OJ Simpson & Glen Rogers
The recent uproar over claims that convicted serial killer Glen Rogers was the actual murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in Brentwood, California, in 1994 demonstrates what’s wrong with our collective attitudes toward criminal justice. We certainly believe in returning to and studying past crimes, but only if the exercise can move us closer to truth, which this one certainly does not.
Jonathan Montgomery
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who stumbled earlier this year by supporting and then backing off the offensive, intrusive and utterly absurd proposal that any woman contemplating an abortion in the Old Dominion be forced to undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound, has taken a big step for justice by issuing a conditional pardon to Jonathan Montgomery, who was convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2008.
BTK Killer
What happens if you find yourself looking into the eyes of a vicious serial killer? I suggest you look away fast, and get far away even faster—it’s a sight that may haunt you for the rest of your life, which might not be long if the killer is a free man and has taken an interest in you.
But in John Douglas’s world, it works differently—he seeks these predators out. It was not only his job (he was the man who cultivated the science of profiling within the FBI in the late ‘70s) but an obsession. Maybe it was Douglas’s calling, or perhaps it was destiny, but somehow his life turned into a mission to help catch human monsters who commit unpardonable acts against helpless victims.
The profiler has paid a severe price for his work—a tortured psyche, sleepless nights, terrifying nightmares, and a cataclysmic descent into a near-fatal coma from nervous exhaustion—by climbing inside the minds of the killers and their victims. (Don’t even try to imagine what this is like.)
