CRIME BEAT: SHE WAS WHITE; SHE HAD TO DIE!

In this episode Crime Beat focuses on a “hate crime” that the judicial establishment does not usually recognize as such, as the victim does not fall into the usual ”victim of hate crime” criteria. For those new to Crime Beat, this is a blog inspired by the old crime magazines that used to be commonly available at newsstands. These magazines took interesting crime events, rewrote them into crime scenarios based on the known facts provided by official police reports, and how the crime was solved. Of course, sometimes unsolved crimes were featured, inviting the public to help the police investigators, if they knew anything at all beyond what they read in the magazine account. Police officers regularly appeared in these stories to add their official insights. All in all, these magazines offered a crime-solving read, as well as “reader participation” in the common goal of “law and order.” Of course, in those days the “law and order” promoted was traditional.

In our featured story today the reader is invited to experience a normal human crossing the path of an abnormal one. The victim - in some sense – is anyone of you. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Consider:

Westchester County, N.Y._ Mrs. Concetta Carriero, 56, a legal secretary, drove to a nearby mall. As she got out of the car, Phillip Grant, 43, grabbed her. In broad daylight he stabbed her twice in the chest.

In court Grant confessed, telling the judge:

“There’s a lot of White people who need to die. I was thinking that the first person I see this morning that looks White, I’m killing them. Being blonde-haired and blue-eyed, she had to die. My only regret is that I didn’t have the means to kill more.”

Grant had recently been released from prison after serving 24 years for raping three women and trying to kill one with a pitchfork. New York does not enforce the death penalty and thus Grant now faces 20-yrs. to life. He will one day no doubt be released – to kill again!     [THE TRUTH AT LAST, Issue No. 454]

At a Westchester County mall, Mrs. Carriero was blonde and blue-eyed – a formula to die for. This is the sort of portentous story that the old Crime magazines so often featured. Crime Beat will also serve up such tales from the huge archive of crimes – some fresh, some dusty, all food for thought. These are tales from the Archives of Horror, and they are not for the faint of heart.

Downnlaced, 2008.