|
3.
AOTW: Has your work affected your view of humanity? What, if any, lessons are there to be learned from studying criminals?
Susan Kelly: I don't thank writing about crime has affected my view of humanity, since it was pretty cynical --- or realistic --- to begin with. I do get disgusted with the revolting things people do to each other. Nothing really shocks me but wanton cruelty. Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around.
Gretchen Brinck: Before writing true crime, my view of humanity had already been affected by doing medical social work for nine years with “crack” mothers, prostitutes, drug addicts, gang members, abused children and raped women. I can understand why police officers, criminal attorneys and prison psychiatrists become cynical and why crime victims feel hate and demand revenge.
Yet, as I said answering #2, I feel we need to understand the complexities of criminal personalities and the multiple.
Michael Fleeman: It reminds us of our limits --- where they are, what happens if we cross them.
Brian J. Karem: You got it backwards. My view of humanity has affected my work. The lessons to be learned from criminals are as varied as the crimes they commit. But I will say with all sincerity that I've interviewed hundreds of criminals as a crime beat and political reporter during the last 20 years.
The number one lesson I've learned from covering crime and interviewing criminals is that we all need to be better parents. An educator friend of mine described parenting as the lost profession of my generation. The results are plain enough to see. You talk to any male criminal and you find out that the common thread running through their lives is some kind of parenting misadventure involving their father. Boys need fathers and children need love and discipline.
So, there's my soapbox preach for the day. You want to do something about crime that is definitive --- support other parents and be a better parent yourself. This issue is the subject of my new book that is coming out in March called Warning Signs by LifeLine Press.
Burl Barer: I learned, from studying criminals: (1) Never argue with an armed drunk (2) If your new love interest is cruel to animals and sets fires, don't assume you can "help them change," especially if they hit you. (3) Anyone who says, "If you ever try to leave me, I'll kill you" isn't just making conversation.
Don Lasseter: Unfortunately, while traveling now, even locally, I find myself saying "Oh, that's where this murder happened, and that's where another murder took place." I see murder sites rather than pleasant things. Studying criminals, I believe, helps create an awareness of danger, and perhaps offers tips on how to avoid becoming a victim.
Irene Pence: After meeting with murderers in penitentiaries and seeing the life that they lead by touring those facilities, I cannot imagine any situation that is too unjust or intolerable for me to commit a crime. I want no part of their existence.
Sue Russell: I'm more suspicious than most. My radar, my internal lie detector, is always working. I've learned that I have good instincts and I really listen to them. Studying criminals repeatedly shows you lives whose paths have been determined in an instant; by a single wrong decision. It's hard to fathom why so many everyday criminals think they'll get away with the most blundering crimes. Why they're willing to throw away their entire lives for what --- even in their perverse perception --- is so little. A finger on the trigger. It's over. Years locked away in a cell. It's like that diet slogan --- a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.
Robert Scott: The lessons I've learned haven't really been from the criminals. They've been from the law enforcement agents who track them down. I just conducted a long interview with two sheriff's detectives in New Mexico. There had been four vicious murders in their county committed by one individual and they didn't want a fifth. So they stayed up four days straight without any sleep tracking down every lead they could find. It took them nearly five hundred miles of back roads all over the area. But it paid off. It was their commitment to duty that helped them apprehend the killer before he could murder again. If September 11th taught us anything it's that there are everyday heroes like these across America.
Carlton Smith: I don’t believe it is helpful to generalize from the behavior of those who commit crimes to a view of humanity as a whole. People do hateful things, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are hateful people, and it certainly doesn't mean that all people are hateful. Let him who is without sin cast the first ... etc. The more of this work I do, the more I find myself feeling sorry for the perpetrators, who more often than not end up doing tremendous damage to themselves even as they inflict incalculable wreckage on their victims’ lives.
Dina Temple-Raston: When Jasper resident heard that King, Brewer and Berry would be coming to the Jasper County Courthouse, they lined up outside, just to catch a glimpse of the trio. But when the group caught sight of them with their sheriff's escort, they were struck dumb as though they were amazed to find them human. I was shocked to find out that King was personable, or to be able to ground him in a life outside prison. I'd never been in a prison or spoken to an inmate before this and I was surprised that inmates didn't fit into Hollywood stereotypes. In this way I was very naive.
Carlton Stowers: Certainly for one to do the necessary research for such books, it is necessary to get to know the characters. Yes, I'm affected by their pain and loss and therefore feel a strong responsibility to them as I write. What lessons are there to be learned? From the criminal, I fear, very little except to say he takes every form and shape, every personality and station in life. In that sense, you're saying, Reader beware! The lessons, if that is the proper word, to be learned is really in the overview of how mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, friends and family, deal with their tragedies.
|
