Whoa, looks like I missed a lot today.
So the trial is delayed -- <sigh>. Guess we saw it coming, but still... .
I'll speak today from the top of "the fence", since I don't think we have anyone else actively posting that is likely to do so.
I've not had time to closely look at all the media coverage from today, but so far I've not seen that the web sites mentioned were fetish sites. (I know y'all will let me know if there is coverage that did mention that.) They well could have been; we will know, I guess, in time.
Still, I can't help but recall that just the other day I visited and bookmarked a web page that could, in a vague description, be said to concern "sexual arousal from seeing someone eaten". It was on the Psychology Today site, and I bookmarked it to post here later, partly in response to a post by bettiepageturner, partially quoted just below:
<respectfully snipped>
Warning: graphic speculation.
I'm not necessarily relieved that there wasn't penetrative sexual assault. Either way Lauren's last moments were absolutely terrifying (based on the defense wounds), but at least if the motive had appeared "routinely" sexual she may have had hope that he would let her live afterwards. But as the report implies, for killers like this, the depraved violence and sadistic control are what make up the sexual act. They've often been unable to perform during the actual interaction with the victim (their escalating desires having prevented standard release for a while now) and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case here. SM was a fetishist (MOO, I guess?). Fetishists of this variety use objects as a stand-in, and keep them around as reminders. I would bet her clothing that was found in his apartment served its purpose as a fantasy object prior to the act, as well as afterwards assuming he couldn't keep anything else.
I don't know how the condoms play in, and I don't want to speculate very hard on it. I don't even want to google what I'd have to google to read theories or explanations of such a paraphilia. How is it possible that even one person on earth had something miswired, or underwent some sort of trauma, such that what resulted was a linkage between arousal and dismemberment?
<respectfully snipped>
I feel so sick to even type any of that. I can't let go of the idea that if we just understood more we could catch these things and prevent them. Sadly with psychopathy comes manipulation and pathological lying (as well as general apathy about the severity of the act), so we rarely get to hear the whole story firsthand.
Sorry for the long and distracting post.. You guys posting pretrial updates are awesome!
The other reason I bookmarked that page to post was because it mentioned the Peggy Hettrick murder case. That was important to me and my viewpoint on this (Lauren's) case, because I have always, from very early on, seen some parallels between what happened in the Hettrick case and the focus in this case on SM's various disturbing posts. Though I don't believe I've ever detailed that on WS, that's actually a really big reason I have remained on the fence.
Here's the article -- remember this guy, the "Cannibal Cop"?:
Cannibal Cop: Fetish vs. Danger
No matter how disturbing a fantasy, we have steps for assessing true threat
The trial for Gilberto Valle, a police officer with the NYPD, is wrapping up this week. It has ignited a lot of controversy as it addresses the gray area between thought and act. Some people think that Valle’s sexual desires are so perverse he’s an obvious danger, while others insist that sadistic fantasies are largely a mental outlet, with low probability of triggering action. How do we decide where the truth lies?...
...In fact, the Valle trial reminds me of a misguided case from 1987. In Fort Collins, Colorado, the body of Peggy Hettrick was found in a field. She’d been stabbed in the back and her vaginal area was mutilated. Tim Masters, 15, lived nearby. He’d seen the body, but thinking it was a mannequin, had failed to report it.
He became a suspect. Several knives were found in his room, along with 15 notebooks full of his writing and drawing. Many sketches depicted decapitation, death, and dismemberment.
Although Masters wasn’t arrested, a detective stayed on the case. He learned about a psychologist who claimed to be able to predict from a suspect’s drawings the likelihood of his becoming violent. In his eighteen years of evaluation, this professional said, he’d never seen such a voluminous production by a suspect.
This was enough to finally arrest Masters. Despite zero physical evidence, the psychologist used the sketches to persuade a jury that Masters, a kid with sadistic fantasies, was the likely killer. He said the sketches were rehearsal fantasies.
In 1999, the jury found Masters guilty of first-degree murder. He went to prison.
The problem is, they were wrong. DNA analysis performed years later exonerated Masters and proved that the psychologist’s notions were erroneous....
more at:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201303/cannibal-cop-fetish-vs-danger
At the link, there is also much about how to distinguish between cases in which there is the likelihood of acting out gruesome thoughts/preoccupations and those in which it is not likely. For what that's worth (because I, for one, am not sure how much it's worth). I think Stephen might fit some of the "danger category" signs, to be fair, and there is much we don't know.
The "cannibal cop", Valle, was not charged with murder -- apparently there was no evidence he ever actually killed (or ate) anyone, no body, etc. -- but was convicted on conspiracy to kidnap and misusing official databases.
If we find out that Stephen was engaged in discussions on a cannabilism fetish site, as Valle was, I am going to give that a lot more weight than I do just knowing that he "visited" a web site that had
something to do with the topic; and I would also have to consider, at that point, whether some other posters at such a site might have become involved in Lauren's death.
The violence-oriented posts on the "other" site, the one with which we are most familiar -- well, I don't like them, but I just can't consider them all that relevant to this case. If the Mickey Finn post had been authentic, sure -- but the others, no. This is the part of this case that makes me think of the Peggy Hettrick case. Also, I remember that on
that site, there was a thread touching on cannibalism -- SM didn't start the thread, but he posted that he was not interested in eating human flesh, unless maybe as a dire necessity in a survival situation.
For now, I am thinking that IF Stephen killed Lauren, there was no cannibalism involved. I also think that, if he killed her, the really valuable evidence will be physical evidence -- because I just don't think he was "good enough" to remove it all -- not computer evidence. I could be wrong.
