These are my opinions in respose to what another poster wrote.
Where did you get this info that he was at Central State Hospital? Do you have something to back this statement up?
Do you have info stating that he spent time on the psychiatric unit rather than at Red River Addictions Complex or the LA Alcohol & Drug Rehab?
How many years ago did you visit there? Currently Central State Hospital has a total of 60 beds.
http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/index.cfm/newsroom/detail/2399
The criminally insane are housed at the East LA State Hospital in Greenwell Springs, LA until they are deemed competent to stand trial, not at Central State.
Here is an interesting except from an article from World Psychiatry that may surprise you:
Violence and Mental Illness:an Overview
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1525086/
Several general conclusions are supported by this brief overview. First, mental disorders are neither necessary, nor sufficient causes of violence. The major determinants of violence continue to be socio-demographic and socio-economic factors such as being young, male, and of lower socio-economic status.
Second, members of the public undoubtedly exaggerate both the strength of the relationship between major mental disorders and violence, as well as their own personal risk from the severely mentally ill.
It is far more likely that people with a serious mental illness will be the victim of violence.
Third,
substance abuse appears to be a major determinant of violence and this is true whether it occurs in the context of a concurrent mental illness or not. Those with substance disorders are major contributors to community violence, perhaps accounting for as much as a third of self-reported violent acts, and seven out of every 10 crimes of violence among mentally disordered offenders.
Quite often lawyers will work pro bono for those who are incarcerated. Or maybe his family paid for it. His Mom reminds me of someone who would love her son even if she didn't like the things he did because that is a commitment she made when she adopted him. Maybe he saved money he got from working to pay his lawyers.
Just because someone is mentally ill does not mean that all of their thought processes don't work correctly. Some have areas of their brain that work tremendously, almost as if to make up for those areas that don't. Or maybe you are giving BSL too much credit. Maybe he bought a Silverado because there were none available with a Z71 on it-which you can purchase seperately. Isaac Newton, Ludwig van Beethoven,Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln,Vincent Van Gogh, Leo Tolstoy,Charles Dickens,John Keats, Michelangelo,Bette Midler,Charles Schultz,Ernest Hemingway,Tennessee Williams,Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky are all now believed to have suffered some form of mental illness.
http://www.mentalhealthministries.net/links_resources/other_resources/famouspeople.pdf
MOO-and I know many people will disagree with me but I believe mentally ill people, hospitalized or not, need empathy; our society needs to come to the realization that mentally ill people did not ask to be born that way. Any one of us could have pulled that straw and been the unlucky one. Just as a person born with Downs syndrome, or conjoined twins,or an infant with a heart defect didn't ask to be born that way. It could have been us.
I am not understanding what behavior you think someone was funding. Him having a 1991 car? or his truck? Most oilfield companies pay gas mileage so workers can actually use their own vehicle and utilize the check they get to pay for the vehicle.
I have yet to decide if I think he sets fires due to poor impulse control and as a means to instant pleasure and gratification, to destroy evidence, as revenge or because of anger. Or because it gives him a sense of control.
