“A 40-year-old Racine man is accused of killing a 2-year-old boy, punching him because he was spilling his milk.”

Manuel Garcia “lost his temper with his girlfriend’s son, punching him numerous times in the abdomen on Thursday, killing him.” He “admitted punching the boy at least three times because the child was[…] ’frustrating him’ and spilling his milk.”

We at PWSBKTW understand that two-year-olds can be frustrating. They have terrible table manners. Still, no one should die over spilled milk. [Read more →]

Tags: people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW know that kids these days are often coddled. They don’t have to work and their parents give them whatever they want. Some parents, though, understand the importance of pushing their children to have a strong work ethic. They know that their kids need skills that are valued in the marketplace, and they demand that their kids contribute to the family’s income. This can only build character. Even 14-year-old girls need character. Fortunately for one of them, her parents gave her plenty of character, good and hard. As wsbtv.com reports:

The couple bought a minivan from a used car dealership in Eastman, about 140 miles southeast of Atlanta, in March 2008 but has not made a single payment on it… They made their daughter perform sex acts on the dealership’s manager in lieu of making the $281 monthly payments on their minivan […] It appears the parents may have offered sex with their daughter to as many as six other adults in exchange for money and drugs…

[Read more →]

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We at PWSBKTW usually describe some particularly heinous act and explain, with wit, when we can muster it, just how terrible the actions of some murderer or child abuser were. We are sorry to say that this week, we have nothing — no sarcasm, no punchlines as we point out who should be killed this week. We have catalogued horrible cases in past columns, managed maybe even to amuse as we shared outrage with our readers, but we’re at a loss for this one. Our column this week probably isn’t even necessary, since by now most readers are familiar with the case and have reached similar conclusions about a just end, but if we’re going to have a column called “People Who Should Be Killed This Week,” it would seem we’d be remiss to not mention the person who perhaps has most earned it. Dr. Earl Bradley is a pediatrician who is accused of sexually assaulting and raping more than 100 children, his patients, over the course of many years, while their parents sat in waiting rooms. Apparently there are videotapes. There is no end to disturbing details. Your day will be better if you don’t read the linked article. There isn’t anything we have to add that isn’t obvious from this column’s title and graphic. A lightning bolt and quick death would be a kindness Earl Bradley doesn’t deserve.  

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Young children sometimes cry. We at PWSBKTW know that this can be annoying. There are several appropriate ways to address the problem of children crying. This is not one of them:

Thirty-three-year-old Aaron Pace, a friend of the baby’s mother who was babysitting the boy, put Drano on a cloth and rubbed the poisonous cloth on [the] baby’s skin because he had been crying, police said.

Rubbing Drano on his skin was supposed to make the 20-month-old stop crying? [Read more →]

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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. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW are on the verge of going insane.

“The second trial of Seattle Jewish Federation gunman Naveed Haq is now in the hands of a King County Superior Court jury.”

Haq stormed the Jewish center in July 2006, fatally shooting one woman and wounding five others. His attorneys acknowledge he did it, but say he was insane at the time and should be committed to a mental hospital for the rest of his life. […] Haq’s first trial ended with jurors deadlocked over the question of his sanity.

[Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW were once young ourselves, so we appreciate juvenile pranks as much as anyone. We’re not too old to remember how fun it is to steal a bicycle. And we can’t tell you how terribly we miss those innocent days of our childhood when we would douse someone with rubbing alcohol and set them on fire if they stopped us from stealing a bicycle. Wait, that wasn’t us. That was Matthew Bent, Denver Jarvis, Steven Shelton, Jesus Mendez, and Jeremy Jarvis. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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At a competency hearing for Brian David Mitchell, the man who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart when she was 14 years old, Elizabeth, now 21, ”testified Thursday she was raped repeatedly each day after she was abducted from her bedroom seven years ago and told she would be killed if she yelled or tried to escape.”

We at PWSBKTW don’t hold competency hearings for men who kidnap girls and rape them repeatedly. Competency? [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW are the forgiving sort. We know that second chances are the American way. We also know that releasing sexual predators from jail is what enlightened societies do. And we’re not talking about the seventeen-year-old who texted a nude picture of himself to his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and got registered as a sex offender, either. No, we’re talking about the real thing, the keep-you-up-at-night predators who snatch little girls off the street. They deserve second chances. They are, after all, people too. Some of them do a lot with their second chances. Phillip Garrido did a lot with his.

An 11-year-old California girl kidnapped in 1991 while waiting for a school bus has been found alive, and a convicted sex offender is accused of raping and fathering two children with her while he and his wife held her captive in their backyard.

[Read more →]

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Jury selection in the trial of Nathan Walker and Tommy Lee Walker has begun. Lest we at PWSBKTW be accused of being in bad taste, we warn you that this one isn’t for the squeamish. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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I had taken a few weeks off from writing my column, “People Who Should Be Killed This Week,” because my family recently moved to a new house. This past Friday was the first entry in a while. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Christopher Guerin, one of When Falls the Coliseum’s contributors, with the following subject line: PWSBKTW. We have since corresponded several times about the column, and I am now posting our discussion below, since I think it will interest those of you who like the column, those of you who don’t, and those of you who don’t care about the column either way but might enjoy a conversation about writing. Feel free to weigh in on all of this.

Christopher Guerin:

Scott,

I’ve been biting my tongue about this for some time, hoping, recently, that it had gone away. This column is just plain wrong. [Read more →]

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John Jackey Worman “was sentenced to 120 years in prison for making a huge cache of child pornography that shows him sexually assaulting a dozen children, including infants at a girlfriend’s in-home day care … He also made girls in his care perform sex acts for school lunch money.” [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW are at the beach today and hope not to be thinking about people who should be killed this week. That depends on how well the other beach-goers behave. Still, our short vacation doesn’t mean that no one should be killed this week. Probably some people should. We invite you, dear PWSBKTW-ers, to nominate your own people who should be killed this week. Tell us who should be killed, and why, and provide a link (basic html is permitted in comments, but no more than one link per comment) to a news item with details.

Note that people you merely dislike — politicans, celebrities, annoying neighbors — are not qualified to be killed this week. Take a look at past weeks to see what it takes to make our prestigious list. When we at PWSBKTW return from our peaceful weekend, we will accept or reject nominations.

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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We at PWSBKTW are all about starting your holiday weekend with sunshine. And rainbows.

For four days, 17-month-old Nicholas Miller was in pain with a badly broken back, which made it difficult for the toddler to walk or even breathe. His brain was bleeding, and he had other wounds.

He got no medical help.

Tylar Hokanson, Nicholas’s stepfather, has confessed to shaking Nicholas. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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“Curtis Jason Powell was arraigned Tuesday on two counts of murder for the shooting deaths of two sisters in an Oakland motel room last week.” We won’t say that having two first names was reason enough to arrest him. But we will say that having two first names was reason enough to keep a close eye on him.

In addition to being charged with two counts of murder for the deaths of Geraldine Latchison, 23, and Angel Latchison, 20, at the Value Inn at 370 W. MacArthur Blvd. on June 15, Powell, 28, is charged with being an ex-felon in possession of a gun and having a prior conviction for mayhem.

Mayhem?  [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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“A 14-year-old girl and her boyfriend were arrested Wednesday as suspects in the murder of the girl’s mother, who was found stabbed in her northern California home, authorities said […] Tylar Witt and Steven Colver, 19, were taken into custody by San Bruno police at a Red Lobster restaurant.” 

First of all, the 19-year-old boyfriend should probably be killed just for dating a 14-year-old girl. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, people who should be killed this week
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“Constantine Toncz, 39, had been speeding several times down the neighborhood street Sunday night. The speed limit in the residential area is 25 mph.” When Sabrina Stanek, the mother of two small children, came out to ask Toncz to slow down, he rammed her with his truck, killing her. Constantine Toncz should be killed this week.

Some nut has been throwing acid off of the top of tall buildings in Hong Kong. [Read more →]

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