Who is this Glenn Sacks person? Don't make me google him! Is he like the John Birch Society or Sean Hannity or something?

It's not that we don't want you to experience the Dark Side of the Force, Amy... We just don't want you to live there.

Glenn's a columnist and blogger I met when had me on his show when I blogged that I thought he was being dumb for starting some campaign about tshirts that said "Boys are dumb, throw rocks at them."

My take: There are shirts that say stuff like "Women are only good for sucking the chrome of a trailer hitch," and I'm not whining about them. I just won't date a guy who's wearing one. Case closed.

Anyway, Glenn's a good guy, who I mostly agree with on things, and he just happened to send me a link to the Mary Winkler thing today, but I've read about it on his site and elsewhere for a long time. And I'm just opposed to murderers of any sex getting custody of their children. Talk about setting a bad example.

Does A Mother Get Any More Unfit?

After reading this, I'd say yes:
http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece

This is what I don't get.

A dude kills because someone fucked up his dinner, nobody has any sympathy for him.

A bitch kills because her husband wants her to wear high heels, and everyone cries for her.

And the same people crying for her drool over the shoes on Sex and the City.

Am I missing something here? It's okay for a woman to wear high heels, unless her husband likes it? Then she can kill him in cold blood, perjure herself during the trial, serve less than a year, and walk away with no fucking lasting consequences from the fact that she ended a man's life. Do I have that about right?

And Maureen Dowd wonders why nobody wants to marry her.

Some people should be beaten to death, slowly

I came arcoss an articel a few months ago, a woman in Japn killed her child because she thought she'd keep her boyfriend, unfortunatly a neihbors child witnessed it so she killed that kid as well. She told the cops she didnt understand why the parents of the child she murdered were so upset becuase they still had their other child

VIC, that story is one of the most horrific I have ever read. I cried, and immediately called my girls at home to tell them I love them. They had just woken up and were confused, thank the gods. No fair making me cry this early in the day, dammit!

Brian, knock it off. I have no sympathy for the Winkler woman, and I don't think she should be out of prison and seeking custody of her kids, but to compare that to some moron killing someone for fucking up his dinner is beyond stupid. Maybe Winkler had some fucked up idea that a minister shouldn't want his wife to dress sexy, and it fucked with her head, I dunno. Certainly she shouldn't have shot him for that, but maybe gotten some kind of counseling or something. She should at least still be in prison for the next 10 years, and custody of her children should not be an option. However, guys that kill someone just for fucking up their dinner just deserve to choke on it. Someone with that bad a temper is probably lucky that anyone made him dinner at all! Context, darling. Seriously.

Flynne: I don't see much of a difference betweens "Oh my god that monster wants me to be his slut" and "You bitch you burned my dinner" if he/she wants you to do something you don't then leave or make a compromise. Killing or ever lashing out at someone for something so inconsequential is lunacy of the highest order. Getting anything more than annoyed at either means your have a bit of a temper issue that needs to be addressed. Contextually they are the same thing, I don't like the way you did X and I'm going to punish you for it.

Also everyone of us have triggers that we react to very badly. To some it's being objectified as a sex object (Winkler) and to other it's the spouses complete utter total lack of concern for our feelings (shooting wife for burning dinner) .

Most women don't want to be viewed as self propelled roast beef curtains. Most men would rather not have their dinner burned or taste so bad the dog won't eat it. The difference between squirl shit crazies and the rest of is is while we may not like X putting 30 aught buck into someone would not even cross our minds.

Point taken, Vlad, but still, I think there's quite a difference between the degree of being upset that someone messed up your dinner and being upset that someone wants you to play dress-up when you're not into it or don't get why the other person wants you to dress up in the first place. YMMV

Coincidentaly, I read Ann Rule's true crime account of the Winkler murder last night and it seems that the real motive is that Mary had gotten conned by one of those internet scams and lost tens of thousands of the family's money and tried to cover it by check kiting.

She and her husband had an appointment at the bank that morning when she shot him and took off.

There was also a lot of detail about how he was a typical hypocritical holy joe type who verbally abused her, but that's grounds for divorce, not a shotgun blast to the back.

I'm willing to believe that she's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier and that she's obviously not all there mentally, but for the life of me, I don't get why anyone would entrust her with three small children.

"If she were a man, is there even the remotest possibility the "justice" would be the same? "

I remember a case in the 1980's where a man strangled his wife in front of their children, served 18 months and won custody. Let's not forget OJ Simpson getting custody. I think it's more a loony judge problem than a sexism problem.

"I think there's quite a difference between the degree of being upset that someone messed up your dinner and being upset that someone wants you to play dress-up when you're not into it"

Not really. As Vlad mentioned, both are just reflections of two differing opinions. In fact, I'd argue that the sexual difference of opinion is a more personal form of rejection as that is an intentional denial.

I've read about that financial angle, too.

O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the criminal trial. Winkler was not. The amount of jail time she got was just sickening.

Flynne, unless I was misunderstanding Brian, I think his meaning was what Vlad says. He wasn't saying there should be sympathy for the man with the burnt dinner, he was saying that there shouldn't be for this woman. I can't help but agree. Both of them are equally loathsome.

Family courts are anything but for in the best interest of the child. They're all about parents' rights these days, especially mother's rights. No matter how horrifying a parent you are. Screw the children; they have no rights. Apparently, you have to be over 18 to have any rights. It is outrageous that a cold-blooded murderer like this is even walking around free. (10 years? No, life w/o parole if not the chair.)

The thought of them raising one child, let alone three, sends a chill right up the spine. These poor kids were already in for a tough recovery from the trauma but had a chance with their grandparent's love but now... Geeze, hope they're strong is all I can say. Extraordinarily strong.

JoJo, I love Ann Rule. She cuts through the crap and tries to give a whole picture, just presents you with the evidence.

Vic, shudder, if there's a case worse than that one, I don't even want to know. Drawing and quartering is too good for that "mom".

Oprah needs to go down for supporting this woman too. Christ!

"O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the criminal trial. Winkler was not. The amount of jail time she got was just sickening. "

We all know OJ was guilty, but since the idiots aquitted him I suppose the courts had no choice.

I don't understand why Winkler hasn't been prosecuted for the check kiting yet. You'd think they'd try to get her some jail time for that.

Yes, family court is corrupt and fucked-up beyond belief. Violent Acres had some excellent editorials on the subject:

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/54/the-deadbeat-dad-myth

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/129/it-takes-two-parents-to-raise-a-successful-functioning-child

I'm not disagreeing with violent acres but the add at the end of the first article about dead beat dads was for an agency specializing in collecting child support. Sort of left a bad taste in my mouth though.

People aren't saying that Winkler was justified in killing her husband BECAUSE of the sexy shoes. The sexy shoes are just the silliest of all of the alleged abuses she suffered, and should take their place in the pantheon of iconically appaling defenses (e.g. the Twinkie defense, the J.A.P. defense, the gay panic defense, the "only following orders" defense, etc.). There's this aura of belief around Winkler that she must have been terribly abused for her to have done what she did, and that is basically the justification people have for declaring her to be a victim--so the platform shoes are not the platform upon which her defense stands. Of course, it doesn't actually seem like she was abused to any extent that would justify what she did, shoes or no shoes. At the very least, the "battered woman" defense is predicated upon the assertion that a battered woman may sudden act while in a state of PTSD but not in a moment of actual peril, and that situation doesn't seem to have been asserted for Winkler.

Likewise, when someone kills a spouse because dinner was burned or whatever, it makes a good headline to phrase it in that way, highlighting the absurdity and evil of the murder, but it doesn't really describe the actual situation. Such murders are always preceded by a long period, likely years, of abuse by the future-murderer, and basically anything could make such a person snap. The real reason the spouse killed was that he was an asshole and likely had anti-social personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, not that the dinner was burned.

And a final irony: the women who are so shocked and horrified about being forced to wear high heels, be pressured to have anal and oral sex and view internet porn, and are therefore sympathetic to Mary Winkler, are the conservative women, the ones more likely to be stay-at-home moms and right wing. The ones who are like WTF? and are unsympathetic to Mary Winkler vis a vis the shoes, sex and porn, are the more liberal, urban, Sex and the City women. That she's a pastor's wife cuts no ice with them.

Here's the thing: in her trial, nobody (even her daughters) recounted any stories of her being abused - but the jury STILL believed her.

And everything she alleged, even if it did happen, is hardly abuse. Perverted, perhaps. But she had three children with him, so she HAD to know he had some kinks. And if this was something new, and he didn't use physical force to make her do anything, then the proper venue is divorce, not a gunshot to the back.

I remember reading about the fraud angle and thinking she thought she could work the courts, collect the life insurance, and still walk away free.

What's disgusting is that she appears to have been right.

Vlad--

Heh, yeah; the ads are random and based on keywords in the blog entries they're on, which is why there's that unfortunate ad that goes against that particular article. But while there are some honest to god deadbeat dads out there, Violent Acres' articles on the subject really hits the mark for more men than the system is willing to admit to, methinks.

I live near Selmer so this was all over our local news. IIRC, the official story was that he was emotionally abusive to her, and she was planning on leaving him. She didn't have any money so she kited checks. He found out about it, and she felt the only way she could get away from him was to kill him. I certainly don't condone what she did, but I do feel sorry for her that she felt murder was her only option.

If her husband was the monster that she has made him out to be, do you really think the kids would be better off with his parents, since they screwed up so badly with their son? I don't really know what I think about the situation. I see the argument for both sides. I'm just glad I'm not the judge who has to make the decision.

This married woman with children, Laura Xiong, basically got away with murder. The story is interesting as it happened in a conservative Asian family setting and the victim is her own husband, Dao, gunned down by her lover, Tony Tran, whom she met at a casino.

The story gets juicier as Dao was ambushed in his own house on the same day that his wife, Laura, had enjoyed a quickie with Tony during her lunch break from her job. The illicit lunch affair happened at the house shared by Laura, Dao and their children.

Now, the money part. $850,000 life insurance on Dao as Laura for beneficiary. As Laura's gambling and credit card debt was going out of control, we have all the ingredients for the storm to break out.

Tony was eventually convicted but will not talk for prosecution to convict Laura as Laura told that she loves him during his trial. On the day of murder, they talked 31 times and her defense argued that she tried to convince Tony not to kill her husband. The prosecution concluded that without Tony's help or solid evidence they cannot win the trial to convict Laura and decided not to charge her for now. That was four years ago and she has been free since then.

In my opinion, the justice is served. You cannot convict someone without convincing juries beyond the shadow of doubts. No matter you like it or not, that is the law in this country and I think that is fair.

Although I do not condone Laura's choice of life style, I do admire what she was able to juggle through the day. She was married with two young children to take care of and was working full time. But she did manage to find time to go to casinos to gamble and find a lover to spice up her sex life. During her lunch break, she manages to sneak a quickie instead of eating sandwich in front of her computer at work.

Whenever I hear stay home mothers complaining they are too busy with their children to do anything else, I think about Laura Xiong. The full story is at the link below.
http://gohmong.com/hmong/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=2

We're not in disagreement about her guilt, Brian. I'm saying that the overall situation is a lot more complex than, as you say:
A dude kills because someone fucked up his dinner, nobody has any sympathy for him. A bitch kills because her husband wants her to wear high heels, and everyone cries for her... Am I missing something here? It's okay for a woman to wear high heels, unless her husband likes it? Then she can kill him in cold blood, perjure herself during the trial, serve less than a year, and walk away with no fucking lasting consequences from the fact that she ended a man's life. Do I have that about right?"

And also, the articles linked to this blog do mention that there ARE people who alleged abuse. It's just that the abuse wasn't all that terrible.

Those cases make me quite emotional so I will not leave any comment on this entry expect to mention the depth my contempt for this women and those who judged her.

So I, like, have a pair of shoes like those. And the first thing I think when I read this story is, 'Who knew they could come in handy for more than just a night out?' The thought makes me reel.

The other thing, of course, is the custody of the children. Perhaps they don't belong with his parents, but they certainly don't belong with her! Even if this was her desperate last-ditch effort to get out of a horribly abusive marriage, she didn't just settle it with a shot to the head. She shot him in the back, then watched him die. Slowly. That's pretty sick no matter what the situation is.

Glenn's a real good guy.

I think more of us could stand getting a better sense of humor and I believe the answer to ugly speech is free speech, not boycotts.

So I disagree with him on many (but not all) of his campaigns against a tee shirt or commercial, just as I disagree with the feminists the majority of the time on their campaigns.

Where he is 100% correct is in noting that speech that would never be allowed if genders were flipped, is actively rewarded when it is against males or fathers.

He is right to raise awareness of the enormous anti-male, anti-father messages that run throughout society. And a lot of that is present because males and fathers are the only people left that it is safe to parody.

But it's parody folks. And it's lame and very lame parody to parody only one designated scape goat group.

Harvey Silverglate at the Boston Phoenix recently wrote about the Death of Parody at Harvard, and the irony of the college that brought us the Lampoon which begat the Nat Lampoon that begat SNL that begat Conan and the Simpsons has now become this politically correct, politically sensitive, humorless, speech policing campus.

I've read that Get Smart would never be allowed to air episodes like this one with the Craw. Was Get Smart in 1965 really so harmful? Have we progressed so far?

Likewise, when someone kills a spouse because dinner was burned or whatever, it makes a good headline to phrase it in that way, highlighting the absurdity and evil of the murder, but it doesn't really describe the actual situation. Such murders are always preceded by a long period, likely years, of abuse by the future-murderer, and basically anything could make such a person snap. The real reason the spouse killed was that he was an asshole and likely had anti-social personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, not that the dinner was burned.

While that is certainly possible, let's not forget a likely and common scenario that occurs frequently as well: a woman that uses passive-aggressive emotional tactics to manipulate her husband. After years of emotional abuse, he snaps and reverts to mindless violence.

Than the feminist activists point to the case and endlessly talk about the horrible problem of domestic violence and how it is always about abusive men and innocent, angelic ladies who have NO responsibility or part to share in the debacle of their relationship or it's violent conclusion.

I feel the need to point out a few things about the Winkler case:

- A jury of her peers, who, unlike us, listened to ALL the evidence, found her sympathetic enough not to sentence her for murder.

- Even her inlaws offered forgiveness, and the father of the dead husband visited her in jail and prayed with her.

- At no time has anyone claimed she was ever a bad mother. In fact, to the contrary, she was universally viewed as an excellent mother.

- Young children don't make very good witnesses in domestic abuse cases. Most good parents would shield their children from seeing anything like that, especially sexual abuse, which would usually occur behind closed doors.

- Mary Winkler is VERY religious woman from a strict, sheltered background, so, as someone said, the sort of sexual demands he was making of her - which might be viewed as "nothing" by a more liberated woman - were obviously traumatic to her and probably would not be anticipated by a minister's wife. Yet, he clearly did not care what her feelings were.

I think she was found innocent because the jury believed her claim that she honestly did not remember killing him and did not intend to....that it was a post-traumatic impulse. We can disagree, but we didn't hear all the facts either.

I personally relate to her case because I was also asked to do many degrading things for my ex. After we married, I discovered he had tons of porn. Ok, no big deal, I thought, lots of guys do. Then, later, he started wanting me to watch it with him - and it was all violent rape scenarios, many involving extremely young-looking girls, hardly developed (though he always claimed they "had" to be 18, even if they looked 13).

Like a child-molestor, who slowly seduces his victim, gaining trust and bargaining for advantage, almost any sexual predator works the same. Finally, he asked me if I would just "act it out" for him...let him "pretend" to rape me. He said it was only "a game".

I guess I will be judged harshly by this group for going along, but I was, at the time this started, very young and naive and that's my only defense. Partly, too, it was like the Tina & Ike Turner situation that someone mentioned last thread - he told me his ex wife and a few other women had "acted it out" for him too, so I guess I felt threatened if I couldn't rise to the challenge like they had.

Although this went on for years, and increased into sicker and sicker levels before I finally left him, NO ONE knew! Only one friend of mine noticed burns and bruises on my wrists once (from rope ties), but, of course, I gave some excuse.

I didn't tell anyone...except, finally marriage therapists, who weren't always so supportive of leaving him. They thought they could "cure" his compulsions, and he would often play along for awhile as if he had been "cured".

My kids certainly didn't know. Only after my son got older and unfortunately discovered some of the rape sites his dad visited on the web, did he even have an inkling. That's when I knew that I HAD to get out of my marriage.

Luckily, I never blacked out - or had a gun nearby - but I can say I've probably experienced a disassociative state. That's really the only way you can get through something that is so painful and unwanted. I would imagine I wasn't really even there...that it wasn't really happening to me. I would just pray for it to end.

And I was a lot better educated and self-aware than Mary Winkler was. That's all I'm saying. You really can't know unless you've experienced sexual abuse and manipulation, and I realize this is usually kind of an anti-abuse group, and maybe even Amy doesn't believe that women can be victims in such a scenario, but I know that's not true, so I just felt I must stick up for the other perspective.

*Only one friend of mine noticed burns and bruises on my wrists once (from rope ties), but, of course, I gave some excuse. *

What was the excuse, that you were too poor to buy soft restraints?

You use soft restraints for soft bondage. Lots of people like soft bondage. That's certainly how it started, and how he built me up to it and "normalized" it ("see, lots of couples do this - they even sell soft restraints"). But that's not the type of bondage he ultimately wanted. Soft restraints aren't the kind a real rapist would use - too easy to break. This wasn't just playful S&M.

Magog! You insensitive brute!

How dare you get snarky with this infantilized victim? Can't you see how she's suffered? Don't you know that women are simply incapable of owning their life choices?

--
phunctor

"Soft restraints aren't the kind a real rapist would use - too easy to break. This wasn't just playful S&M." Um no you would be horribly mistaken there in so many ways. I'm not into S&M or B&D which are different but I had a friend who's hardcore into it. You can actually get quite effective non bruising restraints that are not easy to get out of, she has a few pairs of fuzzy PD cuffs real ones. Also he was escalating the play (that's what they call it not my term) as the sub you had every opportunity to just say no. I don't doubt the ex was an asshole but unless you definatvly said no and he did it anyway it's not abuse, you were an adult.

Vlad, it's more complicated than that, but I really don't expect many here to understand. I'll try though...

Yes, I was an adult, barely. At 19, if this had begun happening to me only a few short years before, no one would dispute that I was a "victim", but 2 or 3 years later, I'm magically supposed to have matured beyond manipulation.

But I did say "no". Many times. You can say "no" 50 times, but there's always a new angle that a manipulator will try, until - I fully admit - it became exhausting. It was far easier to give in than to argue about it because I realized that he wouldn't give up.

Plus, any highly effective sexual manipulator knows how to SLOWLY condition the victim and escalate the demands. They rarely say, "Hi, I want you to do a,b,c, and d". Almost anyone would say "no" to that.

It is not uncommon, in child molestation, for instance, for the victim to even become seductive towards the abuser. Most people on the outside will never understand that. They think, "Why didn't you just run away screaming?"

Because, by the point that it becomes abusive, there is obviously a payoff for the victim - whether it's ice cream, or a toy, or praise, or, most importantly, love and security.

I admit there was a payoff for me, and I am accountable for that. He wildly praised me, and very much loved me...though some may argue it's not "real love", but even most of the therapists agreed that he was deeply in love with me...probably because I fed his addiction. He still claims to be deeply in love with me, which is what made leaving him so hard.

But, even by consent, doing that sort of thing often creates layers upon layers of damage that cannot really be measured at the time.

Some people love hardcore S&M. That's the funny thing, he could've chosen any number of women who would've WANTED to do that, yet whenever a woman expressed a genuine interest, he was turned off. For him, it was only a thrill to manipulate someone who DIDN'T want it to do it. That, to me, is what puts him more into the predator category. I was, after all, 15 years younger.

Unless your friend REALLY loves hardcore S&M, she may be losing more than she realizes. She may tell herself that she's fine with it, as I mostly did. I pretended I was an "actress"...like Meryl Streep playing a rape victim...but I was very naive about the personal costs I was paying.

Even actresses who have played rape victims often report suffering emotional consequences from being so debased and brutalized...and that would be from only one scene, not a repetitive role. And you don't have to sleep with or live with the actor who plays the rapist afterwards.

That's where it really took a toll for me. I no longer felt safe in his arms, so even regular lovemaking was a turn-off. Your body has sense memory, and it's very hard to desire someone who has inflicted pain...even when it's supposedly "pretend".

I hate the attitude here. It's sad that you can't honestly explain your personal story without this instant male/female harsh judgement going on. I am not saying that all women are victims...or that men aren't equally victimized.

I am writing this because there may be someone reading who finds himself or herself in a similar situation - of trying to justify pleasing someone or dominating someone - and maybe they don't fully comprehend the damage they are doing to themselves and their relationship.

It's easy just to snipe at what a person writes, but it takes a bigger person to be constructive.

"Than the feminist activists point to the case and endlessly talk about the horrible problem of domestic violence and how it is always about abusive men and innocent, angelic ladies who have NO responsibility or part to share in the debacle of their relationship or it's violent conclusion."

Ah, you can always count on Dave from Hawaii for bringing in the strawman argument. How much more difficult it would be to argue against the actual things people say, rather than the things Dave from Hawaii puts in their mouths.

Same with you, phunctor: "How dare you get snarky with this infantilized victim? Can't you see how she's suffered? Don't you know that women are simply incapable of owning their life choices?"

I don't see here anywhere that lovelysoul isn't owning her life choices. She completely owns her participation in the situation--there's actually a difference between owning your choices and regretting your choices/seeing the error of your choices and changing.

Next time, you guys should make objections to things that were actually said, rather than your same tired old strawman arguments.

And arguing about the necessity or lack thereof of the rope burns is just ridiculous pettifoggery--it should be obvious from the descriptions of the situation that clearly the guy liked giving rope burns. For some people, bruise-free restraints are OK; for others, they want to inflict visible bruises.

"I don't doubt the ex was an asshole but unless you definatvly said no and he did it anyway it's not abuse" So then as per your reply then yes you were a victim not denigrating that. Just personal experience with the wish wash nos. Some women need to feel taken to maintain their self professed purity, there is at least one where I was told point blank yes I want to but I want it forced. Shit I ran screaming and have been very very cautious since.

As far as my friend, yeah she is hardcore she want to actually be a slave(no rights no choices). This is the most hardcore of the S&M fetish. I'm watching very closely as you can guess. That's how I know about safe words. In that fetish there is a word (never the word "no") that you both agree upon so the sub can bring it all to a halt. If he was playing by the rules that should have been the first thing discussed. Also in the BDSM scene the whole manipulation is actually for some part of the thrill for both parties, that's the dominance aspect. That said there are basic rules you go by which he did not follow, the difference between BDSM and abuse.

"it should be obvious from the descriptions of the situation that clearly the guy liked giving rope burns" or he was just inept. This does not change the reality of LS situation but that came through in a subsequent post. I'm quite leary of the abuse aspect as shit like this happens in the "scene" and guys always get the shaft if she turns on them. The level of tweaked most of the people into hard core bruise and pain inflicting BDSM makes this more likely.

While observing these people (yes national geographic like) I get the impression that none of them are particularly well balanced but is a big difference between emotionally damaged consenting adults and rape.

"While observing these people (yes national geographic like) I get the impression that none of them are particularly well balanced but is a big difference between emotionally damaged consenting adults and rape."

I feel the same way, vlad. As someone who has been in that world, I rarely felt that either side was well-balanced emotionally. But I wasn't going to argue with either a man or woman who claimed that it was just "harmless fun" for them. Still, I often wonder how many of those couples stayed together. It doesn't seem healthy.

And I also sang the same tune at times. When you are in the submissive, pleasing role, that is how you justify what you're doing...or letting someone else do to you.

My ex wasn't inept. He wanted everything as "realistic" as possible. Fuzzy little restraints weren't going to work for him. A real rapist wouldn't use those, since a real rapist doesn't care if he inflicts pain.

Things most certainly had escalated for him in the years before we met. Maybe fuzzy restraints worked at first, but it's like a drug, you eventually have to do more and more to get the same effect. That's where the danger lies.

We had safe words too, but, in all honestly, I rarely used them. For me, the goal was to finish the scene and make him happy...for a few months, if I was lucky. If I interrupted things, he'd only want to do the whole elaborate production again later. Until he was satisfied, there would be no peace in the relationship. So, I took a few rope burns...like taking a few punches for the team. Not pretty or enjoyable, but more expedient for getting the game over with.

Since things tend to escalate, there were a few times where I do feel that I was actually raped. He either ignored my safe word (claiming not to hear), or my mouth was completely covered. At any rate, I believe I know, intimately, what being raped must feel like.

I'm rather skeptical of your friend, and would be interested in knowing what her partner is like, how dominant and controlling he is in other areas. You can't necessarily go by what she says because it may be the payoff that she's getting from it that is her main motivation, not the domination experience itself.

Sorry, Vlad, I misunderstood.

Lovelysoul - my bad, sorry. You didn't deserve my knee-jerk reaction.
--
phunctor

lovely - regardless of your personal experience, it's safe to assume you did not MURDER your ex, right?

You sympathize and empathize with Mary Winkler's claims of abuse, as you experienced something similar. But you do not excuse a crime by pointing out another.

Does the rapist get understanding and sympathy if his victim was a tease, leading him on than rejecting him? Hell no, rape is still wrong.

Whatever abuses she suffered at the hands of her husband, none of it justifies MURDER, as it is well documented that she SHOT HER SLEEPING HUSBAND IN THE BACK.

In this day and age, where all a woman has to do is break down in tears at a courthouse to get a de-facto TRO and have her husband removed from the house by armed policemen because she "feels threatened," shooting a sleeping man in the back has NO JUSTIFICATION WHATSOEVER.

As for Quizzical...perhaps I used a strawman argument - but than I can literally link to hundreds of articles and books that all echo the sentiments of your post: that domestic violence is all about Men as horrible brutalizers and woman play no role whatsoever or bear no responsibility for the relationships they engage in.

You based your entire assertion on the idea that the man who killed his wife over her cooking error was an asshole abuser. I granted that your point may in fact be true - I merely pointed out the other possibility, which most certainly does occur frequently.

But the feminist activists and "anti-domestic violence advocates" NEVER address the role in which women take in an abusive relationship.

In fact, the feminists and advocates do all that they can to portray domestic violence as nothing more than evil men abusing innocent women.

Examples of this narrative are legion. Do I really need to educate you on this or are you content to accept this shibboleth as truth?

Dave, as the mother of a young man, I would hope that a man who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and who had absolutely no violent or criminal past, would be viewed the same as Mary Winkler - at least given the same benefit of the doubt as her jury gave her.

I seem to recall a somewhat similar case of a young man who had a sleep disorder, and actually drove miles to his inlaw's house and murdered his MIL while "sleepwalking". His wife corroborated his sleep disorder and violent nightmares, and stood by him, and he was aquitted.

Unfortunately, all too many male murder defendents, who claim some similar disassociative state of mind, turn out to have girlfriends, or have recently taken out conveniently large life insurance policies on the deceased, which doesn't necessarily mean they are guilty, either. But I assure you that if any of that sort of evidence had been present for Mary Winkler, she would be on death row. The reason she is not is because this behavior seemed like a total anomaly for her, looking at the entirety of her life.

And I believe that's how we SHOULD look at it. I would rather a thousand guilty people go free than convict ONE innocent person, male or female.

I actually couldn't have found Scott Petersen guilty, as strongly as I feel he probably is, but the evidence just wasn't there in that case. If I'd been on the jury, I couldn't have convicted him.

She shot him in the back, and watched him bleed to death while refusing to summon aid. For 20 minutes. Get out your watches, people. Do you know how long 20 minutes is?

The prosecution under-charged her; but that was only the beginning of their incompetence.

Anyone who gives an ounce of credence to this Winkler hag's story is either a knee-jerk feminist or a moron. Or both, since the Venn diagram has considerable overlap for those 2 groups.

I eagerly await the excuses her defenders will offer when she bumps off her 3 kids to please her next boyfriend.

LS -

First, you DID in fact leave the abuser at some point. It took you a while, but you finally wised up. Mary either never wised up, or was never abused.

There was no evidence that she was being abused, no complaints to friends, family, law enforcement, counselors. Nothing.

The she shoots him, while he is sleeping. Shoots him in the back. It is quite clear that she intended him to suffer.

I don't buy any of this "dissociative disorder" shit. It's a bunch of infantilizing nonsense intended to make a predator into a victim. And quite frankly, if it IS real, then I want these people locked up forever, rather than risk them getting "dissociative" near me.

The simple fact of the matter is this - if the genders were simply reversed, and the wife was pressuring the husband to dress up like an erotic dancer for her sexual edification, and he blasted her in the back with a shotgun, the jury would have him convicted by lunch, and hanging by dinner.

What we saw in this case was simple - nobody wants to believe that a woman is capable of cold-blooded murder. Same shit happened with Andrea Yates and Susan Smith. We've been conditioned for the past 400 years to believe that women are meek, demure, kind and nurturing.

It's too much of a mindfuck to contemplate a woman being a murderer.

And there won't be equal justice until that changes.

I will note that Susan Smith got life. But that's more likely because she started the thing out with a report that "some black guy" carjacked her and set off a manhunt looking for the guy that killed two kids.

Yates got convicted, and then the conviction overturned. They bought her insanity defense.

Brian, Yates clearly was insane. She was hearing voices and had already been prescribed antipsychotic meds before the incident.

I know it's hard to believe that people keep VERY silent about abuse. It would be hard for my friends and neighbors to believe that the "perfect couple" who lived next door to them would be engaging in such sick behavior, but that's the truth.

I never made a police report. Funny story though - after our divorce, a local cop I know told me that once, when he was making rounds in our neighborhood, he saw a man crouched up against a window of our home, wearing a stocking over his head. He and his partner pulled over, thinking they had a burgular or rapist, and got into a weird discussion with my husband, who eventually proved to them that he was the owner of our house. lol

I didn't know what to say to that. Just laugh it off. I still didn't tell him. It's too embarrassing to share the details any place other than this anonymous forum.

But I doubt that I'm alone, Brian. Many women are too ashamed to report abuse...particularly sexual abuse...particularly married to a preacher, who is supposed to have the "perfect family". I think Mary Winkler was doing exactly what I did for many years - protecting that "perfect" image while being subjected to things she couldn't bear.

She shouldn't have killed him, and I don't know exactly why she did, but there is "temporary insanity" and mitigating mental issues. I believe she admits she got the gun to "confront him". She walked in the room, probably shaking with fear, and something happened. You have no idea how much heart-pounding fear would be involved in confronting someone who had most likely just abused you...who has beaten you down mentally to such a place of dependence for years. The fear alone could almost cause you to black out!

And I'm sure she must've had a lot of psych evaluations and they didn't find her to be a sociopath. Sociopaths kill again, and they generally show little remorse. Susan Smith is a sociopath, who cared about no one but herself. Mary Winkler has shown lots of remorse for what she did. I strongly doubt Mary Winkler will kill again. In fact, I'd bet on it.

Besides, what good does it do? I mean, I have no faith that our prison system offers "rehabilitation" for anyone. Why deny those little girls - who have already lost their father - a chance to restore at least part of their shattered family and be with their mom, who they also love? Because of our moralizing sense of "justice"? What goal does that serve, other than to make US feel better?

Dave from Hawaii says: "Does the rapist get understanding and sympathy if his victim was a tease, leading him on than rejecting him? Hell no, rape is still wrong.

OK, a side note to the central discussion, but... What the hell??? Yeah, rape is still wrong, but you've been living under a rock if you think that rapists don't have LOTS of defenders and apologists who claim rape victims "deserved it" because they "led him on". There's a reason that rape is so under-reported, and that it's got such a low conviction rate, despite FBI statistics (hardly some bastion of feminism) showing that there are no more false reports of rape than of any other category of crime. Check out this Washington Post article for an analysis of just one aspect: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052803583.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008052803640

Dave continues: As for Quizzical...perhaps I used a strawman argument - but than I can literally link to hundreds of articles and books that all echo the sentiments of your post: that domestic violence is all about Men as horrible brutalizers and woman play no role whatsoever or bear no responsibility for the relationships they engage in. You based your entire assertion on the idea that the man who killed his wife over her cooking error was an asshole abuser. I granted that your point may in fact be true - I merely pointed out the other possibility, which most certainly does occur frequently.

Again, WTF? When did I express the sentiment that domestic violence is all about men as horrible brutalizers, etc.??? Don't you see what you just did here? You switched examples on me. I was commenting on example A: guy killing wife over burned dinner. But you say that I'm commenting on example B: let's not forget a likely and common scenario that occurs frequently as well: a woman that uses passive-aggressive emotional tactics to manipulate her husband. After years of emotional abuse, he snaps and reverts to mindless violence and then criticize me for my attitude to example B, when I NEVER said such a thing and was clearly commenting on A.

Do you honestly think those two cases could be the same person??? And are you trying to make a point that B somehow demonstrates that the woman is partly to blame for her murder? As you just said, nothing Andrea Yates' husband did justifies murder, and nothing some passive-aggressive women does justifies murder, either. Can't you see that examples A and B are completely different people; that they COULD NOT be the same person, due to exigencies of being in an abusive relationship?

To clarify: a situation in which a guy kills his wife because she burned dinner is clearly a situation of abuse by the guy. You don't get to the point where you could tell people that that's why you killed your wife, unless you were a seriously f-ed up abuser. Abusers are typically narcissists and/or have anti-social personality disorder, and are subject to "narcissistic rage". In such cases, these people project all bad things onto a particular person, a spouse in this situation. They will NEVER see that there's anything wrong with what they're doing, because they are completely committed to the idea that they just have the bad luck to be surrounded by these awful people who deserve to be beaten, etc. They lack the ability to see wrong in themselves, and they also see THEMSELVES as the victims of abuse, even though any sane outsider will see the spouse as the one abused. The only way that a spouse will stay with the abuser is if the abuser has completely crushed the other person's sense of self-esteem and self-worth, meaning that the victim tends to blame him/herself for the things the abuser blames him for, so doesn't clearly see the extent of the abuse. This is one reason why it's so hard to stop a spousal abuser from committing abuse--they are utterly committed to the idea that it is themselves who are being abused. But when you look at what they claim as abuse, they'll say things that no rational person will take for abuse, like: burned dinner, 5 minutes late, lies to me [but there's no evidence of lying], disobeys me, changed the channel, bought a soda when I said she couldn't have one, etc. This is how abusers get to the point where they'd actually kill someone in a rage over a burned dinner. And this is how someone will stay with someone who would kill you over a burned dinner.

But in example B, where some guy was the victim of a passive-aggressive wife for umpteen years, the personalities and stories would be different. The people who are the genuine victims, just as in A, will tend to blame themselves. The abusers, who position themselves as victims, will tend to blame the other person, and that's one clue for how to figure out what's really going on, in cases when there's doubt. Like, if someone claims they killed due to burnt dinner, there's no doubt--they're clearly an abuser who blames everything on others and thinks they're the victim. This is one reason why I don't find Andrea Yates to be credible--shoes as abuse??? So if you have a case of an emotionally abused man who is the victim of a passive-aggressive wife for years, who snaps, they'll generally tend to blame themselves for what they did. They won't blame the victim by citing a burned dinner. They might say "I just couldn't take it anymore." Or they might say that they have a problem with rage, or they're always making stupid mistakes, something like that, because they've internalized the self-loathing and abuse dished out by their abuser, even if, in snapping, they recognize at some level that it's abuse. Because that's all part of the personalities and dynamics that go into abusive spousal situations. And this is why examples A and B just couldn't be the same person committing the murder. And looking at things in this way helps to distinguish true victims from narcissistic abusers who only believe themselves to be the victims.

But the feminist activists and "anti-domestic violence advocates" NEVER address the role in which women take in an abusive relationship.
What exactly are you saying here? Are you saying that the passive-aggressive wife in example B's murder was justified? Or are you saying that dinner-burning wife in example A's murder was justified? Or both, or neither? Please clarify.

Good points, quizzical. And thanks for defending me earlier.

A victim of abuse is almost always going to be passive agressive. What else can she/he be? Openly aggressive? No. It is very typical, as you say, for these abusers to blame whatever personal weaknesses they find in their partner, which generally, the cycle of their abuse creates, or at least exacerbates, in the first place.

The victim is going to play a role...either she's getting some payoff, as I was, or she has such low self-worth that she may actually "ask" for her "discipline" by the abuser. That is the cycle of violence. But this, in no way, mitigates the abuser's fault. Abusers are typically people who seek out these weaker types to dominate and abuse. To me, for this, they are more culpable.

Yet, abuse victims are not always meek people with low self-esteem. I personally am not. For one, my ex lavished me with praise, so he didn't try to break me down emotionally. For another, I stayed with him more because I had compassion for him and hoped there would be some "cure". I didn't view it as my fault. He clearly had been severely abused, and probably sexually molested himself.

And the therapeutic community was all too happy to provide me with that false hope....keep us coming back, week after week, paying $125 for our golden 55 minutes of "therapy". If they'd told the truth - that sexual makeup is pretty much set at an early age and his compulsions and issues wouldn't likely ever be "cured", they wouldn't have been able to keep milking us.

To kill someone for burning dinner is ridiculous. That guy is clearly an abuser, and just stating a clear fact about ONE man being an abuser does not mean we are saying ALL men a abusers. This assumption is getting old.

Hey, look, it's 50/50 folks...in discussing ANY event...ANY crime...either we'll be speaking of a man or a woman. Yet, I don't hear any of the women screaming, "You called Andrea Yates...or Susan Smith...a murderer, so you think ALL women are murderers?!!!!

You guys are just too sensitive! If we mention a man doing something bad, we're rabid "feminist activists" and "anti-domestic violence advocates" taking a stand against ALL men, but I can call Susan Smith a sociopath and nobody notices that I'm not exactly towing a gender line. I don't see where any of the women here are. Frankly, you guys are....you always are.

LS - it's the legal (and moral) double standard I object to.

Do you deny that had every facet of the Mary Winkler saga been exactly identical excepting the arrangement of genders that the hypothetical Mr. Winkler would be serving LWOP or sitting on death row at this very moment?

You won't because you can't. Our society is still very much oriented around the idea that women are not violent.

Teddy Kaczynski is serving LWOP, and he was CLEARLY out of his gourd.

I don't buy into either "dissociative disorder" or any other (non self-defense) excusing of the intentional killing of another human being, whatever the reason behind that intent.

Mary Winkler intended to shoot her husband; why else bring the gun? Whether she shot him as a result of premeditation or of poor trigger discipline is beside the point.

And the 'orphan' defense needs to be tossed as well. I didn't buy it with the Menendez brothers, and I don't buy it here. Mary Winkler orphaned her daughters the moment she pulled the trigger.

Brian, I love ya, but you've got to get a grip. Read this

http://www.connpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10127473

and then tell me there's a double standard. This murdering asshole orphaned HIS children the moment he first plunged the knife into their mother. And he kept going. Would that the woman had gotten out of it first, by whatever means available to her.

Gosh, Brian, you are so harsh. I hope you are never on a jury.

One aspect that hasn't been addressed in these cases is the forgiveness and compassion shown to the murderers. Andrea Yates's ex, the father of the children, has stood by her throughout everything. He's always maintained that she was mentally ill and fought for mental health treatment over prison. And Mary Winkler was shown immediate compassion by her inlaws, as well as much of the community, who rallied to her side.

I think courts are somewhat humbled in the face of such empathy and forgiveness. They look at a man like Mr Yates, and if he wanted blood and vengeance, they would've given it to him. But to see this man, who lost all of his children, yet still says to the court, "I know she didn't mean to do it" carries a lot of weight! How dare they presume to judge her better than the man who lived with her and has suffered most from her actions?

I believe that poor woman is in hell, wherever you put her. Given her psychiatric background, a mental hospital seems appropriate to me, especially if it suits Mr. Yates. At any rate, I assure you that she is in hell, knowing, in her lucid moments, that she killed her children. Her life is completely ruined! Yet, that isn't good enough for you?

Ted Kaczinski, repeatedly, over MANY years, plotted to kill people, randomly, methodically, and cowardly! He didn't just snap one day. How can you even compare the two? Plus, it's a federal crime. The feds are almost never as lenient. And I don't think his family ASKED for leniency. His own brother turned him in. They know he's a sociopath.

So, you can't remove these practical consideratiosn and logic from our legal system just to make it suit your personal vision of justice. Statisically, men commit more murders, especially in domestic abuse situations. You may not LIKE that fact, but it is a fact, and juries are going to look at almost any man, who outweighs his partner, and has twice, maybe three-times her strength, in a much more skeptical way when he makes an abuse claim.

It may not be fair that Mary Winkler is a tiny, meek woman, who we can easily imagine being abused, but the jury was indeed asked to imagine that possibility and they found it plausible.

You're right that there are many fewer cases where that sort of image would logically fit a man. As I've said, after 20+ years of running a trailer park, I personally don't know of any man who fits that sort of beaten-down-by-a-woman description. I know some unhappily married men, but none that I feel are being physically abused or threatened to a such a degree that they are afraid to leave. Doesn't mean there aren't some in the world, but I DON'T KNOW ANY.

And juries are made up of PEOPLE - male and female - who weigh their own personal experiences and aquaintances in determining what seems logical and plausible. You may disagree with their judgements, but I think they generally take their role very seriously and try to find a fair sentence. And certainly where a victim or victim's family shows compassion, they are more likely to do so as well.

Flynne - please tell me how that doesn't prove my point. The motherfucker's going to prison for 27 years.

If the gender had been reversed, she'd be walking free.

And that's the point.

Here endeth the lesson.

I think courts are somewhat humbled in the face of such empathy and forgiveness. They look at a man like Mr Yates, and if he wanted blood and vengeance, they would've given it to him. But to see this man, who lost all of his children, yet still says to the court, "I know she didn't mean to do it" carries a lot of weight! How dare they presume to judge her better than the man who lived with her and has suffered most from her actions?

As a believing Christian, he could do nothing else. I however, am not limited by such things.

I believe that poor woman is in hell, wherever you put her. Given her psychiatric background, a mental hospital seems appropriate to me, especially if it suits Mr. Yates. At any rate, I assure you that she is in hell, knowing, in her lucid moments, that she killed her children. Her life is completely ruined! Yet, that isn't good enough for you?

No. In fact, if he knew that she was mentally ill, yet still created more babies with her (it was said during trial that she first experienced mental illness after either the second or third child) then he's complicit in their death, and should have been charged with criminally negligent homicide.

Her life being merely ruined does not make up for the fact that society has now been deprived of five minds and bodies that might have been responsible for the next major breakthrough.

And juries are made up of PEOPLE - male and female - who weigh their own personal experiences and aquaintances in determining what seems logical and plausible. You may disagree with their judgements, but I think they generally take their role very seriously and try to find a fair sentence. And certainly where a victim or victim's family shows compassion, they are more likely to do so as well.

No, juries are made up of people who couldn't get out of jury duty. Their personal experiences aren't at issue. They are commanded by the court to weigh the evidence as presented in light of the relevant law. Their emotions oughtn't enter into it.

Compassion is often wasted on the unworthy. Juror compassion is what caused the first mistrial in the Menendez case.

Emotion is not a sound basis for a civilization.

Well, aren't you just a know-it-all. You could solve every dilemma in society, Brian.

But, by your own ridiculously rigid standards, since she was stupid, homeschooling christian, I'm sure the kids would've been idiots. Too compassionate and forgiving to be of much value to society. That should make you feel better.

Brian, my point is that the one abused, obviously scared woman tried to get out of the relationship by legal means, and was killed by her abusive husband before she could even serve the papers. Had she stabbed him, in such a vicious manner as he did, she would absolutely be serving 27 years; Mary Winkler didn't shoot her husband 27 times; just the once. She had more of an image to maintain, and therefore more to lose, if she approached her husband seeking a divorce. The viciousness of the one attack by the angry, abusive spouse does not compare to the sporadic one-time shot of the abused/confused/frightened spouse.

Certainly, Flynn. Any woman that would disembowel a man, stabbing him 27 times, while his children stood by helpless, would be in prison.

I defy Brian to find any case of that happening where the woman isn't in jail. Or, for that matter, how often is a man, who is desperately trying to get a divorce, brutally killed just because he is leaving his wife?

That happens to a woman here in my city about once a month. She's usually going to work or dropping the kids at daycare and is shot in the parking lot by her angry ex.

But Brian doesn't believe that really happens to women. We make it all up. Or if it's true, it's happening just as frequently to men. Well, why isn't it on the news then? Is it a feminist media conspiracy too?

There was the case where that beautiful woman tied her husband to the bed (promising kinky sex), then stabbed him multiple times. She claimed years of abuse, but she was found guilty.

And recently, there was the case where the woman was found guilty years later of plotting with her boyfriend to have her husband killed for insurance money. The boyfriend's son remembered them washing the weapon.

Justice is not so one-sided, Brian. It only seems one-sided because more men kill than women.

I too get really tired of the small but vocal "poor men" faction on this site. Men ARE the abusers MOST of the time. Hearing you all cry "but what about that ONE man somewhere in this world being held in a relationship by the very real threat of death if he leaves?" is no less annoying than listening to all the "blacks are imprisoned more because of racism, not because they COMMIT more crimes" people. And you're both wrong. Yes abuse happens. Sex abuse of kids, abuse of spouses (usually the woman spouse) it's not made up by whiny "poor me, I have no responsibility" people. It's real. Is it wrongly scapegoated for some crimes? No doubt. But I do believe that some women have no choice but to kill the guy in his sleep. It's not as if he's going to let her walk out, and what else should she do? Wake him up and go toe-to-toe with the guy in a fair fight? Why do you think women's shelters exist? (NO, not so they can sit around and plot how to ruin men's lives) it's because abusers frequently WILL track down the departing spouse and kill them.

And children are VERY unreliable for testimony of this sort. Very few moms are going to let their kid be privy to their abuse. Eyewitness testimony in general has been proven to be the least reliable source at all. People think they saw things they didn't see, they forget things they did see, they are very very open to subjection. Quick-without looking at your arm, draw your watch. That you see multiple times a day. Can you get it exactly right? Doubt it.

"Next time, you guys should make objections to things that were actually said, rather than your same tired old strawman arguments.

And arguing about the necessity or lack thereof of the rope burns is just ridiculous pettifoggery"

Amen and well said to the above. Seriously people, the things some of you will argue about!!!

And BRIAN, if emotion is not a sound basis for civilization, what is? Logic? Cause an eye for an eye is damned logical, but it leaves everyone blind (trite I know). Killing people convicted of murder immediately after their trial is logical-it saves millions in taxpayer money and gets rid of a killer. Let's just take them right out back and shoot them! Keeping someone locked up for their whole life instead of killing them right off was a decision based on emotion-the desire to feel superior to those who do kill, the desire to try and make the killer a better person, all kinds of emotions. I personally agree with you that Yates husband should've been charged too, but that's beside the point.

Brian: here's the weakness of your arguments: you keep saying IF a woman did such-and-such, then she'd get off, but SINCE it was a man, he got lots of years in prison. No one can argue against your hypothetical fantasies. Reasoned argument ends as soon as you bring in your own imagination, and call people wrong if they dare to not agree that in a hypothetical situation, the situation would happen as you envisage. If the situation were so likely to happen in that fashion, then bring in real world examples. If you can't find any real world examples, then I submit that there's no evidence that the situation would play out as your imagination would have it. Rather, your imagination just demonstrates your own prejudices and state of mind.

As for the Unabomber: I suggest you read the book Unabomber: On the Trail of America's Most-Wanted Serial Killer by John Douglas, who used to run the FBI's criminal profiling unit. He explores Kaczynski's psyche and motives at some depth, and makes a strong case that he was not insane in the least. It's a good read (as are all of Douglas's non-fiction works). In any event, Kaczynski pled guilty, so that's why he's serving LWOP.

Way to miss the point.

You're taking my argument as "no woman is ever held responsible" which is not the argument I'm making. Dave in Hawaii or any of the other troglodytes that swept through here recently might, but I did not.

I am arguing that we have in the Winkler case a double standard - that if a man were to shoot his wife to simply save face, there's no set of circumstances under which he would not be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

I did not argue that there aren't violent men, or that violence is more prevalent in the male of the species. Nor did I argue that every woman CAN get out of an abusive relationship.

What I did argue was that this woman, in this relationship alleged abuse when there was no evidence of abuse, no reports of abuse, no previous attempts or threats to leave.

The problem I have with this is that she made an allegation, seemingly out of whole cloth, of abuse. She then went on a national crying tour, destroying the character of the deceased, who could (conveniently) not defend himself. She didn't engage in any of the typical behaviors of a woman who kills in delayed self-defense. In fact, she stood there and watched him die. This is not how an abused person reacts.

However, please feel free to continue telling me what I've said.

Quizzical:

Brian: here's the weakness of your arguments: you keep saying IF a woman did such-and-such, then she'd get off, but SINCE it was a man, he got lots of years in prison. No one can argue against your hypothetical fantasies.

It's especially hard to argue against things I didn't say.

I did NOT say that a woman would not be convicted of something a man would.

I said a man would be convicted where a woman did not.

Very big difference. And one of the very few ways to upset me is to tell me that I have said something that I clearly did not, and then attack my intellect and character on the basis of that which was not said.

Please read more carefully before you convict me of misogyny.

s/a woman did not/a woman was not

PIMF.

Brian, how do you really know how an abused person is supposed to react? If she stood there in some shocked, temporarily insane state of mind, it would almost prove her case. Anyone else would immediately have plotted how to dispose of his body and cover up the crime. Yet, she made absolutely no attempt to do that.

I don't think her case necessarily indicates a double standard - any more than the OJ case shows a double standard for abusive, murdering husbands. The Winkler case is just a very unusual case.

When I first heard of it, I felt for sure she would be found guilty, even though I personally found her claims of abuse credible. I still thought no jury would believe her since she had no hard evidence.

Yet, what she had was a very strong reputation for being honest, credible, and devoutly religious. She had no history of lying or being violent. People wondered, "Why would she make this up? Why would she kill him for any other reason?" That worked strongly in her favor, but it likely wouldn't work for most other women. So, the case is just an exception.

What is of concern, as quizzical says, is that you are so focused on showing how this ONE case proves that a man cannot be treated fairly (or perhaps, equally unfairly). Yet, I submit there are many cases where a man has indeed gotten away with murder - maybe not by making claims of years of abuse and fear for his life, which really - let's be honest - seem pretty silly coming from a man.

But the OJ case itself is one where a man obviously skirted justice. Yet, I, as a woman, do not point to that case to say, "See, how unfair the laws are slanted towards men?" No, I view it as what it is - an odd case, where the prosecution simply did not prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was guilty.

There are really few cases that you can find where a woman shoots her husband and pays no penalty. That truly does not happen very often. You should relax a bit in that knowledge.

I love it...now I'm a "troglodytes" simply because I express a different viewpoint from the feminine-centric opinions that make up the majority of this blogs commentary participants.

My only purpose for participation in this thread was to actually put forth a contradictory point of view to the female-centric memes expressed.

Quizzical referred to the case of the burnt-dinner murderer with the assumption that the husband was obviously a serial abuser.

I did not say she was wrong, only that I sought to inject a possible alternative - that a nagging, shrewish wife can also drive a man to "snap." No where do I claim he is justified, or that she deserved it based on my hypothetical supposition.

In other words, I was simply positing the notion that the typical feminist narrative -- that men are always the abusers in domestic violence scenarios -- is a one-sided, misandrist point of view that is all too common in today's culture.

When we don't know all the details of a case, I think it's rather revealing to see how the majority of women on this site espouse the typical feminist-centric point of view.

Note how some of you are shocked and outraged by my pointing out the possibility that the murdered woman may have been an emotional abuser that drove her husband to murder...yet you same women have sought to empathize and sympathize with Mrs. Winkler, basing your own support on the idea that she may have certainly been abused by her husband.

You're blatant double-standards in this regard are obvious.

And brian...seeing as how I agree with just about everything you've posted in this thread until you got around to calling me a troglodyte, I think your point of view would qualify you as a "troglodyte" to the feminist-centric contingent here as well.

LS - you're getting closer to what I said.

I object to the idea that her only resort was to shoot him in the back and watch him die. If her sole interest was to kill him in defense (because she feared for her well-being), then she either would have shot him in the head, or she would have shot him multiple times.

What I am focusing on here is how this one woman was infantilized by the system and treated as though she was completely incapable of judging the proportionality of her actions. You and Quizzacal are convinced that I am making some kind of bizarre case for men getting away with murder, which I most assuredly am not. I simply do not believe that murder ought to be the first line of defense in an alleged abuse situation.

Let's make this personal for a moment - did you at any time consider killing your ex? Would you have found it to be excusable because of his particular perversion? Mary Winkler thought it was perfectly OK to kill her husband because he was kinky. Not because he beat her, or ridiculed her, or anything else. But because he wanted her to dress like a slut.

We have laws regarding what constitutes self defense. Lying in wait does not. Nor does sneaking up on the alleged abuser in his sleep. There's a temporal aspect to self-defense that was not present here.

And the OJ case was not a man getting away with murder so much as it was a prosecutor and police department letting a man walk away from a murder. Competent law enforcement wouldn't have bungled the physical evidence. Competent prosecutors wouldn't have blown the case. But it's LA. How many other celebrities have killed people and walked due to the gross incompetence of people like Clark and Garcetti?

DiH:

And brian...seeing as how I agree with just about everything you've posted in this thread until you got around to calling me a troglodyte, I think your point of view would qualify you as a "troglodyte" to the feminist-centric contingent here as well.

No, I'm a misanthropic asshole.

There's a difference.

Yes, Dave, there is a double standard when it comes to domestic abuse. But it's not because we choose for it to be there, it is because men are physically stronger and more likely to be the abuser. JUST A FACT. You don't want that to be true, which is the problem. You would like to believe that there are many men out there cowaring in fear of their wives, but there aren't. Do you really know any? Have you ever been one?

Yes, some men have shrewish, nagging wives - given. Some men are unhappily married - given. But physically afraid of their wives? Terrified to leave or seek a divorce because she might track him down and KILL him? Show me one.

You don't know what you're talking about, and you have no proof to back up your philosophy of the poor/cowaring/frightened/abused male. The best you can do is site some domestic violence numbers where women have indeed fought back, but that's a VERY different situation than the fear of physical harm and death many women face every day, and especially when they try to leave.

My ex was not even what I considered a "physical abuser", since what he did was mostly during "sex play." Yet, the night I told him I was actually leaving, he flew into a rage, screaming and yelling at me. I retreated to the bathroom, thinking I'll take a shower and give him some time to calm down.

He forcefully shoved the door open, while I was standing on the other side, which hit my hand so hard I thought it was broken. I started crying, and he grabbed me, with both hands around my neck, and slammed me against the bathroom wall. He was much taller than me, so I was kind of suspended, while he was choking me.

And I thought, "This is how it ends. I am going to die! I didn't even think I was THAT abused, but I'm going to be one of those statistics tomorrow."

Obviously, he released me and I lived to write this, but honestly, how many of you men have experienced anything like that sort of terror at the hands of a woman?

My guess - NONE.

I couldn't have done that to him. He had the physical power to end my life with his bare hands. Therein lies the difference. And, like it or not, it is a BIG difference.

So, you can say we're crying victim, or having our feminist-centric viewpoint, but until you've faced that kind of fear at the hands of a woman, you need to accept that you don't know what the f--k you're talking about.

First I just want to say that I have no sympathy for any of the murderers mentioned in this thread, and I don't think Winkler should have custody of her kids.

As for Mr. Yates, something that hasn't been mentioned yet is that he left his wife ALONE with his kids, KNOWING that she was psychotic, and after being told BY HER DOCTOR that she needed supervision around the clock. Supposedly his mom was supposed to be there an hour after he left, but of course by then the kids were dead. In my opinion, he should have been charged as an accessory to murder, and he should be in jail, not free to walk the streets. He failed his children in the worst way possible.

'Nuff said.

You're right Brian--you didn't say 'IF a woman did such-and-such, then she'd get off, but SINCE it was a man, he got lots of years in prison.' You said basically 'If a man did such-and-such, he'd be punished far more severely than a woman in the same situation, if she were punished at all.' But my overall point still stands--you can't use hypothetical situations to bolster your argument. You're just using your opinion to support... your opinion. That gets us nowhere.

re: "Very big difference. And one of the very few ways to upset me is to tell me that I have said something that I clearly did not, and then attack my intellect and character on the basis of that which was not said. Please read more carefully before you convict me of misogyny.

That seems hypocritical. I didn't "convict [you] of misogyny." That's you putting the word "misogyny" in my mouth, not me.

And you comment below just begs for a refutation:

I am arguing that we have in the Winkler case a double standard - that if a man were to shoot his wife to simply save face, there's no set of circumstances under which he would not be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

A set of circumstances comes easily to mind, as there was a prominent case a number of years ago. But he didn't shoot her, he stabbed her 26 times, which takes a lot longer and is far more brutal and face-to-face. See: http://www.amazon.com/Death-Jewish-American-Princess-Victim/dp/0394568540

There are a lot of similarities in this case, the murder of Elana Steinberg by Steven Steinberg, but the sexes are the reverse of the Winkler's . He stabbed her 26 times, claimed burglars had done it, then changed his story and admitted he'd done it but, like with Winkler, claimed a dissociative state. He was acquitted. I'm pretty sure he got custody of the kids, too. Elana was portrayed as a "Jewish American Princess" (their words, not mine), nagging her husband all the time and causing financial woes. In truth, he was a gambling addict, compulsive liar, staged robberies at his own restaurants to steal money, shoved his wife on one occasion, threatened someone with a knife on another. In short, far more sleazy than Mary Winkler, far clearer a motive. But acquitted, though he does not dispute that it was his hand that held the knife that stabbed her.

*In a post of mine a bit above, I said "Andrea Yates" but meant "Mary Winkler". I trust my intention is clear via context.

LS -

If you had gone and shot him in the back a week later, would you have been justified?

Would you expect to walk free and maintain custody of your children?

Would you even argue that you hadn't done anything wrong?

Because that is the particular injustice that has been perpetrated here.

Had you killed him on the spot while he was attacking you, no jury in America would vote to convict, and they'd be right. But to wait and let it stew and then kill him in his sleep?

That's premeditation. And if you've got time to go get the gun to shoot him in the back, you've got time to tip the fuck out and go visit the cops.

Which Mary Winkler never attempted to do.

And that (and ONLY that) is what I'm on about here.

Oh, and if you even mentioned the grabbing the throat bit during the divorce, I wouldn't be surprised if you got everything and then some.

Well, I stand corrected. A man can use psychobabble bullshit to walk away from a murder too. It seems that more women attempt to use the psychobabble defense than men, and they more often pull it off.

Even more reason to deny the psychobabble bullshit defense.

If you intentionally killed someone and it was not in self-defense, you ought not be a member of free society.

Regardless of gender. Regardless of prior bad acts on the part of the decedent.

So far as I am concerned, Mary Winkler fails the "reasonable person" standard of self defense. Her life was not in immediate jeopardy, nor was there any reason to believe that it was likely to be. She did not need to resort to killing her alleged abuser.

It is precisely this show of bad judgment on her part that makes her particularly unfit to be granted custody of her children.

And now to tie it back to the double standard yet again - the assumption is always one-way: the man will necessarily resort to violence, so anything a woman does ought to be cast as preemptive self-defense.

Maybe I'm just stupid. I cannot for the life of me find any set of circumstances under which what Mary Winkler did could be considered reasonable, nor can I understand how, if she is mentally ill to the point where she was unaware that she was killing her husband, she is not a danger to herself and others? If she has a recurrence of her dissociation, who will be held responsible for the dead body?

Nobody knows what happened in the hours, minutes or seconds before Mary Winkler shot her husband. In my (rather experienced) opinion, he probably had been abusing her that night because crimes of passion usually play out that way.

But, in my case, I don't believe in killing anyone. As a vegetarian, I don't even kill animals. Yet, I will say that I was boiling mad and partially in shock at almost having my life snuffed out. If there'd been a gun nearby in that moment, who knows?

Honestly, it gets down to that. Whether you can ever picture yourself in a moment where you'd do something awful...irrevocable. I wouldn't want him dead. He is my children's father and, strangely enough, I still love him. If I had reacted that way, I'd be deeply remorseful, but, in all honesty, I CAN imagine it.

So, maybe that's why I can put myself in Winkler's shoes, where few others can. I could see on her face the agony she feels over what she did, and I thought, "there but for the grace of God...go I".

As far as my divorce, the no-fault courts don't really care. Plus, what could I prove? My brother-in-law is a powerful attorney here, and my ex is a well-established businessman, who plays golf with all the judges. We had to go out of the area to even get a judge who wouldn't recuse himself from our divorce case.

My point being that it's not such an easy thing to make those claims or "just leave". That is the basis of the "male-centric" argument here - that every abused woman has the option to leave and get a divorce. But I think my own experience should demonstrate how perilous that choice can be for an abused woman.

Also, Brian, if I had shot him, my guess is that I would've been found guilty. I had no arrests to point to, almost no friends who could corroborate my story, and my ex's family would've hired the best legal team money can buy to help put me away.

The best I could've done is bring in some therapists to show that I had been sexually abused, but I'm sure they would argue that I "consented", and sex abuse doesn't equal other types of physical abuse, etc.

So, I'd be rotting in jail right now, and you all would be arguing that I got what I deserved.

But I think my own experience should demonstrate how perilous that choice can be for an abused woman.

And yet, here you sit, lecturing me about how insensitive I am.

Whereas Mary Winkler? She shot the guy in the back and watched him die.

See what I did there? It's called "compare and contrast".

You tried to leave, and then you DID leave. Unless someone's not talking, there's no evidence that Mary ever tried anything.

I think that a critical view of the evidence absent the tearful claims of sexual abuse would reveal a woman with a gambling problem who was killing either for financial gain, or to hide her other crimes.

Why she was allowed to get away with it is beyond me. And to the best of my knowledge, she was never prosecuted for the financial shenanigans either.

Unless, of course, you believe that reaching for the shotgun is an acceptable first course of action.

LS - Your responses are the very problem of feminine-centric memes for which I contest here...you take your own personal experience of being abused and project it onto how you view cases like Mrs. Winkler. Yet you yourself did not murder your abusive spouse in his sleep!

Why can you not see the difference? Why do you continue to seek to empathize and sympathize with a cold-blooded, cold-hearted murderess? So what if her Christian in-laws live by their own principles of forgiveness...that does not mitigate the evil actions she committed and it certainly should not have any bearing on the ludicrous decision rendered by the courts that she is fit to have custody of their children!

It's simply because you experienced fear and intimidation at the hands of a shitty spouse, and it appears that you are projecting that experience onto all men as a typical gender trait.

Obviously, he released me and I lived to write this, but honestly, how many of you men have experienced anything like that sort of terror at the hands of a woman?

My dear, first things first - you did NOT have to "tell him" you were leaving. Knowing he was violent and abusive, why did you go up to him and specifically push his buttons like that? Did you not REALLY expect him to take the news that you wanted to leave calmly and reasonably? Take some responsibility for YOUR OWN LACK OF JUDGEMENT, instead of projecting your own experiences onto an entire gender.

My guess - NONE.

I couldn't have done that to him. He had the physical power to end my life with his bare hands. Therein lies the difference. And, like it or not, it is a BIG difference.

Guess what, my dear, your personal experiences notwithstanding, understand that guys like me (and people like Amy) recognize the observable truth that because a minority of women like you have been traumatized by a minority of bad men, laws have been passed that and the justice system has been subverted and corrupted into a monstrous bureaucracy that uses anecdotal experiences such as your own to justify the current status quo...a system in which a man can be forcibly removed from his home and denied being a part of his children's lives with nothing more than false charges filed by a unscrupulous and selfish wife. Such things can and do happen all the time.

Also, Brian, if I had shot him, my guess is that I would've been found guilty. I had no arrests to point to, almost no friends who could corroborate my story, and my ex's family would've hired the best legal team money can buy to help put me away.

All the lawyers in the world can't make hand marks on the neck go away.

And, as you've shown by your own commentary here, every woman on the jury would be likely to accept your stories of abuse, even absent any physical evidence.

Brian sez: No, I'm a misanthropic asshole. There's a difference.

It's true. I read your blog awhile back. That's why I would never call you a misogynist--I had already pegged you as a misanthrope. Which, along with the whole giving up on dating thing, made me sad for you, since you're mainly just hurting yourself in an effort to prevent being hurt again, and I find it difficult to be annoyed at people whose main victims are themselves. The schoolyard bullies have won. And I hate the schoolyard bullies. :-(

I feel like your comments show you completely missed my points. I didn't merely assume the burnt-dinner murderer was a serial abuser--I provided a chain of argument to demonstrate why the sort of person who would claim to have killed due to a burnt dinner was by nature a serial abuser who was evincing a particular type of personality and disorder. And why it would have to be an entirely different sort of individual who would put up with being emotionally and/or physically abused for many years and then finally snap. Because as anyone in law enforcement can tell you, certain crimes are committed by certain types of people. And other types of people commit other types of crimes. So while person X might commit manslaughter in a bar, that same person would never commit premeditated murder. Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy both were serial killers of women. But the similarities end there, and I would be shocked and outraged if you suggested that Ted Bundy had committed Jack-the-Ripper style murders or vice versa. My point was that your alternative notion of snapping couldn't have been true for example A, by the very nature of the personality of those two different kinds of murderer. So my dismissal of the possibility of man-as-victim isn't a blanket dismissal, but a situational dismissal.

I also never "empathized and sympathized" with Mary Winkler. I called her many nasty, critical things, and expressed skepticism for her story. You're generalizing again.

And here you go with the strawman: "I was simply positing the notion that the typical feminist narrative -- that men are always the abusers in domestic violence scenarios -- is a one-sided, misandrist point of view that is all too common in today's culture.

Where's this narrative? Who is saying it? I just provided a whole long argument that demonstrates a situation in which men aren't the abusers. But you're just repeating your strawman arguments without backup. I have no patience with people who keep claiming how things are so unfair and their opponents are so biased. It just gets old. And tired. Stop generalizing and labeling, and start giving examples and explanations.

Lovelysoul - ”Nobody knows what happened in the hours, minutes or seconds before Mary Winkler shot her husband. In my (rather experienced) opinion, he probably had been abusing her that night because crimes of passion usually play out that way.”

Still, LS, most people seem to know more about it than do you – for instance, she murdered him mid-morning, not at night. More specifically, she murdered him just prior to an appointment at their bank at which she had every reason to believe that her checking scam was about to be revealed to her husband.

You, and some other women may wish to cling tightly to her BS about being abused, but there IS ample evidence that her crime was not one of “passion”, but rather of “desperation” about the truth about her criminal activities coming out to her husband.

Unable to deter the truth any longer, she panicked and shot her husband. Then, she took-off. Did you forget that she made her escape out of town to buy some time to concoct a story about why she had murdered in cold blood the person she had wished to keep in the dark about her financial misdeeds.

Even when authorities caught up with her, she didn’t have a story. The abuse angle was one her defense team drummed up in response to having no good explanation for her actions. And, the jury bought it.

It seems to me that you, LS, and you alone, stand hear as the only direct apologist for Mary Winkler. You still seem to wish to justify her heinous crime. I do believe that everyone else on this forum would agree that what she did was just plain wrong, completely unjustifiable, her sentence to lenient, and her regaining custody of her children the final act of injustice in the whole sordid tragedy.

But, you still seem to think what she did was justified? You still believe that she acted out of humiliation at the (uncorroborated and undocumented) abuse she supposedly suffered at the hands of her husband (who, at the worst possible example she could provide, wanted her to wear shoes that a substantial majority of all other women would love to have and wear)? Riiight!

And here you go with the strawman:

Again, attributing the words of others to me. That was Dave, not me. Please stop that. It REALLY pisses me off.

Oh, so you think it's MY fault for "pushing his buttons" or having "poor judgement"? That and your condescending "my dear" is what makes you sound like an abuser, Dave.

Do you think I would never have to see him again? Plenty of women get killed dropping off their kids. Do you not read the news? Are you oblivious? It is not a small minority of women...or based on "anecdotal" evidence.

And you sidestep the truth of what I am arguing by trying to make a case about irrelevant custody laws and false child-abuse charges. We could argue that separately, but not as long as you hold to your absurd belief that domestic violence against women is a "minor" problem.

"...for instance, she murdered him mid-morning, not at night. More specifically, she murdered him just prior to an appointment at their bank..."

Oops!, My bad. She Murdered him in the afternoon (prior to evening church services - which his absence from lead to the discovery of his dead body). The meeting at the bank was to have been the next day.

Still, my reading and reporting of misinformation does not change the fact that she did not murder him after some evening of supposed abuse.

Just for kicks -

"Mrs. Rule also included a brief discussion of that incident on New Year’s Eve when Mary was photographed in a bar with a beer, and holding a cigarette. The man who snapped the picture with his cell phone camera subsequently asked Mary: “Are you the preacher-killer?” Reportedly, Mary laughed, and said: ”Yeah. You want to be next?”"

Sure sounds like a demur little woman who was deeply humilated by being asked to dress smutty, huh?

LS - Your responses are the very problem of feminine-centric memes for which I contest here...you take your own personal experience of being abused and project it onto how you view cases like Mrs. Winkler. Yet you yourself did not murder your abusive spouse in his sleep! It's simply because you experienced fear and intimidation at the hands of a shitty spouse, and it appears that you are projecting that experience onto all men as a typical gender trait.

I disagree because it sounds like LS's experiences are directly relevant to this particular situation. She wasn't bringing them up in other threads, and she wasn't projecting that onto all men... just Matthew Winkler. As can be seen by her positive comments in another thread about her current squeeze. And it's hardly a "feminine-centric meme" to generalize from one's own personal experience. That's why the whole "reasonable man" standard exists, and the "heat of passion" defense has been successful.

re: And here you go with the strawman:
Again, attributing the words of others to me. That was Dave, not me. Please stop that. It REALLY pisses me off.

Oh, sorry. That was an accident. The whole rest of that post after the two returns is addressed to Dave. I'd said that, and had a quote from him, but then deleted it just before posting because the post was getting too long.

Quizzical - "...and the "heat of passion" defense has been successful."

By law, a "heatr of passion" defense cannot have a lengthy time delay between the "passion" and the response. The interveaning time would allow one to "cool-down" - and to deliberate their response.

I do hope that you didn't mean to imply that it was Mary Winklers defense for her murderous act, but were just using it to make another point.

Brian, you're right, I do not know all the details of her case. I was not on the jury. But she did HAVE a jury of peers, and that is our legal system. And, like I said, her case is a fluke, in my opinion. It wouldn't have happened to me. I'd be in jail, and so would most other women.

You act like this is happening every day! Women are shooting their husbands and getting away with it. Like quizzical said, show some other cases to prove how "unfair" this is and what a double standard there is towards women murderers. I really don't think many women are killing their husbands and walking away, abuse or not. I named two earlier cases where women were found guilty. There are many more, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find others like the Winkler case.

LS - even if I were to stipulate that the Winkler case is an aberration, do we still need to compound the error by granting a volatile woman custody of three young children?

Right, quizzical. These guys are just trying to find anything that supports their prejudices. Mary Winkler makes a joke in a bar, where she is clearly trying to grow and change from the sheltered life she knew, and that becomes cannon fodder for them.

I, for one, am not doing that towards men. God knows I have enough justification to resent them. I doubt either of these guys have experienced one tenth of the degradation I have, but I don't look for reasons to hate men or feel disadvantaged by them. I don't take glee in any story I can find that shows a man in bad light.

I'm dating a wonderful guy, and my dad is a wonderful guy, and I have wonderful male friends. I've never held my PERSONAL experiences against males as a group or individually.

Do you guys have any female friends? I mean real freinds that you'd actually go, one on one, and share a cup of coffee with? Frankly, I just can't imagine you sitting there talking like this.

Oh, so you think it's MY fault for "pushing his buttons" or having "poor judgement"? That and your condescending "my dear" is what makes you sound like an abuser, Dave.

I did not say it was ALL your fault. He had no justification to physically or sexually abuse you. But you continue to push this narrative that you were a helpless, completely innocent women that has been victimized. I'm only pointing out that you had your own role to play in your own situation, and that you are refusing to accept or look at it honestly.

This is really the root of the problem in today's society - this meme that women have no responsibility for their behavior, that you are all victims whenever a situation of domestic violence occurs.

It's well documented that domestic violence is usually a situation in which a man and a woman are trapped in a cycle - a situation in which BOTH contribute to the violence in the home. Read about Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first Domestic Violence Shelter, if you truly are clueless about what I'm referring to.

And that's where I say, when you went to his face and told him you were leaving, you were once again participating in that cycle: you provoked him because you specifically wanted to...it is a sense of power to "Control" him. By using your words and threats as an emotional attack, you were able to get the kind of response you damn well knew he would give.

And than you get to play the poor victim without even a clue as to the part you played in your own damn tragedy. Take some responsibility for your own actions! Yes, you certainly displayed a SEVERE lack of rational judgement - first, in picking your choice of husband (if you were honest with yourself, you would admit that all of the warning signs that he was abusive were there before you said "I do.") Second, in that knowing he was an abusive man, you continued to "push his buttons" knowing all too well he was a man that could not or would not control his anger.

Do you fault the Bear at the zoo when a moron jumps into his exhibit and gets mauled? Or do you fault the moron for knowingly entering the exhibit knowing the Bear is going to do what Bears do?

For pointing this out, and my use of a salutation like "dear" is your basis for speculating that I'm an abuser? LMAO.

Your attitude is EXACTLY why I have bothered to jump into the debates on this thread.

Do you think I would never have to see him again? Plenty of women get killed dropping off their kids. Do you not read the news? Are you oblivious? It is not a small minority of women...or based on "anecdotal" evidence.

And you sidestep the truth of what I am arguing by trying to make a case about irrelevant custody laws and false child-abuse charges. We could argue that separately, but not as long as you hold to your absurd belief that domestic violence against women is a "minor" problem.

There you go again, avoiding all personal responsibility and playing the victim card again. I'm not sidestepping anything. You cannot deny that you know full well that had you elected to, you could have easily left your ex when he wasn't around, went to one of the thousands of shelters that exist for women out there, and gotten all kinds of help from the system to get away from him.

Instead, you went up to him and told him you were leaving.

You purposely chose a course of action that resulted in exactly what you knew would happened.

You were not a victim. You were a co-conspirator in the situation which you helped create.

No wonder you can find some twisted rationalizations for a cold-blooded killer like Mary Winkler.

I don't know, Brian. It seems to me that she's had quite some time to be observed by psychologists and social workers and try to rehabilitate herself. I'm sure the decision wasn't made lightly, and she will be under supervision.

Of course, if you don't believe in rehabilitation - at least for a woman - then nothing will ever be good enough to prove that to you. But I have been a child care advocate and there are steps parents can take to show their fitness to regain custody. And many of the parents I dealt with were far worse PARENTS than Mary Winkler, who as far as I know, was always a loving, caring parent. It's not a perfect system, but she must've at least completed those steps and then some.

You're so full of shit, Dave. I specifically said my ex had never been that type of abuser, so I had no reason to assume he would react in such a manner. Besides, he was asking me whether I was leaving. I guess I could've lied, but why? Then, you'd say I provoked him by lying. Men like you will find some reason that I should be hit, no matter what I did.

Of course, if you don't believe in rehabilitation - at least for a woman -

I don't believe in rehabilitation at all where this kind of behavior is concerned. There's no reason to believe she won't kill again if she feel similarly humiliated. Just like there's no reason to believe that the latest kiddie-diddler that was released from prison won't rape the neighbor's five year old.

Oh, and nice dig, there. You keep telling yourself that I'm anti-woman, and maybe you'll even begin to believe it. But it won't be true.

And I've seen far too many cases where DCF placed a child with some foster parent that they supposedly vetted only to have the child beaten to death. So you'll pardon me if I don't believe for one second that the social workers have a clue. I'd wager that for every competent social worker, there's two imbeciles. Which makes the job of the competent ones that much harder, I'd assume.

The unfortunate part there is, that just like parents, the unfit and fit don't look different.

I'm full of shit...yet your the insane women seeking to rationalize cold blooded murder?

You can't have it both ways.

Are you trying to say you had NO CLUE your husband would be abusive to you? That his actions were completely out of the blue?

Right.

There are certain types who cannot be rehabilitated. Sociopaths (read "The Sociopaths Among Us", a wonderful book by a prison psychologist) and child molestors.

Mary Winkler isn't either of those. The chances for those kids are far better than if I placed them back with some druggie-rehabbed parent here in my town. She was always a good mom, and I'd bet you she won't hurt those kids.

"She was always a good mom, and I'd bet you she won't hurt those kids."

How in holy fuck can you say she was always a good mom? She has ALREADY hurt her kids...BY MURDERING THEIR FATHER!!!!

And you say I'm full of shit?

Lovelysoul - "These guys are just trying to find anything that supports their prejudices. Mary Winkler makes a joke in a bar, where she is clearly trying to grow and change from the sheltered life she knew"

LS,

You write as though you know her personally. I added that bit because, to me, it suggested that she wasn't really the little goody-good her defenses PR campaign made her out to be. I, for one, don't buy her "I was abused and humiliated, so I had a psychotic break" BS. You seem to take it hook, line, and sinker - without a moments questioning.

You might recall that she was actively engaged in an ongoing check writing-fraud. Not the sort of thing good little Christian ministers wives are supposed to do. Neither is dressing up naughty and getting a little wild. But, for all either of us knows, she was quite happy to do so - until she was convinced to claim she had found it humiliating so as to try to avoid going to prison for cold-blooded murder.

Frankly, it seems to me that if she didn't like the kinky stuff, the fact that her husband was a preacher should have given her all the leverage she would have needed to put an end to it (stop, or I'll tell everyone...).

It's been some time since I saw a TV show about the case, but, as I recall, Mary had a problem with spending too much on things like clothes - and shoes. At the time, my thought was, why wouldn't people think that she might well have bought the white shoes of her own free will because she liked them herself? She seemed to buy a lot of other thing she wanted.

Perhaps the problem is that you're "too close" to this case to be objective about it. Your own experience inclines you towards believing every woman who claims such abuse.

But, remember that good defense attorneys are those that understand human nature quite well, and the majority of people (men and women alike) are predisposed towards believing that women tend to be law-abiding and non-violent (some truth in that, actually). All her defense needed to do was serve up poor little Mary, sobbing about the terrible abuse, and 12 people who weren't able to get out of jury duty would lap that $hit up.

I'll bet that if you were facing prison time, you could find it in yourself to take the stand, clutch your hands to your chest, and meekly sob about how terrible your favorite sex-play made you feel.

Don't you suppose Mary could do the same?

slwerner: Quizzical - "...and the "heat of passion" defense has been successful."

By law, a "heat of passion" defense cannot have a lengthy time delay between the "passion" and the response. The interveaning time would allow one to "cool-down" - and to deliberate their response. I do hope that you didn't mean to imply that it was Mary Winklers defense for her murderous act, but were just using it to make another point.

No, my "heat of passion" (and "reasonable man") comment had nothing to do with Mary Winkler's particular case. I was just making a general observation that there has long been widespread legal recognition for people basing judgments on their personal experiences, so it's not a feminist meme.

Dave: You're the one who is trying to absolve people of responsibility for their actions. To whit: "There you go again, avoiding all personal responsibility and playing the victim card again. I'm not sidestepping anything. You cannot deny that you know full well that had you elected to, you could have easily left your ex when he wasn't around, went to one of the thousands of shelters that exist for women out there, and gotten all kinds of help from the system to get away from him. Instead, you went up to him and told him you were leaving. You purposely chose a course of action that resulted in exactly what you knew would happened. You were not a victim. You were a co-conspirator in the situation which you helped create. No wonder you can find some twisted rationalizations for a cold-blooded killer like Mary Winkler."

It's not the role of rational people to walk on eggshells constantly for fear of inspiring a violent response in another person. A rational, reasonable person will not go apeshit insane because they hear something they don't want to hear. A person with an anger management problem might. A person with a personality disorder might. A psychotic person might. And except in the case of the psychotic person who lacks the ability to control his/her actions, what a person does with their anger is 100% their responsibility. People are 100% responsible for what words come out of their mouths. And people are 100% responsible for what they by their own choice do with their bodies. You are making excuses for violent, criminal behavior by saying that it's at least partly the fault of the person they attack that they've been attacked. The attacked is not a co-conspirator. If someone hears something he doesn't want to hear, they can always walk away. That LS's husband didn't walk away to cool down, or merely yell, but chose to strangle, is 100% the husband's responsibility and fault. You seem to not have good definitions of personal boundaries. If a person is unable to control his/her own actions to the extent that he/she might strangle someone if they say something you don't like, then you get help--you don't project responsibility onto everyone else to not say or do anything that will set you off. I don't expect what I just said to penetrate your consciousness, but it needs saying.

"If a person is unable to control his/her own actions to the extent that he/she might strangle someone if they say something you don't like, then you get help--you don't project responsibility onto everyone else to not say or do anything that will set you off. I don't expect what I just said to penetrate your consciousness, but it needs saying."

Funny, but I do agree with your saying, despite your condescension at the end.

Choosing to strangle is certainly not LS fault, her husband bears 100% responsibility for his own actions. No one deserves to be physically assaulted, and no one is justified in committing assault simply because of anything a person said.

But that doesn't preclude nor justify nor rationalize LS and her own actions either.

As in ANY divorce, there is always a "he-said, she-said" side to every story. But based on what LS has written here, she tries comes off as the 100% innocent victim that just happened to unfortunately wake up one day and find out the wonderful, loving man she fell in love with and married, suddenly turned into an abusive monster.

I don't buy it.

Furthermore, I think it's quite clear LS has used her own personal experience and projected it on to Winkler's case here to the point that she can read detailed accounts of her actions and still rationalize her murderous behavior. Than she goes on to rationalize how returning custody of her three girls is somehow a good thing!?!?!

To any reasonable mind, it's simply outrageous to even consider that "She was always a good mom, and I'd bet you she won't hurt those kids."

Has it failed to penetrate YOUR consciousness as to why I, or anyone else, would find such a statement ludicrous and outrageous?

You know, Dave, I don't even try to justify my own situation. It is what it is, and I don't expect anyone but him and me to understand.

But, tonight, there was a young girl, age 20, who was on our property, and he and I were both there, and we both told her that she was way too young to choose a spouse, even though she is madly in love with her boyfriend, yet he has given signs of being an abuser ("you cook this, not that," etc).

I looked at my spouse of 20+ years, who has abused me many times, and we both were in agreement that she was way too young to choose a spouse for the next 50 or 60 years.

Life, if you really live it, and enjoy all the opportunities to love and give that it offers, presents you with multiple chances to teach what you've learned. I don't expect you to understand, but I ask that you realize that is what I am doing with my life.

I forgive my ex, because he was damaged, and all I can expect - or hope - of anyone is that they can try to pay forward all the blessings that they have been given, because most of us in this country, despite our many gripes, are profoundly lucky. We really have no right to complain, given what most others in the world face. We should show compassion.

I don't know you personally, but I challenge you to do the same with your life. You may be anti-woman, so go where there are mercy killings...go where there is female mutilation...and maybe then you will understand the long history of abuse women have suffered. Perhaps then, you will stop thinking only of yourself, because I guarantee that you, as a man, have not suffered anynwhere near what women across the globe have suffered.

And it's sad that a woman, such as Amy, who wouldn't even have the right to speak or write what she does, would side with you, so I challenge her too - go where most women are defenseless and speechless. Go where most women have no rights. And then complain about this system of justice.

You are like an aristocracy, judging the rights of the less fortunate. You know nothing of what you speak, yet you feel free to speak it. You really have no right - no experience in which to judge - so I am asking you to get educated - not from a new-monied wealthy American viewpoint - but from a true understanding of how silent most women across the globe are. Even my ex, the abuser, understands that, and wants better for his daughter. Let's stop the cycle of violence and work towards a better understanding between the genders.

"I'll bet that if you were facing prison time, you could find it in yourself to take the stand, clutch your hands to your chest, and meekly sob about how terrible your favorite sex-play made you feel".

This is how sick and nasty some people are. I repeatedly said that sort of "sex play" was not what I liked, yet this asshole wants to project it on to me, most likley because it's the sort of "sex play" HE likes and he wants to believe that all women secretly long for it as their "favorite".

I didn't wake up one day and realize my ex was an abuser. He was always a sexual abuser. I just didn't realize he would be abusive outside of that context. Foolish me.

None of you have apparently dealt with any of this, yet you're so quick to judge me.

And apparently, none of you have vounteered as a guardian ad litem, as I have, yet you're experts on the placement of children. You think denying them their mother is preferable? I made my statement based on practical experience, and Mary Winkler is the kind of parent I WISH I could deal with most of the time.

Got news for you: Kids get returned to their biological, drunk, drug-addicted parents ALL the time. You think it's a utopia out there? Foster parents aren't worth shit. Biological parents aren't worth shit. Trust me, if you'd spent any time dealing with REAL CHILD WELFARE ISSUES, you wouldn't be saying this devout christian is such a bad mother, even if she killed someone. I've got parents on crack, for God's sake! Why don't you volunteer to be a guardian ad litem before you throw stones at me? Easy to do from your comfortable living room of all-knowing judgement, but you're not there placing kids, so, once again, you don't know what the f---k you're talking about!

Let's stop the cycle of violence and work towards a better understanding between the genders.

I'll do it the moment that women stop using the system to become the abusers.

Once you've had the system turned against you for no reason except to satisfy the ego of another human being, you get an idea what it's like to fear someone whom you could kill with a single touch.

And you know this how, Brian? I thought you hadn't had a relationship. And is it REALLY as bad as female mutilation or being shot to death as a "mercy killing" (which is happening in this country). You men are so "poor me...we have it so bad in the wealthiest country in the world" You don't know bad treatment! You've never experienced anything like that. A bad a day in court... where it didn't go your little way? Please! Grow up! This is not the entire universe. There are real men going to war at 12, having to kill to survive. Your little slights and knocks hardly represent a "bad system". You should count your lucky stars you're in this country.

You know, I have a tenant here at my marina from South Africa. He started as a game hunter, then became a mercenary - a gun for hire.

He has two bullet holes in his stomach, which I've seen when he's gone shirtless, and he has had one finger shot off from a gunfight. He was involved in the Tutzi/Zulu war, which admittedly, I know very little about, but he told me that warriors there would rape a woman, then cut out, tan, and wear her vagina on their heads, like a bandana. He said that's how he knew who to kill - by the imprint on their foreheads. They'd try to blend into the normal population, but if he saw the markings, he didn't ask questions, he'd just shoot them dead.

I don't condone his lifestyle, but I can surely say he's had it much rougher than any American male that I know. And he thinks this is one the greatest countries ever. You guys are SPOILED! You have no idea what your contemporaries have to deal with in other parts of the world. You focus on your little courtroom slights and injustices...and how disadvantaged you are against women. Frankly, compared to man like "African John" - and the true injustices he's seen - that's sort of embarrasing.

Ironically given the way feminisim wishes to define abuse - shouting, verbal insults, economic disparity, uninvited touching - men are abused more than women.

LS you are to emotionally involved, you see a woman how claims she was sexually abused and want to help someone who has been thru what you have. But she wasnt. I can understand how facing the reality that someone can be so cold and calculation as to lie about sich a horrible thing would be impossibly hard for you having gone thru what you did. But men and women are equally capable of lying to save their own asses.

brain you're normally sharper, given LS's past experience and the speed at which she linked herself emotionaly to this cause it should have been fairly obvious that reason alone would not have made an impact in the emotional barrier she put up.

Mary shot he husband in the back over money, the only proof she had of abuse and slutty costumes was one pair of shoes and an old wig which could have come from the churches play productions. No costumes in the house, no other proof of abuse, no pornography or anysexual parafinellia of any kind to be found anywhere despite her claims that he forced her to watch porn.

When she was arrested all she had was the kids a shot gun and a handfull of shells, the phone on the motel room had been disconnected - anyone think she might have killed the kids if she hadent been arrested?

She was going to college and had lots of freinds, when was the last time and abused controlled woman had so much freedom?

The comment above about her telly the guy she was the preacher killer and asking him if wanted to be next - she said that while out on BAIL - not after her release but before he trial even began

Once released she went on the talk show circut but earlier this year when trying to gain contol of her daughters trust fund(after quitting her job) she applied for a gag order and for the records to be sealed in any further proceedings

She cares for nothing but herself, and LS it should be obvious to even you that this woman is far more like your ex then she is like you

And you know this how, Brian? I thought you hadn't had a relationship.

Let's just say that competition in the corporate world can be pretty vicious sometimes, and we'll leave it at that.

No, it certainly doesn't compare to having your vagina ripped out with a spork, but I fight my injustices where I find them.

I just don't happen to live on a continent where vagina-shredding is common.

"She was going to college and had lots of freinds, when was the last time and abused controlled woman had so much freedom?"

I had lots of friends and went to college too. My ex did not keep me under house arrest. That in itself proves nothing about abuse.

And if she made that comment in the bar, which I'm rather skeptical of since people routinely make up false stories about any sort of celebrity - and I'm sure it wasn't recorded - then it was most likely just a joke.

But she may indeed be a total sociopath. If so, she has fooled lots of people, including therapists and her jury. The therapists don't really surprise me, as many are so clueless they wouldn't know a sociopath from a butterfly, but juries are generally tougher.

I've done a lot of reading on sociopaths, and probably lived with one, and she just doesn't seem like one to me. Not because of my personal experiences or any bias. I would be the first to call her one if I saw it that way, but from the limited interviews I've seen, she just didn't. I've gotten pretty good at spotting them, but there's always room for error.

Here's an article about her actual testimony.

www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/18/winkler.testimony/index.html

Apparently, while awaiting trial, she went out on New Year's Eve with some friends. There's nothing wrong with that, and according to the Channel 5 Nashville story at the time, she did not say "Do you want to be next?" Most likely, they added that part to the story later. This guy Correa obviously was biased against her.

"Shocked by what he saw, Correa grabbed his cell phone and starting taking pictures of Winker sitting at the bar. One of his friends even approached her.

"So he went and talked to them and said, ‘Are you the preacher killer?' She said, ‘Yeah,'" Correa said.

LS - "This is how sick and nasty some people are. I repeatedly said that sort of "sex play" was not what I liked, yet this asshole wants to project it on to me, most likley because it's the sort of "sex play" HE likes and he wants to believe that all women secretly long for it as their "favorite"."

LS,

This was NOT my intention at all. I was addressing my post to you personally, and simply neglected to consider how making that suggestion of you, personally, might be taken.

Seriously, I did not intend it the way it seems to have come across to you. I don't pretend to know what you nor all women like.

My ill-advised wording was my clumsy attempt to make the point that you, myself, or almost anyone, could, if faced with severe punishment for a heinous act that we might have committed, any of us could easily proclaim that some thing (some sexual activity, for example) that we had actually enjoyed was such a terrible affront to us that we experienced a psychotic break in which we committed the crime.

I’m not meaning to suggest that you enjoyed what you had to endure, but rather than I just don’t buy the Mary Winkler was so traumatized by the comparatively tame “sex play” that she and her husband engaged in that it could possibly trigger such a break.

You see, one of the problems that I have with her story is that, in order to believe that being asked to dress sexy could have caused such a reaction, one has to buy her “shtick” about being such a sheltered “prude” that the mere though that her husband might find her “sexy” when dressed up made her feel unclean. You have to believe that she conducted her life in such an Amish-like fashion that “dressing up” could be such an affront to her sensibilities and moral inclinations that it could stress her to the point of such a break. That, I just cannot buy.

Keep in mind that there was NO evidence of any physical violence, no evidence found of “kinky” sexual acts – no fetish-wear, no pornographic materials. All that was found in the search was the type of clothing and shoes that many women would choose to wear out on a date, and a wig (now, maybe some might be able to spin a wig into humiliating sexual abuse, but I cannot).

Also, bear in mind that that photo snapped of her drinking and smoking in a bar was not to distantly removed from her PR tour, wherein she went on the talk-show circuit, taking the money to sob about the horrible abuse she suffered, and how humiliated she was having to wear high-heeled shoes and a wig. Yet, somehow, this pious little devout Christian wife of a preach was bothered at all about being seen in a bar drinking?

You can go on believing that she “snapped” because she was abused, but most all of those who have taken a serious look into the case believe that her financial and criminal activities played a large role in her actions.

Again, I apologize to you for inferring that you, personally (and women in general) would like degrading sexualized abuses. Honestly, that was not my intention. I simply failed to consider that it could easily be interpreted that way.

I have to be done with this thread. The whiny men are killing me here (figuratively!, although no doubt they fantasize doing so to a woman someday).

All I have to say to Mr "it was your fault he choked you because you told him you were leaving" is I really, really hope a mary winkler finds you some day. It will be YOUR fault, for spewing such a continuous stream of mysogynistic ignorance out your mouth. And we ALL know you've never had a relationship. And none of us are suprised. And if you really, really want to whine about how tough the corporate world is, all I can say is go enlist and ship overseas for a few months. I guarentee you'll change your tune about your rough life experiences, you whiny, sad little man. I would be so ashamed if I raised a man like you. Whining about how unfair the courts are to men in general, and white men with jobs in particular. Unreal.

Well, I'm glad you cleared that up, Dave--it had sounded to me like you were an apologist for someone "snapping".

Let's stop the cycle of violence and
work towards a better understanding
between the genders.

I'll do it the moment that women stop using the system to become the abusers.

I disagree strongly with this, Brian. It's an attitude that I've come across before in a number of contexts where there are conflicts. You're basically using as your guide to how you should act, the behavior of the opposition. This doesn't work, ever, and is just an excuse to do nothing. If you're going to wait till every person and thing you're against changes to something you like before you act, you'll never accomplish anything. Not that I mind, since I think you're wrong. But since the beginning of time, someone has used the system, and whatever other tools they have at their disposal, to do something unfair. Assholes have always existed, and they always will. The system used to be enormously biased against women and children. Now there have been changes that have improved the situation somewhat. I'd say these were changes for the better; you'd say they were for the worse. But it's highly contextual--some people got screwed before, some people are getting screwed now, and there's some overlap, and some new people getting screwed. Especially people who don't know how to work the system. People who know how to work the system will always get ahead, and the vulnerable will usually lose. You're so cynical, you've let the assholes/folks who know how to work the system, define the system for you, and opted out. Better to let the assholes be assholes, and try to improve what you can.

Ok, slwerner, apology accepted.

I just wasted a lot of my morning reading about this case, and I have to say that I still find her story credible. One reason is that it was so NOT over the top. She could've made up anything, but she told a very subtle, yet consistent, story of abuse.

And there were some witnesses - more than I would probably have, actually. A church member saw her with a black eye in 2003 (my one friend saw my bruised wrists). Her dad claims he saw bruises, covered with makeup, and confronted her, but she said, "Everything's fine, Daddy. Don't worry." (I said the same thing so many times to my Daddy).

The church secretary said he was mean and treated people "as if they were lower than him."

Other witnesses said she changed whenever he walked in the room, dropping her head and putting her hands together. She seemed nervous around him.

If they were all going to lie for her, they could've come up with something much more extreme and dramatic...something that wouldn't ring so true.

She claims they were fighting, and he went into the baby's room and held the baby's nose closed, trying to suffocate her because "he wanted a boy".

Now, that's the kind of subtle detail that, to me, just doesn't seem made up. A liar, who'd never really been abused, would've said he was beating her all morning, but she simply sees him try to smother their innocent little child, obviously trying to terrify her.

It was at that point that she got the gun. Mother's instinct? Entirely plausible. If my ex had tried to smother our baby to get back at me...well, it could make a mother snap. After years of that sort of thing, it really could.

To me, it's a very subtle story, which makes it seem true. Sociopaths embellish - they like to tell bold, grandiose tales when they lie because they ENJOY tricking people. I simply don't see that grandiosity here.

Her story of abuse is basically similar to mine, only she actually has more witnesses.

It's not the "dressing up", lswerner. It's whatever he made her do when she was dressed up. In my experience, everyone tries to minimize that, just like they did when I first told my story here - focusing on the restraints and telling me where I could buy fuzzy ones.

That wasn't what was abusive - he stalked me(peering through windows) for hourse. I rarely knew when I was being watched. Sometimes, he'd lay the clothes out on the bed and that's how I knew I was supposed to "dress up" for him.

We don't know what he asked her to do. But what we are asked to do is give her the benefit of the doubt because abuse is something people cover up. There are rarely witnesses.

I still find that I, like the jury, can give her the benefit of the doubt. And, anyway, it appears that the inlaws simply released the girls to her. She did not "win" the custody case. For whatever reason, they decided to settle and return the girls.

I'd say these were changes for the better; you'd say they were for the worse.

Please don't try to tell me what I think.

But it's highly contextual--some people got screwed before, some people are getting screwed now, and there's some overlap, and some new people getting screwed. Especially people who don't know how to work the system. People who know how to work the system will always get ahead, and the vulnerable will usually lose.

Here's the rub: the "system" has been rigged by activists. It's no longer a search for justice, but for retribution for past slights, real and perceived. And there's nothing to prevent false accusations, and in many instances, there's nothing more than the word of two people to go by. And when the law give the word of one person greater weight on the basis of "the severity of the accusation" (or worse - "women don't lie about these things, you know") then you have intentionally and with malice aforethought CREATED injustice.

And this is what Dave keeps railing on about - a small group of highly vocal activists have coded into law the presumption that women are not violent, and that women never lie about being abused.

You're so cynical, you've let the assholes/folks who know how to work the system, define the system for you, and opted out. Better to let the assholes be assholes, and try to improve what you can.

Yes. Because I lack the energy to fight them any longer. The only reason I've managed to survive the bullshit as long as I have is that I would vehemently defend myself against false accusations. I finally concluded that it was much easier to simply avoid anyone who even gave the appearance that they were a vindictive piece of shit than have to engage in damage control.

It may be a baby/bathwater solution, but at least I'm not at risk of losing everything I've worked for because someone else gets a bug up their ass.

Sure, momof3 and lovely are going to call me a whiner. Fine. I don't abuse women, and I don't know anyone who does. Since I don't know anyone who's been on the receiving end of such injustices, am I allowed to call anyone who has a whiner? I didn't think so either.

If your desire is to see justice for all, don't condone injustice for the sake of vengeance. Every time an innocent person goes down in flames on the word of a liar, it makes the likelihood of the next true victim's being believed that much smaller.

Brian, I just don't understand how you want to the world to be. I can assume, from your comments, that you'd like mandatory sentencing in every crime, without a chance for a jury to apply any empathy to their verdict.

It seems (I'm merely guessing) that you think it should just be "She killed him. Doesn't matter her reasons. Give her life or the death penalty - boom, done."

Yet, I think mandatory sentencing has created MORE injustice than ever before. When juries and judges have no leeway to judge a particular case or individual, then a lot of innocent people are going to jail. Many young men, who may have sold or obtained a drug only one time, and never hurt anyone, are put away for years with hardened drug dealers and murderers because of mandatory sentencing.

Judges express frustration at those sorts of restrictions and the inability to show compassion for individual defendants. Justice is NOT being done in those cases, yet that seems to be more of what you want.

I mean, I just don't understand your lack of compassion. It worries me and (I think) most of us here. Maybe that's the cool, hardline, "men-are-victims-of-the-system" rhetoric you find on those websites you read, but honestly, as I said, you just have to look around the world to know that men, particularly in the western world, are not so disadvantaged.

"African John" didn't say there were any females walking around the jungle wearing penises on their heads. Very few men are murdered in mercy killings. It's just indisputable that whatever your individual gripes about the system in this country being anti-male (and yes, put in context, it seems like whining), the larger world is pretty much anti-female. We're basically treated as chattel.

So, even giving your assertions some credit, what's so bad about there being a few places in the world slanted more in our favor?

It does seem very...unmanly...ungentlemanly of you to complain so furiously, given how many advantages and freedoms you have as a citizen of this country.

Frankly, compared to men who have been born in less ideal circumstances, who've experienced war and seen horrendous injustices, you sound like a sniveling brat. And that's pretty much how they view you too...little spoiled American whiners...not real men.

Correction: I meant "honor killings", not mercy killings.

Lovelysoul - "...you just have to look around the world to know that men, particularly in the western world, are not so disadvantaged."

So, LS,

If I'm reading you correctly, what you're saying is that since people elsewhere experience far greater injustices, American men should just accept some injustices doen to them?

Injustice is injustice, no matter how great or how small. And, if we are honest people, we should have as a goal to end all injustices.

Compared to being raped, murdered, and multilated, the English cab driver who lost his job, home, and honor due to a false rape allegation has not sufferd as greatly. But, he never-the-less HAS suffered. It is simply not intellectulalluy honest to say that it does not matter what happens to him because it hasn't yet killed him.

If you truly believe that Mary Winkler's being asked to dress-up and have oral and anal sex is justification for her "snapping", then might you also accept that a man finding out that the children being raised by he and his wife are NOT his could also cause him to "snap" and kill his unfaithful wife? Would that be reason enough to give such a man "the benefit of the doubt" and give him a couple of months in a mental hospital for manslaughter rather than murder?

Frankly, I've always gotten the impression that you, in particular, are highly gender biased. Arguing that rapes and murders around the world outweigh injustices done to American men (so they should just keep quite and accept their fates), while (out of the other side of your mouth) stating that a woman who claims verbal abuse and sexual humiliation is at least somewhat justified in killing her husband IS a very clear example of just how far your gender-bias extends.

LS - I think we can sum up your last post thus: epic fail.

The only reason mandatory sentencing (which I don't find particularly useful in most cases) even exists is because too many soft-headed judges were applying "discretion" and letting criminals walk away unpunished.

One of the things I have a huge problem with is the entire "pulling the heartstrings of the jury" to get a favorable outcome, for either the prosecution or the defense. The jury are supposed to be impartial. How the hell can you be impartial when you are using emotion to guide your analysis of the facts and law before you? That the Menendez brothers are now orphans bears no impact on the presented fact that they killed their parents. Yet the first jury seated in that case hung for precisely that reason.

My lack of compassion is limited only to those who do not deserve it. I have no sympathy for the meth-head who blows himself up. I do, however, have compassion for the next-door neighbor who had his house burned down because of it. It's a cause and effect kind of thing.

Although what I think bothers me most about your post is that you are using precisely the argument that was used against suffragettes and women's rights activists in this country. To wit: "You've got it better than anyone else in the world, stop bitching."

A wise man once said "Perfect is the enemy of good." I'm not aiming for perfect, or even fair. But equitable would be nice. I've had enough of encapsulating retribution for past wrongs in law.

And the entire sordid episode around Mary Winkler, the Duke rape hoax, and dozens of other cases bothers me for precisely that reason. Some man at some time raped or abused someone, so now the law must be made to treat all men as abusers so they know what it feels like.

Rush has a term for that. He calls it "Get even with 'em ism".

I am not suggesting that there are not endless examples of injustice - for both males and females - throughout the world. You can find some for men; I can find some for women, and we could go on like that forever.

But, let's face it, none of us are really suffering like in Darfur. You're on a computer right now, probably in a comfortable air-conditioned home, and so am I.

I was just saying if you assume ALL your assertions about gender bias are true in this country, then at best, MOST American males are STILL not suffering to the degree that males and females are suffering elsewhere, and certainly the bias in most of the world is against females.

I'm asking you to look at it from a more fairminded and manly perspective. If you're going to speak for men, you might want to try to becoming one first...not some incessant little spoiled crybaby pointing to other men's suffering as your own.

A real man like my South African friend wouldn't be caught dead arguing this kind of "woe is me, men are so victimized by women" crap. He's got more balls than that!

It's not that I'm against men. There are just some I admire much more than others. And, frankly, I feel embarrassed for those of you that are trying to claim that you have it so tough in America, of all places. Man up! Go to Rwanda, then come back and tell us how "unjust" your existence here is.

Injustice is injustice, no matter how great or how small. And, if we are honest people, we should have as a goal to end all injustices.

Yeah, good luck with that. I've been following this thread, and not saying much, because it's obvious to me that there's too much at stake in the eyes of the people on both sides of this that no one will agree to disagree until one side concedes to the other. Which ain't gonna happen. Bottom line is, as long as there are dishonest people, as long as there are those who are convinced that their way is the better way, there will always always always be injustices. Arguing about it doesn't change it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you cannot legislate morality. You cannot make people think a certain way. You can't possibly know for sure what goes on in the mind of another person. All you can do is keep on honing your internal bullshit meter and hope for the best. Because when the needle goes over the red line, it's already too damn late.

"Some man at some time raped or abused someone, so now the law must be made to treat all men as abusers so they know what it feels like".

That's so dumb, it's like you treat rape as such a RARE occurence in history, even when I tell you men in parts of the world are still wearing VAGINAS on their heads! Yet, you act like, "oh well, rape is so rare...maybe happened somewhere at some time..."

The difference is that a rape victim in the past had few options for justice and little chance of proving her case. She rarely would've been believed. Apparently, you're upset that ever changed.

And suffragists didn't have the same rights as men. Now, you and I, as citizens, have the same basic rights...you can quibble that they're biased here or there, or some laws need to be tweaked or changed...but it is no way the same as me telling the suffragists to "shut up, you've got it better than anywhere else in the world". If you had fewer rights than me, it would be applicable, but we have the same basic rights and freedoms.

Go to Rwanda, then come back and tell us how "unjust" your existence here is.

Right back at ya.

But the point is, we aren't IN Rwanda. We're in America.

And if the point of our system of justice is to secure a better life for all Americans, then we're doing a piss-poor job of it. Calling me a "girly-man" and telling me to "man up" and take my punishment for having a penis just isn't going to hold much water.

You share a problem with the affirmative-action crowd. It's not about securing an equal place at the table so much as it is about getting the opportunity to show Whitey what it's like to be oppressed.

Of course, now I'm a RACIST mysogynist girly man, so maybe I ought to quite while I'm ahead. Wouldn't want to add any more adjectives to my life.

"Some man at some time raped or abused someone, so now the law must be made to treat all men as abusers so they know what it feels like".

That's so dumb, it's like you treat rape as such a RARE occurence in history, even when I tell you men in parts of the world are still wearing VAGINAS on their heads! Yet, you act like, "oh well, rape is so rare...maybe happened somewhere at some time..."

The difference is that a rape victim in the past had few options for justice and little chance of proving her case. She rarely would've been believed. Apparently, you're upset that ever changed.

And suffragists didn't have the same rights as men. Now, you and I, as citizens, have the same basic rights...you can quibble that they're biased here or there, or some laws need to be tweaked or changed...but it is no way the same as me telling the suffragists to "shut up, you've got it better than anywhere else in the world". If you had fewer rights than me, it would be applicable, but we have the same basic rights and freedoms.

Jesus Christ, woman! Have you read a single thing I've written in this thread? How the fuck did you get to "rape is a rare occurrence" from what I wrote?

It's either patent dishonesty, or projection, or an inability to confront the facts with truth.

Let me put it in terms you can't possibly misread.

Even if half of all men are rapists, it STILL does not justify crafting a system of laws that operates from the assumption that ALL men are rapists. Yet we have crafted just such a set of laws - simply substitute 'abuser' for 'rapist'.

You can't get past your personal experience here. That's fine, you're human. What I'm telling you is that to presume that since you were abused that all claims of abuse are of equal merit is improper.

I don't particularly care how bad the rest of the world is. I can't change it. And living in Rwanda wouldn't change my opinion of injustices being perpetrated in my own country.

LS - "I'm asking you to look at it from a more fairminded and manly perspective. If you're going to speak for men, you might want to try to becoming one first...not some incessant little spoiled crybaby pointing to other men's suffering as your own."

Or, we could turn that around and ask the same of you - as it regards the primary subject of this thread - Mary Winkler.

Are you not taking on Mary's "suffering" as your own? Did what she supossedly have to endure anything at all like the women in Darfur?

You see, your logic cuts both ways.

I don't see how you can continue to defend Mary Winkler's cold-blooded murder (over money issues) while bashing men for sticking up the injustices suffered by other men? If a women (such as yourself) can "defend" another woman (who is the perpetrator of a heinous crime), why shouldn't men be able to defend other men who have been victims?

Are you saying that you cannot see a double-standard in taking that position?

Jesus, you think I'm enacting vengeance on you? That's how paranoid you are. I am saying NEITHER of us have it so "tough" in this country. Most of the injustices you "feel" aren't even yours anyway, since you don't participate much in life, having basically dropped out. You read about other men experiencing some type of injustice and try to claim it as yours.

I don't want to punish you. I want you to realize how lucky you are. I want you to stop feeling so "disenfranchized" because you really aren't...any way you cut it. Maybe it's safer for you to feel that way - gives you a reason to turn against life and most people, who might hurt you - but you're only hurting yourself living that way.

LS - now you're making this personal.

You personally don't want anything from me. However, the law does.

Until a few years ago, only a woman could be the victim of sexual harrassment in Connecticut.

There are laws in place that prevent a man accused of rape from being allowed to confront his accuser. This is not the case for any other legal action in American jurisprudence.

There are policies in place in many schools that make it difficult to impossible for a man to become a teacher out of fear that he will be a molester. These policies persist in the face of female teachers being prosecuted for abusing their young charges. And yes, I'm admitting that there is a specific branch of offense where women are prosecuted successfully and frequently. But the double standard still persists - the assumption that men are abusers and women are not. These assumptions have no place in law or policy.

Am I lucky to have been born in the United States? Damn straight.

But I don't want to see the professional grievance industry turn my country into Rwanda, where being a member of the wrong tribe can be a "career limiting move" if you get my drift.

The problem with your argument, slwerner, is that you genuinely assume that I would NOT defend a man with an equally credible story of abuse or rape.

Show me one - just ONE - similar story - not hypothetical - and I assure you I would be on his side in a heartbeat. After all, I am the woman who defended murderous Scott Petersen! I said he shouldn't have gone to jail because they didn't prove his case, in my opinion.

The only issue I have is showing TOO much compassion and fairmindedness to BOTH genders. But that's very different than your perspective. You refuse to show any compassion to a woman like Winkler, or give her the benefit of the doubt. You'd rather lock her up, or fry her...even if there might be the slightest doubt you are WRONG.

My perspective is entirely different. I believe we should always err on the side of reasonable doubt - male or female. That's supposed to be how our justice system works, not punishing one gender or another for our personal vendettas.

These assumptions have no place in law or policy.

Exactly, Brian, and they aren't. Where is it written in ANY law in ANY state in this country "the assumption that men are abusers and women are not." Where is it written down and followed to the letter in ANY DAMN POLICY in this state? You show me where it is written in ANY law book, or any other paper used in a court of law, and I'll grant that you're right. Put up or shut up Big Boy. Because NOWHERE will you find it written, and yet you still insist it is. Knock it off.

LS -

You and I differ again. The day after Laci Peterson was announced to have gone missing, my friend and I looked at each other and said "the husband did it".

We were right.

The evidence was all circumstantial at first, but the conclusion was almost unavoidable. There was more evidence in the Peterson case than there was in the Richard Crafts case, and he wound up getting convicted too. When the bodies washed up on shore, of course, all doubt was removed.

Flynne - we can start by proving the converse (i.e. only women are victims of violence) by pointing here: http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/

That, of course, leads to the conclusion that if only women are victims, then only men are abusers, and therefore the assumption (perhaps I left the weasel word out earlier, if so I'm sorry) that "all men are potential abusers". Of course, the activists leave the word "potential" out, and go right to assuming that all men are abusers.

So, the law might not SAY "all men are abusers", but the impact of the way that the laws are written, combined with the enforcement mechanism, guarantee that this is the first assumption from which all other decisions are made.

Right, Flynn. There is no standard policy stating that - or that "women aren't violent". No woman would ever be convicted, and plenty of women are. The fact that common sense often plays into decisions regarding child molestation or rape...which are predominately crimes commmited by males...is what upsets men like Brian.

It's like the argument over racial profiling. It's why we all - even little old couples - have to be searched at airports now - because, God forbid, we should presume that there's not some EQUAL likelihood that every person in that line is a terrorist, even when we know, statistically, that isn't true.

So, Brian wants us to abandon common sense and presume that when a woman is raped, or a child is molested, it's just as likely that a woman did it. And it seems to me that's the sort of system we are indeed trying to have, whether it makes sense or not.

The few areas where there may still be some biased policies are in places like schools, where safety is such a major concern, or in rape cases, which is a crime of intimidation and very hard for a woman to prove.

So, I see the opposite of what Brian sees. I think we are becoming less able to "profile" crimes appropriately because of this sort of political correctness. We're trying to be so "fair" to everyone that we loose common sense.

LS - "you genuinely assume that I would NOT defend a man with an equally credible story of abuse or rape.
Show me one - just ONE - similar story - not hypothetical - and I assure you I would be on his side in a heartbeat."

Rape!?!?

Where did Mary Winkler ever have any story about being raped, let alone a credible one?

And, as to her claims of abuse, from the records (which you no doubt checked) the only credible claims of abuse were in regard to Matthew Winkler being something of a bully – not a good way to act, but hardly worthy of being murdered. The one testimonial account of church secretary noting that Mary once had a black eye – in 2004 – also included that Mary herself had told her that she had gotten it accidently while “horsing around” with her daughters. And, of course, HER family could “recall” the evidence of physical abuse they saw, even though her friends, neighbors, and even her own daughter could not (you did read the synopses of their testimonies didn’t you?). That being the sum and total of the evidence presented before court of law (yes, the unsubstantiated claims have grown worse after the trial – where no standards of evidence exist), it’s hard to see any pattern of physical abuse.

Now, as to the whole sexual humiliation story, how do either of us know if Mary is lying or telling the truth about that? I’d contend that the fact that she was seen smoking and drinking in a bar would suggest that Mary had a bit of a wild streak in her all along – something that she would have to suppress in order to maintain the façade as a preachers wife. My suspicions are that she was a willing participant in “sexual play”, and that it only became a “problem” for her when she needed an excuse for murdering her husband.

Also, I hadn’t brought it up earlier because it is little more than idle speculation, but, amongst the few items Mary took when she fled with her daughters were the shotgun and a box of shells for it. This has lead to that aforementioned speculation that she had intended (or, at least entertained the notion of doing so) to kill the children and perhaps herself; as is often seen in cases where people find themselves trapped by the web of their own lies and deceits. Mary’s house-of-cards was caving in on her. Even though she later claimed that Matthew had directed her to commit the fraud, no one who’s investigated it believes that he was aware of what was going on - she had opened a separate account in her name alone to use in her fraud.

Yet, none of this matters to you? You still buying into her account that her terrible suffering was what caused her to “snap”? That’s exactly what she went out on the talk show circuit claiming.

Even if her account of Matthew pinching their daughters nose is true, considerable time passed between that event and her “snapping”, and even her own testimony was that he left the room willing after she asked for the baby.

And, furthermore, he had gone to sleep before she went for the gun. You may see a terrified woman acting out “in the heat of passion” and snapping – I see a woman who had been told she was facing felony charges for her crimes. I’ll agree she was terrified – I just don’t buy that her terror was from her husband.

Obviously, I don’t have similar case, with genders reversed, for you to prove that you’d defend a man as well (I never read your defense of Scott Peterson, who I believe viscously murdered his wife and child, and should "fry" BTW).

And, I’ve never suggested that Mary Winkler be “fried”, nor even serve the maximum sentence. But, I do find in astounding that you can say she will never hurt her children after she “snapped” so very easily when murdering her husband? You think a couple of months in a hospital was enough for her resolve her “hair-trigger snapping” response?

I’d allow for her to have supervised visits, but not full custody of her children and the trust fund set up for them (the one she went to court to gain access to back in February ( in case you missed it).

That's why I said what I did before, about honing the internal bullshit detector. I've always maintained that "political correctness" is neither political nor correct. "Common sense ain't so common anymore" is what my da and I have been saying for years. And most people are happy to throw personal repsonsibility to the wayside, to be used nevermore, moldering in the forlorn patch of withered weeds by the highway, content to let Big Brother make all the decisions for them. Well, not this little black duck! Me, I'd rather be able to live my life the best way I see fit, or check the hell out. And they can have my gun when they pry my cold dead fingers from it. Of course, YMMV! o_O

Y'know what, I'm done. There's so much damn straw in the air I can't see.

You keep finding newer and more sinister motives to ascribe to me. None of which are true.

My position in this has been abundantly clear.

Mary Winkler intentionally killed her husband. Her accusations of abuse were all hearsay, as there was no way to cross-examine the alleged abuser. There was no concrete evidence of abuse, no reports of abuse, no reaction from her. She shot him in the back with a shotgun the day before her check-passing was about to be revealed.

And this woman, who killed a man in cold blood, is getting her children back.

And you, lovelysoul, have bent over backwards to defend what this woman did on the basis that since you were abused, then her claims must be credible as well. But you didn't shoot anyone in the back, did you?

Of course, there's a massive tell in your last post "rape ... is a crime of intimidation". Rape is a crime of sex, where a man (or woman) takes that to which he/she is not entitled.

Just about the only thing I agree with you on is that we are becoming too politically correct. But that political correctness is what is leading to the bad assumptions that I'm complaining about.

Obviously, the best either of us can do with Winkler is speculate...wildly, in your summary. Maybe she really had a "wild streak" all along (because she had a cigarette on New Years eve?), she was going to kill the kids, etc."

The difference between us is that your speculation would "fry" her and my speculation would give her another chance to live a productive life.

So, I would tend to err towards my speculation - knowing how hard abuse is to prove, knowing how few witnesses there are (especially 7 yr old children!), knowing that men don't always want innocent, tender "sex play" with costumes....and so forth.

Clearly, people from all walks of life can disagree on this case. But I am a trained guardian ad litem, very familiar with child abuse cases, and it is extremely rare for a woman to kill her children, even if she injured or killed her spouse in a domestic violence situation.

Plus, the inlaws surrendered the children to her, which says to me that they don't find her to be THAT big of threat to the kids.

slwerner says: And, furthermore, he had gone to sleep before she went for the gun. You may see a terrified woman acting out “in the heat of passion” and snapping – I see a woman who had been told she was facing felony charges for her crimes. I’ll agree she was terrified – I just don’t buy that her terror was from her husband.

FYI: I read a bunch of books by FBI profilers, and they had a lot of interesting things to say about what you can tell about the criminal by the way he/she commits the crime. For example, if you find that a killer has attacked and/or mutilated someone's face, then more than likely the killer is someone close to the victim, because that's a way to express anger and hatred that a stranger wouldn't feel a need to do. Conversely, if a person kills someone but feels badly about it, they'll often treat the body in a way that expresses that. Like, if a parent kills a child, that parent will almost certainly treat the body with respect: burying it, keeping it clothed, those kinds of things. That Winkler shot her husband while he was sleeping and in the back, given that model, would indicate some desire not to see his face when she killed him. So even when she was doing it, she was feeling guilty about it, not angry. Which to me suggests that it wasn't the heat of passion, but more calculating. Killing in anger tends to be face to face. That's another of the things that makes me suspicious of Mary's version of events and what was going on in her mind.

Brian says:Of course, there's a massive tell in your last post "rape ... is a crime of intimidation". Rape is a crime of sex, where a man (or woman) takes that to which he/she is not entitled.

The best definition I've heard of for rape is that rape is a crime of violence in which the weapon is sex. The folks who study rape as a crime long ago dismissed the idea that rape is a crime of sex alone, because there is too much about it that does not fit that model. To a non-rapist, it might seem like the only thing that would make a person commit rape is that they really want sex and can't get it any other way. Much like why one would steal a loaf of bread. But if you look at the lives of rapists, and how they carry out their rapes, you'll see that the rape is meeting different needs than the sexual alone, and being carried out in such a way that sex is only one component of the whole attack. By saying it is a crime of sex and dismissing the idea that it is a crime of intimidation, you are contradicting the findings of the experts in this issue and demonstrating lack of knowledge of the realities of what goes on during rapes. Or perhaps it's a disagreement in perspective: "crime of intimidation" is describing the motivations of the rapist; "taking that to which he/she is not entitled" is an entirely materialist way of looking at rape, without any recognition of the psychological components.

I have to be done with this thread. The whiny men are killing me here (figuratively!, although no doubt they fantasize doing so to a woman someday).

Momof3, you should be done with this thread because you're obviously too dumb to understand context, abstract reasoning and logic. Your characterization of men that are justifiably and rationally outraged that people would actually excuse, justify and rationalize the cold blooded murder of a man as "whiny" and that we would fantasize about killing women is just patently offensive.

I've only got one adequate response for such an offensive insult: Fuck you and the broom you rode in on.

?All I have to say to Mr "it was your fault he choked you because you told him you were leaving" is I really, really hope a mary winkler finds you some day.

Did you even graduate from grade school? If that is all you got out of everything I've written, than you REALLY need to learn how to read and comprehend.

It will be YOUR fault, for spewing such a continuous stream of mysogynistic ignorance out your mouth. And we ALL know you've never had a relationship.

Talk about spewing a continuous stream of ignorance. Tell me where in this thread that I or any other man in this thread has implied that any woman debating here fantasized about murdering men, or speculated that I've never been in a relationship. Gimme a break...as if being in a relationship is some sort of badge of authority. My personal relationships have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Your attempts to insult me by speaking out of your ass for which you nothing about only shows how incapable you are to reason logically and that you only rely on your emotionally based, misandrist garbage as your sole argument.

And none of us are suprised. And if you really, really want to whine about how tough the corporate world is, all I can say is go enlist and ship overseas for a few months. I guarentee you'll change your tune about your rough life experiences, you whiny, sad little man. I would be so ashamed if I raised a man like you. Whining about how unfair the courts are to men in general, and white men with jobs in particular. Unreal.

This attempts at speculative shaming language are simply pathetic. Let's see how you like turnabout as fair play than...

"All I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't raised by such a harpy of a spiteful and malicious bitch such as you. Whining about how men could be upset that a murderer could get away with her crime simply by claiming she was abused without any concrete evidence, than getting custody of her three little girls. Unbelievable that men should find such a blatant injustice outrageous...Unreal."

LS - I'm through trying to argue with you. I understand you cannot disconnect your own experience and look at this case objectively.

All I can say is this: no matter what Mr. Winkler allegedly did, her actions were considerably worse, and they did permanent, life-altering damage to her three girls.

Even if the husband was "an abuser," the fact that she "snapped" shows that she cannot control her temper to the point of COLD BLOODED MURDER. And you think she'd be appropriate to have custody of her children?

What does a woman have to do to lose custody in your eyes, if murder is not bad enough?

That's a very good point, quizzical. You have such interesting info.

You may be right about why she shot him in the back, but I feel she was definately afraid of him. There was a part of her that wanted to stand up to him - to be a strong, protective mother and defend her child from ever being nearly smothered again. She couldn't let that stand! Yet, there was another side of her that was completely terrified.

So (just speculating) she took the gun into the room, intending to be brave and confront him about his "meanness." She knew he'd listen if she held the gun. Yet, she's also so afraid of confronting him - of having him turn around and see her doing something she'd never been brave enough to do before, which surely will get her into BIG trouble with him - that the slightest movement on his part causes her to jump and sets off the gun.

They are right that she may not have "snapped" per se, but she also wasn't in a clear-thinking state of mind by that point. And I really don't believe she intended to kill him.

I could be wrong about all this, but like I said, I'd rather err on the side of compassion and reasonable doubt. The state didn't PROVE she was a cold-blooded killer, who did it because of the Nigerian scam, and that was their burden.

Here's a story for those who don't think women can be violent: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ODD_BARBECUE_BATTERY?SITE=MOCAP&SECTION=AMERICAS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

And here's another mother who is a real piece of work: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24089403-2,00.html

Dave, the only women I've recommended lose custody have been drug or alcohol addicts, and only then after they've repeated failed to show any effort to rehabilitate.

I've never had a murderer to consider, though I once had a case where a sibling had been killed by the father.

When I began as GAL, I thought it should be so simple. Take kids in bad homes and put them in good homes. But it's a lot more complex. Lots of times I can only suggest the lesser of two or three bad options. So, unlike someone with no experience with it, I've gotten somewhat used to it not being ideal, or foolproof, or completely without risk. Although, luckily, through good instincts, I've never lost a child and have generally made the best recommendations to the court.

That's why I feel as I do. I'm relying a lot on gut instinct regarding her character and abilities as a mom - separating out the murder. She is not on trial now. Her kids want to be with her. Even abused or neglected kids still want to be with their biological parents. It's usually their deepest longing, so we always TRY to make that possible, for THEIR sakes. Often, it's not, but it seems to me that it's possible in this case. She has been visiting them, and receiving counseling, for over two years. It's not like this is the first time she's seen them since the murders.

That said, I'm relieved I'm not on that case. It will definitely be a wait-and-see situation.