This is a good example of how self defense goes well beyond merely knowing technique. These gals broke the first three commandments of SD:
Thou shalt not go to stupid places.
Thou shalt not go to stupid places with stupid people.
Thou shalt not go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things.
Each of these ladies went to a stupid place to meet a stupid person on the premise of doing something stupid. They each placed themselves into the position of being a victim of a killer. They broke all of the rules of meeting people over the internet. And paid with their lives. While I am saddened by their deaths and feel that their killer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and sentenced accordingly, each of these ladies had a hand in their own demise.
Look at Lana Clarkson. She was forty in 2003. A guy comes into the bar she worked at. It is Phil Spector, a man who is known to wave guns around in the studio, even threatening one man with a crossbow, and who has been accused by a good number of women of abusive behavior. She could have said no when he asked her to come home with him. She did not, and now she is dead.
I will not get into my thoughts on Spector's guilt or innocence. I say only that she broke those same cardinal rules.
Spector himself did the same. He went to a bar and picked up a gal he had never met and took her home.
If her death is a suicide, as Spector's defense maintains, then he is paying with his life (albeit in a different way) for the following mistakes:
1. He behaved in a socially unacceptable way and did so for decades. He was able to do so because of his position in the recording industry.
2. He made socially unacceptable comments that were derrogetory to women followed up with that they need to have a bullet in their heads. He made such comments as a celebrity and thus should have no expectation that it will remain private.
3. He then brought an unknown quantity into his home who decided that his foyer was a good place to kill herself.
Now she is dead and mistakes one and two have been used against him in court, resulting in a murder 2 conviction and a sentence of 15 years to life (sentincing is at the end of May).
Had either of the two exercised an iota of common sense, Clarkson would not have woken up dead in Spector's foyer and Spector would not be in jail awaiting a sentence that, even if only fifteen years, is essentially a life sentence for a man of sixty nine years of age.
If he murdered her, as the jury decided, then likewise, he should be procecuted to the fullest extent of the law and sentenced accordingly.
The ladies who were victims of the Craigslist killer did not deserve to die in such a manner. But they literally handed themselves over to an internet predator by breaking every rule.
Several young men made similar mistakes many years ago and wound up in the digestive tract of Jeffery Dahmer as a result.
Bottom line: think about what you are doing before you put yourself into a position of weakness.
Daniel
