Suicide Ain't No Couple's Dance

[catelin]

The key concept to suicide is that you fucking kill YOURSELF. Why is it, then, that someone decides to take some other poor sap along for the ride? I personally have never understood the idea of wanting to make oneself dead. I've got too much of a survivor instinct. You're in a plane crash in the Andes with me, I will be using my pocket knife to make ass steaks. No doubt. But even assuming that there's a bona fide reason for shortening your stay on the planet, why include someone else in that? As usual, my question relates to a case I'm working on. Aside from being the vivacious bon vivant my friends all know and love, I'm an ATF-trained arson prosecutor. You'd never know by looking, eh? Oh, and I mean the training on how to investigate and prosecute arsons, not how to commit them. Just figured I'd make that clear, in light of that pesky ATF/Waco dealio. So I've got this case comes across my desk where one guy decides he's going to blow himself to bits. Efficient. I have no problem with that, as long as it's away from others. However, he decides to do it in his place of employment. Pulls out the gas stove from the wall, turns the radio on, and sits down for the long sleep. A neighbor boy, about 20, smells gas. He sees the guy and runs in to pull him out of the small building. Well, suicide king gets pissed and ends up igniting the gas...building goes boom. Boy of twenty now has burns over fifty percent of his body and may not live. Suicide king has burns, but of course, not nearly as serious as the poor kid who went in to save his sorry ass. The rub in all this is that 20-year-old good Samaritan's mother got to stand by the sidelines and watch her son's clothes burn onto his body. Right in front of her eyes. Man. No good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes it sure seems that way.

Comments

[razorart.livejournal.com]

That case reminds me of a book I read in the mid-80's where a father actually tried to burn his son alive (I forget the kid's name) to get back his ex wife for some bullshit.

The kid lived--in pain and disfigured, getting constant skin grafts, etc. The last I saw him, on some talk show or something, he still looked like a serious burn victim.

What a sick fuck of a person to do that to anyone, no less your child.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

That sick fuck is Charles Rothenberg. His son David was 6 years old when he doused him with kerosene and set him on fire. Left him with serious burns over 90% of his body. Served 6 1/2 years of a measly 13-year sentence. Call me unevolved, but I could put a bullet in this prick's brain today and it wouldn't even raise my pulse rate.

[razorart.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's who I mean. The book was one of the few that had me sobbing for hours.

>>Call me unevolved, but I could put a bullet in this prick's brain today and it wouldn't even raise my pulse rate.

Here here, well put. I didn't know that he only served 6 1/2 years. I just...cannot...believe it.

Have you heard anything about how David is now? He must be around 20 or something.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen anything about him for several years. I do remember some awkward human interest pieces from his teen years in which he seemed as well adjusted as one could expect. Nonetheless, it's heartbreaking. I can't think of a more painful (both physically and emotionally) type of violence that I've seen inflicted on a person...and I've seen lots. Humans. Some of us just suck ass.

[omy.livejournal.com]

I also know of a case where a mother tried to burn her own child alive, a three year old girl, to get back at her lesbian lover with whom she was rasing the child. She then tried to claim that the girl burned herself while playing with a lighter. My mom knew the woman's lover, who said the child looked like she was burned with a blow torch.
So awful. How could anyone do such a thing? Kinda makes you lose faith in humanity.