The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68747 Message #1243997
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
10-Aug-04 - 09:19 AM
Thread Name: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
This story is one that is so depressing that it needs an examination for many reasons. On the surface as a cautionary tale about anger management and a sense of proportion, but from a societal viewpoint, as an examination of mental health. Who raised this guy and his partners in crime, how, and what did he learn in prison? This man was caught trespassing. He and the three youths he hired got worked to such a frenzy that they would not only bludgeon, but render un-identifiable, these people over their impound of a video game.
Here is the whole story
4 Officers Fired Over Custody Allegation
Four Probation Officers Fired for Allegedly Letting Murder Suspect Slip Through the Cracks (AP)
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Aug. 9, 2004 — The state fired a probation officer and three supervisors Monday for allegedly failing to keep custody of an ex-convict who is the lead figure in the vicious beating and stabbing deaths of six people last week. Crosby had no answer for why Victorino slipped through the cracks.
[snip]
Police said the killings were the brutal culmination of an argument between Victorino and one of the victims, believed to be Erin Belanger, 22. She was singled out for a beating so brutal that even dental records were useless in trying to identify her. Victorino and three teenage defendants have been charged with first-degree murder and armed burglary. The four were denied bond and appointed public defenders Monday during their first court appearance.
Authorities say the source of the dispute was an Xbox video game system and clothes owned by Victorino. Belanger's grandparents, from Maine, own a Florida winter home that was supposed to be vacant this summer, but police said Victorino and other squatters used it in July as a party spot. Joe Abshire, Belanger's brother-in-law, said Erin had talked to him recently about heading to the vacant house to go swimming one day and finding about six people living there. The squatters were kicked out, but they left behind the Xbox and clothes. Belanger took the items back to the three-bedroom rental home she shared with friends.
Over the next days, deputies were called to the grandparents' house six times. The victims also reported a tire-slashing at their home and a threat. The squatters warned Belanger that "they were going to come back there and beat her with a baseball bat when she was sleeping," Abshire told The Sun of Lowell, Mass., for Sunday editions.
All four suspects were armed with aluminum bats when Victorino kicked in the locked front door, according to arrest records. The group, who wore black clothes and had scarves on their faces, grabbed knives inside and attacked victims in different rooms of the three-bedroom house as some of them slept, authorities said. Victorino, the last to leave the house, took the Xbox, police said.
The victims, who ranged in age from 18 to 34, were found in bloody beds, and on bloody floors, and there were crimson spatters on the walls and the ceiling. "This is the worst thing that I've ever seen in my career," said Sheriff Ben Johnson, a 33-year veteran of law enforcement. "The brutal force used against the victims ... it's indescribable."
[snip]