Crime Update

I have some really great bling that I received from two different awesome bloggers, and I said I was going to post them today but I am not. The bloggers who gave me the awards are too great to just do a cursory post on, as are the people to whom I want to pass on the award. So now all I can say is, "This week, I promise." Which is actually a little odd for me, as I have been coveting one in particular...but I just don't have "it" today, whatever "it" is.

I found out some information about the murder the occurred here last week, information which is extremely disturbing on a variety of levels. I heard this from a very reliable "source," too, as in from a friend of the victim, so I think this is pretty accurate. Do you guys want to know what the connection was? None. Absolutely none. Neither the husband nor his young wife knew this guy, nor does the wife remember ever having SEEN him before. After the guy had taken her husband out of commission and while he was attempting to rape her, the young wife cried out, "Why are you doing this?" And his reply? "No reason, I just felt like killing someone." She managed to get to the phone somehow, though no one at this point knows how, or if he had already taken off when she called; it all happened relatively quickly.

In light of our experience with CSG, I cannot help but let my thoughts flutter around the idea that the two are one and the same. This is something I have studiously avoided contemplating, shoving those fleeting thoughts away as quickly as they float to the surface; it seems pointless and counterproductive, because then I freak out. I have four kids who believe wholeheartedly that I can keep them safe-freaking out is not an option for me.

Still, in the dark of the night, the thoughts come and I can't succeed in keeping them at bay. It seems worse now, because there are some similarities that seem too close to be ignored. I think I blogged briefly about this, but tried to pass it off as something I wasn't really concerned about-I was lying out my ass, because yeah-there are some fucking insane similarities. Description of the guy? Remarkably similar, including height, weight, facial hair, clothing, and race. Basic MO? Also the same. They are calling our situation with CSG an "Interrupted Home Invasion," and the murder was also a Home Invasion. There are-I don't know. I just don't know.

I would love to be able to say that my rational mind says that it couldn't be the same guy. That it is all just some freaky coincidence. That surely he would not kill someone in the wee hours of Sunday morning and then find time to come to my house and steal my dogs and go through my mailbox. That it would stand to reason that if it WAS the same guy, he would not have run away from our house, but would have stayed there and killed us all. But then again I think of things like this: that the element of surprise was on our side that night, because he was expecting to walk into a sleeping house and instead my daughter turned into Xena and came rushing in-surely that was not expected. I think of things like with the young couple-they were both asleep and he incapacitated the husband, leaving his wife with no real defense. What if he had the same plans for my kid? My daughter? To get me and the baby out of the way before moving on to the next victim? Or perhaps I WAS the victim and had Hannah not intervened, they would have walked into the house in the morning to find me dead.

And this is where it gets really, really fucked up. I know that it is irrelevant now, and that we should just be grateful that for whatever reasons, CSG is laying low at the moment. We have done all we can do regarding beefed up security, including THE greatest motion lights known to man-they are very nearly blinding, lighting up the entire back yard from the wall to the alley, and in the front they illuminate not just MY porch and yard, but part of the neighbor's as well. I love my lights. My lights are almost orgasm-causing. No one has complained yet, but if they do, I am going to tell them to bite my ass-because if perhaps one neighbor had bothered to venture outside while my daughter was screaming, maybe we wouldn't need the lights.

So I haven't been sleeping well, all things considered, and I just want it to be over. I have my days where I don't even really think about it much, there have been nights where we all sleep well and have no problems, and it is getting better daily. Especially for the kids, who will NOT be told this new information about the murder. For me, I think so much of my own fears have to do with the fact that it is something I have no control over-something totally random, something that couldn't have been prevented with prior knowledge. Someone once said something about how it sounded like I had feelings of guilt, and yeah, to that commenter, you are right. Of course there is a feeling of guilt, or rather was: I left the door unlocked. I let the kids sleep outside. I...but you know, I think about the murder victims, and I don't feel anything toward them other than deep sadness. No blame; they could have been sitting in the living room naked with all the lights on and the doors open performing oral sex on the neighbor's dog and they would still not be to blame. The cold hard reality is that random bad shit happens, and it is beyond our control. And it sucks, guys, it really sucks.

There is my rant for the day. It is daylight, of course, and totally easy to tell myself how ridiculous I am being for even considering that it was the same guy. It is different at night, and I just hope that I have more success at keeping the thoughts out of my head than I did last night.

As a funny aside, did any of you read my SPAM comment from a couple of posts ago? I don't know how old Marion Bishop got through the hoops to leave the comment, but I went ahead and published it because it totally made me laugh out loud. I visited the site she mentioned, and damn, am I tempted. Come on-wouldn't that be a SEXY look for me?