Althouse: "What mystery? She fell in love with a murderer and he took advantage of it."

May 12, 2022

"What mystery? She fell in love with a murderer and he took advantage of it."

That's the top comment on "A jailer ran off with a murder suspect. Her death deepened the mystery" (WaPo).

39 comments:

RideSpaceMountain said...: Which generation of feminism absolved women of taking responsibility for anything again? I can never remember if it 2nd generation feminism or generation 3.2.; 5/12/22, 8:28 AM
Jeff Vader said...: Not to be sexist but has a male guard ever run off with a prisoner before?; 5/12/22, 8:32 AM
God of the Sea People said...: 'Love' seems like a bit of a leap. She got horny for a murderer and he took advantage of it.

The bizarre thing is how she could have been so dumb to think that this would ever end well.; 5/12/22, 8:33 AM
John Borell said...: Some ladies love the bad boys.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a32314885/dating-bad-boys/; 5/12/22, 8:46 AM
Beasts of England said...: This happened not too far away, so our media hub has been saturated with the details. She was soon the be recognized for the fifth time as corrections officer of the year. She sold her house and had about $70k in cash and applied for retirement shortly before the escape.

The dude’s a legit psychopath and manipulated her to the extreme. What she did was illegal, of course, but the wrong person took a bullet to the head.; 5/12/22, 8:47 AM
Levi Starks said...: Her body, her choice.; 5/12/22, 8:56 AM
What's emanating from your penumbra said...: I'm seeing a theme this morning.

We don't know how the plot was concocted, but one thing we know for sure is that her ethics were such that she never should have been in her position.

She is solely responsible for her decisions. Denying that requires viewing women like children. And perpetual victims (surprise!).; 5/12/22, 9:07 AM
Lars Porsena said...: Girls luv them some bad boys.; 5/12/22, 9:12 AM
William said...: I wonder what level of infatuation would cause her to think that this could result in a happy ending. Apparently she wasn't irrational in other aspects of her life....You can sort of understand what's going on with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but this sets a new record for self destructive romances....Her beau, Casey White, has had very poor luck with his lovers. Very high mortality rate among them. I just hope that he finds some way to get over this and go on to choose the right partner among the many women who will be sending him fan letters and proposing marriage.; 5/12/22, 9:16 AM
Leland said...: Day marked, I agree with a WaPo top rated comment.; 5/12/22, 9:17 AM
Ice Nine said...: Her (escape) plan for being happily ever after with her lover was as well thought out as her choice of lovers.; 5/12/22, 9:33 AM
n.n said...: There is no mystery in sex and... So, I married an abortionist, then self-aborted.; 5/12/22, 9:43 AM
Iman said...: A sad story… the woman had a stellar record over a 30 year career, but she threw it all away to fight the crushing loneliness?; 5/12/22, 9:51 AM
etbass said...: It shows how bad is the decision to allow female guards to be in male prisons. Will this make a difference for the future? Of course not.; 5/12/22, 10:13 AM
PerthJim said...: This story has a "Raising Arizona" vibe, female prison guard gets with a male prisoner. I can't think of any real or fictional cases with the genders reversed.; 5/12/22, 10:55 AM
Sally327 said...: I don't know about falling in love. Maybe that was part of it but I think it had more to do with a 57 year old woman looking down a short road to old age, who'd lived her whole life in this podunk town with this safe government job and everything completely dull and totally predictable.

And then something sparks between her and this prisoner and she spends the last two years of her life with this great secret, working out the details of this exciting, dangerous plan to get him out and to go away together and all the time she's fooling everyone, everyone who thinks they have her pegged, her whole life, and they don't know anything about who she is or what's she capable of.

It was probably the most alive she ever felt. (h/t Walter White in Breaking Bad).; 5/12/22, 11:20 AM
PerthJim said...: This story has a strong "Raising Arizona" vibe. A female guard falls for a male inmate. I can't think of any story, real or fictional, that reverses the genders.; 5/12/22, 11:22 AM
Joe Smith said...: Women and minorities cannot be blamed for any of their actions.

And they need government to tell them what to do and how to live.

It's science!®; 5/12/22, 11:24 AM
farmgirl said...: Quite an age difference.
She should have known better.
I bet all the other inmates knew.; 5/12/22, 11:33 AM
Jupiter said...: It kind of looks to me, like she committed suicide by psycho. It may even have been her intention to take his useless ass with her. Does she have any kids?

Note that I use the present tense.; 5/12/22, 11:56 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: I knew a RN and life counselor who destroyed her family because she fell in love with (and married) a guy who was doing life for shotgunning his then wife in a local insurance office. Love is a many-splendored thing, no doubt, but it was another little example of credentials not precluding crazy.; 5/12/22, 12:02 PM
mikee said...: Casey White may not get sympathetic treatment from prison guards in future.; 5/12/22, 12:05 PM
stunned said...: Did these two not watch Escape at Dannemora?; 5/12/22, 12:17 PM
James K said...: There was a similar story from 2015 in upstate New York.

Former prison employee who helped murderers escape upstate New York prison has been released

It ended better for her, not so much for the escapees.; 5/12/22, 12:31 PM
Tina Trent said...: Jeff: I've never heard of an actual escape, but many, many more male than female prison officials and newspaper editors and authors and actors have sprung male murderers, in nearly all cases grotesque killers of women. The female warden at Bedford Hills has lobbied to release several of her famous prisoners -- she clearly gets off on the attention.

NYT Editor A.M.Rosenthal, for example, also dedicated much of his life trying to spring murderer-rapist (in that order) Winston Moseley. Moseley murdered, stabbed, and set fire to his victims, then raped them. In his editorials, and a book, and lectures, Rosenthal completely lied about the circumstances of the alleged "38 Witnesses" to the killing of Kitty Genovese, claiming they watched or heard the attack but did nothing. This story was entirely debunked: only a few heard the first brief assault on the street and Genovese quickly got away; some did call the police, and then Moseley committed most of her murder-rape in a hallway elsewhere, with only one terrified witness, a friend of Genovese's who scaled a roof and contacted authorities as quickly as he felt he could do so safely.

Rosenthal wrote a book condemning the "38" but not Moseley. He lobbied for Moseley's release and gave the necrophiliatic woman killer a whole page of the Times to argue that he had been rehabilitated, even after he'd escaped prison once and went on another grotesque woman-attacking spree.

As more evidence emerged that Rosenthal had falsely accused Kitty Genovese's neighbors of neglect, he rewrote his book two more times, desperately trying to make excuses for himself and preserve his celebrity while clinging to the lie. He also kept trying to free Moseley.

If that ain't love, it's at least self-love.; 5/12/22, 12:46 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Based on other articles describing his past behavior, the guy sounds like an actual psychopath. Very sad.; 5/12/22, 12:54 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Some people have skin crawling sensations when in the presence of psychopaths. It's too bad that not everyone does.; 5/12/22, 12:59 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: The more I read about Vicky White, her work history, and the efforts she took to organize her life to leave her life behind, the less sense it makes that she had no serious plan to leave the area. IDK, I am wondering if she had received a diagnosis of stage four cancer or something of that nature? No one has mentioned her health history so far.; 5/12/22, 1:22 PM
Mike Petrik said...: Yes, some girls are stupidly attracted to the bad boy types, but plenty of guys are attracted to psychopaths if they are good-looking. Best prophylactic is good role model parenting.

And yes, female guards at a male prison seems a bit naive.; 5/12/22, 1:40 PM
Michael K said...: This is not at all an unusual story. When I was interviewing applicants for the military, one prison guard who was enlisting in the Army Reserve, told me this was a serious problem in prisons with female guards. Criminals in prison are some of the most skilled manipulators and liars in society. There are many stories of this sort of thing but few actually escape. There was a big escape several years ago in which one convict's girl friend who was not in prison provided them with guns. Three men escaped and murdered a number of people once out of prison.; 5/12/22, 2:50 PM
gadfly said...: This plot was too crazy even for Charles Manson.

Manson’s engagement to a woman 53 years his junior was part of a wild scheme of hers to profit by putting his body on public display after his death, says the author of an upcoming book.

Manson’s fiancée, 27-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, known as Star, sought to wed the convicted mastermind of the Sharon Tate murder and eight other slayings so that she could gain possession of his corpse, according to journalist Daniel Simone.

Burton and a pal, Craig Hammond, planned to layout Manson’s remains in a glass crypt, Simone says. The pair figured their bizarre California version of Lenin’s Tomb would draw huge crowds and make big money.

But Manson, 80, does not want to marry Burton and has no interest in spending eternity displayed in a glass coffin, Simone told The Post. “He’s finally realized that he’s been played for a fool,” Simone said.

Another reason the madman balked at the plan is that he believes he is immortal. “He feels he will never die,” Simone said. “Therefore, he feels it’s a stupid idea, to begin with.”

This story appeared in February 2015. Strangely Corcoran prison didn't find or treat his medical problem, so our immortal killer died of colon cancer in November of 2017 without a marriage to Star as wife #3. No glass coffin for Charley.; 5/12/22, 3:29 PM
traditionalguy said...: She needed a Pre-nuptial Agreement.; 5/12/22, 5:11 PM
Rollo said...: Puts me in mind of teachers who get it on with students. With women, it's mostly about escape from loneliness and unhappiness, I think.; 5/12/22, 6:42 PM
Tina Trent said...: This is why we passed laws to prevent offenders and their kin from profiting off their crimes.

It still doesn't explain the lady fan club for nearly every serial killer of women. I have no cases of the opposite, just lots of examples of women outside the system who got involved with men inside the system who were notorious abusers and killers of women.

I have no explanation. Maybe R.H. Hardin has one. These are screwed up women. But the men are the actual killers. Bad emotional judgment versus killing is no comparison.

Given that 98% of serious violent crime is committed by men, maybe we should focus on that instead.; 5/12/22, 7:39 PM
wildswan said...: I think Sally 327 (above) has got it. This woman was 57 and basically still living at home. Mr. Psycho exploits that.; 5/12/22, 7:59 PM
Mary Beth said...: The other prisoners knew about the guard's relationship with the prisoner, why didn't her supervisor notice? She was visiting him and calling when she was off work. How was she still allowed to work with him?; 5/12/22, 8:37 PM
Rt41Rebel said...: Old news...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/four-female-prison-guards-impregnated-by-same-inmate/; 5/12/22, 11:30 PM
Gospace said...: As part of my security clearance I underwent regular training where we were taught how the KGB and other clandestine services would subvert you, drawing you deeper and deeper into a web, doing innocent little favors that suddenly become- "Do this or we tell all the things you've done for us." Yeah, they may have all seemed innocent, but in the aggregate, put together... they don't look that way. And we heard about how the KGB has spent millions and years of time studying the psychology of just how to do this. (Left unsaid is- we do the same thing. But it's hard to do in a society where everyone is rightfully paranoid.)

After retiring from active duty, I worked in a prison for a while- not as a guard. During initial training we were told about some of the ways inmates trap people. And were encouraged to read a book all prisons kept in their staff library, which I thought was called "Games Inmates Play", but all the books I googled with that title were published after I left. Doesn't mater- google the phrase and there are lots of books on the subject.

Inmates use the exact same techniques the KGB uses. It was like reading a security training manual or things to watch out for. Except inmates do it naturally without spending millions of dollars researching how and doing psychology studies. They do it naturally, without compunction or remorse, because- they're all natural born con men and have no conscience. The rest of us to be trained how to do it, and have to work against our instincts. They don't.

Male guards having sex with female inmates is a problem, but foe some reason, males don't aid escape attempts. They'll smuggle drugs and contraband in when threatened- but seem to draw the line at aiding and abetting escape. Same with other male prison employees. What's the big thing inmates can hold over guards/employees if they have sex? Inmates, all of them, are wards of the state. No matter how "voluntary" the sex is- it's an automatic rape charge. And that was a charge she was facing, along with aiding and abetting the escape.

There are several cases of female guards marrying male former inmates after their release. And some of male guards marrying females- But considering the disparity in numbers between female guards and male guards- the problem is much more rampant among female guards. One of the things you're not allowed to talk about. Because the problem is even more concentrated among females of an ethnic group I won't mention.

It's a truism that cops and crooks come from the same social class. Same is even more true of guards and inmates. Listening for years to guards speak, ofttimes the difference is- the guards didn't get caught when they were younger, and turned their lives around before they did. Once you're caught- it's harder to make a u-turn.; 5/13/22, 1:28 AM
Saint Croix said...: I can't think of any story, real or fictional, that reverses the genders.

I wrote one, about a decade ago.

Baby on Death Row.; 5/13/22, 3:42 AM