A few thoughts:
as I mentioned in Vanessa's thread, as unlikely as it seems these two murders are connected (and I don't think they are, but anything is possible) it is definitely weird that both brutal attacks happened during daylight to two young women who share so many similarities. Apart from having a similar "look" and a social media presence, they also posted a fair amount of images that strike me as being highly aspirational for people without their same financial privilege- apart from being pretty both women appear "sleek" and well-groomed in their social media, which is a certain type of class marker, in addition to both posting photos of adventure vacations. That makes me give a little more weight to a stalker theory, although the least complicated explanation is that both met up with random attackers by chance.
As an aside- on this site (and in MSM and society in general) we're bombarded with sensational, horrific cases. The world at large is not as dangerous and horrific a place as it would seem if one spends a lot of time here and watching the news. Sensationalism sells, and people in general are rarely victims of serial killers or other random murderers.
Being a woman under 60 out alone on a jog who is attacked by a stranger is pretty low on the list of causes of premature death in this country. Like, lower than being a a woman under 60 driving to the gym to run on the treadmill and getting in a car crash because she's been told to never jog alone. imo.
It's still highly unlikely that any woman who run by themselves, especially in the middle of the day, are going to become murder victims. Sure, it's good to be aware of one's surroundings and listen to one's instincts (and I'm in favor of *nobody*, male or female, wearing earphones when exercising outdoors- imo it's dangerous to block out one's surroundings, especially when running near traffic, but we all make the choices for our own individual risk tolerance in order to live happy, fulfilling lives)- but victim blaming or telling women they shouldn't be able to move about the world freely as autonomous beings is *not* a good solution imo. Not everyone has or wants to have a chaperone attached to their hip at all times, and expecting woman to do so places an unfair burden on them and curtails their ability to be fully human and have equal rights out in the world at large. imo. Women are told their whole lives to be constantly on high alert every waking moment and unless they want to become limited, house-bound agoraphobics, a lot of the time they aren't going to be making the choice that's "perfectly protected" in a society that tells them that's how they have to be in order to be safe and "responsible". Eff That Noise.
Also- yeah, all those legions of untested rape kits are probably a bigger contributor to women out running alone being at risk then, you know, them out being alone. Last I heard they were starting to work through the backlog but I haven't followed up recently to see where they were in the process now. According to FBI stats, a small percentage of rapists are responsible for the majority of rapes- in other words, a huge amount of reported rapes are carried out by serial rapists with multiple victims. Being able to match rape case DNA to a even a handful of rapists could result in a huge decrease in future assault statistics. (Not to mention, some serial rapists escalate to murder).
