British woman beheaded in Canaries

Woman beheaded by mad man with machete in Tenerife

A British woman apparently on holiday in the Canaries has been murdered whilst shopping in a supermarket. She was repeatedly stabbed then beheaded in a frenzied attack. Eye witnesses saw the perpetrator calmly carry passed them the woman's head by the hair, until he was grappled to the ground by police.

This is such a horrendous thing to have happened. However, should it have happened? The Spanish police are letting it be known that the man involved, a Bulgarian, has had a history of mental illness. If he was known to be difficult why was he let out, so to speak? I know it's easy being wise after the event, but we are constantly being asked to be wise after events. Another family severely traumatised, another mentally unstable person incarcerated and another inquiry no doubt. I imagine Spain is no different from the UK or any other country. A judge will adjudicate and say things need to change. Let's hope the do.

Florida shooting - Shawn Tyson to be tried for double first degree murder

So the police in Florida have got enough evidence to put Shawn Tyson on trial for the double murders in Sarasota of British tourists James Cooper and James Kouzaris. Tyson is a tearaway. A danger to the community. That's what a judge said, but the judge's remarks went unheeded. The tragedy in all this is that human nature can be debased very quickly. Tyson's inner core is sinking quite quickly. In fact, he may well have been a threat to the outside world once he mastered walking. Now he faces a lifetime in jail, without parole, if he is convicted. Tyson is only sixteen yet that's him done as far as society is concerned.

In Florida, as in other states, juveniles can be tried as adults. This is not to delineate any legal nicety. It is more to get full measure of vengeance and retribution. Tyson will, if convicted, go to a Department of Corrections that will have little interest in correcting him. Why should they. He'll be in for life. Assuming they feed him well and don't let him get buggered in the showers he could live to be 100. Americans are going to get far more ageing convicts, just as they will ageing any other groups.

The system let down the two British friends. The system allowed Tyson to become a dangerous street roamer. Can the system change? If it doesn't then we'll just get more of the same. Conviction for murder should entail a lengthy prison sentence. But I firmly believe that criminals should be steered towards re-formation and rehabilitation. Justice is one thing. We all deserve justice in the face of horrendous crimes and, whatever the status and nature of the accused, punishment must be meted out. However, vengeance and retribution just perpetuates the vicious cycle and really demeans us all.

These two Britons murdered in the way they were deserve justice with the scales properly balanced. And they deserve one more thing. Speculation is rife about why they ventured into this depraved, crime-ridden zone. Probably because they had no idea that it was. Simple as that. I can say that I have found myself in similar situations in Atlanta. I got wise as to which bits were bad and which were not. But as a visitor on vacation? No chance. There were no signs up saying "Crime-ridden ghetto! Get Out!" or such like. Most of the area of Newtown, Sarasota seems to be populated with bungalows all set on dusty hot streets if Google Maps are anything to go by. Not the most salubrious setting but certainly not a place to frighten off lost souls.

So speculate not. However, rest assured we all know what sort of a place Newtown is now. And more's the pity. Perhaps something positive can come out of all this?

Daily Telegraph report

Florida gun deaths suspect named as Shawn Tyson

Shawn Tyson

A 16-year-old boy charged with the murders of two British holidaymakers in Florida has been named by detectives. Shawn Tyson is due in court later charged with murdering James Kouzaris, 24, from Northampton, and James Cooper, 25, of Warwick.

The Mayor of Sarasota, Kelly Kirschner, said, "It's a gut-check for us as a community". Shawn Tyson will appear in court later today.

Female guard strangled in prison chapel

I've never understood why the American authorities call their prisons correctional centers when very little correction seems to take place. Washington State is the latest to find out they have made a grave error - a dereliction of duty in fact. Female guard Jayme Biendl has been strangled in the chapel by an inmate trying to escape. The guard had been telling people that she felt unsafe as the sole person guarding this part of the prison.

Equal opportunities? Political correctness? No, it's just the stupid way things are done these days. Any fool could have told the authorities that this was not a good idea. A life has been taken. No doubt they will seek to fry the culprit in a grisly manner, yet totally misunderstanding that it was they who had a duty in the first place. It seems Pontius Pilate may have had a hand in drafting the regulations.

The whole thing stinks!

Chris Jefferies, the flattened flat and Bristolian innuendo

It seems that the landlord of the flat rented by Joanna Yeates has caused people's tongues to wag. Wag so much that the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, has stepped in to tell them to hush it all up. I said in a previous post that it is all getting a bit out of hand. It is far better that the police get on with their work unaided by prejudicial gossip. Anyone with a grudge against public schools, homosexuals, eccentrics, landlords of "mansion" properties, neighbourhood watch schemes or even the Prayer Book Society have all waded in giving their ten cents worth of nods and winks. It's all rather unseemly.

Now I read that the forensic teams have almost gutted Chris Jefferies' flat. Interestingly, I notice that the media is getting chummy. He's gone from Christopher Jefferies to Chris Jefferies. It sort of makes him "known". If I was caught up in such a situation, I'd be thinking of officers, some of whom look no older that 18, sifting through my personal belongings. It's rather like an impersonal version of an airport search. I had one of those at Minneapolis by a nordic fellow with piggy fingers. He left all my stuff on the carousel! Welcome to Ellis Island and the rest.

What if Mr.Jefferies is released on Monday? Is he just handed back his belongings in plastic binliners? Or will the police come round and do a makeover in true TV reality show style? Nobody is asking these sort of questions. But I can't help thinking that two and two still makes 54 in many peoples minds. I well remember being involved in a police enquiry when one of my sisters came across a flasher. She was about ten or eleven. The police acted promptly, never found the flasher, but I remember one policeman giving out names of likely offenders as if we might have known him. They took the shorts my sister was wearing away with them. The one thing that comes to mind when I think of this is that the shorts were never returned, as promised. My mother would bring this up every so often as if to remind us that there was an element of untrustworthiness about the whole thing. I'm sure she was more concerned over missing property than a flasher on the loose.

Finding perpetrators of ghastly crimes is not easy. People mislead, people say things they think are true. Apparently Christopher Jefferies is in this position because he got muddled up about what he saw or didn't see. I don't know. But I do know that people can get their lives turned upside down in a moment. I have been stopped by the police twice in my life by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police were only doing their job. As innocent as I may have felt, it was still a mental strain explaining things in response to their questions. The police are drawn from society. They are not given special powers from Heaven. If we jump to conclusions, they may too!

Killer Venables 'where he belongs', says Bulger mother

John Venables was a ten-year old murderer of a two-year-old little boy. The outrage caused public anger. As with all cases like this it left more scars on the human pysche and people began to vent all manner of diatribes and platitudes in equal measure. Such an event always triggers revenge and feelings of retribution it seems. Sometimes these feelings are directed mindlessly at those who are charged with dealing with the consequences.

I'm not surprised there are still children beating up children in Britain today. Unless a child is mentally ill, all behaviour is from nurturing the nature of the child. I'm sure I could have turned my children into knife-wielding little thugs if I'd been of a mind. In turn, I could have been the evil result of debauched parents. Thankfully neither has happened or will ever happen. But my honest opinion of the human condition is that hatred of others comes about far more easily than love and understanding. It seems that most news items on television pander to the disasters and brutality in the world, rather than the triumph over adversity or the love of one to another.

So when it comes to dealing with a 27-year old man who was a ten-year old child killer what do we do? The vast majority appear to want everything from hot oil vats to a return to hanging (plus drawing and quartering for good measure!). Any half-trained television reporter could stir up such feelings. Seeing as Britain does not have cruel and inhumane punishment as an option, the authorities have deemed it fit to give John Venables a new identity. Since his release he has been out on licence. Now he is back inside for breaching his parole terms.

The questions I have been pondering are these? As he has a new name, is he currently in prison for a parole violation regarding a crime his former self committed or is he just there because he is a parole violator? Surely the fellow inmates will get round to asking what he was inside for. Does he have a made up crime to subsitute for the original one? We are not going to be told what condition he violated. According to a legal expert on BBC News he could just be in prison because he became mentally unstable. This could be one reason. Which suggests prison is not an ideal place for a mentally unstable man trying to remember who he is.

Then I have issue with this new identity business. What if he had keep to the straight and narrow according to the parole rules and had got married and started a family? Does his wife have a right to know that the man she is with is not who she thinks he is? And it could go throughout society. Could he rise to be a successful businessman or is keeping a low profile part of the deal? The trouble with secrecy is that secrets have a way of coming out. The authorities want to keep his identity secret because they fear the actions of the wider society. So a person like John Venables goes through the rest of his life like a lone rat in a sewer. Such a creature needs all the mental agility to plot a course to avoid being deluged with excrement and foul concoctions.

The real conundrum here is that no-one really knows what to do for the best, because the life Venables is leading is one that would cause anyone to go barmy. Fifteen odd years of living a lie must be a strain, particularly if those around you are more than likely to be distant and aloof.

How we treat the likes of John Venables does matter. Society has not changing one iota over the centuries. We like to think we are somehow 21st century superior, but the revenge, petty jealousies, selfishness and greed continue. Looting eathquake hit shops in Chile, excuses trotted out at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, suicide bombings, the list goes on. Getting steamed up about John Venables just helps to keep the kettle boiling.

I have no easy answers. But I do know that shouting epithets and venting hatred from an armchair says more about the venter than those trying to makes things better.

Deathbed confession? More like a death row profession!

James Brewer has a few things muddled up. First he thought he was dying because he'd had a stroke. Then he felt confession was good for the soul so he confessed to a murder, after which his stroke symptoms miraculously vanished. However he had not died but remained firmly on Earth to await his fate. That fate could now be death row as an inmate.

The whole story is bizarre. Mr.Brewer is now 58 and apparently shot dead 20-year-old Jimmy Carroll who he thought had been trying to seduce his wife. That was in 1977 when Brewer would have been about 21/22. Two things occur to me. First, guns and hot-headed neighbourly disputes do not mix. Any short period of viewing Jerry Springer re-runs will immediately alert one to the level of aggression that "country folk" can engender. The second is that Brewer and his wife are now involved with church activity and Mrs.Brewer's Bible classes have undoubtedly rubbed off on him.

The irony of all this is that even if the stroke didn't kill him, the state is keen to have its go. Police detective Tony Grasso said, "He wanted to cleanse his soul, because he thought he was going to the great beyond." That in itself is no bad thing. It was good that he confessed. However, it's what happens next that is the issue.

Brewer will probably be charged and then put on trial. Will he be convicted on his confession alone? Maybe. A decent lawyer would probably plead that his client was temporarily insane at the time. Who knows? The thing is he is now in the system. If he is convicted he may end up on death row.

Death row inmate or a dying stroke victim in hospital? Brewer thought he was the latter, now he may the former. The American penal system holds much store in Old Testament style vengeance. Going on death row is a grim reality of this. If he does end up there he may be praying for another stroke. Sounds terrible, I know, but his future is probably better in the hands of the Lord rather than the hands of the warden of a correctional facility. And what a euphemism that is!