June 2, 1976

Stop Highway Shootings With Death Penalty

A gruesome game of death is reaching epidemic proportions in the big cities of America, raising once again demands for capital punishment.

Snipers single out motorists at random for a "hit."  Without provocation they pull alongside unsuspecting drivers and shoot them.

The 17-year-old son of a friend of mine was killed in Illinois last week in a mysterious auto accident that the coroner says "probably" was triggered by a sniper's bullet.  We will never know because the young man was driving alone.  He crashed through a guard rail without applying the brakes.  The medical authority says he had a bullet hole in his body and probably never knew what hit him.

It was senseless and sick.

Sick, sick, sick.

A beautiful life wasted for a 10-second ego trip by a maniac.

It is utterly frightening because there is no defense, and our society seems to spawn psychopathic killers.

It was not an isolated incident.  Over the holiday a sniper attack killed one motorist and wounded another in Detroit.  A few weeks ago an Akron driver ducked a split second before a shotgun blast from a passing car blew out his windshield.  A motorist in Cleveland and another in Akron were killed by chance assassins within the last few months.

The mad craze has spread to New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

The pattern suggests the same mad-dog attitude that brought the deaths of several innocent victims in California as initiation murders into the notorious Zebra Club.

Such extreme antisocial behavior puzzles decent citizens until they read that mass killers Richard Speck and Charles Manson come up for parole before this year is out.  Newspaper and television reports make it clear that the penalty for sadistic murder is not great.

Speck killed eight nurses in a school dormitory for no apparent reason.  A ninth victim managed to survive and identify Speck.  His fingerprints were all over the girls' rooms.

His punishment?

Eight consecutive 50-to-150-year sentences with eligibility for parole in nine years with good behavior.  A book publisher has promised him a fortune for a book about his killings.

Charles Manson, likewise, will be eligible for parole after conviction for the mutilation murder of a movie actress, a grocer's family and a school superintendent.  His deeds became a national thrill over network television recently.

Our society seems to have become so satiated with gore that we accord a kind of adulation to those unfeeling butchers who can still give us goose bumps.

It is an outrage, in my opinion, that the likes of Speck and Manson are eligible for release ever.  They are sub-human throwbacks and deserve the same treatment we give berserk animals.

Speak not to me of compassion.  That feeling is for human beings.  Thrill killers and paid assassins are beyond the pale.

Right now there is a weak-minded introvert - roaming around for victims.  Chances are he will escape cleanly.  But, so what if he gets caught?  Eight or nine years is a small price to pay for getting on TV big and maybe selling a book of your adventures fob a cool million or so.

It's time we stopped doubting our sanity as to the wisdom of capital punishment.

There is a vast difference between free speech and stupidity.

If we, can't tell the difference then we don't deserve free speech, or free anything.  The liberals have mesmerized us into numbness.  We are no longer sensitive to human values.  Every night we see rape, violence, torture, and murder paraded before us as entertainment.  Some movies now are being shown that claim the mutilation murders presented are for real, right before our eyes.

There is serious talk in many cities for the formation of citizen vigilance committees to drive out the obvious crime and pornography our public officials claim they are powerless to stop.

The Brazilians resorted to vigilante groups and brought back law and order to their nation in less than two years.  They did it without namby-pamby courts or timid police departments.

Of course there were a few untidy corpses in the gutters most mornings.  But the supply of criminals and antisocial types is limited.  Sooner or later the worst are eliminated and the remaining amateur killers soon realize there is no fame or profit in meanness.

Let the legislatures and Congress give us a law that metes out swift punishment in kind for unprovoked murder.

The alternatives are the brutalization of society, or masked justice.

Either is terrible to contemplate.

But not as terrible as surrender to brutes.

Author: Lindsey Williams