This Tuesday marks the 10 year anniversary of the first of the tragic DC sniper shootings. I can remember right where I was when I first heard of the first shooting. The fear that gripped the region didn’t let up for 23 days. Those 23 days seemed much longer. I doubt that anyone who lived in the area at the time will ever fully recover from the psychological ordeal of a this type of terrorism.
Yes, Lee Malvo was a monster. A monster of the worst kind. A monster who picks off mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends, sisters, brothers, without rhyme or reason. Yet knowing all of this, there is just something tragic about listening to this young man speak.
Perhaps most noticeable is the fact that Lee Malvo makes no excuses nor does he play an ironic victim card. After all, he was practically brain-washed by an older, malevolent vicious man. Notable is that Malvo has had to be his own shrink, priest, and teacher. Such luxuries aren’t afforded inmates with life sentences.
I am not comfortable with Lee Malvo. Something is missing. I sure don’t want to turn him loose. I don’t want to torture him either. Even though he doesn’t think so, I feel he was a victim. I would at least hope he had a kindle and a good book swap program. John Allen Muhammad? I want him to rot in hell. He took one more life than accounted for in the sniper shootings–the life of a kid who looked up to him. Lee Malvo.
Full Interview with Lee Malvo with Josh White
Those were terrible days. Fear was everywhere.
I will never forget limping out of town and getting gasoline in Front Royal. I thought I was safe. That probably wasn’t true but I convinced myself.
I am puzzled by any description of Malvo as a “victim.” He was a young terrorist, of an age where he was capable of discerning right from wrong. I don’t care how “brainwashed” you are, you have to know that shooting innocent people is wrong. The innocent woman who was just sitting on a bench at a shopping center was a victim. All of us who lived through those fearful weeks were “victims.” I hope he is truly contrite for his actions, and he can settle up with his higher power and hopefully receive forgiveness from the families he hurt. But he is no victim.
Thinking along the lines of people with the Stockholm Syndrome, he was a kid with a troubled past, abandoned by a parent, and manipulated and used by an older role model. That to me spells victim.
Please note I am not saying I think he should be exonerated or released. I do not. I just want him to have a Kindle. Perhaps he can self help himself out of his dismal situation. Maybe through the printed word he will become a decent human being. He sure has nothing to look forward to. He himself said he was a monster. That is the beginning of settling up, or so I have been told.
The question to ask is what would have become of him if he had had at least one supportive parent? Would he have been used, manipulated and turned into a killer had he just been the kid next door? We will never know. I like to think not. Sometime it is helpful to understand why people do the things they do.
We are past right from wrong. He obviously did extreme wrong.
I very much agree that we were all victims.
Personally, I think the little punk should have fried like his friend Malvo. Just because he was 17, is NO excuse to escape execution. Especially, if one of those killings took place in PWC, as the shooting of Dean Myers did. We’d just gone into K-Mart as that shooting took place, just three lights down on 234. I will NEVER forget that night.
I hated kids having to be on lock down at schools, because of these two terrorists.