This is not to excuse, minimize or condone the incalculable and unnecessary suffering these people cause, nor to minimize the punishment they receive if they live.

These are completely lose-lose situations. I have met and come to know and understand some very unsavory people who have committed some horrific acts. They are miserably unhappy, lonely people, even if surrounded by others, and if one scratches below the surface one can trace the monsters they have become to the monsterous ways they were treated.

All of them had formative experiences of abuse, rejection, ridicule and perversion beyond normal comprehension. None of them set out to be the creatures they became - all of them were products of very sick people. And some of them have known they were monsters, and had to be stopped. Westley Allen Dodd was one of them.

Having said that, no family or individual should suffer as the result of their predations. Ever. This is they type of case where I believe in the death penalty, and if called upon in a case like this I would "throw the switch" on any of them. Not for punishment, life in the slam would do, but to prevent the chance they could be released and would do it again.

It might be with tears in my eyes, and it has to be done. And there is no winner.

Arf