Monday, August 01, 2005

Loyalty is one thing; stupidity is another

I'm appalled — though hardly shocked, the way people raise (or don't raise) their kids these days — that some 18-year-old New Jersey punk invited the girl next door over to watch TV and ended up stabbing her to death in the heat of an argument.

I'm not even all that surprised — though I suppose were I not jaded and cynical, I would be — that said punk dismembered the poor victim's body, placed the severed sections in a steamer trunk, and tried to dump the whole kit and kaboodle into the Passaic River.

No, what stuns me about this sad report is that the punk was able to persuade his brother and a 16-year-old friend into helping him dispose of the body. The brother I can sort of understand — blood is thicker than water, after all — but what was the other kid thinking?

A guy calls you on the phone and says, "Hey, Jimmy. I just offed Jennifer. Could you come over real quick and help my little bro and me hack her body up and toss her in the Passaic?"

Don't you say, "Umm... NO"?

Okay, the punk is your friend. I get that. But you can make new friends. Friends who don't murder teenaged girls. Friends who don't dissect their murder victims and pack them like yesterday's BVDs into a steamer trunk. Friends who don't ask you to become an accessory-after-the-fact to murder. Friends who aren't willing to implicate you in a brutal crime whose commission you had nothing to do with, so that you can spend the next 10 to 15 years of your pitiful existence trying like the dickens to avoid hand-sharpened shivs and Big Louie the tossed-salad man.

Let's see, friendship with prison; no friendship but no prison. I'll take the prison-free option every time.

1 insisted on sticking two cents in:

Blogger Joel offered these pearls of wisdom...

Sigh.

5:28 PM  

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