Serial killer getting off easy
COMMENTARY

Move over Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and O.J. Simpson. There’s a new killer on the block with the highest body count yet. And it’s time to examine society's ills, legal loopholes and our values of life and death.

On Nov. 5, 54-year-old Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 murders — the highest number of convictions for a single killer in U.S history. Ridgway, a truck painter, left a trail of horror in the Seattle area for almost two decades. He picked up women — mostly prostitutes and runaways in the city’s red light district — and strangled them. Occasionally, he performed sexual acts on them after their deaths.

Unfortunately, serial killers have become a part of life in America. More than 100 killers are believed to be in operation — a dozen or so using Texas’ largest freeways. To receive major attention, the killers must have celebrity connections or do something really outrageous to their victims.

As modern life becomes more fast-paced, trends change and the population constantly grows, people have developed more of a cutthroat attitude to maintain a certain portion of the resources. It's most evident in the academic and business world.

How many people do you know that will do whatever it takes to succeed? They have no problem stepping over someone or going against major principles. It is that type of thinking that leads to blatant disregard for other people on a large scale.

Society has been desensitized to violence. It is exposed to us in almost every fashion, whether in a movie of the week, video game or chart-topping CD. I don't need to see somebody's head chopped off to realize that a character is really bad. The moment I see a machete, I get it.

There is also a popular chain of videos where you can watch people die in 101 different ways. Why? There is too much natural carnage available now. Pretty soon there will be real footage of a slaughterhouse and we'll see how it ranks against Disney films at the box office.

The most shocking action is when the legal system hands down a sentence for the convicted. A life sentence for someone who took so many lives is a pat on the back for committing the murders. Sometimes, the convicts are brought under justice by the law only to slip through a legal loophole.

Many in Seattle are upset because Ridgway didn’t get the death penalty. If someone who confesses to 48 murders doesn’t get the death penalty, who does? Frankly, I think lethal injection is too good for these types of crimes. The things I think should be criminal punishments can’t even be printed in this article.

Morris Bailey is a columnist for The Daily Cougar at the University of Houston.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.