We at PWSBKTW were going to write a witty set-up to amuse our readers this week. But can anyone, even an anyone with our great skill and sense of humor, top this, the first lines of the news story itself?

A Brazilian man has admitted trying to kill his two-year-old stepson by pushing 30 sewing needles inside him after doping him with wine.

That’s hilarious.

The merriment continues.

Speaking from his jail cell 30-year-old bricklayer Roberto Carlos Magalhaes said he wanted to murder the boy to get back at his ex-wife.

He said he inserted the needles two or three times a week.

The boy was too drunk on the wine and water mixture to cry but felt the pain after the alcohol wore off, Magalhaes said.

“It was truly an unbearable suffering,” the stepdad said.

“It was to get back at the boy’s mother. I thought the needles would work their way through his body and kill the boy.”

This Magalhaes is a comedic genius. Where does he come up with this stuff?

We at PWSBKTW have on occasion been accused of bad taste. But we know a good satire when we read one. There’s no way a story like this could be true. A man could not possibly have been sticking needles into a two-year-old boy over the course of weeks. It’s too funny. And there’s no way that doctors removed four rusty needles that “had lodged near his heart and in his lungs.” That’s just silliness.

And just when we might be thinking it isn’t satire, but a real horror, it gets sillier. Magalhaes’ lover was also arrested. Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, also seeking revenge against the ex-wife, would “enter into trances and give [Magalhes] commands to insert the needles.” That’s good stuff, practically a sitcom.

The ex-wife — for surely someone is to blame for this, and it can’t be the guy who inserted the needles — must have been some piece of work to drive a kind-hearted woman to enter into trances and command an innocent stepfather to insert needles into a two-year-old boy. That is, if any of this were not satire but actually true. It can’t be. We at PWSBKTW have chronicled some heinous behavior in the last few months, but even we don’t believe that human beings would do this to get back at an ex-wife. It can’t be true. We hope it isn’t.

Because if it were true, we’d have to change the name and direction of this very column. Normally, we’d end our pithy remarks with some variation on our usual call for justice: “Roberto Carlos Magalhaes and Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, for inserting 30 needles into the body of a two-year-old boy, should be killed this week.” That alone might upset some people, who on occasion write in to tell us that we are no better than the criminals we say should be killed, that we have sunk to their level, that wanting them dead makes us as bad as the murderers and rapists.

Imagine then if this story were true and not hilarious satire. Imagine how much worse than Roberto Carlos Magalhaes and Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos we at PWSBKTW would be if this satirical news article were not a work of comedic genius, but a real news story. If it were true, we would have to note that mere killing wouldn’t remotely approach what these people deserve. If they actually did this to a little boy, our pleasant and friendly column, which simply tells readers who should be killed each week, might devolve into a demand for specific and truly horrendous varieties of torture. Then what would people think of us? We at PWSBKTW could be thrown out of polite society altogether. We would never be invited to cocktail parties.

Fortunately, our column can go on, as originally titled and conceived, since certainly no one inserted 30 needles into a two-year-old, hoping that it would slowly kill him.

That just isn’t the world we live in.

About Scott Stein

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week //