Enough of the Barney-fied fairy tales where no one is ever hurt and everyone spontaneously decides to love one another and eat healthy food. There really are wolves in the woods, witches in gingerbread houses, and trolls under bridges.

“‘The Earth is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the 2nd part.” – Se7en .

Heartbreaking. Horrifying. I am hugging my baby and crying.
“including godsend”

This is the kind of place people go to escape the violence of the city. And look what happened.
There’s nothing more jarring than having mythology meet reality.

This is so utterly horrifying. As a parent, this makes my stomach churn.
capcha: hangs one. Appropriate, no?

One of our parishioners from St. Francisville called last night in horror at what happened. It was not something good to hear right before bed.

This is the kind of place people go to escape the violence of the city. And look what happened.
My wife and I were under no such illusions when we left Houston to move to a small town in rural East Texas.
For example, we know several people on our county’s sex offender registry list by sight.

‘The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’

Flannery O’Connor could have written this.

Amen Hector.
Darel, besides wolves in woods, witches in gingerbread, and trolls under bridges, the Bind/Torture/Kill serial killer was the president of his parish council.

Right, Hector. I can’t really read this and think the 16-year-old (assuming he is the killer, as I gather seems pretty certain) is a monstrous other, something radically different from me. For while to commit such a depraved act might never enter the minds of many, still … there is something in us that hates innocence.
It’s out of that heart that come evil thoughts and acts (see the words of Christ in St. Matthew 15:19).
So we have to get a new one.
“loutish Mr” captcha…

All of us are capable of murder, under the right circumstances.
When I was 12 years old I was riding my bike full speed down a steep hill in my neighborhood. At the bottom of the hill some younger brats (word used in place of a banned one) had strung a length of twine across the street. When I hit the twine, it cut open my shirt, sliced my chest and caused me to wreck. Even today I shudder to think what might have happened had the twine been at throat or face height.
The brats stood at hand laughing.
I got up with murder in my face and heart and chased those kids into their house, where they locked the door– on which I pounded so loud and long I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t come out to see what was the matter.
At all of twelve years old I was truly mad eough to kill that day.
(weird CPATCHA: youth clinking?)

The trail that is in question is a 5 mile long,single car wide paved walking path. It is deep in the woods,unpatrolled and pitch dark at night.
Anyone who would dare to use this trail after dark would be a fool.Even during the day it is so remote that most anything could happen.
What suprises me is that just because it is in an exclusive country club enviroment that it must be a safe place because this doesnt happen in nice neighborhoods.
How those “Rose Colored Glasses” tend to distort common scense.
I do agree that the author of this story is quite Macbre in their own right by giving such personal opinions of this situation.
Yes it is a sign of the times for sure.

From Steven Pinker’s book “The Blank Slate”:
Twenty years later, (Stephen Jay) Gould wrote that “Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species.” His new argument comes from what he calls the Great Asymmetry. It is “an essential truth,” he writes, that “good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one.” Moreover, “we perform 10,000 acts of small and unrecorded kindness for each surpassingly rare, but sadly balancing, moment of cruelty.” The statistics making up this “essential truth” are pulled out of the air and are certainly wrong: psychopaths, who are definitely not “good and kind people,” make up about three or four percent of the male population, not several hundredths of a percent.

While watching the Discovery Channel program wherein Dr. Stone puts evil into some twenty levels, I learned that one in every hundred people is a psychopath and that not all psychopaths kill people. However, in my 65 years, I have observed people who will say anything true or false, break any confidence, just in order to get advancement or just attention. These people also have no conscience and must surely be kept at an arms length. I warn my godchildren about such people all the time. Interestingly, I have also found such people to be very defensive of the religions they claim to practice.
When do people really develop a conscience? How do we aid that process?

Woodchuck_Willie,
Are you from this area (The Felicianas)? I am…and I know the family of the precious child that was murdered. This child was murdered at approximately 1pm in the afternoon, this group of family and friends were not on the trail after dark. Additionally, this crime was committed 100 yards away from a residence and 200 yards away from the first tee box of a very active golf course. Additionally, this is not the first time that this family has visited The Bluffs or that bike/walking trail…they have friends who live in the subdivision.
http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=12630575

Whatever happened, the perpetrator walked out of the woods and essentially told on himself to the nearest group of adults available. I have noticed this in news coverage of some other murders closer to home — the first thing the perpetrator did was to tell a close acquaintance “I killed her, I’m going to prison for the rest of my life.” In other words, these are people who know, at least immediately after the fact, that what they did was wrong, possibly even regret it, and have some sense that they couldn’t control themselves if they found themselves in a similar situation in the future. In fact, they couldn’t control themselves at the moment they killed. That is the key thing we don’t understand.

I never stated that this terrible event happened at night. I just stated that this trail is an area to be avoided.
Yes the boy was brutally killed within a short distance from the public view and this only supports my point that even in a neighborhood as the Bluffs, crime takes a back seat to nothing nor no one.
I am very familiar with every inch of the Bluffs property. The residents should be more aware of their surroundings and take every precaution to protect themselves as if they were in the inner city.
Instead, they live a life of false security simply because the Bluffs is an upscale neighborhood.
After the Nature Trail was completed most joggers still chose to run the neighborhood roadways for whatever the reason and I applaud them for making this decision.
My heart goes out to the family of both boys involved and hope that some good will come out of this heartless act.
The Trail was built for the exposure to Nature and to provide a track for different running events but now it has been ear marked as a dangerous place and its about time. It just a shame that a child had to loose his life for the negligence of his community—-when will the people of the Bluffs realize that they are not above this type of crime.

“The violence of the city”? What suburban nonsense. Having lived in many major American cities, and now living in a rural township, believe me…it’s more frightening out here amongst the good ol’ boys. I’d take Manhattan over any soulless suburban/exurban/rural existence any day.

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