I am not a moderator, but I want to make a plea to others......this thread has become a free-for-all for tearing down the mother. She needs to be talked about, and she has plenty to be guilty about, but so many of the posts speculate and make assumptions so far beyond any hint of fact, its more like blood sport than sleuthing. It seemed to start with the tattoo photo, which let loose a torrent of posts enraged that she would get a tattoo of her child's murderer.....never mind that she got the tattoo weeks ago. Then came interpretations of how cold-blooded she must be based on the look in her eyes in her mugshot. I could cite many examples, but I don't want to make it personal.
I was glad she was not showing her face on TV, because I knew as soon as she did, that is where the attention would go, to tearing her down, and it has. It happens every time.
As mothers, we all want to feel that our children are safe from this sort of thing. One of the things that helps us feel safe is to separate ourselves in some way from the kind of people this happens to. "This happened because she is a bad mother, that won't happen to my children because I am a good mother". I agree, she is a bad mother, a very bad mother, but that doesn't make her a murderer.
Meanwhile, some of us are moving on to strike at grandma, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" . Really? All because her mother allegedly bonded her out. Nobody here knows why she did that, and it is premature to judge her character based on that one action. Her reasons may be surprising. She knows Lonna better than anyone. Maybe she is blinded by a mother's love and can't believe Lonna is capable of harming Lonzie. Maybe she thinks she can get through to her and compel her to cooperate with the investigation, or confide in her information that could help. Maybe she feels guilty because of her failings raising Lonna herself, or because she didn't do enough to protect Lonzie. Or....just maybe Lonzie's sister misses her mother so desperately and grandma she thinks visits will be beneficial to her emotional recovery. Maybe she is hoping Lonzie's sister will confide something to her mother that she wouldn't tell anyone else. We just don't know.
After 25 years in a career where I dealt with the worst people in the world, I learned that very few of them are "monsters". I also learned that people who are grieving behave in all sorts of unexpected ways, especially when a child is involved. There is no "normal" when your mind is unraveling and your world is coming apart. The grieving cling desperately to ANYTHING that pulls them back from the edge of the abyss, to some sense of what their lives were before. Good people do and say some incredibly stupid things, which their friends and family usually keep to themselves. Bad people do and say even stupider things, reckless things that make them look like "monsters". That doesn't make them so. There is good in even the worst of us. This ain't no love fest for the family, but can we at least stay near the facts?
