Two nights ago I was watching the National Geographic Channel. It's one of the sites I check when I settle in for my 9-11 pm illuminations, along with Fox News, International Film Channel, the History Channel, and occasionally Turner Classic Movies. I was half-way through a Sudoku puzzle, when I sat bolt upright.
They had a program on called New Methods of Police Interrogation. To my surprise, they had "a popular English professor named Thomas Murray" on the show. He had apparently slaughtered his ex-wife in a custody battle over the children.
When the police found the slaughtered ex-wife (battered and stabbed in her house in Manhattan Kansas), they went to inform the ex-husband (who worked at Kansas State University), and he said he would like to talk to them later as he was busy. This struck the police as odd, and they took him in for questioning. The questioning was filmed, and we saw highlights through a two-way mirror. Murray seemed to already be familiar with the crime scene, citing its bloodiness, and he said that his wife's blood found in his car was due to her having had a nosebleed. During the interrogation, it became obvious that Thomas Murray (a linguist who specialized in the vocabulary of S & M), had abrasions on his hands. The police asked to see his arms, and his wrists and his legs and body were also badly bruised.
Asked how it happened, Murray replied something to the effect, "I had trouble with a pineapple."
I said to myself reflexively, "You should have seen the pineapple."
The jury sentenced him to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 25 years. I googled, and Murray's appeal in June of 2008 before the Kansas Supreme Court failed to overturn the conviction in spite of what Murray's lawyer claimed were procedural irregularities in the first trial.
I looked in Amazon.com for books by Murray. To my relief, Murray was not a literature professor. He seems to have been largely a linguist. His work included a study of the vocabulary of S & M, a study of the various speech patterns in St. Louis, and a book about the morphology of English, as well as a book written with his ex-wife (the woman he apparently murdered for attempting to gain custody of their children), which I can't seem to recall exactly: something about legal vocabulary, perhaps.
Whatever else I think about English professors as a group, I don't think of them generally as psycho-killers. If anything, I think of them as overly idealistic. There are probably at least 200,000 tenured English professors in the country (8000 colleges, if you include community colleges -- with an average of 25 professors in each department?). Out of this huge body of men and women, you'd think that a few of them would commit horrible acts, and I'm not saying that there aren't a percentage of English professors who are capable of this kind of thing, but I think it's probably lower than the carnage committed by members of other professions. Professional boxers, for example, who are used to violence, are probably more often indicted for violent crimes than are English professors. (Someone has probably done a study of arrest-rates for boxers and English professors, but I haven't looked for it.)
But Murray wasn't really an English professor in my estimation. Most English departments separate out the linguists, and have a different department for them. Not because they are necessarily more violent than English professors, but because the work they are doing is probably closer to mathematics (it's based more on close analysis as opposed to broad appreciation), and is therefore substantially different.
My view of the Literature profession is that if anything we are too idealistic (we are committed to ideals by our very nature), too much consumed by one-kingdom visions of the Sermon on the Mount, and the ability of humanity to make a saltation out of our animal origins, spawn wings, and fly about, singing Songs of Innocence out of William Blake.
I'd rather that we get our feet back on the ground, and think about the actual Experience of human nature, and ally ourselves with realists like Locke and Luther, rather than with demented utopians like Marx and Munster. Against the laws of love, there are always people like Thomas Murray. We need to think about them, too, as aspects of humanity, even of our own humanity, to be guarded against.
14 comments:
He didn't "apparently" murder his ex-wife. He DID and was CONVICTED of brutally murdering his ex-wife. What in the world does it matter what profession he was in? Did being an English professor make him better than the majority of the population? I think not. He's not the first educated person to commit a horrific crime. He is a self-centered psychopath who cared only about himself. The worst part now is that our tax dollars go to feed him and give him a roof over his head.
I happen to be an English professor. That's why it mattered to me.
We weren't there to see, so we can never be absolutely certain of what took place. The bruises might be explained in another way. I think he should have defended himself by arguing that the bruises and cuts were from an illicit S/M encounter rather than an encounter with a pineapple, since he had the publication to make it seem feasible. And maybe it was.
The jury saw it another way, but juries CAN be wrong. I was once on a jury that was ready to let a drunken driver go simply because several of them drank heavily when driving, and saw nothing wrong with it.
The drunken driver had killed two children on New Year's Eve!
He got off with his license suspended for a year.
Juries aren't always right, so I wrote, "Apparently."
Something didn't add up as I read the account. I still don't see how this man could have acted so brutally, and so suddenly. It's not normal for people who use wording to suddenly use their fists, or a knife.
People who use their fists see that perhaps as something reasonable to do.
It seems to be out of character, or something.
But I don't know the whole case.
And my larger point is that although I often argue against the English professoriate, it's not for being overly brutal. It's for being too naive.
I don't think being educated makes someone better, but I hope, I dearly hope, it makes us better able to live within the law. Otherwise, what's the point of it?
Murray was a linguistics professor...so the book on S&M was based on the language of S&M, not necessarily the act of it.
The bruises could have been explained in another way, but he was too wrapped up in trying to explain every little piece of possible evidence away that he sounded stupid. He did not think anyone was smart enough to find him out.
And there was plenty of proof that he didn't just "snap" as it were. He researched on his computer for at least a month possible ways to kill someone and not get caught. Who does that? Someone who doesn't want to "lose"...someone who was extremely controlling and didn't care about anyone other than himself.
I do understand that juries can be wrong. Not everyone gets it correct. But this conviction was correct..he deserves a thousand times more than what he got. 25 years is nothing. He stole a beautiful human being from her family and friends..people that adored her. He should rot.
I am not very familiar with the case outside of the twenty minutes on the show and what little I googled. I'm very sorry for the family of the victim. Many times killers have some kind of frozen conscience that allows them to do these nutty things. Yesterday in the local paper I read about a decapitation that happened recently at Virginia Tech. A Chinese student decapitated another student with a knife. Unbelievably weird. It's like evil is stalking Virginia Tech.
I was using this murder to make a larger point about English departments, but of course there is the specific point, too, of this guy, and what the jury felt that he had actually done. The notion that he was too smart to get caught is probably common to academic killers.
Still, I think it's rare that academics or artists get caught up in this kind of thing. Caravaggio was a murderer, too.
But it always strikes me as odd when someone is sensitive in one area, and terribly insensitive in another.
At any rate, Thomas Murray WILL rot. He's not eligible for parole for 25 years, which will make him seventy-five, and since he already had one attempt at an appeal, I don't think he'll get another.
No one deserves to die in this way.
NO ONE.
I mean, no one deserves to be killed.
Killers do deserve the electric chair, or at least to be separated in prison, and left there until they are dead.
In order to have a free society, we must lock up those who just don't get it.
I hadn't heard the detail of his researching how to get away with murder.
i'm all for locking people up as long as we don't make too clear a distinction between us
and them
they are our brothers and sisters too...perhaps authentic repentance is possible...a silly outdated way of thinking i know...but maybe if we gave it a chance
sounds like mr murray got into the wrong sort of spirituality...i wonder if it would ever be possible to put restrictions on what people can study...if a certain sort of knowledge leads to murder and imprisonment it should be dispensed with
who will have mercy on the impoverished soul of thomas murray
if god can and does forgive might it not behoove us to explore the degrees of possibility in that forgiveness
maybe the ordeal described here begs the question about the relative merit of areas of knowledge...perhaps there are some things known to humans which must be difficult but essential to attain and know...and some things we can simply toss in the fire
but then who decides which books get burned??
maybe a better sentence would be to take a guy like that give him 20$$ and set him loose walking down a forlorn road in eastern wyoming let everyone in the area know he's there...but at least give him a running chance...if he ends up at the appointed courthouse one year later with nothing to further compromise his social status..why...let him go free
if he wants to argue cruel and unusual put him back in jail and force him to read his own books
i think there's a need for more imagination in our justice system
is there a way to make repentance and redemption more obvious more accessible to peope who wind up in the slag pits of cognitive disturbance...can we define limits to the mercy of god??
gosh i don't know about you but i see the face of christ in that guy
if the president of the united states is responsible for one innocent death in a time of war he should go before a wsr tribunal and stand trial...even if it's just pro forma
i was thinking of the wierd escapade of norman mailer getting the guy out of prison because of a reputed literary ability...and the guy turns around a kills again right on the street
maybe we all have to learn to leave well enough alone no matter what
hieronymous bosch the garden of earthly delights...the movie
I think what you describe as Mailer's move, will end up as Barry's undoing as well -- the terrorists will get out on legal technicalities and knock down another skyscraper full of screaming people. Charity begins at home, if he lets them out, let them live in the White House with him. Surely that's one of the roomier houses around!
As for Murray, it's hard to know what happened. He clearly plotted, but not very well. He had a good mind (his linguistic work is often quoted by other scholars, and he's a good keen writer), but I suspect he stewed, and then blew.
Who really knows?
I'm interested in learning more about the decapitation at Virginia Tech last week, but there's not much detail available. It happened right in a university cafeteria!
Sometimes we can say that this has to do with chemical levels, rather than rational choice theory. But adjusting the chemical level may be necessary but not sufficient.
You might see a pattern if you knew the entire life of the exploding citizen. But we just get a single interview, and don't know whether there were other manifestations that built to a plateau, and then levelled out.
Or maybeI should have said, "and then spiked."
The commandment against killing has a positive corollary in Luther's catechism that you have to help people keep their lives.
Is this so also in Catholicism, or is this Luther's added touch?
i think it fair to take the work of helen prejean as an example of the catholic church's teaching on the dignity of the human person regarding the pilgrimage known as death row
find a way to restore a person's sense of self worth...that might require something far greater than "talk" and dialogue
the dynamic associated with selfhatred is especailly pernicious
...to some extent modern psychology has been able to discover ways in which that affliction of the human soul might be unravelled...but even then i sense that there is a need for a HIGHER POWER experience of some sort...mediated by a worthless sinner like the one being condemned
the goal of the church in contrast to the TWO KINGDOM approach is to regard all people as souls who came from god and are returning to god...this despite the judgments of man
but even on the cross jesus could not get the repentant sinner off the proverbial hook...he just gave him a bit of assurance...you will be wih me
That only comes with true repentance though, right?
Or have you closed Hell down altogether?
hell is where there is no love
Conflict is a part of love, but there are rules of engagement for conflict.
Geneva Conventions, 10 commandments, local ordinances.
Love can be hellish, or heavenly, depending on the day, but as long as the local and universal ordinances are followed, generally fairly easy to survive.
what's love got ta do got to do with it
love's just a secondhand emotion
-tina
Post a Comment