Comments on: Murder on Union Hill Road

Murder on Union Hill Road

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 05:18:02 -0800

In April 2016, eight family members were slain in their homes in Ohio. Nine months later, the killer or killers are still on the loose, and the town has all but forgotten the crimes.

By: ArbitraryAndCapricious

ArbitraryAndCapricious — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:13:20 -0800

Well, that was grim. And it mostly made me want to know a lot more about Allis.

By: Malla

Malla — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:38:26 -0800

That was both sad and confusing. The police......aren't investigating? Or, she didn't talk to the police, because of her "feelings" article? The author grew up rural, Midwest, and poor, but seems to treat the townspeople like a hick sideshow exhibit? Why the hell is Walmart so surprising to her? The whole thing gives off a gross gawker drive by vibe.

By: doctornemo

doctornemo — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:38:40 -0800

"Sometimes people even stalked from bed and shot blind into the dark because they couldn't sleep."

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:39:20 -0800

Oh man, field scientists are tough. They can get in or out of any situation, which is why, despite studying archaeology for years, I could never qualify to be one. I appreciated Hale's nervous narrative presence. It highlights the absurdity of reporting on a murder that almost no one cares about. Withdrawing the reward money offered! Any great crime can go unpunished if the majority of people believe that the victims deserved it. It's one of the major flaws in the human software. (Also, the mention of a mission trip to Sweden struck me as bitterly hilarious in this context. I cannot imagine Swedish folks wanting a damn thing that American Christianity has to offer in these times.)

By: ArbitraryAndCapricious

ArbitraryAndCapricious — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:44:03 -0800

Now that I have figured out who Allis is, I would like to see her version of this story, tentatively titled "That Time I Had to Bail Out My Bougie Friend Who Somehow Managed to Successfully Pitch an Article that I Was Much More Qualified Than Her to Write, Despite the Fact that She is a Writer and I am a Professional Taxidermist."

By: klarck

klarck — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:47:26 -0800

An LA writer flies to a poor county in flyover country to write a "feelings-y piece", brings semi-local friend as translator. I mean, the author seems to be self-aware of her limitations, but damn, that she treats the story as anthropology bugs the hell out of this mid-westerner. She wasn't qualified to write the piece; she shouldn't have written it.

By: Bulgaroktonos

Bulgaroktonos — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:53:33 -0800

"Sometimes people even stalked from bed and shot blind into the dark because they couldn't sleep." That line was weird to me, if only for it's (I'm assuming) use of "stalk" as a hunting verb.* Do any Americans use the word that way? It's also just a weird thing to drop in without further explanation. Is this actually a thing (beyond some isolated incident)? People firing blindly into the dark? Is she maybe being misled or misunderstanding? I saw some people hunting in ways that didn't feel super safe growing up (bowhunting from the bed of a moving pickup springs to mind), but that's crazy; it definitely intensifies the feeling of the author being out of her depth. I was curious to read this piece, because the original story was so horrifying and the fact that we're still in the dark about what happened is interesting, but it just left me wishing I had read a local journalist who had written something in depth about it. *Also, is it really stalking if you're lying in bed? I thought the action of walking was part of the act of stalking.

By: soundguy99

soundguy99 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:59:21 -0800

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:04:47 -0800

My vote is for more Allis as well.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:10:40 -0800

well, i haven't read the whole snootfest but i've come to the conclusion that it's not that people around there don't care, it's that they don't care to talk about it with her

By: fatbird

fatbird — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:14:11 -0800

That line was weird to me, if only for it's (I'm assuming) use of "stalk" as a hunting verb.* "Stalked" has a more vague use that's just walking heavy-footed, deliberately, or in some other way not normal. The phrase "stalked away in anger" is one I know, implying a kind of stomping exit. I can see using it to describe a cranky insomniac getting out of bed to go shoot a bit in the back yard.

By: fatbird

fatbird — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:15:43 -0800

Ok, mystery solved: the author, Kathleen Hale's, previous appearance on Metafilter.

By: tclark

tclark — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:15:47 -0800

I happen to know Allis, and A) I'm pretty sure she could have done a much better job on this article, and B) I can confirm she is an all-around smart, interesting, and talented person.

By: soundguy99

soundguy99 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:21:24 -0800

That line was weird to me, if only for it's (I'm assuming) use of "stalk" as a hunting verb.* Do any Americans use the word that way? It's also just a weird thing to drop in without further explanation. Is this actually a thing (beyond some isolated incident)? People firing blindly into the dark? Things like that are part of what gave the piece the "gawk at the freaks" tone I mentioned above. "Stalk" is definitely used as a hunting verb, and "stalked" is definitely mostly used to describe motion, but they both at least imply a sense of purpose, so "stalked from the bed to the door to answer the unexpected late-night knock" seems legit, while "stalking" somewhere to do something pointless like firing blindly into the dark for no reason doesn't sound quite right. So it reads as more the writer's imagination instilling some kind of terrifying purpose to something that she's just assuming happens because rural people are scary ciphers. I mean, I don't doubt that people under the influence of some combo of drugs, alcohol, and PTSD might let fly blindly out their window in the middle of the night, but describing it as "stalked" when she certainly didn't actually witness this herself speaks more to the writer's fearful assumptions than the actual behavior.

By: nicebookrack

nicebookrack — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:24:41 -0800

fatbird, I was just about to link the same post; I knew the name Kathleen Hale looked familiar. I've also read her first novel--about a mysterious murder in a small midwestern town--and didn't like it. I would be interested to see more investigation of this case by other reporters, because I don't trust this writer's ability to report on complex social situations like this with the necessary insight or objectivity.

By: Bulgaroktonos

Bulgaroktonos — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:26:42 -0800

Yeah, there's the germ of something there - the question of how we create social distinctions so that even in poverty-stricken rural Ohio there are people too low on the social ladder to receive community sympathy (and, possibly, sustained interest from law enforcement) One thing that will stick with me from this is the fact the local restaurant owner who offered the reward withdrew it when it started looking like the family was involved in selling drugs. That somehow that fact trumped the need to find the person or people who murdered two people while a three year old was in the house and their six month old was in bed with them. There's definitely a story here about who counts and who doesn't that reminds me of similar stories we've seen on Metafilter in other contexts (the serial killer in Rocky Mount, NC for example), but it didn't feel like that story got out much.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:32:56 -0800

Okay, on the one hand, yes, much was made of the hick part. OTOH, there's some stuff that - unless it is outright lies - is pretty disturbing. Like Allis feeling that she needs a knife or a gun for all-purpose social protection in this place, to the point where, if she forgets her knife, she wants to go buy a gun. I know I too am a spoiled bourgeois, but even when I've been in scary places, I have never felt that I actually needed a weapon to the point that I should buy one on the fly. That is, this is a difference from many people's experience, and I would argue that it's a bad one. I don't think it's just one of those totally okay cultural differences that in some parts of the country a stranger can't pass through without needing a weapon.

By: soundguy99

soundguy99 — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:36:23 -0800

withdrew it when it started looking like the family was involved in selling drugs. As far as I can recall, up here in the northern urban part of Ohio the media pretty much lost interest once that came out. Like, "Oh, well, if it was just a bunch of southern Ohio hicks killing each other over their small-time drug business, been there done that move on to the next story." So, yeah. Who counts and who doesn't?

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:39:34 -0800

And the whole "no one talks about these dead people because they're all, even the youngest, trashy trash trash" - that's not typical of anywhere I've lived. I've seen the death of a poor HS peer treated as less important than the drunk-driving death of a rich HS peer, so I know it happens - but there was a wave of outrage by teachers in my HS over that. I think it's perfectly possible that this is both a disturbing story that reveals some actual community problems caused by entrenched poverty and diminished human possibility and that it was written by someone who was not the best writer for the story. To me, actually, the queasy unevenness of the story seems to suggest both the writer's awareness that she's kind of the wrong person (like, she uses Allis's comments as a way to make fun of herself and make herself look pretty incompetent) and that there's something just really fucked up about the whole thing. I don't think it's written without art.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:41:09 -0800

The author grew up rural, Midwest, and poor, but seems to treat the townspeople like a hick sideshow exhibit? Why the hell is Walmart so surprising to her? wisconsin and ohio are not the same, especially ohio hill country - rural midwestern places are not the same - not all of them have walmarts within a short driving distance here in s w michigan, i can go to prosperous towns, towns that are falling apart, rural areas where a family like the one in the story existed and were despised by all, and other areas where they wouldn't have been remarked upon - within 10 miles of that area where that family i knew existed there were two towns of less than 10,000 - one, very well to do and prosperous as long as you stay on the right side of the river - the other with an rotting downtown and a significant ghetto area you cannot generalize about the rural midwest - there are too many exceptions to whatever rule you have in mind

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:46:19 -0800

Also this: Bobby started talking about a polygraph the police wanted her to take. The polygraph was voluntary, but she said of course she'd agreed to one. Allis told her she should have a lawyer present. "Don't need no lawyer," Leonard said. "Just let them do their thing and once she gets through with that lie detector test, then she can do something about it. Hey Bobby, tell her what they been asking you." "How much someone paid me to kill my family," she said. We told her that sounded hard, that we would have wanted to cry. The fact is that what's going on here - like in the cities, but with even less oversight, community and accountability - is full on abuse of marginalized people by anyone with even a little power. And most of those with a little power - in either place - being themselves stupid, un-self-aware and incompetent. If anything, what I took from this story was that there's a lot of cultural pressure to deny just how shittily some rural poor communities live, and sometimes it's from a "ha ha hicks" standpoint and other times it's from a "well, that's their authentic culture don't make fun of it" standpoint.

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:46:58 -0800

The hatred for this family reminded me of the disdain for Stephen Avery's family as portrayed in Making a Murderer.

By: dr_dank

dr_dank — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:50:47 -0800

The NY Times is on their way to the town to cover the real story: the charming fellow at the demolition derby that has both a deer farm AND a dick.

By: kevinbelt

kevinbelt — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:51:46 -0800

"wisconsin and ohio are not the same, especially ohio hill country - rural midwestern places are not the same" Totally true. Even within Ohio, there's a lot of variation. Appalachia in the southeast, plains in the northwest. The people and the culture are not at all comparable.

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:58:02 -0800

Describing Thiensville, WI as rural and poor is completely ridiculous. According to city-data.com, the median income is $54k, higher than state average, and the median house price is $200k. It's full of places to get lattes, massages, and expensive clothes. It's definitely possible the author grew up poor, but it's absolutely nothing like the place described in the article. It's really hard to trust anything else she writes.

By: ocschwar

ocschwar — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:58:49 -0800

Totally true. Even within Ohio, there's a lot of variation. Appalachia in the southeast, plains in the northwest. The people and the culture are not at all comparable. And holy hell, do the people in the two cultures speak ill of each other. Constantly. It's what sets my teeth on edge when I visit in-laws.

By: AFABulous

AFABulous — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 07:59:09 -0800

I mean, I was literally there last week, drinking $8 import beer and eating frites in a Belgian themed restaurant.

By: I_Love_Bananas

I_Love_Bananas — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:02:02 -0800

On the way out, I found myself dawdling in the aisle for memorial garlands and fake funeral flowers. "Do all Walmarts have these?" I asked Allis. "Or do people in Pike County die more often, necessitating special supplies?" "Quit being weird," she said. The contempt-stench coming off this article makes it really hard to read.

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:02:57 -0800

As far I can tell, she never claimed to be from a poor town. She writes "I'd grown up in a small village, too: Thiensville, Wisconsin, population 3,200—'the Square Mile of Smiles.'" She then immediately follows that by noting differences between the communities.

By: Malla

Malla — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:06:47 -0800

Yes, I know the Midwest (in conclusion) is a land of contrasts! Spent my whole life here. But her fake "gosh Walmart sells plastic flowers" pose set my teeth on edge. She grew up in Wisconsin. She's been in a Walmart before.

By: lazycomputerkids

lazycomputerkids — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:07:08 -0800

I've gone back to read the prior thread cited in this thread, and the threads cited from that thread, and, boy...the polarity of response Hale achieves is consistent and impressive.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:07:30 -0800

oh, geez, thiensville isn't rural at all, it's suburban milwalkee, and it's in the middle of a lakeshore town to boot, which is a unique culture in itself that is light years away from anything like a place like pike county

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:10:49 -0800

also, the walmarts in small rural towns are a lot different than the ones in major metropolitan areas - and maybe she went to meijer's instead - (they're in the milwaukee area, too)

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:11:30 -0800

But her fake "gosh Walmart sells plastic flowers" pose set my teeth on edge. She grew up in Wisconsin. She's been in a Walmart before. So have I, but I couldn't tel you if my local WalMart sells memorial wreaths (which is what the story is talking about, not simply "plastic flowers".) I would find it kind of surprising, too.

By: gusottertrout

gusottertrout — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:15:46 -0800

To me, actually, the queasy unevenness of the story seems to suggest both the writer's awareness that she's kind of the wrong person (like, she uses Allis's comments as a way to make fun of herself and make herself look pretty incompetent) and that there's something just really fucked up about the whole thing. I don't think it's written without art. Eh, for me, I'd say more written with artifice instead of art. The writer seeming to realize she isn't the right person to write this is more than a little difficult to accept. Either she is aware of the differences and thus could interact and write in a more suiting manner in dealing with the townsfolk, or she isn't, then the seeming awareness doesn't make much sense. If anything, it has a feel of the writer intentionally adopting a persona in order to sell the piece as one of those elite types visiting the rural whites. If there was some greater twist to the balance of recognition, or some point where the writer opens another view to the reader, then, maybe, there would have been some art to the piece, but if that's there, I certainly didn't see it. It felt heavily shaped with only glancing interest in the people around her other than in moments where she could provide the greatest disparity of locals versus writer. She needn't even be so forward with her presence in the piece had she really wanted to capture the locale, but adding herself minimized the amount of writing she had to do about them, and pushed the narrative to be about her alleged feelings of cultural difference. The line about reaching for her notebook and asking if the policeman meant scrotum is just all kinds of bullshit from where I'm sitting.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:15:51 -0800

you can get plastic flowers at rite aid, too, you know ...

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:18:15 -0800

I've been in maybe 30+ Wal-Marts in my life, in rural towns in Indiana/Ohio/Penn/Kentucky. Times of my life where I did most of my shopping there. And I've got to say I've never noticed a section for fake funeral flowers and memorial garlands. But could be I just never had to go down that aisle. And I've definitely been at the outdoor section counter waiting behind a couple getting their first gun, hunting license, "nice knife," etc. All that to say I thought some of the authorial touches were really nice and helped me see the uniqueness of Piketon (never been there, but been to Pike County/Chillicothe area), while some were strange and brought me out of the story. "Write about my dick" is either a fabrication, or a really fucking tragic and insightful line about how certainly some of the reception she receives was because she was a woman, not because of her attitude.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:27:27 -0800

And the whole "no one talks about these dead people because they're all, even the youngest, trashy trash trash" - that's not typical of anywhere I've lived. You, uh, might just not have noticed. I've seen it happen more than once, in a fairly wide range of communities. Sometimes it's because they're "trash", sometimes because they're different in other ways.

By: Malla

Malla — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:28:27 -0800

Maybe she's just never bought flowers for a funeral other than over the phone. This thread has made me think about places I've seen memorial arrangements/supplies in my suburban community. I've come up with Michaels (craft store), Hyvee, and the swanky grocery store with the built in floral area. Almost every place like Target and CVS has a fake flower aisle/section, but not memorial themed.

By: Copronymus

Copronymus — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:35:55 -0800

You, uh, might just not have noticed. I've seen it happen more than once, in a fairly wide range of communities. Sometimes it's because they're "trash", sometimes because they're different in other ways. While I have absolutely no reason to believe that this was in any way a factor in this horrific crime, Pike County is also home to a unique ethnic group that unquestionably marks people as different from their neighbors.

By: chavenet

chavenet — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:38:38 -0800

The murder scene is straight out of A Simple Plan, the people straight out of Knockemstiff

By: Sequence

Sequence — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:48:43 -0800

"Write about my dick" is either a fabrication, or a really fucking tragic and insightful line about how certainly some of the reception she receives was because she was a woman, not because of her attitude. Or just how little people from that sort of background value this kind of media coverage. And I'm not saying that to denigrate them, given that I'm not really sure how much value this story is really creating for the people who're actually living there. I don't really know that there's any reason to read more into it than that he was telling her to fuck off, and that while I'm generally pretty sensitive to women getting a lack of respect, I can't imagine how a man would have done any better if he was still writing this same story. At the end of the day, why talk to the media about something like this and take it seriously? It's not going to make your family any safer, this story's just here to be a bit of a weird story from a place 99.99% of the piece's readers will never be within a hundred miles of. I ordinarily loathe what rural Ohio is doing to non-rural Ohio, what with being from the northeast part of the state, but in this case I don't blame them in the least. Nobody's obligated to be someone else's human interest story.

By: lazycomputerkids

lazycomputerkids — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:58:17 -0800

I'm sympathizing with reactions that ask: Is she making this up? And: Is it a pose? Because I had them too as I read. But all my senses are engaged and I'm frequently surprised-- an experience.

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 08:58:58 -0800

Lady writer from LA: "Can I ask you a few questions about why it seems like nobody here cares why or how 8 people were murdered?" Man: "Nobody cares because those retards were trash. Why don't you write about my dick." Metafilter: I hate this lady writer so much.

By: fshgrl

fshgrl — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:04:01 -0800

And the whole "no one talks about these dead people because they're all, even the youngest, trashy trash trash" - that's not typical of anywhere I've lived. I live in the fringes of one of these God, guns and meth areas and that's exactly how they talk. Any misfortune is your own fault and every crime was committed by an "other", no exceptions. It's a totally failed civilisation basically. There was a local murder of a teenager over drugs a couple years ago and the victim was a "good" kid while the murderer was trashy and the community wantes his whole family raped to death in prison. I know this because it was posted all over Facebook and the comments section of every lock media outlet. This, despite the supposedly good kid being seemingly pretty heavily involved in drugs himself and having a record of driving under the influence and being a dropout. The community can't face that they can't successfully raise children and function as a community basically imho, so they must find a way to blame others. It's the same impulse and blaming poor women for getting preganant or people with cancer for not having better insurance. I thought this article was spot on capturing that vibe.

By: cilantro

cilantro — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:04:50 -0800

I read most of this before coming into the thread and I was convinced it was fiction. It just seems so weird and affected. I'm from a similar sized town in a similar part of America with similar demographics (same median income, lots of poverty, lots of drugs, lots of disabilities, not enough jobs) and people just don't act like this. Like, they might not care as much about poor people being murdered as they should, but they wouldn't act like this. I don't know. This is just weird.

By: late afternoon dreaming hotel

late afternoon dreaming hotel — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:18:31 -0800

What a great piece. I find it odd that so many comments here are referring to the writer being either too distant, too precious, shrewdly canny or what have you. I don't get that vibe. It's a narrative. It puts its cards on the table. Read the cards. No matter how hard I smiled, the contrast between her easy Southern Ohio drawl and my bland, pan-American accent made me sound discouragingly prim—or, as one derby goer would accurately put it, like a stuck-up bitch. At least she wouldn't be surprised by people on Metafilter taking offense from her approach. Sounds like she got plenty of that reception throughout. I grew up on a farm in rural Arkansas, and those passages about the crowd at the derby... I mean I can feel my palms sweat remembering trying to just. blend. in. It's not offensive to me to hear this kind of story. It's familiar, uncomfortable. I left. I judged it and I left.

By: domo

domo — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:19:33 -0800

I grew up in a trailer in Mississippi and the "write about my dick" passage really brought be back. It rings true.

By: zippy

zippy — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:20:55 -0800

The reason we might ask whether someone might have written this better is because, as far as I can tell, we have no other stories about this tragedy to go on. The local community wants to go on like it's embarrassing to think about the family with an infant and toddler who were murdered, that it's hired foreign professionals coming into their town to rain vengeance on, what, someone growing pot? When it's so much more likely it's someone in town with a personal grudge. Do the local police really have so many entire-family-murdered cases that they don't have any leads? That they focused on the person who called 911 and has no violent criminal history as their only suspect? This is a tragedy, and only one reporter appears to have cared enough to try and understand.

By: cilantro

cilantro — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:25:35 -0800

Just to say - I don't think it was badly written. If it's all true, and if everyone did say these things and act like this, then it's a pretty amazing story and record. I feel like it should ring true to me based on the place, but it doesn't. It apparently does ring true to lots of other people in this thread. Maybe after 11 years in another country, I've been gone too long.

By: cooker girl

cooker girl — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:38:53 -0800

Having grown up in a small town in central Indiana, with relatives who lived in deeply rural Mississippi (for generation upon generation), and now having lived in Southwestern Ohio for almost 25 years...this story and the people in it ring very, very true to me. Is everyone like that? Of course not. But those people exist, and if the author says that the town doesn't give a shit about the people who were murdered because they consider them to be trash, well, I believe it. My experiences demand it of me. This is how some people live. This is how some people are. Just because you personally (the generic "you") don't know people like this, it doesn't make it not true. Please trust the people in this thread telling you that they know.

By: fshgrl

fshgrl — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:39:34 -0800

Much of America has gotten a lot poorer and a lot meaner in the last 10 years.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:45:11 -0800

I live in the meth capital of Indiana, and the environment described in the article rings pretty true to me. An entire clan living along a backwoods road, half the crowd at the demo derby dressed in cammo, the pregnant girl and her boyfriend shopping, the vindictiveness toward people deemed lower in status or otherwise not living-up to an artificial standard, rumors accepted as true because it supports the vindictiveness, and, yeah, "write about my dick." It all rings true. I was taken by the escalation in locals heads that the family were "drug dealers" even though the only "drug" mentioned was simple weed. The cops depiction of a "grow operation" immediately evokes an image of a warehouse stuffed with high-quality, hydroponic weed, when the truth was probably a home-made grow box stuffed in a closet, with two or three ratty plants. Regardless, no one kills an entire family, scattered across multiple homes, over weed in this day and age. This killing was something else entirely.

By: cooker girl

cooker girl — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:50:09 -0800

OMG, also! The restaurant owner who initially offered reward money was Jeff Ruby. Oh, this guy. I am so not at all surprised that he rescinded it.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:54:18 -0800

This is the "uranium plant" mentioned in the article.

By: Sequence

Sequence — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:02:47 -0800

Catching up near the end of the article now:

A gag order has been placed on the family about the custody battle over Ruger and Kylie, and the Pike County Coroner's Office won't make public its final autopsy reports on Chris Sr., Gary, Dana, Frankie, Hannah Gilley, Hanna Rhoden, Chris Jr., and Kenneth.

So--the family is now having some kind of custody fight about two of the three young children who survived this, and I get that there's a gag order, but... the article doesn't seem to have even mentioned that this was going on, at all, until this point near the bottom. And what happened to Sophia goes apparently completely without mention. This is the thing that's struck me the weirdest about the story, not how anybody talks.

By: zippy

zippy — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:07:53 -0800

hey might not care as much about poor people being murdered as they should, but they wouldn't act like this. I don't know. This is just weird. They might if they suspect the killers are local and respected / feared. They also might if they believe the victims brought it on themselves. I mean all I have is the story we read, but it sounds like the cops interviewed one person and didn't round up the usual local suspects. No one said "oh yeah, they interviewed my cousin too." Everyone just wants to move on. A family was brutally murdered, the killers went from trailer to trailer, deliberately. Then a collective denial and lethargy affected the community and the police, who in the former case withdrew a reward, and in the latter case have said zip about their progress, not even a perfunctory "we continue to follow our leads, please call 555-1212 if you have any information." You're right, it is weird.

By: tavella

tavella — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:19:30 -0800

I wonder if it could be a combination of the two; the local belief that the family was worthless and deserved being murdered, and having a good idea who did it and not wanting to attract their attention. It's a little freaky, though. You'd think the thought that perhaps the kind of people who murder eight people methodically might someday decide that *you* fall into the worthless class might trickle into their consciousness. (checks the elections results) Ah, Trump country. Perhaps now I understand.

By: zippy

zippy — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:20:20 -0800

Adding to this, on Apr 23 Jeff Ruby offered a reward in the tweet screenshotted in the link (tweet since deleted). The offer ends with a praying hands emoji. Five days later, he rescinded it.

By: Copronymus

Copronymus — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:25:18 -0800

You'd think the thought that perhaps the kind of people who murder eight people methodically might someday decide that *you* fall into the worthless class might trickle into their consciousness. (checks the elections results) Ah, Trump country. Perhaps now I understand. I'd be extremely surprised if anyone mentioned in the article voted at all. I grew up a couple counties over and it got just over 12,000 votes out of 23,000 adults, and there is nothing I've ever seen that would make me think it's the poorer and more isolated 48% that's voting in this country, especially in rural areas.

By: zippy

zippy — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:29:01 -0800

The sheriff in the case made a statement in October, his first since the murders six months prior, saying he no longer believes a foreign cartel was behind the killing, and that the killers are locals.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:37:03 -0800

You, uh, might just not have noticed. I've seen it happen more than once, in a fairly wide range of communities. Sometimes it's because they're "trash", sometimes because they're different in other ways. What I was trying to get at was that no one was talking. When there's a murder or a suicide in my GLBTQ community, for instance, there are vigils and lots of quiet talk. When there's a police murder here, you hear about it on Facebook or just from people. There's always some social formation that recognizes and mourns the death. What struck me about this story was that there appeared to be no one mourning here. Another example: if someone gets hit by a car or killed in a brawl, everywhere I've ever lived someone puts up crosses and flowers and odds and ends where it happened unless the place it happened is literally inaccessible. Their family or friends do it, a church does it, their neighbors do it. We learned in this article that the high school aged girl who died was not even mentioned at her class's graduation and did not merit a photo on the photos-of-the-tragically-dead wall at the local restaurant. I'm not saying that no one in America has it bad in the way that these people have it bad. I'm saying that in my experience over forty years, it is extremely unusual for there to be no visible mourning for a whole family like that.

By: Mitrovarr

Mitrovarr — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:40:18 -0800

I can understand the local reaction to this. I mean, this happens, you've got some terrifyingly efficient and ruthless killers who are probably locals in the area, and they probably won't be caught. But you still have to go on and go to work and otherwise try to keep it together. What are you going to do? I mean, there's not a lot of options besides "Make up some reason it can't happen to me and try to live my life". And the drug thing gave people the handle they were looking for in the "some reason it can't happen to me" department. Also, I can think of at least two obvious reasons that people in the area don't want to talk about this. First off, most of them probably really, really don't want to think about it. At all. And secondly, you have some really efficient killers who are probably still in the area. People might be scared to talk, but also culturally prevented from being open about being scared to talk (or be in denial about why they don't want to talk).

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 10:56:13 -0800

You'd think the thought that perhaps the kind of people who murder eight people methodically might someday decide that *you* fall into the worthless class might trickle into their consciousness. I seriously doubt this had anything to do with class, though. I suspect this falls into the category of "everyone knows who did it and why and it's none of their business."

By: ArbitraryAndCapricious

ArbitraryAndCapricious — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:01:51 -0800

What struck me about this story was that there appeared to be no one mourning here.

There was no one mourning in a way that was visible to an outsider who came in with the intent of writing a magazine story. That doesn't necessarily mean that no one was mourning. There may be all sorts of things going on in this community that aren't apparent to the person writing this story.

By: skrozidile

skrozidile — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:32:00 -0800

quick google reveals more allis "But right now, despite the beastly to do list in her freezer, Allis is primarily focused on honing her skills for the fast-approaching World Taxidermy Championships. "It's sort of a good old boys club," she says. "All men besides me, and they like to go big, so I'm doing the opposite. It's harder to work in miniature anyway." So while men who resemble Theodore Roosevelt and Ron from Parks and Recreation drag in big game, mounted after some safari, Allis will be unveiling her biggest coup yet: a curated array of hummingbird babies."

By: yohko

yohko — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:44:23 -0800

"Or do people in Pike County die more often, necessitating special supplies?" How, exactly, would people in a certain area "die more often"? Most people only die (in the having a funeral sense) once. If Pike County has figured out a workaround, there's a really really big story here.

By: We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese

We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:45:33 -0800

Another example: if someone gets hit by a car or killed in a brawl, everywhere I've ever lived someone puts up crosses and flowers and odds and ends where it happened There was no one mourning in a way that was visible to an outsider who came in with the intent of writing a magazine story. And I mean, yes, many communities put up shrines and memorials following a tragic death, but how many of those crosses and flowers and odds and ends are still there five weeks later? We had a not-dissimilar massacre in Chicago late last year, several family members murdered overnight, seemingly for no reason anyone could deduce (children included, in this horrible case), and yes: for a week or so, there was a shrine and flowers and all that. Nightly news coverage. And I promise you five weeks later if you'd asked anyone except their next door neighbors the response would have been "Who? Oh, them. Yeah, that's a shame, I guess. But they were probably into something, you know?"

By: nicebookrack

nicebookrack — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:52:35 -0800

The memorial flowers in Walmart: Yes, I am focusing on this one petty irrelevant detail of the article because the smugness annoys me so much. The fake flowers and wreath-making supplies are shelved in the "Arts and Crafts" section of stores. They've been in every Walmart I've ever visited that was large enough to have an Arts and Crafts section, which is usually near the Hunting and Fishing section, which is where Allis went in the Walmart to get her weapons, so they almost certainly passed the fake flower aisle on their way back. Also from the article: Five weeks after the massacre, while Bobby looked forward to her first official polygraph test, I sat down across from her at church. The massacre was April 22. If this visit with Bobby was the same visit as the Walmart trip, that puts Allis and Kathleen Hale in town around May 29. OF COURSE there would be grave-decorating supplies on display.

By: she's not there

she's not there — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:56:24 -0800

My cousins were born and raised in the area—as far as I know, they still live there. I haven't seen them in a [rac]coon's age. (A term from the local vernacular, heard ~45 years ago.) The youngest boy was named Bandit. Given this admittedly narrow perspective, every word of the story rang true for me.

By: LizBoBiz

LizBoBiz — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:05:31 -0800

How, exactly, would people in a certain area "die more often"? Easy. Their mortality rate is higher so people "die more often".

By: Squeak Attack

Squeak Attack — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:21:27 -0800

By: bendy

bendy — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:41:25 -0800

I gotta say the constrast between the author and Allis really appealed to me. The nervous, totally-out-of-her-element upper middle class white woman accompanied by the easygoing friend who could connect with anyone - that was the interesting part of the story. There isn't really any meat to the story of the crime, but the women's very different interactions with the locals was amusing.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:53:20 -0800

That piece did nothing but confirm my previous impression of Kathleen Hale as absolutely sui generis, and a genius. And far from being smug and condescending, Hale made me feel like I was a member of the murdered family who had moved to the city decades ago, but knew he could never really get away. One paragraph made me laugh until prickles of embarrassment broke out across my back:

While she put in the legwork, I held a stranger's baby and clapped his hands while Pastor Phil praised God, kicked the air, and entranced us with his dance moves. Jessica whispered to me that once, when they were kids, her brother had tried to imitate Phil's "Christian Dynamism," and ended up kicking himself in the face, "blood everywhere.

If there was one fact I could choose to pry out of the bureaucracy to help me crack the case, it would be how much civil asset forfeiture money law enforcement had pulled out of the area over the last five years.

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:17:12 -0800

I don't think it's entirely unfair to compare Hale's piece to Truman Capote's iconic "non fiction novel" In Cold Blood about "the 1959 murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas". In Cold Blood opens: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveller reaches them... It's fifty years since Capote's book was published - and that opening still makes me want to read on...

By: ArbitraryAndCapricious

ArbitraryAndCapricious — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:41:24 -0800

It's probably a little unfair to ding any crime writing for not being as compelling as In Cold Blood.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 15:56:47 -0800

Metafilter: I hate this lady writer so much. Well she IS a woman daring to write on the internet, so it's not surprising the slimy underbelly of the hive mind would present itself. I'm pretty sure if it was a guy who wrote this, we'd be getting a lot more "Brilliant! Another Hunter S Thompson! " comments.

By: eponym

eponym — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:48:25 -0800

The reason we might ask whether someone might have written this better is because, as far as I can tell, we have no other stories about this tragedy to go on. I hadn't heard about this story at all before, so I did a very quick skim of some of the more hard-news focused articles (of which there are quite a few)...was especially struck by how entirely opposite the conclusions reached by this CNN piece were, although obviously I have no real gauge for which, if either, is a fundamentally truer portrait of the place. It's from a little earlier on, but well after the drug aspect came to light: "Several Piketon residents told CNN they were genuinely surprised to learn that investigators found large marijuana-growing operations at the crime scenes, along with evidence of cockfighting. In a place where secrets don't stay that way for long, the revelations cast doubt on what people thought they knew about the Rhodens...No one else would attach their names to negative comments about the Rhodens, citing respect for the family. No one wants to publicly speak ill of the dead. With more funerals continuing into next week, the focus is on the surviving Rhoden relatives...'Everybody feels so bad. This is not supposed to happen in small towns like this,' she said. 'Everybody's hurting and they want to help.'"

By: neonrev

neonrev — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:56:26 -0800

Well, I know for sure that the reason there were memorial wreaths in the front of Wal-Mart was because, as she notes, she arrived during memorial day weekend, and people in this sort of area A: frequently have the entire extended family living nearby, and thus have more family graves they are able to visit and B: Have a somewhat higher rate of military service, especially amoung older men and C: Actually do die more often than the people where she is from, because of incredibly obvious reasons. More people buy and place wreaths at graves. Those racks aren't there year-round, I'm sure of this. But that degree of consideration was beyond this author. No, it's probably because country people just like plastic flowers or something. There were a lot of people wearing camo stuff because a lot of them hunt, a lot of them don't own a whole lot of clothes, and it's not at all weird to wear there. They also do not use it to hide in muddy trenches, because Ohio is not actually an active war zone. People from cities reacting with shock at people wearing camo stuff is just the lamest. Try for a second to think about THEIR lives and what THEY do instead of trying to fit it into your own map of 'how people are'. My main problem with this piece is that when the author encounters a part of life there that she doesn't immediately understand or have a stereotype to fall back on, she chalks it up to this infuriating sense of 'mysterious rural people' with their strange and instructable ways. I don't feel like she's at all interested in trying to understand them on their ground, she's wanting them to engage with her on hers, and is baffled as to why that might bother them. The very nature of the piece, to find out "Why they don't care", demonstrates this perfectly. The fact that their response is not her expected one elicits the continued assumption that it's a matter of caring or not, not that the manner in which they care differs from hers. There's a lot of that upthread too. She asked, and they answered. They think, from all the information they have, that they probably got into something that sometimes gets a bunch of people killed. They, presumably, don't do these things, and thus don't need to worry, and in fact maybe don't do these things out of these concerns. The fact that you don't like this mindset doesn't mean that they don't care. They thought about it, and decided that it didn't need to be a continued part of their lives. I'll talk more about why they'd be inclined to care less about them later. I spent most of the day at work thinking on this in the back of my mind, forgive my verbosity.

By: neonrev

neonrev — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:19:01 -0800

And I don't think the local reaction is all that unusual, both for the reasons mentioned already (they were into something bad, they deserved it, 'trash people') and a couple others. The 'trash people' thing is huge. When the economic ladder is more or less limited to the space between the bottom couple rungs, you start to invent new rungs to fill out the 'spectrum', and suddenly the space between "trash" and "working poor" is about a thousand dollars. It's not about renting or owning a home, it's between 'actual trailer' and 'functional shack'. We're also talking about a much more tightknit family system than can even really exist in a city. These people all lived more or less next to each other, and I assure you that is extremely common in rural areas. Why wouldn't you live as close to family as possible there, the social safety net is non-existent, and it's not like moving across town puts you all that closer to anything of any value. Live next to your parents and they can help with childcare, if someone's car breaks down maybe cousin Jim can drop you off so you don't lose the job at the plant, it's a survival tactic. We're also talking about generational poverty in a way that really only exists to this degree there and in deprived urban areas. We're talking "literally no one I'm related to has ever not been in deep poverty basically since we've been in this country" generational poverty. This is an extraordinarily hard cycle to break, and since there's no mechanism to help them, their only option is to entrench. You can get pretty fucking good at being really poor after a couple of generations, the problem is that the ways you do that usually ensure that you will always be poor, but if there doesn't seem to be a way out? Why not? This creates a world where families, and related people, are far more closely associated with each other than in more populated areas. I'm very familiar with this, I grew up in a much more rural area (the description of the author coming from a 'village' literally made me laugh. I'm from an actual village, not a suburb, and it had 60-odd people in it.) and it's a constant. When I'm asked my name and someone hears the last name, they ask "Which son?" because obviously I'm the child of one of the 7 children of Jim, and they need to pre-judge me based on the reputation of my father. So when people talk about "Trash people", they are actually talking about the entire family in a way that is not immediately obvious to people from places where perhaps you never meet the relatives of any of your neighbors or co-workers. "That's a bad family" is still very real and in full effect in some places. This can mean that they are associated with crime or bad behavior (just yesterday I found out my sister is moving in with her boyfriend, a kid whose older brother and father are well-known for DUI and fighting, and I worry because he's from a "Bad Family", and because I know those are learned behaviors. But still, my first thought is that he's from a bad family, and I'm very aware of that bias. It's strong.) or just because they are broadly very poor and thus thought to just not be good enough to make it. When you are struggling to make it yourself, it's very easy to look at someone not making it and think "Well, they aren't trying as hard/as good as me.". It's important to feel good about yourself, and that's an easy way, albeit obviously wrong and shitty. You also must consider the degree of constant stress there is for people living what would be considered marginal lives. A life lived paycheck to paycheck, barely making rent, sometimes eating less out of need rather than health concerns, unable to properly attend to your own health concerns, maybe in a bad relationship you can't leave for economic reasons, maybe working 2 jobs, this kind of life really just leaves basically zero room for unnecessary concerns. Ask me how I know.

By: (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:25:20 -0800

How do you know.

By: neonrev

neonrev — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:33:11 -0800

So, I've lived in technical poverty most my life, real poverty for some, and am only just now cusping into the realm of the 'working class', despite working as much as possible since I was 13. I've spent a bit of that time, both by choice and because that's the sort of people you know, pretty familiar with the sale of a number of drugs. The allure of what that money, even the petty drug sale money, looks like when $500 is as much money as you have had at one time in 2 years, is pretty strong. I don't sell drugs because I don't want to be at risk of the sort of thing that happens in that line of work (and also because a lot of drugs are really socially bad, and that's another element to this), and I can also say that the fact that it was weed doesn't mean that the risk is necessarily less. Heroin is making a comeback, especially in rural areas, post-prescription drug crackdown, and the sort of violence that a heroin brings to an area instantly reaches all corners of the illicit world. It's not like the money and the weed that a weed dealer has can't buy heroin, after all. I tell you this to try and describe the mindset of a person who doesn't care about the bad things that happen to drug dealers, because I also pretty much don't, in my day to day. This one I do care about, because this is a fucking horrible thing to have happen to anybody, and nothing I've ever known comes even remotely close (I know a guy stabbed to death over meth, that's the most violent), but I can understand not applying the same standards to drug dealers, or people involved in drugs. I can understand not wanting to apply the full measure of grief that actually engaging with this event occurring in your community warrants. No one likes the guy who sells drugs except the people who buy drugs. I'm the last person on earth to argue that weed is an inherent ill, but it also isn't just a universal good either. It can be seen, totally legitimately and especially in that sort of place, as a really serious social ill. Weed ain't all fancy strains and vaping, sometimes it's basically alcohol by a different path. It can be equally destructive and has little of the massive human history and acceptance of alcohol sales. This means something bad happens, even really bad, it's easier to not take it on yourself when it happens to a drug dealer. What were they going to do, sell more drugs? It's not a good mindset, but it's also not a totally inconceivable and crazy mindset either. And why would they take the measure of mourning that this crime requires when they already have troubles aplenty, there is cause to believe that they succumbed to bad ways of making a living, maybe they were a family that was thought to be 'trash', probably for bad reasons, maybe they were a family that was thought of well and this is hugely embarrassing and even more hurtful, almost certainly there is no risk to the greater community. They aren't monsters any more than a middle-class person who doesn't 'care' about international tragedies are, they are just people who put this tragedy outside of the category of ones they have time to worry about. It's so far not looking like they are wrong.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:40:15 -0800

My main problem with this piece is that when the author encounters a part of life there that she doesn't immediately understand or have a stereotype to fall back on, she chalks it up to this infuriating sense of 'mysterious rural people' with their strange and [inscrutable] ways. Just this. There's an air of trying way too hard, often to the point of ridiculousness; take, for example, the description of a demolition derby as "Thousands of people from Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere had come to watch boxes destroy themselves." I imagine some undergrad turning in a piece to their creative writing class, and the instructor reading that passage, enunciating each word, then turning to the student and just looking at them for a while over their reading glasses, then picking up a couple of empty boxes, knocking them together, and asking, "Is that what was going on?" There was also the irritating bits of reporting every mean thing that people said to her, long after she'd already admitted to bringing her friend along as Speaker to Rednecks.

By: neonrev

neonrev — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:58:38 -0800

often to the point of ridiculousness; take, for example, the description of a demolition derby as "Thousands of people from Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere had come to watch boxes destroy themselves." I feel similarly, and also that it's the other side of the "Fancy Elites go to watch a bunch of dudes in tights prance about on a stage" intentional ignorance of other cultures coin, except that one of those opinions is mostly expressed person to person, and the other has think pieces written about it, and the author pretends at recognizing their biases.

By: Snarl Furillo

Snarl Furillo — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 03:18:15 -0800

In lieu of headstones, which came at additional cost, each person's name had been spelled out on plastic cards stuck into the ground You could pay a million fucking dollars for a tombstone and no cemetery in America would let you erect the goddamn thing five weeks after the burial. The ground has to settle in the grave, and that takes months. My main problem with this piece is that when the author encounters a part of life there that she doesn't immediately understand or have a stereotype to fall back on, she chalks it up to this infuriating sense of 'mysterious rural people' with their strange and instructable ways. Exactly.

By: Snarl Furillo

Snarl Furillo — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 04:02:16 -0800

I suspect this falls into the category of "everyone knows who did it and why and it's none of their business." Yeah, I had forgotten this until just now, but the names of the perpetrators of a few "unsolved" crimes in my hometown are considered public knowledge, along with the names of a few unindicted co-conspirators in other crimes and times when the wrong person got the better deal from the DA. Also, everyone knows which kids got stern warnings from the Secret Service for printing counterfeit twenties on their home printer, despite the fact that they weren't charged and officially their names were withheld. I think the remainder of the callousness came from her choice of sources. You ask the loud drunk dude about the grisly murders in another town, "Write about my dick" is exactly what you're gonna get. I would bet a lot of money that everyone at the demolition derby was relaying their impression of Piketon generally and not the murdered family, who they almost certainly did not know. One of the many weird things about busted-up small towns is that everyone believes that the surrounding towns are uniquely redneck and toothless (full of scrot bags, I guess!), unlike THEIR town, which is safe and classy and a great place to raise a family.

By: kevinbelt

kevinbelt — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 12:03:42 -0800

I finally got around to finishing this article. I started it at work, then continued at home last night, but fell asleep unexpectedly. There was one line, repeated a couple of times, that stuck out to me: "You haven't seen that sort of poverty before" Because I can still remember the first time I drove through Pike County. It was 22 years ago, my 14th birthday. My family was going on vacation to Virginia Beach, and somehow (maybe construction on the interstate?), our AAA TripTik had routed us down US-23 South. Now, I grew up in a pretty poor environment. My high school had the lowest standardized test scores in the state of Ohio my senior year, and the highest teen pregnancy rate. My job as a crossing guard in fifth grade was to escort people across a street into the entrance of a housing project. I had to give up Little League baseball around the same time because drug dealers kept shooting each other at the park we played at. On a different note, my uncle had lived for a time in college in a trailer on his sister/my aunt's farm in eastern Ohio. So I'd been around poor people before. But Pike County was something else. As they say in the article, I really had not seen poverty like that before, even just from the busy highway. God only knows what you'd see if you turned off on a country road. And this was two decades ago, before NAFTA, before Walmart, before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, before the opioid epidemic (which hit this part of the country really hard, before Trumpism. I doubt the intervening time has made it any better. That said, it does seem like the writer came to some of her fieldwork with conclusions in mind. She couldn't find anywhere else to talk to people except a Walmart, a megachurch, a dive bar, and a demolition derby? Were there no banjo-strumming guides to take her on a canoe trip? I mean there's a Kiwanis Club in Waverly (which is misspelt in the article, btw), and a Chamber of Commerce. 15 miles up the road (near where the demolition derby was held), there's a branch campus of public university, a bookstore, a law library. The people there might not have much to say about the Rhoden murders, but it couldn't be much less illuminating than "write about my dick". She went looking for hillbillies behaving like hillbillies, and that's what she found. She seems to have left off part of the closing conversation. When Allis told her to "stop trying to make this a novel", she apparently responded "you're right, I'll just throw a bunch of rural clichés together and call it an article". ----- Also, how have we gotten so many comments without anybody mentioning that the article covers the death of Harambe? What kind of internet is this?

By: Sequence

Sequence — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 13:41:40 -0800

Also, how have we gotten so many comments without anybody mentioning that the article covers the death of Harambe? What kind of internet is this? I didn't think much of this at the time, but was kind of reflecting on it just now. I think people seem to have a bit of a distorted idea how much the average person knows/cares about the news, generally. Growing up in a small town, the news about local events mattered for two things: Is this relevant to me personally, or is this interesting to talk about? The only way deaths like this remain interesting on a personal level to people is if they were close to the family, or if people are genuinely worried that there's one or more serial killers out on the loose who might show up at their house next. The drugs angle gave people what they needed there, whether or not it's accurate. Drugs, family drama--people have generally gotten enough suggestion that Stuff Was Wrong With Those People that they don't think this was a random act of violence, and they don't think it's going to happen to them. Maybe they take a few more safety precautions than they used to, but they're able to sleep at night. Which leaves, basically, the non-office equivalent of water cooler talk. In which this stayed interesting precisely as long as Harambe did. In which this was a curiosity, a weird thing that happened, an indication of how fucked up the world is. But people don't act on that sort of thing. They don't linger over that sort of thing. And you know, I don't, either, it's not just a "those hicks" thing. I am not going to live any differently now than I did before I read this article. That's what feels exploitative about it. This wasn't written to get people to do anything. It was just written to be... interesting. For a moment. And then we move on, and who exactly are we to judge the people who happen to live closer to the event for doing the same? It's not a "poor people" thing, it's not a "rural people" thing, it's just that if you can't give me any idea what to do about it, I have a thousand things higher on my priority list than solving this family's problems. I can't judge anybody else for feeling the same, even if they happen to live in closer geographic proximity.

By: ArbitraryAndCapricious

ArbitraryAndCapricious — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 14:55:13 -0800

Ok, so I was thinking about something. Is anyone here from DC? How much do people talk about the murder of the Savopoulos family in 2015? I remember my mom talking about it right after it happened, and then at some point I asked her if there was any news about it and she said something about how she didn't even want to think about it anymore. (The murders were particularly brutal, and one of the victims was a ten-year-old.) The Savapouloses were the opposite of trash: they were rich people who seem to have been killed in a kidnapping for ransom scheme, and as far as I can tell, nobody thinks they did anything to invite it other than be rich. And I don't think that people in DC talk about it too much, not because they think that the family had it coming, but because it's just a little bit too terrible to contemplate. Also, there are no lessons to be taken from it, other than that sometimes terrible people do terrible things. I don't think that my mom thinks that any ten year old in the world deserves to be tortured and murdered, and that's not why she decided that she didn't want to think about it anymore. But you could totally write a story about how people in DC hate the rich or are too self-absorbed to care or whatever, if you talked to the right people and chose to spin it that way.