Is it just me? Maybe it is but....

...it really pisses me off sometimes when you have somebody who commits a murder, like the guy who just shot and killed five innocent Amish girls and seriously wounding five others, that the family will come out and just say all kinds of glowing and delightful things about them to the media.
The night before I think it was his brother or a friend saying things like, "Oh he was a great guy and a loving father, a kind and gentle person, he was just having a bad day, that's all". I didn't even hear, and most times you won't, an apology offered to the victim's families.

I'm sorry. I don't care who you are. You do something like that I disown you forever. "What was he like?", "No comment!"

He obviously WASN'T such and kind and gentle person. But see, if they say 'no comment', then the media will go away faster and they won't be on the news and Good Morning America.

The neighbors, co-workers, kindergarten teacher, etc. get on my nerves too as they only want to get their faces on the TV with usually the same complimentary quotes or, "I really didn't know the guy but one time I was behind him in the lottery line" or "We didn't know the family but their kids went to the same school as our kids".

If I had a family member who did something like this, I would be 100% baffled as well. I bet it's easy to go into "but but but he was so nice and normal!" mode.

It's probably a way to ease the guilt they must inevitably feel (justified or not) for not seeing the signs early enough to prevent something like this from happening.

You could be family or a friend.

A former friend and now enemy of mine sexually assaulted his own six year old daughter and was looking to me, other friends and neighbors for support and maybe as a character witnesses at his criminal trial but I told somebody else to tell him forget it and stay clear of me even if he only got probation which was the case. Time served, about two months and five years probation, I believe is all he got for sodomizing his own daughter.

I would have done the same thing if I was in your situation. Speaking of your situation, how dare he prey on a six year old girl, HIS own child and then have the audacity to expect support from you and others! Wow.

Out of curiosity, did finding out what your ex-friend did make you question your ability to judge people? I only ask because I think I would have a hard time dealing with something like that.

The guy was a heavy drinker and that's what he blamed the incident on. There's only two people in my life who I spotted dead on as being a child molesters. Both were coworkers with stepdaughters. With one guy he showed real signs of jealousy when he was talking about his step daughters and them fooling around with their boyfriends and so on. He'd say things like "boy I better not catch them doing this and that" with real hatred in his voice and uncomfortable body language. He got shit canned for poor job performance and I never saw him again. The other guy, a real christian fanatic who taught Sunday school and despised people who drank alcohol was always talking about what a slut his 14 year step daughter was, how shocking the things she bragged about doing and so on. He didn't get fired but was also a lazy shit and he quit when he couldn't handle the work. Needless to say I ran into different people throughout the years in the same trade and they said both were in prison for messing with their step daughters. Why my neighbor got off so easy I can only speculate. His wife took their daughter and moved somewhere never to be heard from again and wasn't even at the trial. I think his boss was the only one who spoke up for him but like I said, I believe all he got was time served for sixty days and probation for five years which is pretty sad as the girl was old enough to remember what happened to her and who did it. I never heard from any of the family again but I hope the woman got the daughter some professional help.

These family members have been hit with a pretty heavy blow, and it's not surprising that they don't speak/behave in ways that those of us who are more detached would think is logical and reasonable. To an extent, they too are victims of the murderer (and no, that's not an equivalency or a trivialization).

:shrug:

Last night the news program I watched only showed the very same guy, whoever he is, in a church all happy and smiley with piano music playing behind him saying to everyone, "the Amish people said they forgive him, they forgive him". I can't remember if he said, "so should we".

www.spiegel.de

He terrorized and slaughtered children, and apparently had some really, really sick sexual stuff he was wanting to do to them. Devout Christians don't do stuff like that.

That's one thing I always respected about the Unabomber's family: they never tried to whitewash anything.