Dennis Radar displayed the jitters of an actor more than the remorse of a killer at his sentencing yesterday…
Evil, like beauty, is [often] in the eye of the beholder. And, the moral relativism that now governs our lives makes what is deemed evil invariably debatable. For example, President Bush described Saddam Hussein as evil primarily because he used chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds. But, by that standard, it is arguable that U.S. President Harry Truman was evil because he dropped 2 atomic bombs on innocent Japanese civilians.
(Moreover, Bush himself has been described as evil for attacking Iraq under false pretenses, making the lives of most Iraqis far worse than it was under Saddam’s rule and refusing to withdraw American troops who are being picked off by Islamic insurgents like sitting ducks. Indeed, Cindy Sheehan – the fiendishly celebrated anti-war protester whose son was killed in Iraq – called him the “biggest terrorist in the world”. But I digress…)
Clearly, there is a probative correlation between one’s political orientation and who or what one describes as evil. But some people commit acts of such depravity (unrelated to any cause – however flawed or misguided) that they incite universal condemnation as personifications of “pure” evil. Dennis Radar’s ambition was to become one of them. In fact, he often lamented in his taunting (catch me if you can) letters to police that he was not getting the notoriety for his killings that his murdering peers like Ted Bundy, David (Son of Sam) Berkowitz and Jeffrey Dahmer got for their crimes. Alas, Radar must now consider himself a glorified success.
Radar, of course, is the self-described “BTK” serial killer who took great pride in methodically “hunting” human prey to [B]ind, [T]orture and [K]ill. (Please click here for my original article on his arrest.) And, he seemed to take perverse pleasure in confessing every detail of his crimes for which he was sentenced yesterday to 10 life terms (1 for each of his 10 victims).
Even though no reasonable person would deny that the things he did to his victims were pure evil, Radar’s evil nature became eerily manifest during his allocution to the court about his criminal acts. Lawyers sometimes use a Latin term called res ipsa loquitur to argue that “the thing speaks for itself”. Well, that term seems very apt to describe the evil that reeked from every word Radar uttered to explain and apologize for his crimes.
Click here and here for an instructive glimpse into the mind of a truly evil man. And, try to contain your disgust at the way he describes masturbating after each kill the way some people smoke cigarettes after sex. After all, it is important to be aware of this evil because – as Radar proves – it could be living next door….
News and Politics
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