I haven’t read the whole thread yet but I’m assuming they did an extremely thorough investigation to bring 1st degree murder charges & have them really prove beyond reasonable doubt to a jury of hopefully 12 reasonable, rational people who will subsequently convict & put these two away for life. I’m anti-death penalty & so is Mr. Lotus & I also was a combat medic in Iraq during the invasion & I’m constantly researching repugnant crimes & crime scene photos so I’ve seen A LOT of really messed up stuff (after enduring an incredibly sexually/physically/emotionally/verbally abusive childhood) but THIS, I can’t get my effing head around it. I’m sorry if saying effing broke a rule. My point of that was Mr. Lotus & I agreed this morning that they deserve the death penalty. Which is really saying a lot, coming from either of us.
I’m not a reactionary person or an alarmist. It takes a whole lot to get me this shook. I mean a whole lot. I’m not desensitized because I’m still appalled at the stuff going on around the world but there isn’t even a word close to appalling that would be adequate to describe this utter depraved apathy.
It reminds me of a mission I was on with my guys (I was in a “line” unit; yes the whole “no women are on the front lines” thing was a lie) where we were searching for some insurgents responsible for an attack on another company in our battalion. Well, we’re going house to house in this village. Since I was the medic, I went along to provide medical assistance if needed, regardless of who it is, bad or good & I took that very seriously (Note: the lady I’m about to write about wasn’t “bad” & my whole view on that war changed as I got older & wiser but the treatment of women was/still is bad, they’re not even considered people to a lot of them, sadly). We got to this one house & my guys have cleared the inside so we headed out back to clear the out buildings & we all just stop. Why? Oh because we see a woman chained to a tree, crawling with maggots & flies. In her ears, eyes, mouth, just everywhere, all over her body, so I’m fixin to get a body bag for transport. Until. She. Blinked. She was medevac to the nearest CSH & I don’t know if she made it or not. I hope she did but with that much necrosis, it was just... nobody could believe our own eyes. This was very, very early on & a sign of what was to come.
Sorry for the tangent & personal information. Also, I know drugs are gonna be brought up & sometimes on here, I’m the resident ex-junkie (can I get verified for that, I ask half-jokingly but on more than a few occasions, people have thanked me for the somewhat extensive & never sugar coated insight I was able to provide, I mean, I was an expert in it for over a decade!) so I’m going to say the same thing I say in most cases of infant death via neglect/abuse/murder where the parents are involved with drugs: It wasn’t the drugs that made them do this. It made them worse, but there are millions of active, habitual users of heroin, crack & meth that would be equally as appalled as I am. You have to have something wrong with your brain first in order to have that malice & intent. It goes far beyond neglect in this case because they knowingly left him there, knowing the end result would be death. Mental illnesses are not excuses & neither are drugs. Only in rare & extenuating circumstances do severe mental deficit cases move forward as a plausible defense.
I had had to come out of lurking to say that THIS poor baby Sterling, how he died, just.... I have not been THIS disgusted since deployment about anything.
This is is so incredibly sad. Sterling, you were too good for this Earth. The ONLY solace I take is knowing that Sterling won’t be continually abused & neglected for 18 years. I know that sounds so weird but I’m just...idk what but I’m feeling something that at least that poor baby endured that for a short time? There isn’t even any solace in that because I can’t stand the facts of what Sterling endured in his short life & I REALLY can’t stand that I have to share the planet with not only these two seriously messed up people but also knowing there are more like them out there.
