I was searching for an interesting story to write about, and came upon an interesting moral dilemma. Well, perhaps it’s not so much a moral dilemma as a test of character. Ready? OK, here it is.

It’s the beginning of the 21st century. You’re a member of an incredibly successful musical group. You and your bandmates have paid your dues, working gigs at run down bars and 3rd rate venues for little or no pay, working your way up the ladder of fame.

Your big break comes in the form of an American Idol type television talent show for singing groups. All that hard work, all those hours and hours of practicing and rehearsing finally pay off, and you and the band are declared the winners.

I think most of us had a parent or parental figure that we loved dearly but at the same time were terrified of. In most people’s cases it’s the mother, but in my case, it was my grandmother.

To say that she was tiny would be an understatement. She was a gigantic 4’8″ and, fully dressed, soaking wet, and carrying her fully-load purse, weighed in at a colossal 85 pounds. But her personality was a force of nature.

She was fierce.

She was born outside of Dublin and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was a child. She raised her 15 children (hey, we’re Irish – we don’t have kids, we have litters) to be productive members of the community. When my mother developed her “issues,” my brothers and I went to live with her and my grandfather. We loved her dearly.

Attention all you soul shoppers, today we have a buy one get two free special. For your consideration, let me introduce our three new inductees; Jason Christopher Lay, his attorney, Reginald W. Bours III, and the Honorable Eric M. Johnson or Maryland.

Let us begin with Jason Lay. Back in 2003, Jason was a VERY bad boy. He began using drugs and alcohol. He also began sexually assaulting a 4-year old girl who was the daughter of a friend of his. This abuse continued after Jason married the girl’s mother.

The sexual abuse that this defenseless child suffered was horrific but she heroically testified against Lay at his 2005 trial. She detailed the abuse, even though she refused to look at him. During his trial, Lay was obstinate and in denial. He made faces at witnesses and showed little remorse for his crimes.

Not so long ago if I saw a roving band of teenagers or preteens I used to groan with an insufferable amount of annoyance. I simply don’t like them. Now I see them, and wonder how many of them would be willing to murder one another over a video game, or an unseemly text message. The trend in the media indicates to me that more and more of them will succumb to their only partially developed instabilities. It seems like some of the most heinous crimes are being committed by kids nowadays. Can we say Jordan Brown, for instance? I just don’t understand. Can’t you kids go write angsty poetry like I did back in the day?

Well 15 year old Wayne Treacy couldn’t.

Hello there visitors and frequenters of People You’ll See In Hell. We’ve got us a regular celebrity on the cutting board today. Those of you who have seen Charlize Theron in the movie Monster will recognize the face to the left as that of Aileen Carol Wuornos.

Aileen was a known prostitute who had a tendency to kill those who called upon her services. Hence the movie. But I’m not here to write about a film, I’m here to explain the situation of Wuornos with you.

Aileen always had a passion for sex, losing her virginity at the age of eleven. She had numerous sexual partners, including her own brother. When she was thirteen, it was found that she was pregnant. Wuornos claimed that the man who got her pregnant did so through raping her.

She gave birth to a boy, who was given up for adoption, and was eventually taken in by her grandfather, who threw her out of the house when she was fifteen. At this point Aileen Carol Wuornos thought it would be a dandy idea to take up prostitution as a way to make money for survival. Whatever floats your boat.

I think that most of us make a “to do” list on occasion, especially when we have a particularly busy day. I know that if I don’t make a list, I might drop the dogs at the dry cleaners and take the clothes to the groomers. I have been accused of forgetting my head if it wasn’t attached (thanks honey, love you too).

One can only imagine the March 7, 2010 “to do” list of Ashley Nicole Cox (AKA Ashley Jones), 20, of Corbin, Kentucky.

1. Go visit boyfriend at Roederer Men’s Correctional Complex
2. Give birth to a baby on a prison toilet in the visitors’ room.
3. Stuff toilet paper down the throat of the baby, suffocating it.
4. Throw body in the trash. Make sure to cover the body up with garbage.
5. Resume visit with boyfriend.
6. Pick up something for dinner on the way home.

In my previous post, I wrote about Charles Cullen. Cullen was a serial killer who used his medical profession as a modus operandi for ending the lives of his unfortunate victims. For those of you who thought that Cullen was the worst, think again. Say hello of Harold Shipman.

Harold Frederick Shipman, or “Dr. Death” as he so was coined after his arrest, was the man with the highest number of confirmed murders in the modern world, weighing in at 218. 218 confirmed victims. Not a number to forget, and not a man to forget any time soon, alive or dead.

H. H. Holmes (The Devil In The White City) killed nine. Jeffrey Dahmer killed seventeen. Ted Bundy killed as many as 35, John Wayne Gacy 33. Ever heard of Charles Cullen? No? Charles Cullen murdered at least 45 between 1988 and 2003. Cullen was one of those self-righteous, self-proclaimed “angels of mercy”, a nurse with an eye for those who needed to die.

From his childhood, Charles Cullen was surrounded by death. His dad died while driving a bus when Cullen was seven months old. Four of his eight siblings died in their childhood. When he was seventeen, his mom died in a car accident.

A miserable child, Cullen attempted to commit suicide twenty times in the course of twenty years. Nothing like an annual tradition. The first occurred at the age of nine, when Cullen drank chemicals from his chemistry set. From there, the attempts got more creative, ranging from stealing drugs from the hospital in which he worked, to plunging a pair of scissors through his sick, twisted skull.