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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Drew Peterson and men (in my opinion) like him

It was announced today that Drew Peterson is engaged. Since he's not yet divorced from Stacey and she hasn't been declared legally dead, isn't this whole engagement thing a bit premature at best? Oh yeah, the new wife to be is 24. He does like them young doesn't he? He admitted to a reporter that his new love is a "fan" of his. This really got me thinking.

Men who murder or are accused of murdering their wives have a huge fan base in this country. I just don't get it. Drew is suspected of murdering not one but two of his wives. Think that makes him safe to marry??? In my mind, he's not even safe enough to invite to the neighborhood bar-b-Que.

Even Charles Manson still receives marriage proposals. Why do women do this? You certainly don't see Betty Broderick with a new husband. Men apparently take the thought of dating people who murder their spouses a little more seriously than women do.

I don't know about you but I can promise that (a) I'm not going to strike up a relationship with a man convicted OR even accused of beating, cheating on (and especially not) murdering his wife (much less 2), and (b) IF by some weird happenstance I should find myself dating a man who unbeknownst to me was any of the above, I would run, run, RUN. Anyone who would not run from someone like this, is seriously in need of deep and prolonged psychological help.

A girl I knew socially when I was in college (we'll call her Rhonda) ran after these types of men. I don't know why. She was VERY pretty. Knew how to dress, do her hair and make-up to get the most out of her already stunning looks and was a very sweet girl and a hard worker who paid her bills and stayed out of trouble. She had a mom and dad who loved their only child and would do anything for her. She was never abused by her parents.

But, she had a couple of prison penpals (WAY before Internet) and she always seemed to date some guy who was "down on his luck" (meaning wouldn't work but sure would spend HER money). They were always the same, only the names were different. She would meet them and before the week was over, they were living in her apartment.

They were always "tough guys" who liked to keep her on an extremely tight leash. They never worked. They spent HER money freely. One guy in particular (we'll call him Jerk) would come to her job (in HER car) and sit in the parking lot watching to see who she ate lunch with. He would call her office every hour and God forbid she not talk with him until HE decided to get off the phone or there was hell to pay.

She came to work on more than one occasion with bruises. Her boss was a friend of mine and one day at lunch he told me about the situation. All I knew at the time was that she was dating Jerk and I tried to stay away from both of them until he moved on (and I knew he would) because he didn't like me and I didn't like him and I knew that if I visited or called as soon as I was gone he was going to trip out on her. So I stayed away.

Her boss told me about Jerk sitting in the parking lot to keep an eye on her. He said a couple of times Jerk even came into the office and demanded to see her RIGHT THEN because he hadn't seen her go out to lunch and assumed she had "snuck" out the back door with some man.

The last time he had come inside, the boss asked him to leave and not come back on the property or he would have him arrested. Jerk promptly and loudly accused the boss of sleeping with Rhonda and threatened to kill him AND her if he ever found out that was true.

Boss was going to call the police but Rhonda talked him out of it. The next day, Rhonda called in sick and the day after that, she arrived at work wearing sunglasses and continued wearing them for nearly a week.

Boss was put in the position of having to tell Rhonda that the next time the guy even pulled up on the parking lot, she was fired if she didn't do something to keep him away such as kicking him out and getting a peace bond on him.

Rhonda and I had a night class together. She never missed class regardless of what was going on in her life. However, before the semester was over, she rarely showed up in class and when she did, she came late and sat in the back and slipped out the door before I could get to her when it was over.

One day a few friends and I had lunch together. Cindy, one of our mutual acquaintances, told me that she heard Rhonda had moved back in with her parents in an attempt to get rid of Jerk. I was really glad to hear that and hoped for the best.

Rhonda's daddy was an independent long distance truck driver and whenever he had a trip, he and Rhonda's mother would jump in the truck and be gone for weeks on end together.

It was nearly the end of the semester, close to Christmas and I was getting ready to head out of the door on my way to class when my phone rang. It was Cindy in tears telling me that Rhonda was dead.

Apparently, her parents were on a haul and Rhonda was alone in their house one night when someone beat her, tied her to her bed, stabbed her over 100 times with a pen knife. The police later said that stabbing her with the pen knife wouldn't kill her but would inflict pain which was akin to torturing her. Once she passed out, he poured gas around her bed and set the house on fire. She eventually died from smoke inhalation.

However, the bed he tied her to was a water bed and didn't burn and the fire department got there before the roof caved in so her body wasn't burned either so the idiot who did this to her left ALL his evidence at the scene of the crime. But this was before DNA testing. Local cops relied on fingerprints and the like. They said there were no prints to get.

They never arrested Jerk because (surprise!) he was long gone by the time they went to her apartment to get him. Neighbors said they saw him putting his duffel bag in the back seat of Rhonda's car and driving away alone late on the night before (which would have been the night of her murder).

They eventually found her car parked beneath an overpass with blood in the trunk. They came to the conclusion that he came upon her somewhere other than her parents house, beat her, put her in the trunk and then took her back to her parents house to finish the job. I assume he took her to her parents house because it was far more private than her own upstairs apartment located only blocks from the campus.

To compound the situation, no one could remember Jerk's last name or knew where he was supposed to be from. Rhonda never discussed him or their relationship with anyone that I am aware of. Jerk wouldn't allow her to socialize with any of her friends once he moved in and she had only known him about a week before he was her new "roomie" and her parents had never even met him so there weren't many leads.

Her parents told the police that once he moved in with Rhonda she rarely came to their house. They, like her friends, decided to give her the space she needed in the hopes that either she would eventually kick him out or he would leave of his own accord. That's the way things were done back then in my neck of the woods. Wait it out. Don't interfere.

The police assume he was one of her prison pen pals but being that this all occurred in the early 1980's long before data bases and the like, they couldn't find out exactly who she had been corresponding with and since the guy never worked, no paper trail there either.

Needless to say, they never found him and as far as I know the case is still open. Doesn't do any good for Rhonda though does it?

I told this story in an attempt to prove my point. Don't believe what this type of guy tells you. Don't think that just because he did it to one girl doesn't mean he'll do it to you (because you would be wrong to believe that).

Guys like this are creatures of habit. They, on some level, enjoy what they do. They enjoy the power they exact over these women. They thrive on the fear they see in the women's eyes.

THEY WILL DO IT AGAIN...AND AGAIN...and again until they are either put away or dead. At some point this behavior becomes their nature, their character, their life and they will hurt or kill anything or anyone who threatens to come between them and their prey.

Any woman who strikes up or allows a relationship to continue with this type of guy might as well go on down to the funeral home and pick out their coffin because that's where their story will likely end.

Having said all of this, do I have pity for the girl who is now engaged to Drew Peterson? No, actually I do not. Did I have pity for Rhonda? Yes, I did. I'll tell you the difference between the two (slight though it is).

Remember Rhonda's story happened in the very early part of the 1980's before Internet and before folks locked up their cars or had security alarms installed (or at least in my neck of the woods).

Rhonda had no idea or reason to suspect that Jerk had ever hurt a woman before her. He wasn't from that area, she only had his word (for what that was worth) and her gut feelings to go by. Although she seemed to only date creeps, they never beat her, they just used her. So, she had never been in that type of situation and probably never knew anyone who had so why would she think that he would actually torture and kill her if she left him? She was still providing him a place to live so in her mind I'm sure she thought that he would just go out and find another unsuspecting woman to harass and then she could move back into her apartment and go on with her life.

Now as for Drew Peterson's new squeeze, that's a different story altogether. Unless this chick has been living under a rock and is deaf and blind, she has to know what he is accused of. The article I read said she lived only a few blocks from his house so I'm certain she knows the story on him. It also said SHE wrote to HIM. She initiated this scenario. WTF??? Why would she do this?? Is she crazy? Does she WANT to be his next victim? Dear Lord!

Oh yeah, innocent until proven guilty. Well, let's put it this way. He may be innocent of all charges and suspicions. He very well may be. BUT, it's common sense to stay away from people like that just in case he is guilty. It's survival. If he's innocent, then no harm done and everyone goes about their lives. But if he's guilty, she could be signing her own death certificate.

Who on this earth (not even Brad Pitt) is worth taking that risk and being wrong. So, I do not have pity for her. She is a grown woman and is going into this with both eyes wide open. She knows she is playing with fire and is literally betting her life that she won't get burned. Let's see if she's right.

But that's just me.

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