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Post by cammie on Jan 19, 2009 1:28:32 GMT
swl, good post. Plus + for ya!
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 19, 2009 3:27:30 GMT
It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children right from wrong. Adults who are immoral enough to murder in cold blood have something wrong with them. So, were these two ever taught it was WRONG to cut ppl up like a side of beef? Maybe the "sweet" nature of their mother just somehow totally escaped BOTH brothers. Eyeroll! ______________________ Yeah, I'm sure this "sweet" mom is proud of giving birth to two murdering thugs. You cannot tell me that by having met a person and seeing their immediate projected persona vs really knowing what kind of parenting skills they used over the years, you know their nature. Most anyone can project a false front. _________________ Maybe their mom is sweet, maybe she is not. Her two demon-boys sure aren't sweet! I blame the murderers for the murder(s) they commit, not their mom. That's why THEY are on DR, and the mom is not. _____________________ Then again, not everyone is the best judge of character. What is acceptable to one person may not be acceptable to another as evidenced in the company one keeps. I am a fairly good judge of character and that is why I avoid adulterers; can't much believe anything they say as they are proven liars You condemn and judge their mother whom you have never met nor spoken with yet tell me I can't know her nature even though I have had some contact with her but yet you presume to know her nature and that she raised her boys wrong....you laid the blame on her and can't deny it. Read this: Cautionary tales about bad boys Marin's Walker has Concord counterpart Sam McManis Saturday, December 15, 2001 Look beyond the scraggly beard and the long, limp hair partially covering his face, and gaze into those deep-set sorrowful eyes captured by the camera. This was a good kid, once, you think. Knew right from wrong. Wanted to help, not hurt, others. Friends and family quoted in news accounts confirm as much, too, calling him pious, clean-cut, intelligent. They express shock and bewilderment, muse about wrong life choices and bad influences. John Walker? No, Glenn Helzer. This week in Contra Costa Superior Court in Martinez, prosecutors presented grisly evidence in a preliminary hearing for brothers Glenn and Justin Helzer and friend Dawn Godman, who are accused of killing five people -- including the daughter of blues musician Elvin Bishop -- in Concord and Marin County in August of 2000. Testimony has included reports that Glenn Helzer, 31, reared as a Mormon, had joined a self-awareness program called Harmony and also dabbled in the occult with his younger brother and friend. It was this hybrid of skewed self- awareness and hyper-nihilism ("There is no such thing as right and wrong," Helzer wrote to his fellow defendants in his "12 Principles of Magic") that prosecutors say led to the three's botched extortion scheme that resulted in dismembered remains of three of the victims being found in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Helzer committed the murders, police and Helzer's friends testified in sometimes graphic detail, as part of his "plan from God" to raise $20 million in order to spread his message of "peace and love." To outsiders, it was chilling, sometimes sickening, testimony of pure malevolence. To those who knew the Helzer brothers before their descent into crime in 2000, it was chilling because it seems at odds with the assumptions they had drawn about the Helzer family in their dealings with them over the years. A longtime family friend, Susan Farr of Martinez, has been aghast while following accounts of the preliminary hearing. This is not the Glenn Helzer she knew at the local Mormon ward, not the lanky, charismatic boy who went on his mission in Brazil for two years and later became a broker for Dean Witter in Concord. "Both boys were very straight arrows," Farr said. "It's just amazing what I'm hearing from the trial. They were an outstanding family, always doing good for people like the homeless. It's really hard to hear some of the things coming out." In some respects, Glenn Helzer's story shares some sociological themes with that of Walker, the 20-year-old from Marin County who went from a questing young Islamic student to a Taliban fighter. Both these men from "good families" apparently veered onto an extreme religious path that had violent results. And now, people casting about for blame say, that convenient catch- all, permissive parenting, is one culprit. Walker's well-to-do parents have been criticized from Marin to Manhattan for encouraging their son to pursue his interests in Islam. Helzer's middle- class parents, according to prosecutors, did not discourage him from venturing beyond his strict Mormon upbringing into a self-awareness program that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has frowned upon. Farr, who attends services at the same Martinez ward as Carma and Gerry Helzer, said the parents are not to blame, that Carma certainly wouldn't condone principles such as Glenn Helzer's mantra, "I am already perfect and therefore can do nothing wrong." "Oh, gosh no," Farr said. "His mother is somebody I've always thought of as the perfect mother. She's what you would call strict but loving. I see her on Sundays, and I know it's hard on her." Walnut Creek psychologist Don Elium, author of "Raising a Son," defends the parents. "People who are saying that (the parents are at fault) have not had a child who has wanted to find a spiritual quest," Elium said. "When these young men are 19 or 20, there's nothing a parent can do to stop them. It's not the Mormons or the self-help group that made that guy in Contra Costa court go bad. It has to do with the individual. Spiritual quests can be good, but there's an essential risk -- it can go bad." So, just as people in Marin speculate how Walker turned into an Islamic extremist, people in Contra Costa wonder how these polite Mormon men went bad in the late '90s, after they were excommunicated from the church for reasons the church will not disclose. Some say drugs. Some say a cult's influence. Some, including Glenn Helzer's attorney, say mental illness. And some say just plain bad parenting. Good kids, they say, don't turn out like John Walker and Glenn Helzer. They have values, a strong moral foundation chiseled out in a well-reared childhood. Something deep in their background must -- just has to -- account for the horrible mess they made of their and other people's lives, right? Maybe, maybe not. It makes us feel better to think so, surely. Every dad and mom wants to think their vigilance and secure grip on the parental reins will prevent little Johnny from growing up into a wartime traitor or keep young Glenn from becoming a multiple murderer. To think that despite our best efforts our child's life still could go horribly wrong, that he could be staring at us from newspaper pages with sorrowful eyes, is just too scary to contemplate.
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Post by cammie on Jan 19, 2009 6:28:38 GMT
Any "fairly good judge of character" would NEVER choose to seek out a convicted murderer for companionship unless they themselves were of inferior character. Birds of a feather.
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 19, 2009 6:54:31 GMT
Any "fairly good judge of character" would NEVER choose to seek out a convicted murderer for companionship unless they themselves were of inferior character. Birds of a feather. You lose. How do I lose? My feathers are far differnt than Jeff's. I am not a murderer nor will I ever murder anyone nor condone the act of murder. I have judged the person I know and have found some excellent character traits that I am trying to incorporate into my life as they are good traits.
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 19, 2009 6:58:24 GMT
It would be so nice to make a post without my character being called into question on this thread; I'm tired of the little digs and bullshyt and hope the board will not let this one person ruin the experience like she always does
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 19, 2009 7:00:28 GMT
Also one day there were two brothers visiting each other; they were identical and we got to talkiing should the one switch places with the condemned one to give him a chance to run away?
My answer was no. I would not put my life on the line for anyone behind bars meaning, my job, home, family, retirement benefits and all that goes with being a law abiding citizen.
I would hate to see my relative executed but I would not change places so they could get away.
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Post by pumpkinette on Jan 19, 2009 11:52:25 GMT
Any "fairly good judge of character" would NEVER choose to seek out a convicted murderer for companionship unless they themselves were of inferior character. Birds of a feather. As usual, you never mention the MINIMUM of 22% of the MVS in the US who have an inter-family case. That's because there's complications within those cases that you never want to face. It's easier to just put murderers in 1 little, safe category box.
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Post by pumpkinette on Jan 19, 2009 11:53:27 GMT
Any "fairly good judge of character" would NEVER choose to seek out a convicted murderer for companionship unless they themselves were of inferior character. Birds of a feather. Jesus Christ, what a LOSER and an inferior character! ;D He was PATHETIC, wasn't he, when He said to visit people in prison? ;D
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Post by drewsmom595 on Jan 19, 2009 12:10:24 GMT
Any "fairly good judge of character" would NEVER choose to seek out a convicted murderer for companionship unless they themselves were of inferior character. Birds of a feather. Jesus Christ, what a LOSER and an inferior character! ;D He was PATHETIC, wasn't he, when He said to visit people in prison? ;D LOL, Laura!!!!! You're absolutely right. Jesus did visit with prisoners and felt it was a supreme act of compassion to do so.
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Post by drewsmom595 on Jan 19, 2009 12:14:48 GMT
Prisoners and Other Strangers Jack Miles explains why Christian ethics demand we treat prisoners as we would the Lord
The following is an excerpt from "Ethics of the Neighbor," a talk presented May 16 at The First Natalie Limonick Symposium on Jewish Civilization at UCLA's Center for Jewish Studies
Prisoners have a special place in the Christian imagination. It matters that Jesus himself was a prisoner. To speak the language of American law enforcement, his death was a death in custody. His most influential followers, Peter and Paul, were also prisoners. They too died in custody. John the Baptist, who first acclaimed Jesus as Messiah, was beheaded in a Roman prison. Christianity is a religion founded by men in deep trouble with the law, men familiar with the inside of prisons, whose message was "the last shall be first, and the first last."
In religious ethics as formulated in our monotheistic traditions, what is owed to the neighbor is simultaneously owed to God himself. The Christian way of imagining this double duty exploits the fact that Christianity's God has appeared in human form. Thus, when doing good deeds for our fellow human beings, we as Christians seek to imagine that we are simultaneously doing them for Christ in person. Jesus taught his followers to imagine themselves hearing his voice saying, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you came to me," and finally: "I was in prison and you visited me" (Matthew 25:35-36).
Allow me, if I may, at this dark and shameful moment in our history, to linger over the last entry on that list: "I was in prison and you visited me." Jesus gives every item on his list twice-once in a positive formulation, for praise, and once in a negative formulation, for blame. Thus, "I was in prison and you did not visit me." Can you imagine what it is like to be in prison waiting for a visit that does not come? But let me ask an easier question: Do you know where the nearest jail is?
Ten years ago, when I was still working for the Los Angeles Times, I discovered Los Angeles County Jail almost by accident. At that time, I had worked out a back-streets route to escape rush-hour traffic. I grew so familiar with my zigzag shortcut that I knew every building along the way. I didn't fail to notice, then, when a large new building started to go up on a brick-strewn no-man's-land northeast of Union Station. Octagonal in shape and windowless, this building-set well back from the street-appeared to be some kind of power plant or transmitting station. After the first month or so, I noticed that there were actually two octagonal structures under construction.
This sort of thing doesn't ordinarily much interest me; but leaving one Friday for a three-day weekend, I noticed that a large sign had gone up of the usual sort that one sees in front of construction sites. I decided to park and walk across the rubble to read what it said. It was then that I learned that the two octagonal structures were in fact additions to the Men's Central Jail and that, after all, they were not windowless. What looked at a distance like seams were actually tall, narrow, slit-like windows.
What I took away from my discovery was a humbling and somewhat disturbing reflection on, as it happens, the Shoah, the genocidal slaughter of Europe's Jews by Nazi Germany. In discussions of the Shoah, I had heard the question asked more than once: "Did the Germans know?" Almost always, the conclusion reached was that, yes, they surely did know. Were I a German living in that era, I had wondered, would I have known? Would I have spoken out? The fact that until stumbling upon the largest jail in my own city in this way I had not known its location and that this bit of ignorance had never bothered me in the slightest seemed a damning commentary on my social awareness.
Now, unlike the concentration camps, County Jail is not a secret facility; it is not located outside the borders of the United States. Nonetheless it had never occurred to me to ask even the first question about it. If I had been a German living in 1946, would it have been an adequate defense to say that I didn't know about the death camps simply because it had never occurred to me to ask? Yet in Los Angeles this flimsy excuse seemed to be my only defense.The new buildings turned out to be just steps from the existing jail, itself a gigantic structure that I only discovered on that same first stop. As I walked down the short, curving cul-de-sac that separated the original jail from the twin towers, as they are now called, I came unexpectedly upon a young man dressed in grey washpants and a white T-shirt and sitting on the curb. When he saw me, he jumped to his feet and asked me for some money. He had just been released from jail, he said, with only the clothes on his back and no idea of what to do or where to go.
I found this implausible. Surely, I thought, the authorities would not be so foolish as to release a convicted criminal penniless onto the street. But the man had not been panhandling when I almost literally stepped on him. A skinny, crewcut white guy with a couple of teeth knocked out, he was sitting disconsolately alone with his feet in the gutter of a street that had at that hour neither vehicular nor pedestrian traffic. I gave him ten dollars.
A few years later, when a Mexican high school student whom I had tutored was imprisoned on a drug offense and then released in Northern California, I learned that what I had observed that afternoon in Los Angeles was pretty close to standard practice. I also learned, after doing a little archival research, that an alliance of Mexican and Chinese neighborhood people had fought hard against the expansion of County Jail. Understandably, they did not like having homeless, penniless ex-cons turned loose on the streets where they lived. As you will have inferred, they lost that battle. You can fight city hall, but it takes more money to win than they had.
A Christian who does not know where the jails of his town are located would seem to be, in short, not much of a Christian. On judgment day, what can he expect to hear if not the voice of his Lord saying, "I was in prison, and you did not visit me"? And to repeat something I said earlier, if we do not even know where our prisons are located, how can we begin to know how prisoners are treated behind their locked doors?
Over the past two weeks, as the atrocious abuse of Iraqi prisoners by the American military has come to light, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have been at pains to proclaim that this depravity is not what America is all about. Clearly, it is not what American ideals are all about. But at the level of performance rather than ideals, of rational analysis rather than instinctive affiliation, we must ask whether our treatment of prisoners in Iraq does not, after all, give the world a valid glimpse of how prisoners are treated in America and thereby of America itself.
After the Iraqi prisoner scandal broke, Fox Butterfield, a New York Times reporter who has made prisons something of a specialty, wrote one of the briefest but, in my opinion, most telling articles yet published on the scandal under the title "Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S." Its opening two paragraphs read as follows:
Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.
In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation.
If, after the Abu Ghraib scandal, the world has begun to wonder whether Americans treat their prisoners at home the way they treat them abroad, the world's curiosity may not be entirely misplaced. Abuse of prisoners is particularly widespread in Texas, Butterfield reports, but here in Los Angeles a prisoner allegedly under witness protection while in custody was slain at County Jail within the past month by a man he had testified against.
As at Abu Ghraib, inadequate budgets have meant shrinking staffs for the staggering 18,000 prisoners held in Los Angeles County facilities. As at Abu Ghraib, inadequate staffs have resulted in a growing risk of anarchy and violence.
American prisons are certainly not the only lens through which to view America, but they are, I submit, one valid lens among the many-as if to say, "Show me how your country treats its prisoners, and I will tell you what kind of country you are."
William Lawson, the man who first alerted CBS to the existence of the now infamous photographs, did not begin with television. Before making that move, he had tried and failed seventeen times, with seventeen different members of Congress, to get our government to address this ongoing atrocity.
But both at home and abroad, the cause of prisoner rights is a cause without a constituency. No one ever won an election campaigning for more humane treatment of convicted or suspected criminals, or even detainees held completely without criminal charge-like the 70-90 percent at Abu Ghraib who were arrested by mistake and eventually released without charge.
At Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, at several other little known or completely secret places around the world, and in an archipelago of obscure holding pens for illegal immigrants to the United States, tens of thousands of men and women are being held without charge and without term.
Are these unfortunates-typically called detainees rather than prisoners-my neighbor? Ethically, do I owe them anything? As a worshipper of the God who warned, "I was in prison and you did not visit me," I must believe that I do owe them something, but I am still struggling to determine what it is. I do not relish self-examination, much less self-indictment. I would be happy to let the whole thing slide with a sigh of dismissal. Nothing could be more natural, more "philosophical," than that, but nothing would be less Christian. I don't like prisoners any more than the next guy does, but are they my neighbors? Yes, unfortunately, inconveniently, they are.
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Post by iamjumbo on Jan 19, 2009 14:05:40 GMT
These were grown up men with some skewered thinking brought on by a skewed up cult they were raised in; now do all Mormons kill? No, so we can't blame the religion nor the parents for teaching them what they believe to be the truth. This mother loves her sons and supports them; while we may not agree we really don't know what we would do in this type of case. I still wonder if they will be executed fairly close together or if the appeals will take different amounts of time seeing how they got different sentences. Everytime I see a reciprocating saw I get the willies thinking that is what this bunch used to cut the victims up before putting them in duffle bags and throwing them in the river. I cannot even imagine doing that sort of thing; it just does not compute. what is unfortunate is that, they are both years away from being executed at all.
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 19, 2009 16:07:13 GMT
gotta dot those i's and cross those t's and then justice will be served.
I don't believe there will ever be anything other than hoping for a life sentence rather than the death sentence they have; they were clearly guilty.
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Post by iamjumbo on Jan 20, 2009 15:28:43 GMT
gotta dot those i's and cross those t's and then justice will be served. I don't believe there will ever be anything other than hoping for a life sentence rather than the death sentence they have; they were clearly guilty. of that, there is no doubt, and there are NO mitigating factors. it is california's, primarily thanks to the foegel imbecile, dragging it's feet on getting them into the chamber that will allow these fools to die of old age in san quentin
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Post by cammie on Jan 21, 2009 0:30:18 GMT
Jesus, Peter and Paul were not murderers. They never hacked victims up with a saw and threw their dismembered bodies away like discarted trash.
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Post by pumpkinette on Jan 21, 2009 6:16:47 GMT
Jesus, Peter and Paul were not murderers. They never hacked victims up with a saw and threw their dismembered bodies away like discarted trash. What about St. Paul talking about how at the LEAST he had murder in his heart? He persecuted the 1st Christians. Moses was a literal murderer. But, there's not 1 word about him being in hell in the Bible. King David put out a hit on a man. However, he repented and never did it again. These things aren't always so "black and white" when it comes down to it, ie., not every murder case and murderer are the same.
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Post by pumpkinette on Jan 21, 2009 11:33:36 GMT
Jesus, Peter and Paul were not murderers. They never hacked victims up with a saw and threw their dismembered bodies away like discarted trash. From www.biblestudy.org/apostlepaul/timeline1.html:32 A.D. Martyrdom of Stephen / Saul Leads Persecution Against Believers Stephen, whose Grecian name means "crown," is stoned for his testimony about Jesus (Acts 6-7). Stephen was one of the first deacons specially appointed by the early church to serve (Acts 6:1-6) and is considered the first Christian martyr. A young, zealous Saul (Paul) consents to and witnesses Stephen's death (Acts 7:58-8:1), after which he leads persecution against believers of Christ (Acts 8:1-4).
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2009 13:52:58 GMT
Just out of interest, why do some people get so wound up about murderers cutting up dead bodies to dispose of them? Surely it is what they did to them while they were alive that should sicken us?
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Post by chefmate51 on Jan 21, 2009 14:15:26 GMT
Jesus, Peter and Paul were not murderers. They never hacked victims up with a saw and threw their dismembered bodies away like discarted trash. Why are we talking about Jesus, Peter and Paul? Where do they fit in this thread?
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 21, 2009 15:38:48 GMT
Just out of interest, why do some people get so wound up about murderers cutting up dead bodies to dispose of them? Surely it is what they did to them while they were alive that should sicken us? Well, of course it's not nice to think of our loved ones being hacked about after death. All the same, dear Skylark, you're dead right. It's what murderers did to the living that's the really disgusting thing.
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Post by Big Lin on Jan 21, 2009 15:40:21 GMT
Jesus, Peter and Paul were not murderers. They never hacked victims up with a saw and threw their dismembered bodies away like discarted trash. Why are we talking about Jesus, Peter and Paul? Where do they fit in this thread? I must admit I can't see that either, Chris, except in terms of the fact that Paul during his Saul period was a murderer himself. I suppose the question is about repentance and whether or not it excuses bad behaviour. To my mind, it doesn't and forgiveness is the job of God and justice the job of human beings.
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