kill them, lol.
See, if I created a toon on your server, that would be true. I’m not retarded. If I was going to go all out to prove that point, I’d simply transfer. Killing your pixelated avatar for 25 dollars? Not worth it in this economy.
I don’t recall ever asking what class you play. Actually, I had no intention of asking, because it doesn’t really matter.
But to answer your question, I am most skillful as a priest. Again, it doesn’t matter what you play: I’ve killed them all. Sadly, right before Wrath came out I was taking out rogues as a Holy priest. Sadly for them. It was rather amusing to me, actually.
I don’t play much anymore, to be honest. They made the game too easy and all sorts of idiots started flooding in.
True, Mazzi.
Before Wrath, when I still used my Hordie account, it used to take a PARTY OF FIVE 70s to take down my feral drood.
Ah, I miss the days…. *wipes away tear of nostalgia*
Between my husband an me, we have 5 accounts, and I am very VERY skillful at making gold in game. If I rolled a DK on server, I could have her well geared and 500 gold in the bank in week. I have done it before. All the while maxing out my attributes.
As my husband tells his buddies, I play the AH better than anyone he has ever seen, lol.
To the non-wow posters here, I apologize for this thread, but it’s so cool to find another female player out of game. Move along now.
That’s great Mazzi. I myself can’t stand playing the AH. And again, my preference far lies with priests and droods, which means I’d have to start all over from the beginning.
5 Accounts? Me and my hubby had that at one point. My two, his two and an extra. At least one extra I think.
I really haven’t played much in months though, I’ve just started picking it up again here and there in between chauffeuring my kid around to all her activities, dealing with every medical issue in the world, school etc, etc, etc. Too many idiots, and World of AOEcraft isn’t nearly as fun as vanilla WoW. The guild is progressing through Heroic Ulduar at the moment and although I REALLY REALLY don’t want to go I suppose I should start getting in there. I’d rather be pvping =)
From what I understand, you can only transfer to a lower-populated server which I don’t think Darkspear is. I could be wrong since I just returned a week ago after not playing since 2007.
I’ve killed every class out there as well. I was a consistent BGer throughout my leveling and you could find me there every holiday weekend. And I was good in my little non-Twink gear. Once, I even captured the flag in WSG(personally) all 3 times before the Alliance even got ours once.
lol And this next thing makes me really laugh….but I agree they have made it too easy. That is the first thing I said to my buddy when I came back. I also had started leveling a hunter which made it that much easier. I made lvl 29 in like 3 days and now he sits to play the BGs. I am now focusing on leveling a rogue and a DK. And I may take my warlock from 70 to 80 eventually. And I have a higher level druid as well which will get play when the new animal forms are introduced.
Maybe all articles should be about WoW? We seem to have found some common ground here.
ROFLROFLROFLROFL
So you captured the wsg flag 3 times in one game? That’s funny as hell. What do you think druids were for? Um… it wasn’t just sitting in a corner.
If you haven’t played since 2007, I could chew you and spit you out, t bag your corpse and roast marshmallows all the while doing a college paper and making dinner simultaneously. I don’t even need resi gear to do it.
BG twinks are a joke and a waste of time. And the hysterical thing is, I had you pegged as the standard tard ganker, rolling only either: warlock, rogue or huntard. I guess time has proven my passing suspicions to be right. To be fair, people also roll DK now. And they are squishy to me like an overripe pear.
Battlegrounds as Alliance suck. The horde queues are instantaneous. You queue, you hear the gong sound… you’re in. The Alliance have to wait 30 minutes plus for any given BG in my battle group. So it was much easier to do bg pvp as Horde. On the bright side, since the introduction of Wintergrasp, there’s always a way to play.
Also note that you are wrong about transfers. I’d suggest you read up. The only thing we agree about is through the inference that you are as happy as I am about the new animal forms.
Oh I’m a little rusty, but things are coming back. I was good and the skills will fall back into place.
And I’ve given just about every class a shot except priests and paladins. I never wanna be relegated to healing, I hate it. I wouldn’t do it on my druid. I never got my shammy high enough for it to be an issue.
I wanted to make a warrior that only fought unarmed or with fist weapons, but apparently the suck right now.(according to forums) And locks were a ton of fun before they started getting nerfed like crazy.
And you inferred correctly that I look forward to the new forms. Though I may have to hit up the barber to alter my Tauren’s look.
L2dualspec.
I like playing Mr Mullet. I wish people would take that game more seriously.
Not to speak for Max, but Admin left a fairly open policy. Admin seemed to be more than happy simply editing and commenting in context on trollish posts. A few times when Max caught spammers, he deleted them in droves.
This Stapler guy is simply James in a new suit and the simplest solution is to watch him self destruct. He blew his cover, he lost every argument on each individual point and then let his grammar slip again, presumably because he stopped checking it before he sent it.
He’ll rattle off some “fuck you” or another, grumble and gripe and then disappear for a few days or weeks before he comes back again and tries to start something else back up. He thinks it’s intelligence, it’s really just delusions of grandeur and a pattern that’s become the hallmark of trolls across the internet.
Thank you Jason, I knew I liked you. :) You make very good points, by the way, and you have the information to back them up. I applaud you, sir!
Still lol-ing @ you thinking I am someone else.
You realize the fact that you claim to be so intelligent makes this that much funnier right?
I hope this James fellow comes back some time so you can have Max verify we are two different people. Of course, I’ll never let you live it down when that day comes.
Besides I already told you to talk to Mazzi, she has researched me. My name isn’t James and I find it highly unlikely that he lives in Utah.
I repeat – I have NOT researched you and I certainly have not tried to determine if any of the other TROLLS are you.
It makes no difference if you are any of those other people. You are a TROLL. That’s all I need to know.
And before you start trying to prove you are not a TROLL, consider this – troll behavior is determined by the posters around you. So whatever YOU consider a troll is irrelevant. You are a TROLL. Go back under your bridge.
lol Um yeah I’m pretty certain the definition of troll is NOT “whatever the other posters consider it to be”. But I’m not surprised that you have resorted to making up your own definition now.
Does anyone else feel like shoving a ball-point pen into their own eye-socket, or is that just me? Shawn just disgusts me. That poor baby. I can imagine the sound of her voice as she said “sorry daddy.” Breaks my heart.
I’m glad they didn’t post any pictures of the little girl (before the crime.. thank you.. I definately dont want to see after pictures).. because it’s almost like.. not seeing her makes it just a fraction less gut wrenching.. Little kids are just naturally beautiful beings.. round little faces.. Big eyes, little button noses.. round little cheeks.. sometimes curly hair that wisps up at their ears.. Little hands, and feet.. and little tushies.. LOL.. sorry.. I have a niece and my sister and I always giggle over what a cute little tushier her daughter has (she’s 9 months old now.. an especially cute age).. And all the spirit, and curiosity, and amazement over everyday things?? The giggles and two-toothed grins?? I just dont know know how someone could look at all that.. wonderfulness packed in a tiny package and destroy it without a thought..
I dont know if anyone really understands the concept of “true evil”.. I dont know if a person could ever fit that description.. but I know that people are capable of bringing evil into the world, and doing things that are by most standards, incredibly wicked and cruel.. and when they do they need to be punished according to the law.. If people are not happy with the way the law punishes it’s “evil doers” than it’s important to take that issue up with those who create the laws.. rather than going on anger and launching into vigilante justice.. It doesn’t seem fair.. Our emotions tell us “we must get justice.. someone has to suffer for this.. someone has to pay.. ” but it’s how our society.. despite it’s flaws, has maintained itself for so long..
Here’s a link with video:
http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/phoenix-news-062309-shawn-grell-death-penalty.1aee4fb8.html
It shows pictures of the poor little baby, beautiful blue eyes and blond hair. In one she’s clutching a stuffed animal. It makes me wish for his demise even more. What a piece of scum.
What a beautiful little girl. What a tragedy. Retarded or not, I could shoot that sick POS in the head in a minute without a moment’s thought or an instant’s hesitation. That poor angel.
DAMMIT.. why’d you have to go and do that.. :(.. I know I didn’t have to look..
She had sad little eyes.. and a rosey little nose..
Yep.. my heart is officially broken for tonight.. Now I’m going to have to wait until my sister gets back from camping before I hug my “baby”..
sigh..
Man. This video made me cry. I went and hugged my daughter after watching it. I’m glad his conscience started eating at him. He is a sick bastard.
What an adorable little girl. The picture of her holding the bear just tore me up. It breaks my heart to know that she would have been around 9 years old now. She would have been starting to get to that point where she wasn’t as interested in toys, but starting to get into preteen things. Everytime a crime like this happens, I can’t help but think about the person that these child crime victims would have grown into. This little girl will never get to have her first crush, go to her prom, graduate from high school and college, get married, or have children of her own. These thoughts make my anger over this crime increase even more. This little one deserved so much more in life, but the person who should have protected her took her life. That is beyond evil and it’s unforgivable.
This guy should not be put to death by lethal injection and allowed to just go to sleep peacefully. I believe that this child’s mother should personally be allowed to pour gasoline on him and light him on fire! Then we should all be allowed the joy of watching this guy run around begging for someone to help him as he burns to death. I still think that is even too easy of a way for him to go, but it would be fitting since this is how he killed his child. This guy is not retarded, and I believe that is an insult to people that are actually mentally retarded. This man purposefully & methodically perpetrated this horrific crime. For that, he should be given a dose of eye-to-eye justice.
I so need to stop coming here…it makes me really hate humans…
Okay, this made me cry uncontrollably. I’m going to have nightmares about this asshole for w long time.
Reading this just affirms that I need to hug my daughter tight and never let go.
Well, at least he turned himself in…
Tragic, and heartwrenching that poor Kristin had to endure something so horrifying…
I couldn’t read further when I seen the description of how she ran around, engulfed in flames.
OMG.
I have a child that’s going to be 2….*pause for a minute or twenty while I hug my children*
The main question is…..WHY????
If laws were changed, and anyone convicted of killing a child was subject to the same horrible death they put those children through, maybe people would think twice before doing these unspeakable things. But no. Instead they crowd our jails, suck up all our money, drain our resources and enjoy hot meals and internet. Disgusting. I knew a guy named Anthony Lemontez King Jr. Google him, his myspace is myspace.com/vaxhustla. This dude killed a two month old baby. He broke her leg in half, broke her ribs and shook her until she stopped breathing. Instead of sitting in jail contemplating his miserable actions, he’s on Myspace daily, bitching about how “crackers” are trying to hold him back and he’s in jail “over some shit” that wasn’t his fault. I say kill all these animals, because that’s what they are, WHY keep burdening society?
to mae it is we should set him on fire. eye for an eye. when I think of my little 2 year old girl and the thought of someone doing this! Where in the hell was the mother during all of this time! she needs burn also! i want to throw up. so sad…..
that sack of shit!!!!! what a pathetic excuse for a human! to harm a child is a terrible act in itself, but to go one step further and kill your own flesh in blood, well, that’s so far beyond horrible. this piece of scum suckin’ low life ignorant fucktard deserves to be set on fire and left to burn too. let me do it!!!!!!!!
one more thing.. where was the mother?
Mom was there for the child this time lori. Everything I read indicated that Amber Salem was an excellent mother and that Kristen was well taken care of. What happened was in no way her fault, unless it’s a sin to have lousy taste in men.
SOMEONE deserves a gasoline bath and a lit cigarette.
Let me throw him to my family pack of pitbulls. They love yummy scum.
All you trolls and christians and basically ANY asshole who’s trying to make excuses or blame society or whatthefuckever –
HE SET A TWO YEAR OLD GIRL ON FIRE.
Even Jesus would shit on this guy’s face before stabbing him to death.
It’s not funny to even joke about giving this guy a second chance.
All right, gang, please forgive me, but I am about to get *gasp* religious for a minute.
Brittany, take it easy on the religious. I’m a Pentecostal Christian and I have no mercy on the wicked in society. Not all Christians are bleeding-heart, give-them-another-chance softies. My church believes firmly in consequences for one’s actions. Please, don’t lump us all together. Baptists (Northern and Southern, Pentecostals, New Lifers, Church of Christ, and several other denominations believe in taking responsibility for your own actions, good or bad. As a matter of fact, my own Pastor said “one ‘oh crap’ erases all of your ‘atta-boys’. ” However, Jesus would probably not shit on the guy’s face or stab him to death. That is just not who He is. I suggest (SUGGEST, not DEMAND, big difference) that you read about him in the Book of John in the Bible, if you ever get a chance. He is all about forgiveness… not necessarily second chances, but definately forgiveness. Don’t get mad at me for defending myself against your onslaught, but I do get offended on occasion. :)
oh nice, you actually got a real laugh out loud out of me if only for sheer imagery!
Those people who think Grell doesn’t deserve to die for what he did should really try lying in a ditch while gasoline is poured on them and then a match thrown in their direction. Let see whether then they will change their minds.
For heaven’s sake people, he killed his own daughter. Yes, he maybe retarded but surely not that retarded to know that you don’t set your own daughter on fire.
Retarded or not, he still knew that pouring gasoline on his child and striking the match would ultimately lead to the child’s death.
To thatsmystapler: why should we feel sorry for the criminal’s families? You never dove into that one..you just stated that we should. How do you know that they didn’t enable the criminal to be the scum that they are? By enabling I mean, turning the other cheek, shunning the ‘bad egg’ in the family. How come this person was allowed to continue to be a threat to society, when his support system who loved him so much was within arms reach?
FUCK feeling sorry for the criminals families. I don’t feel sorry for people who allow their family members to run this earth, behaving like bad-behaved children.
He deserves the ultimate hell. End of story.
I’m pretty sure the young children of criminals have no impact on their parent’s behavior and yet they pay for it with stuff like this. Imagine the stigma attached with something like that. With the world either knowing the story, or having to lie to explain what happened to your mom or dad. When people want to post stories like this and hate-spewed comments, I can guarantee the children are never thought of. And they are as much victims as anyone else.
That stigma is good. That shame and magnifying effect of anguish is positive. It means people are becoming aware of a problem. When an error file is produced, 9 times out of 10, it is ignored. When it’s reported, 9 times out of 10 it never sees someone who can fix it. And more than 9 times out of 10, if it is ever fixed, it’s fixed by someone who has that problem or observed the catastrophic consequences of that problem and had a reason to try and fix that problem.
The problem here isn’t that he couldn’t get a job, because he could. It isn’t that he was too stupid or retarded to know right from wrong. It isn’t even that he should have been given another chance. We have to solve problems in the framework, and someone who commits a crime has to solve their problems because they are their problems. A society as a whole has a problem when someone like this shows up and they have to contain the problem and spread information about that problem so something can be done to prevent it from being repeated. That’s the outside problem, you act like the internal problem can be solved externally. That defies reason and logic.
Our only and most vital duty when a problem occurs is to alert others to the problem so that another occurrence of the problem becomes preventable, if possible. If a child is born into the shame and notability of their father or mother’s crimes, then it’s the duty of the surviving guardians to fix any problems that may arise. You can’t fix that, Mormonism can’t fix that, and anyone claiming to be able to fix that problem from the outside in, isn’t being objective or paying attention to the data at hand. You can help complete a solution that needs more than just the resources available within, provide information for solutions to similar situations, but you cannot solve their problem, nor should you avoid the consequences of notification in this sequence of events to spare a family member’s sensibilities when something like this might be preventable.
Without being the child in such a situation, can you truly comment on the stigma being good? Without having endured that can you really disregard their feelings on the issue so easily? What you look at as a societal PSA, they see as their world crumbling down around them. What is merely words on a page or in a news report to you to disseminate is reality to them. In another thread it was declared that children having their heads pasted on adult bodies was a traumatic event for them. But somehow, being the child of a criminal in articles like these isn’t?
As for society and dealing with the problems, what do you consider to be the best solution? Because reading the comments on here, people aren’t interested in identifying the problem and fixing it. They want to isolate the problem. To put it into computer terms, you get a virus when you visit a particular site. You have your AV software quarantine the virus every time you visit the site, but you keep going to the site. No matter how many times your quarantine the virus, you are never going to stop it from showing up again as long as you keep visiting that site. You have to change your behavior and stop going to the site. Society needs to change it’s behavior to have fewer viruses showing up.
I do agree that society needs to be made aware of potential threats, but to what degree? At what point does it cross over from notification to exploitation? What is newsworthy and what is simply sensational? The assumed rights of a society to have as much information as possible should not supercede a child’s right to grow up in peace, regardless of who their parents are.
Without being the child in such a situation, can you truly comment on the stigma being good?
Yes, by its very definition. The child suffers from Existential Stigma, the criminal suffers from Achieved Stigma. Stigma is useful to the insiders to protect themselves from the outsiders. These words you use have definitions, be prepared to understand them or use different words. It helps understanding if we use the same language.
Without having endured that can you really disregard their feelings on the issue so easily?
It is the burden of the stigmatized to either correct the perception of the stigma or to correct the stigmatizers to remove the norm, more or taboo that inflicted the stigma. You assume that because we sit inside the circle, that I can’t see what they feel, but I, like you, choose to draw my circle based upon my society, my faith and my understanding of what has to come next. Empathy does not imply or enforce compassion, sympathy or empathic concern, though I have these and provide these as tools for someone who suffers from existential Stigmata to make their case and allow them re-entry to the circle of trust, that the suspicion and shame they should feel, as thinking human beings, based upon their familial relationship with the criminal.
But somehow, being the child of a criminal in articles like these isn’t?
I didn’t inflict the crime on them, they’re a victim of their criminal relative. I can attempt to help them, but I didn’t change anything to cause the problem. They identify the problem the exact same way I identified the problem. Someone external came in, stopped the criminal and told everyone what happened. This site does the same. The creation of child pornography isn’t telling the story. It’s committing the crime.
As for society and dealing with the problems, what do you consider to be the best solution?
The millennial old process of social correction with conscience, due diligence and corrective effort on the part of the stigmatized and the stigmatizer, why, what was your solution?
To put it into computer terms, you get a virus when you visit a particular site. You have your AV software quarantine the virus every time you visit the site, but you keep going to the site. No matter how many times your quarantine the virus, you are never going to stop it from showing up again as long as you keep visiting that site.
I notify the site admin that he is infected, I add him to a series of black lists I help maintain, and 85% of the world I live in cannot see the site until the problem is corrected. That’s one way. Additionally, I marginalize the effect the virus vector can infect, by contributing code to open source projects that fix the vulnerability used. I am affected in this example and I am not powerless to make this change. I fall within the opposing circles of stigmatized and stigmatizer.
You have to change your behavior and stop going to the site. Society needs to change it’s behavior to have fewer viruses showing up.
No, in the internet world it’s changing. The problem is caused by the infected site, so I make a change and those I protect or the System Admins I help, make changes so our society does not get infected. We don’t change behaviors, we fix systems.
I do agree that society needs to be made aware of potential threats, but to what degree?
To the degree directly beneath the limit of their patience or the diminishing returns of their abeyance to the enforcement of the stigma.
At what point does it cross over from notification to exploitation?
When resistance overcomes participation.
What is newsworthy and what is simply sensational?
The acceptable moral caliber between historical and an assault on the public good.
Regardless of the type of stigma, the child still has one attached to them. And so we are clear on the language we are both using, I want to refer to this definition of stigma found on dictionary.com:
stig?ma
??/?st?gm?/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [stig-muh] Show IPA
Use stigma in a Sentence
–noun, plural stig?ma?ta ?/?st?gm?t?, st?g?m?t?, -?mæt?/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [stig-muh-tuh, stig-mah-tuh, -mat-uh] Show IPA , stig?mas.
1. a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one’s reputation.
The children(and other family members as well) have inherited this disgrace and/or infamy through the actions of their relative. What you are saying is it is up to them to remove that mark from their names. It is up to them to disprove the assumptions people will make based on their familial associations, rather than up to society to not focus on the crime in a sensational manner under the guise of journalism. That is an awfully tall order for most people to undertake let alone a child. And it is not very empathetic to expect them to undo the damage done by their namesakes rather than expecting society to be respectful to them in the manner in which they choose to address the crime.
What I am saying is it is easy to sit behind a monitor and refer to someone you don’t know as a monster, pervert, piece of crap, etc. It is much harder to read such things when you are the child or relative of said person. And people say they make such comments to show support for the victims. But there are other, often non-spoken about, victims where such comments actually make the process harder for them. They seek to put the incident behind them and don’t need a bunch of bored people keeping the topic alive on the internet. Yet their feelings are not taken into consideration.
And you say you didn’t inflict the crime upon them. But you are every time you put the entertainment value of the subject matter ahead of their privacy. And yes the record becomes public when an arrest happens and it is reported on by the media. However, it is a whole different issue when the story is taken and rehashed in gory detail complete with editorial comments about the subject ranging from their appearance to assumptions about their background. That is going beyond being a responsible member of society simply notifying the rest of potential danger.
Example: The Lori Drew case. I know she has at least one child and a husband. People are posting her numbers, addresses, etc. Does anyone think about the impact their actions are having on the rest of her family in their desire for vengeance for a crime that didn’t even affect them? Having to change numbers all the time and move all the time, what kind of strain does that have on the family as a whole? Does the teen daughter deserve that? Sure, she was involved, but she was a child. They aren’t expected to understand the consequences of their actions to the degree that adults are. Does she deserve this? I never even read about the husband being involved. What about him? Are there other children? Are the actions of the people posting this information the actions of responsible members of society, or merely troublemaking?
And that is how YOU choose to handle viruses. I can attest from being a computer science major with other non-computer students and a former computer support agent for Dell that there are MANY people that do not handle it that way. And fixing your system doesn’t stop the virus from being on the site. You can reformat completely and when you go back to the site, the virus will still be there waiting for you. And your system will contract it again. Society keeps doing the same things over and over and wonders why they keep getting these “viruses”. Society has to change its behavior. This includes fixing the justice system, the laws, and looking into true rehabilitation rather than simply releasing them back into society with nothing more than bus fare.
And participation cannot be the measuring stick for exploitation. Tabloids prove this. There will always be people that will participate in such things regardless of how harmful it is to others. Shock sites stay in business because of participation, regardless of the resistance from everyone else.
Morals differ from person to person. And who decides what is in the public good? The editors of sites such as this? Is it for the good of the public that we read the detailed accounts of how a person is tortured and killed? Is it for the good of the public when we are informed that they won’t be able to color their highlights in prison? Is society better off for having that specific information? I think the answer is no. At that point, it stops being newsworthy and becomes sensation.
You cannot tell me as an intelligent person that you believe that the content of the site is 100% necessary newsworthy material and good journalism and that the comments against the subjects of the articles are being made in the best interests of society only.
And that is how YOU choose to handle viruses. I can attest from being a computer science major with other non-computer students and a former computer support agent for Dell that there are MANY people that do not handle it that way.
“Many people,” but none of them professional or using anything close to best practices. The supporting literature explicitly states, “…positive rules before negative rules but negative rules in axiom to the limitations of coverage.” I wrote that paper for a fortune 100 and made it a crown piece in the white paper I wrote for my SANS GIAC certification in late 2006. You’re wrong and again should ask someone you respect, who is an actual computer scientist, to set you straight. End Point security is fail and you should know better.
I choose to handle Viruses this way, because unlike history, language, or even arguing with you on the internet, computer security is not something I dabble in, it’s a significant portion of my income. Go ahead, I’ve given you or anyone enough information to look me up. Find my paper and try and poke some holes in that one.
Now back to the topic at hand:
The children(and other family members as well) have inherited this disgrace and/or infamy through the actions of their relative. What you are saying is it is up to them to remove that mark from their names. It is up to them to disprove the assumptions people will make based on their familial associations, rather than up to society to not focus on the crime in a sensational manner under the guise of journalism.
Society is a “group of people living together in an ordered community.” From the online etymology dictionary. A socious, or companion from the latin Societatem and organization or brotherhood of mutual respect or admiration. We do not admire crime. We abhor crime, so we reject participation of criminals and criminal elements into our society. Crime comes from the word Krisis (crisis) which is the turning point of a disease as defined by Hippocrates. Someone who commits a crime has chosen a “turn for the worse.” In society, crime is a disease that must be shunned and rejected. There has been significant effort to rehabilitate criminals and even to provide solace for the families of criminals, but the inclusion in society is a willful act of those in society, not a voluntary participation by the criminal or the family of a criminal. As I said before, stigma is a word that has a very specific meaning. It is a mark, to identify people who do not belong. It’s the Scarlet letter, the brand of a traitor, the tar and feathering and the mark of the outcast, as well as the wounds on Jesus Christ, someone I not merely respect but actually believe in. Stigma in this case is one of choice for the family member. They can stand by their family name and the actions of their family member or they can come stand with society again by rejecting their family and the actions upon attaining their majority. They can choose to stand with the criminal or they can choose to stand with society as a whole.
Crime is a stigma, crime is a judgment or mark of judgment as well as a turning point in the disease of “sin.” Every Western language identified crime in one way or another as a mark of disease or plague to stigmatize the action of a crime as a connection with the failing of faith. Our religions reflect a concentration on personal penance and personal responsibility but include stipulations for crimes following the sons of a criminal for multiple generations. We’ve largely discarded this practice with the holiest of holy options. Innocent until proven guilty. We take no institutional actions against the family of a criminal, we simply take a societal approach. We draw a line in the sand and say, “this is responsible behavior and next to the criminal is not responsible behavior.”
It’s up to the family to step away from the criminal and distance themselves from the shame that is inherent in the relationship with the criminal. We have so many traditions and cultural connections to this including the baptismal washing of sins into rebirth, to shed the sins of our religious ancestry in original sin.
On top of all of this “theory” there’s the simple nature of all of it. The family of a criminal does not deserve the benefit of the doubt, they simply possess it to a lesser degree until they declare their intentions. We cannot know a man’s (or woman’s) heart until they either declare it or present actions that prove one way or another their intent as well as their purpose.
I didn’t make this up. Again, it’s like I did all of the research for you and all you have to do is go and check it and see if I’m right or not, and you’ll know you’re wrong.
And you think society is generally professional and uses best practices?
One’s reputation can be harmed without them ever doing anything themselves. You seem to want to pigeon-hole stigma into having to be an active action on the part of the individual and that is not the case. And a person can be against the actions of their family member, and still bear the stigma attached to the name. Why do you think some family members of famous criminals change their names? They are against their actions and still bear the burden their name brings. So a stigma doesn’t simply cease to exist because you take a stance against the negative action. And children don’t even get that luxury.
You expect them to say the actions were wrong and their life will magically be ok? You think that will stop kids from teasing them? Or does it make it easier to explain what happened to your parent when someone asks why you only have a mom or dad? Sure they can lie, but it is still hard having to lie about such a thing. Does decrying the action make it any easier to get online and read the hateful remarks of others? I really don’t think you have an empathetic understanding of how hard this stuff is on a child. You can try to define stigma in whatever manner you like, but that will not change the impact it has on a child. And you simply don’t get that.
And while there are no institutional actions taken against the family, there are societal actions. Again, I mention the Lori Drew case. Her whole family is paying for her actions and the actions of strangers. You seem to think that the offended family member should simply distance themselves from the criminal. It’s not so easy for kids to do that. They can’t simply walk away from a parent. In this case, the actions of the strangers have become as bad as hers if not worse because of their intent. How is that for a societal response? It that a sign of being civilized? Is that the stage that history and attempts at rehabilitation has brought us to?
And please don’t tell me you are naive enough to think that our system is TRULY based on the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”. If you are that naive, go hang out at a courthouse for a few days and watch some trials. Once you are arrested, you are considered to be guilty, treated as guilty by the cops, and have to prove your innocence in court. You are guilty until you prove your innocent.
On this debate, you are wrong. You are trying to narrowly define stigma. You are trying to use a bunch of words to basically say that there is no negative impact on the family members as long as they don’t support their criminal member. I’ve read enough of your posts to know that empathy is not a strong point of yours. You can’t dismiss feelings, no matter how much research you do.
Yes, more and more they are forced to use best practices, because their ISP’s subscribe to the same concepts that are beginning to roll out security that steps beyond end point, becomes more nodal, progressive and enforces positive rules over negative. Given that AOL, Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T, Charter, and every other major ISP subscribes to both black listing and white listing, and even wonder of wonder Dell computers corporate subscribes to these lists, yes, even the people that you want to call stupid are dealing with viruses the same way I do. It is far from 100%, nor does it exclude the current need for end point security, but it is progressive, strategic and more effective than we had.
You seem to think that because I lack a complete picture that I lack an empathic response. I have an empathic response for the victims of crime who lose a loved one or have to suffer through the loved one’s rehabilitation, because that’s what brought me to this site. My religious convictions are quite possibly as firmly grounded as your own and while I still find it hard to believe you have actually read an understood the book of Mormon or the bible, you can believe that what you’re saying is coming from that or you can believe as I do that your beliefs comes from a lack of experience in the subject at hand and a general failure to think about what the words you use actually mean.
To legal proceedings, I don’t dodge jury duty and my first jury was at 18. My third seating(in which we sat two different cases) was over two years ago and odds are good the way the system works that I’ll be called again. I was clearly instructed before the proceedings and before retiring with my fellow jurors that in fact the defendant was innocent until proven guilty. In one case, we found that only one charge out of three stuck. In another case we had to rule that even though we thought he was guilty(second sitting), that the defense had presented a reasonable case that someone else could have done the crime. I felt he was guilty, but the judge instructed us to answer the questions as they were written in his instructions, and I don’t “feel” guilty when our jury tossed that around and finally said that to the letter of the questions we had to acquit.
I’d feel comfortable facing this judicial system, guilty or innocent that I would get my just desserts. That’s not naivete, that’s an actual hands on understanding of the system and my own capacity, beyond the proceedings of mere traffic court or superior court.
To the rest, words mean something. Crime is a disease of society passed from one person to another through a failure to immunize, enforce, and safe guard a body of laws from those who would take advantage of another. There are bad laws and there are good laws, but laws against people who burn their children alive are excellent.
Society stands outside, but protected by the legal system. You can be a criminal and participate in society, but society has a right to establish your membership and your exclusion, just as those excluded have the right to establish a society or as individuals to attack society and enforce a reform.
Empathy does not imply compassion, sympathy or empathic concern, it can pertain to any of these three but is only linked, not a requirement for the sense. I think you miss the actual barb by failing to understand the words used. I have empathy and even some sympathy(where I can stand by and share some of their pain) and compassion for the secondary layer of victims of a criminal who have to live with the stigma, but I do not have a positive regard for their situation so I do not have an empathic concern for their emotional welfare. It’s not that I don’t help, but that I disregard the validity of their claims of unfair treatment at the hands of the angry people who reasonably sympathize with the victims more than the criminals.
I don’t think the need for even sympathy for these secondary victims has to overcome the hatred and vitriol expressed against the criminal who does truly atrocious things. I also think that sympathy is also best reserved for the truly innocent in these matters, so while I feel a measure of sympathy, it is offset by a need to express more sympathy for the victims than for any other. All of these words, define social constructs that allow us to overcome the crime and the criminal, instill in the common man a respect and trust for the law as well as a hatred of that crime and allow use to enshrine the victim and assist in that victim’s eventual replacement. Rehabilitation of a criminal must be secondary to the survival and repair of the majority and even that must be above the repair of the victim’s family’s personal shame and grief over the stigmatization of what was a weakness and failing in their communal unit.
To Lori Drew, isn’t it ironic, that the same venom from the internet, of the supposedly anonymous is what currently assaults her position and her family? Her actions made her notorious and her job requires that she have a reasonable and honorable position in the community. You cannot force someone to feel the way you do, nor can you argue that it was merely the media’s handling of Lori Drew that contributed to her notorious stature. You can call it an aggravating factor, but the facts of the case weren’t all disputed in the court case, most were confirmed by the defense, they simply argued that they were not criminal. They even admitted that they were wrong. They did attempt to offset some of the wrong on Megan, who killed herself and believe it or not, I do think we should as a society and culture stress how useless suicide truly is, but it’s not time for us to do that to Megan. We should circle around Megan’s parents, pour on oil and wine and call the innkeeper and give them the best room we can afford until they recover as much as possible. Meanwhile, those elements not specifically involved in that endeavor should be helping to insure that the parable of Lori Drew is one where the lesson learned, lessens the chance that it can happen again.
You seem to be working under the assumption that I don’t have experience of the things I speak. In this regard, you would be sorely mistaken. Everything I’ve spoken about in this debate, I have done so from a position that you are not in. It is because of that, I can say with 100% certainty that you are wrong. No matter how long-winded you get or try to compartmentalize the different people, you will never understand something you have not experienced yourself. The fact that you continue to argue things you have never experienced, determined that you are the correct one here, is sad and amusing.
You claim to be devout in your religion, I recommend that you study the tenets of whatever it may be a bit more. Because I know of no religion that condones your personality failings. The way you pass judgment, your insults, and your pride are all negative aspects of who you are. The fact that you have taken it upon yourself to decide who is “truly innocent” says a lot about the type of person you are. Someday you will suffer a might fall, maybe something traumatic. Perhaps that will serve to humble you a bit.
And the irony in the Lori Drew case is the people that condemn her actions are doing the same thing as her. The difference being that she did not intend for Megan to kill herself, and the other people are hoping Lori does. Their intent makes their actions that much worse. And your religious beliefs should tell you that they will get their reckoning someday.
You seem to be working under the assumption that I don’t have experience of the things I speak
Since you’ve failed to give examples, that assumption is not only reasonable, it should be a given.
In this regard, you would be sorely mistaken. Everything I’ve spoken about in this debate, I have done so from a position that you are not in.
Nothing you’ve said so far can make me sore. Nothing you’ve said so far supports a reasoned position or contradicts my points in detail or reasonable argument.
Make a point and support it and you might be able to change the balance here, but what you’ve said so far is how you feel, not how things are.
No matter how long-winded you get or try to compartmentalize the different people, you will never understand something you have not experienced yourself.
Who have you lost to murder? Who do you know was raped? Who do you know was falsely convicted of a crime? Who do you know who got away with murder? Who have you lost to drunk driving? What have you lost to animal cruelty? Has a friend you talked to every week, sometimes every day been killed? Have you lost any first cousins who were like older brothers to you to crime? Do you have relatives in prison right now, that you feel shameful for having any relationship to? Have you lost a child hood friend to racial violence? I haven’t discussed all of the answers to these questions, but if it comes to it, I can with excellent and deeply personal examples.
We are the sum of our experiences and mine are just as valid as yours in this argument, because I’ve presented mine in contradiction to your statements backed up with appropriate language and reasonable citations. Jury duty and a strong tradition/work/relationship and understanding of the law, stacked with a firm understanding of research and reasoned approaches trumps your little temper tantrum because you’ve consistently shown you cannot and will not support your statements with anything but vitriol and childish misuse of words you should have learned about before age 10–like almost everyone else here.
You claim to be devout in your religion, I recommend that you study the tenets of whatever it may be a bit more.
I do consistently and with a deep understanding that I do not even know the depths or height of my own faith until the end of my life. The chief examples of these are Love your neighbor as yourself, and “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
There’s one thing I do, however which does violate that last one. I challenge people to do at the minimum what I do publicly. My private acts, those are for God and me, but there are endeavors that take multiple people. Things like teaching SQL and Excel to people who need it to get anything other than a basic job, or providing help to a charity that helps a former inmate regain enough honorable job service to move on to another job that pays better and can be more forgiving of past transgressions. Those are the sort of things that should be screamed from the rooftops so that A. People take advantage of the program and B. People step up so the system can become self-sustaining even after the death of the primary organizers.
Because I know of no religion that condones your personality failings.
Then you aren’t paying attention to even the Mormon faith. I am not a Mormon, but nothing I’ve said would stand outside of the tabernacle save for my familial support of my Gay brother’s right to marry under American law, a rejection of the taxless nature of religion and support for a firm and secular legal system without interruption from religious authority or corruption.
The fact that you have taken it upon yourself to decide who is “truly innocent” says a lot about the type of person you are.
To paraphrase, any tree that does not bear fruit shall be cut down and thrown in the fire and burned.
Someday you will suffer a might fall, maybe something traumatic. Perhaps that will serve to humble you a bit.
Like say a Brown Recluse Spider bite that results in half an orange out of your left leg? A 5 week bout with pneumonia, 2 weeks into a new job? A personal Cancer scare?
Life is a series of falls in which we stand back up, dust ourselves off and keep moving, until something kills us. We are purposeful beings who build in incremental steps, solutions to problems that overcome obstacles. Crime is a disease of society that has to be overcome through both a hard line and a clear statement of the problems. We have always overcome crime through the parable and nothing on this site is short of the modern parable.
And the irony in the Lori Drew case is the people that condemn her actions are doing the same thing as her. The difference being that she did not intend for Megan to kill herself, and the other people are hoping Lori does. Their intent makes their actions that much worse. And your religious beliefs should tell you that they will get their reckoning someday.
It’s funny actually, it’s not the same thing. The internet wahoos who are throwing flame after flame in her direction aren’t doing it because they want to take revenge for a slight against their own daughter, but are doing it because Lori’s actions resulted in the death of a girl and our society hates bullies at the same time our mobs become them.
My religious beliefs, like every other man, woman and child who will ever be born or has ever been born, are mine. No one else will ever have a relationship like mine and I don’t expect it, I only hope for it.
Would you believe that I’m nearly a year younger than you are? You make me feel old because you know so very little about the world around you. You don’t pay attention, you don’t research the most basic of your assumptions and you don’t bother to keep looking once you’ve made up your mind. These aren’t assumptions, these are facts.
As it stands, the “gossip” about crimes is one of the few tools our civilization has in announcing to the world what is right and what is wrong and insuring that the majority of people hear about it. It is the pulpit of the human social conscience. Enshrining the victims and demoralizing the criminal is an unfortunate consequence of the actions of the criminals, not a responsibility of society since nothing else that works has been found to fix the problem.
If those examples are the extent of the trauma in your life, you should be thanking the Lord for how easy you have had it.
Assumptions are never reasonable. You know what they say when you assume.
You truly think you are the bees knees. This line “No one else will ever have a relationship like mine and I don’t expect it, I only hope for it.” has to be one of the most pompous things I have ever read.
Dude you are so full of crap. You hide it by talking in circles, slightly diverting the topic or manipulating phrases. But you can see it if you look. I sincerely doubt you have ever admitted you were wrong about anything in your life. You still think you are right and I am wrong about me being someone else. You are conceited enough to think you know my identity better than me. That’s how absurd you are. And there comes a point when you have to say enough is enough. And I am doing that with this conversation. I could bring on 3 people as examples to share their stories about being related to criminals and the stigmas attached and you would still tell them they were wrong. So why continue to discuss this with you? So you can continue to write your nonsense and know that I’ve got your number.
If those examples are the extent of the trauma in your life, you should be thanking the Lord for how easy you have had it.
Translation: Blah Blah, thatsmystapler is still trolling, empty, beaten and unable to make any presentation of fact because he’s ignorant and just as conceited as he assumes everyone who disagrees with him is.
Query: Did you learn to be this big of a failure at Dell?
Assumptions are never reasonable. You know what they say when you assume.
Obviously the ASS out of U and ME statement never met the scientific method, nor have you. You claim to be so logical, and make an allusion like this? Logic fail, assumptions and their proof or disproof are the core of logic–see supposition. Arguably, since the source of the word is the term for Mary’s ride into heaven, your knowledge of religion mirrors your knowledge of words.
You truly think you are the bees knees. This line “No one else will ever have a relationship like mine and I don’t expect it, I only hope for it.” has to be one of the most pompous things I have ever read.
A perfect mirror of your argument with a certain Atheist, where she claimed her God was not yours, and you refuted that your belief in God was right and they were wrong. Maybe not so perfect a mirror. Yours was a global, mine was specific to my personal knowledge.
No one else is me. Perhaps you should just look up every word I use or you want to use that’s longer than 5 letters. Start with relationship.
I sincerely doubt you have ever admitted you were wrong about anything in your life.
I’ve done it on this site, several times. I did it in my typo response. I even conceded one point to you in an argument, which is the only reasonable point of an argument, but I still think you’re James or very, very closely related to him in some way. You two (or one) suffer from the same false erudition. Make simple vocabulary mistakes, like at the very least you talk to one another or are from a similar background. When you make typos, they’re identical, your emphasis words are close to spot on and your argumentative style is crude and exactly the same. maybe I’m reading too much into you two. Maybe you’re both just dumb.
That’s how absurd you are.
It’s funny you’d use that word. No it’s ironic you’d use that word. Look up incongruous when you get a chance. I hope it leaves you chilled.
I could bring on 3 people as examples to share their stories about being related to criminals and the stigmas attached and you would still tell them they were wrong.
Funny, I could find 10 posters on this site who’ve called you a fool, a moron, or questioned your sanity. You have the stigma of being a fool, a moron and called insane… Do you get it yet? People who think you’re wrong, versus people who think you’re right, outnumber you on this site, not because you have this amazing argument no one understands, but because your argument sucks. Your words don’t mean what you think they mean. Your examples are non-existent. Support what you say, or be prepared to eat crow.
So you can continue to write your nonsense and know that I’ve got your number.
Don’t forget the area code is 919.
As a nice little parting gift:
non·sense Pronunciation (nnsns, -sns)
n.
1. Words or signs having no intelligible meaning: a message that was nonsense until decoded.
2. Subject matter, behavior, or language that is foolish or absurd.
3. Extravagant foolishness or frivolity: a clown’s exuberant nonsense.
4. Matter of little or no importance or usefulness: a chatty letter full of gossip and nonsense.
5. Insolent talk or behavior; impudence: wouldn’t take any nonsense from the children.
Jason = attack the issues, answer Stapler’s questions
Stapler = attack Jason, ignore Jason’s questions
No wonder everyone thinks Stapler is a jerk, lol.
Jason:
While it is clear that you and I do not agree about everything, I <3 you right now.
Honestly, with the situation I'm in and the amount of brain drainage from the classes I'm taking despite my situation, I do not have the time, energy or will to take apart Stapler's posts in such an eloquent, well reasoned manner. I'm afraid that my patience has run short and the most people are getting out of me lately is a "fuck you and go die".
That being said, I still have the energy to be so perfectly amused by your posts that I read them aloud for my husband's enjoyment as well. Bravo! =)
No worries Alanna, I’ve said before that I’m much more liberal than it may appear. Kenny and I are friends in real life and I don’t think he and I see eye to eye on quite a few things, but I think this site and its purpose are the sort of things that a lot of people can share on. Hating people who rape and burn babies is a fairly low bar to establish a sense of community, but I’m still surprised at all of the good people that come around.
On the reply side, I think I’ve got the perfect way to pigeonhole the Staplers of this world though. When someone comes to this site and sees someone venting their spleen and cussing up a storm because they want some murdering/rapist/scum to die a torturous death, they either understand why or they miss the point and start mouthing off from some moral perch they think they’ve earned from some understanding they think they own. They assume the desire to see some sort of eye for an eye is somehow reflective of how weak that person is, how ignorant and how shallow their moral fiber, and they want to preach their “revelation” into the breach.
They miss the point that at the very least, the person who is calling for these torturous things, would want the same done to them if they ever committed the same exact crime. That’s a depth of understanding and “empathy” if you will, that they fly right past and miss. They miss why someone would feel so much anger and helplessness in the face of an injustice like the ones displayed on this site, would suddenly demand for something just worse to happen. Perhaps too many of the people who come out swinging with their passion are all too aware of how often crap like this has been done and then gotten away with. It’s funny, because they swoop in and needle the people who are angry at the right folks and invariably redirect the frustration back on themselves for so completely missing the point.
To those who come from the moral high ground, swinging their favorite quote from the bible ahead of them, like it’s clearing their path of all reasonable argument, the only option is to swing the actual bible back at them. When someone swings their new favorite word, or some happy quote from their Dilbert calendar, the etymology of the word and the definition are the biblical equivalent. Finish up your classes, enjoy this site, and pay it forward. As long as the internet continues to exist there will be a few emotionally challenged and illiterate fools to pants along the way.
UPDATE 07-07-2009 – Nevermind
Max – I think you put the link in the wrong thread, lol.
Oh shit. That was pretty stupid.
Heh… I wasn’t sure whether the pics were Nixzmary’s on the wrong thread, or Kristen’s with the wrong name – but I sure as hall wasn’t going to go look! I can’t stomach stuff like that. It’s way more than my senses can handle to read it, but looking at it makes me lurch.
Why dont people like him pick on people like me? instead of little helpless babies? I have alot of anger and just wait til the wrong strain of fungus like this idiot messes with me.
My sister was married to Shawn’s father (not during this time earlier). Shawn had come to live with them for 3 months on one occassion. The defense had approached my sister to be a part of the defense on the resentencing. My sister told the defense that he deserves the death penalty. My sister says that Shawn was in no way mentally retarded but very rebellious. She says that he was not book smart, because he would not go to school but that he is very capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. She says that he was very manipulative and was very good at hiding his wrongs. For example, he was arrested when he was an adult but gave a different name and was convicted as a minor…but it was not him. How many people can pull that off. This guy knows right and wrong. His immediate family have testified to conditions worse then what they are to try and save him. They thought they had a judge that would not give him the death penalty. Shawn needs to be put to death. No matter how harsh this sounds, I wish it could be by the same means that Kristen was murdered.
Marie, that doesn’t sound harsh at all, quite the opposite. He deserves far worse for what he did to that beautiful little girl, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find many who would disagree with me.
Thank you Marie – Your post confirms what I suspected along about Grell – that he was intelligent enough to exaggerate his so-called mental health problems, and that most of the informations about his terrible childhood came from his own family trying to save him from the needle. What he did to Kristen he did out of pure malice and spite, and he deserves no mercy. I don’t think we’ll ever know why he really did it, but I don’t buy the “she was whining” excuse. I think it had more to do with getting back at some of the adults in his life – Amber Brown’s parents perhaps, or Amber herself for some reason – he just had way too much time to think about what he was going to do for it to have been a knee-jerk reaction to a crabby little girl. Anyways, that’s what I think.
BTW, for those who are interested in Shawn Grell’s resentencing hearing, the defense rested on July 2nd, and Court was recessed until July 20th. I assume we’ll have closing arguments then and it should be in the jury’s hands by the 22nd. Lets just hope they don’t buy into the mentally retarded defense and send him back to death row where he belongs.
If Grell was retarded he wouldn’t of had the sense to take this angel to a secluded spot where no one could see what evil he had done. actually wouldn’t be allowed to drive a car. he’s a disgusting firebug who wanted to hurt her Mother and Grandparents because he’s such a huge failure at life. The only retarded thing I see is that this scumbag is still sharing the air I breath.
I woke up at 4am this morning having nightmares, seeing little Kristen pacing the ground as she was over come in flame. Hell is good of a place for this Monster Grell. RIP sweet Kristen, you’ll not be forgotten.
I found out about this old case through a truecrime website. I can’t forget it. It is haunting me. I am a mother as well and this just seems all too common – man wants to “get” the mother (or her family) so he kills the one person who would mean the most to her. I really hope that death came quickly for her — I can’t even bear to think how she felt — betrayed by the one she thought loved her. The mother is serving a death sentence as well — when you lose a child, especially to violence, especially by its own father, you are the walking dead. Every breath you take, every thought. My prayers and thoughts are with her. I really hope she can be at peace and her daughter gets justice.
I thought about that being a mom to a beautiful daughter 14 months old..I look at her and I just can’t imagine anyone, especially her father or myself harming a hair on her head..
When I read this..
“Dr. Seth Asser, an expert in child trauma and burn injuries, testified today that there is no doubt in his mind that little Kristen Salem suffered horribly as she burned to death, the majority of her body consumed by flame. “Kristen became extremely confused from the lack of oxygen before her heart eventually stopped,” he said. The little girl “would have had to be in pain from the quickest instant when she was set on fire until she fell over, and maybe sometime after that,” Asser said.
Kristen’s mother, Amber Salem, ran from the courtroom crying during Asser’s testimony.”
I felt her grief and could only imagine heart as she ran from that court room. it’s breaking my heart even now.
It’s hard for me to sleep after seeing Kristen’s picture now. This case is 11 yrs old .. don’t know how I missed it. Like you said, I think these cases always cause me to tear up, but being a mother, the pain is double. Children are pawns too often. People think that since they brought the children into the world, they can take them out. I only wish Grell committed this crime in Texas. There’s little doubt he’d be put to death. And quick too. They don’t play here.
I have been waking up every night since I read this dreaming about this. My sister is avoiding my site and my link to this one because I barely told her about this and she screamed out loud. I feel awful I even told her and it felt sickening rolling off breath.
If you haven’t mentioned it..I don’t think i’d do that again. no one is prepared to think about this. I have bags under my eyes and break into tears allot any more.
I know this is awful but I even prayed to God that there is punishment after death. I imagine I’m going to burn in hell along with him now. I’ll tell you this though if I do I will kick him with all might right in the balls.
My God, that looks like my daughter. Big blue eyes and tufty blonde hair. I have no words for this one. Nothing. The night I read this story I didn’t sleep well. I share a room with my one year old, her crib sits next to my bed. My husband said that every half hour or so I bolted up out of bed and peeked over into her crib before falling back asleep. I kept thinking about that little girl, seeing her in my dreams.
I remember clearly the day this happened . I lived in AZ at the time. “No, daddy, no!” It’s time to put this monster down. Enough already.
I can’t stop thinking about her :( I just can’t. I wish there was something that I could do…leave some flowers at her grave, words….because it’s so old, I can’t find much about it. I can’t even find anything at findagrave? Does anyone have any more info on this little girl besides being known as a murder victim? I’d like to think of her more than simply that.
this her find a grave site..she’s such a pretty little girl.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Salem&GSfn=Kristen&GSpartial=1&GSby=1997&GSbyrel=in&GSdy=1999&GSdyrel=in&GSst=5&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=7056013&
what kind of devil could look at her, hear her say “Daddy please no” and do the most heinous of
acts and burn her to death? looking at Grell I know I have seen pure evil.
Thank you for the link. Yeah, I cried again last night. I really should move on but I keep tuning in because I want this evil man get what’s coming to him. I’d like to think that she is in a better place but then I am sad because her life was cut unnecessarily short. I used to be against capital punishment – but then I had a child. Then I realized that some people do not deserve air space. It always sickens me when victims are those who can’t fight back – the children and the elderly.
I was in the pool of jurors for this resentencing thing and sat in a court with this animal on 2 occasions. At first I was interested in trying to help make sure this guy what he deserved but when the little old ladies in the pool were so adamant against the death penalty, I knew it would simply end up me against a bunch of people that would never agree. In the end, I told his defense lawyer, in open interviews in front of this guy, that I thought the original decision was correct and therefore I did not think I was really qualified to sit on this jury because I believe he should have been executed a long time ago. Have to admit though, was ominous being in the same room with this person, man he looked mean and full of hate.
Probably knowing he did something so malevolent, so evil it’s beyond a normal decent persons perception of even criminal behavior (this is on a level all it’s own) That his presence was funnelled through that knowledge.
I had watched a movie about the Wannsee Conference recently and it was just people talking at a dinner table but it made my blood run cold. I thought to myself “If I was a person in any of these men’s presence, like Reinhard Heydrich, I would literally tremble in terror” just because I know how evil they were.
I bet it really was foreboding in his presence. i just hope people in prison don’t feel like us and he gets some real jail house justice.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
Don’t bother Michael. It didn’t work for me, and I’m used to stories like this.
I’m still disgusted with myself for not crying…Monsters like this should be gutted like fish.
UPDATE: He has been sentenced to death by the jury. I’m so happy about this. I only hope that he doesn’t die before Arizona does away with his worthless life. But he’s young, so there is hope.
Thank you so much for this update. I’m glad that after all this time, that little girl will finally see a little bit of justice. Humane, relatively painless justice, certainly nothing close to what he truly deserves. I know this story means a lot to you.
I hope somebody shanks his ass!!
I am glad he got the death penalty, there is no redemption for this type of crime. I do regret one thing about the death penalty and its application-he will feel nothing of the pain she suffered. I have a feeling that this man feels nothing for any living being or creature, including himself and being sentenced to death means nothing to him because he is missing some element of humanity that sees life as precious. I really don’t know what punishment could even begin to come close to his crime and really the crimes of all the child killers discussed here, thus I do hope there is an afterlife and a hell where an appropriate punishment can be meted out.
There is no punishment I can imagine (and I have an imagination) that could come close to making him pay for what he did. Even if you did the exact same thing to him as he did to his child, he wouldn’t be as trusting and innocent so i would not be the same. Just kill him and save the oxygen for the rest of us.
http://www.azfamily.com/yahoo_rss/stories/phoenix-news-072709-grell-sentenced.81b9f41c.html
YAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
The fucker’s gonna fry.
okay, now I’m gonna go wipe away the flood of tears that flows everytime I think of poor swwt Kristin, hug my kids and Thank God that Arizona feels the same way I do about this mangey waste.
RIP Baby Kristen.
Good riddance to scum. Hope he gets shanked in prison. They don’t put up with scum like him.
As I posted before, Shawn was the stepson of my sister. She did not raise him and was only in his life for 3 months. This man was very capable of right and wrong. You can look at my past posts. He did not have the terrible childhood that was described. He has a sister who is very productive. The sad fact is that he was not supposed to be able to pick her up from day care and they allowed him to take her that fateful day. After his death sentence was found unconstitutional because a Judge sentenced him. He went before a Jury for 3 months. On July 23, 2009, the jury heard both sides, and he as been sentenced to death, as should be. It has been 9 years since the heinous unthinkable crime, and it should be carried out. Shawn himself that he is ready for the death penalty, as it should be. HIs daughter was a beautiful child. He did this out of anger and new his actions were such an atrocity. I would hope there are not further appeals and the juries sentencing will be carried out. Shawn had every opportunity for help and had much support from his family that he refused. Even when he is executed, it is not enough for the harm he brought on his innocent child who could not defend herself. What a tragedy.
Jodie, thank you for your responses and I know words seem so inadequate, but with this comment comes my heart filled with love and sympathy your loss of beautiful Kristen.
Grell had signed Ambers name at Day Care I thought I read right? so he basically kidnapped her and day care didn’t follow their own rules. I am still in shock.
I’m so sorry this has happened
RIP Kristen Courtney Salem
Was trying to figure out if this was a childhood friend..Anyone know if he spent time in Hayward Ca. as a kid?
My daughter is that age. She’s beautiful. . . . . this thing is no human. The day he does finally die., no one will shed a tear. The mention of his existence on this planet will only bring thoughts of his daughter’s. I wonder if he thinks he spent his time wisely,. from birth to murder and execution., what a waste of human life all around. The most important thing is life.,so many waste it.
Are there any updates on this piece of shit? I can’t seem to find anything new. I hate this pig fucker.
I hate this male. I hate him. I cried and cried reading this story. UGH! We need this male erased, deleted, forgotten.
from humanity that is.
I have to submit to a background check to get a job. I have to have a license to drive a car. But this monster was allowed to procreate. I don’t want to get into a discussion of eugenics, which is what this kind of thing always deteriorates toward, but it seems to me that if all potential parents had to undergo the scrutiny that potential adoptive parents had to, there would be no unwanted or abused children. No one is required to prove that he or she is mentally, emotionally, ethically, or financially prepared to have and raise a child. And the results of this absence we read about daily on PYSIH.
It makes me especially sad that after he slapped her she said “sorry daddy” she was so sweet, she said Sorry daddy, I look at her little face and i can just tell… Im sorry if I am not as eloquent as all of you, i dont have words for things like this, he lit a child on fire, he claims he is sorry, if he is then he needs to sit in his shit ass cell and light himself on fire… Im sorry for you baby Kristen, I hope you are in a better place, someone please get a flamethrower and slow roast this motherfucker…
Any updates to be had on this POS? I can’t find anything, but I think this sonofabitch is still breathing our air.
I met Shawn before he commited this horrible crime.I only met him once for like a hour,he was staying at one of my friends house.When I met him he was drinking,he had his stuff in my friends closet and was sitting in the closet crying.(he lived with my friend at that time)I asked him what was wrong,he responded that his ex wouldn’t let him see his daughter any more.There was a picture of the three of them together and I told him his little girl was beautiful…I also told him that wasn’t right for a mother to keep her daughter from her father..then again I had no idea why she wasn’t letting him see her.Then a few months later I am watching tv and hear about this case,not seeing a picture of the person my heart breaks..then when I do see who it is I freak out saying I know that mother fucker from somewhere….then remember where/when.It’s really sad that he did this to his beautiful child,he should gladly take the death sentence but is a coward and trys to fight it.Hope he rots in hell and the memory of Kristen lives on forever
What the hell? First he’s crying because he can’t see her, then he’s setting her on fire? What a nutjob. Happily, he’s a nutjob who’s going to fry some day.
This is very sad, I wonder why it takes background check companies so long to get these reports back. Int he article it said a couple of months, that seems long.
If this wasn’t premeditated, I don’t know what is… He told police he “decided he was going to do it” and drove around looking for a spot…. This site I saw makes me unable to believe this guy is mentally retarded.. http://www.dui1.com/DuiCaseLawDetail1730/Page1.htm
Some please tell me how he did not know what he was doing was disgustingly wrong… the little girl screamed “No, Daddy, no!”..so obviously even she, at 2 years old, knew he was doing something bad.