"It felt cool to kill...."

[cali]

MONT VERNON – Murder was always part of the plan when four young men agreed to break in to a local home and "just kill the people...for fun," according to one of the alleged killers who told police it felt "cool" to kill the mother but regretted her 11-year-old daughter lived.

Cristopher A. Gribble, 20, admitted he and Steven Spader, 18, stood on either side of the bed where Kimberly L. Cates was sleeping with her daughter Jaimie during the Oct. 4 pre-dawn home invasion at 4 Trow Road, court documents released today reveal.

While their two friends watched from the doorway, Spader attacked Kimberly Cates, 42, with a machete in the darkened bedroom, Gribble said. When her daughter tried to jump over her mother, Gribble said he stabbed the girl in the face and chest with a long, thin knife and tried to kill her by stabbing her in the heart, court documents show.

Gribble said he then threw the girl against a sliding glass door and, assuming she was dead, delivered final blows to her mother's neck and chest.

When the men learned from online media later that day that the girl survived, Gribble said Spader and Autumn Savoy, 20, of Hollis, chided him for not succeeding in killing Jaimie.

"At least I killed (mine)," Spader told Gribble, according to Gribble's account to police.

<snip>

http://www.theunionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Accused+killers+showed+no+remorse+during+questioning&articleId=3da13ef6-54d0-40fc-aae5-00f87a335ac4

throw away the key. No parole ever. Yes, they're young, but they deserve life.

[Laura902]

1. PUT THOSE SADISTIC SUB-HUMANS AWAY FOREVER n/t!!!!!!!!!

[Blue Owl]

2. No words

:cry:

[Kerrytravelers]

3. It is so sad that young people throw their lives away. How did they become what they are?

What a horribly sad story.

[notadmblnd]

23. The answer to that question lays with their parents

[Berry Cool]

31. Actually, it may not.

If they're sociopaths, which it sounds like they are, they may have been born that way. No one may have been able to change it.

If you're born without a conscience, nobody can give you one. The most any parent can do is train kids to recognize the presence of a conscience that has empathy for others and can discern right from wrong. If a kid is born with a brain so warped it doesn't possess a conscience, there may be nothing to do other than lock up and throw away the key.

[notadmblnd]

33. you would think that they would be alert enough to know something is wrong with their child?

and just ignoring it, is a form of neglect. I don't think that people that are born with out consciences can simply hide it for years and years, then all of a sudden it expresses itself.

I stand by what I said, the answer lays with the parents. I didn't say it was their fault (before anyone else goes off on me), but they are the ones that have the answers.

[surrealAmerican]

56. I disagree.

I don't think anyone is actually born with a conscience. It's something young children develop over years of interacting with adults and other children. All infants seem to have is a desire to interact with other people, and an understanding of their own helplessness. A good parent can turn that into empathy.

Something went horribly wrong with these people, but they were prenatally predestined to behave this way.

[cliffordu]

4. Execution. Public execution.

[TK421]

6. the slowest kind possible....nothing else will do n/t

[redqueen]

7. Death is too good for them. (nt)

[cali]

22. No. That's just revolting.

[CakeGrrl]

27. Agreed.

There are some people who just are not fit to coexist in society, and I'm not inclined to have part of my hard-earned money being spent on their room and board behind bars.

I just watched an episode of "Forensic Files" where a teenage girl was killed by a man who had killed before; but because he shot a woman in the back as a teenager, he only did six months and got a clean slate.

Not everyone can be rehabilitated. If you do the crime beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, you get the punishment. Or else some other innocent may pay the price.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

41. That would be so cool to publically execute.

:rofl:

[NNN0LHI]

54. Pick-pockets would be all for it

[Fumesucker]

5. Why does this sort of thing seem to happen regularly in the USA?

And so seldom in many other nations?

[cali]

8. it happens other places

you're in a U.S. centric news system.

[Fumesucker]

9. I didn't say it *never* happens..

But it happens with boringly consistent regularity in the US, less so in many other nations.

[proteus_lives]

10. Well, we don't have neighborhood wide slaughters, ethic conflict or mass graves.

That happens in other parts of the world.

[Fumesucker]

13. In first world nations?

Not that I've noticed.

And the neighborhood slaughters and ethnic conflicts in Iraq were largely triggered by the US invasion..

[proteus_lives]

19. And before, they were triggered by Saddam.

I guess my point is, in first world nations the craziness is in individuals. But I could provide you a list of international spree and serial killers.

[Fumesucker]

32. How many suicide bombers were there in Iraq before 2003?

It's nearly an every day event there now..

[proteus_lives]

38. None, because Saddam had his foot on the population.

If US occupying forces were as harsh as his regime, there wouldn't be any bombers now either.

[Fumesucker]

40. We destroyed their infrastucture and turned Iraq into a fundamentalist state..

It was the most secular state in the ME before we invaded, now religious woo woo has largely taken over the populace..

Women had far higher status and more freedom before the US invaded..

I read Riverbend's blog for a considerable time, the young lady documented the results of the US invasion and occupation on the average Iraqi citizen in graphically horrifying detail.. I recommend it for those who think our invasion was such a great idea..

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

[proteus_lives]

42. I don't think the invasion was a great idea.

There's nothing in that desert shit-hole that's worth American lives or coin.

But I'm not going to pretend that Saddam was a great guy because I hated bush and the invasion.

Anyone who longs for the good old days of Saddam is deluded or they were profiting from the regime.

[Fumesucker]

43. I think a lot of Iraqi women long for the good old days of Saddam..

Riverbend seemed to be saying that before she left the country..

Edited to add: And that desert shithole had a high civilization when my ancestors were painting themselves blue and dancing around Stonehenge..

[proteus_lives]

47. They long for the days of Saddam's rapists and political executions?

Huh.

It's shithole because American men and women are over there dying for the wrong reasons. That makes it a shithole that's not worth American lives and treasures.

We should pull out and let them fight it out.

[slackmaster]

12. We have way more people than most other nations

Our bell curves are all taller and wider than those of smaller nations. Our extremes are more extreme, and we have more of them.

[Fumesucker]

17. Even proportionally I think this sort of thing happens more often in the US

Than most other first world nations..

People going out and slaughtering each other is just a regular feature on our news, not so much in many other, often much more croweded, nations.

[Bucky]

53. Possibly so. If you live in Iraq and have an impulse to kill, you have more social outlets

This post was meant ironically.

One thing I've gotten out of studying history regularly is some broader perspective on human nature. This story, while horrifying, is not demonstration of an increased level of senseless violence in American society. Local lords doing this sort of thing to insolent peasants in the middle ages would not be called "senseless violence." Drug gangs in Mexico today doing this sort of thing to households they're feuding with are called "drug related violence" while a contra gang in Nicaragua doing this same thing a generation ago would be committing "human rights abuses." On more than a few occasions Genghis Khan (among a slew of Eurasian despots from Tamurlane to Catherine the Great) did this sort of thing against whole cities. If this crime was done in this country 150 years ago, they'd just call it "winning the West."

But it's all the same stuff and it seems to happen a good deal less in today's United States than it does in, say, Rwanda or Sri Lanka or Afghanistan.

[virgogal]

21. This happens regularly? I doubt it.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

11. I'm against capital punishment. And I want these people dead.

I guess that's why it would be nice to have capital punishment banned by law. Because sometimes I read these stories and think about my own family. And then I think that I want these heartless bastards dead. Still, I don't want us to answer killing with killing, because in the end it doesn't solve anything, and punishment should be meted out with the passion removed.

That said, it's my sincere hope that these motherfuckers have lots and lots of opportunity to think about what it will be like to spend their 5th consecutive Christmas in a maximum security prison. Then they can contemplate what it will be like to spend their 20th consecutive Christmas in prison. Then they can think about dying alone in prison at a ripe old age after a long, long life of deprivation. Live long and rot, you useless fucks.

[Kerrytravelers]

20. OMG. You sound exactly like Mr. kt. Is that you????

We feel the same way. Punishment should be passionless and consistent with the crime. What makes me sad is when I wonder how people become like this. Think about a newborn, a toddler, and then think about what it would take to make that innocent little being change in a few short years to something that could be so vicious.

That being said, I'd like to wring their necks.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

29. I am not he, but it sounds like we all agree

And you bring up a fascinating point about where along a progression this happens. I'm not in the right field to have good answers for nature vs. nurture questions, but in my view, everyone starts out pretty much completely innocent of anything (teachings of some churches notwithstanding). I don't know if these kids/young adults were of means, but it didn't sound as though they led deprived lives. I'm not trying to play the naive card either. I just don't understand how someone can turn out to be so....so sociopathic.

[HillbillyBob]

28. I am ambivalent to death penalty considering how many innocents

get railroaded..

I have a better idea..lock them up with Cheney in some undisclosed location.
Brick up the room and push food to them on a little tray, not enough to ever be full. Then again that is cruel and unusual(these days).
Cheney would find the lack of intellectual stimulation hell.:sarcasm:
I have not come up with a satisfactory punishment for rove, (*), rummy, rice and the rest..there are a few Ds that could benefit from some loss of 'freedom' too. :dilemma:

[Faygo Kid]

14. Bring it, cowards. Bring it now.

Awful story, but one that had to be posted.

[Libertas1776]

15. sick murderous fucks

may they rot in hell, but not before rotting in prison for the rest of their mortal existence. Of course, I wouldn't bat an eye if they were given the DP.

[Canuckistanian]

16. Mount Vernon - isn't that where Glenn Beck comes from? n/t

[cali]

18. No. This happened in NH. Beck was born in Washington State

[virgogal]

25. Poor NH. The Dartmouth murders and now this.

[cali]

30. A pair of particularly creepy murders that seemingly have quite a bit in common.

[virgogal]

34. Exacty. I read "Judgement Ridge" about the Dartmouth murders

and it absolutely horrified me.

No real answers---very troubling,and frightening.

[Laura902]

24. I wish i believed in a God

just so these disgusting, vile, fuckers would burn in hell forever!!!:grr:

[WeDidIt]

26. Just a reminder, New Hampshire has the death penalty

I believe they would qualify under New Hampshire law, too.

Since they've pretty much confessed, getting the death penalty should be a slam dunk, too.

[BB1]

35. Has the army drafted them yet?

They are a few killers short in various wars.

[PacerLJ35]

49. Ah, yes...because they are cold-blooded killers then obviously they are cut of the same cloth...

You know, our military is full of people who'd murder anyone "for the fun of it".

[Shell Beau]

61. So you are equating these assholes to the men and women in our

armed forces? Niiiiiiice. :eyes:

[LeftinOH]

36. Look at these monsters:

Stephen Spader and Christopher Gribble:

-just today, Spader announced that he regretted not killing the 11-year-old girl (whose toes were chopped off with a machete).

Quinn Glover and William Marks:


You have to wonder what kind of 'parents' produce children like this- sickening.
http://www.theunionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Four+arrested+in+brutal+murder+of+NH+mom&articleId=adebed4a-86e4-4b29-838c-e65d632ecc83

[cali]

39. a little about Spader

MONT VERNON, N.H. (WBZ) ―

Click to enlarge
1 of 1
17-year-old Steven Spader is accused of driving the four to the house and cutting Kim Cates with a machete.

AP

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numSlides of totalImages
The upscale Brookline, NH home where Steven Spader was raised, belies the turbulent direction of his life the last several months.

Prosecutors say the dark finale came Sunday, when Spader allegedy led a quartet of teens who stabbed Kim Cates to death in her home, and left her 11-year-old daughter Jaimie, seriously injured.

One of the suspect's fathers says he warned his son that Spader was trouble.

"I've been trying to get him away from Stevie for, since I met Stevie in April. And you know, what do you do with your kids? Do you lock them up?" said James Marks, father of 18-year-old William Marks.

In February, another man told police that Spader threatened to kill him, before abducting his daughter and holding her in a car trunk for days. The girl was said to be Spader's 'sometimes' girlfriend. The father was trying to end the relationship.

The charges against Spader didn't hold, but he did spend some in jail for stealing stereo gear in May and threatening another teen with a tire iron in June.

<snip>
http://wbztv.com/local/newhampshire/steven.spader.kim.2.1234653.html

[canetoad]

37. Here is what I find the most disturbing

....the alleged killers who told police it felt "cool" to kill....

Cool? The full horror of their deeds, the implications of destroying another human simply for the sake of sensation, the morality (or lack thereoff) of cold-blooded murder - all reduced, without introspection, to the word 'cool'.

This is monstrous.

[gopwacker_455]

44. sadistic bastards

[ljm2002]

45. Seems to me all four of them should get life without parole...

...even the two who did not physically commit the murder and attempted murder, stood there and watched. So I'm not getting how their charges do not include conspiracy to commit murder, along with the two who actually committed the murder and mayhem.

That poor mother and daughter. I'm glad the daughter lived, but horrified at what she endured and of course the loss of her mother.

Still against the death penalty though. Better they should rot for the rest of their natural lives, preferably in solitary confinement with at most an hour outside each and every day of their miserable existence.

[live love laugh]

46. I'm sickened. nt

[seeinfweggos]

48. Spader and Gribble said they cased a house that was "in the middle of nowhere" because "it had no

security"

if they somehow managed to break into my home they would not have broken out.

[Shell Beau]

50. Sick sick sick sick!!

That poor family. Sadistic assholes. Rot in hell assholes!

[votingupstart]

51. wow... i am usually not for the death penalty... however... i do make exceptions sometimes

[HughBeaumont]

52. Stick them all in the GP.

Murdering a mom and attempted killing of a child "just for the fun of it"? They'll wish they were dead after about a year.

[PM Martin]

55. May they spend their days in the horrors of

a maximum security prison. May they spend their days in confinement without sunlight. May their end come after suffering in the horrors of gray concrete blocks. Let it be known to the world their fate so that it discourages anyone from doing this again.

[Hannah Bell]

57. here's another irredeemable monster

The two teenage girls, who had concocted a rich fantasy life together populated with famous actors such as James Mason and Orson Welles, did not want to be separated. They had hoped to go to England with Hulme's father after the divorce.

On 22 June 1954, the girls took Honora Rieper for a walk in Victoria Park in their hometown of Christchurch. On an isolated path Hulme dropped an ornamental stone so that Ms. Rieper would lean over to retrieve it. At that point, Parker had planned to hit her mother with half a brick wrapped in a stocking. The girls presumed that would kill the woman. Instead, it took 45 frenzied blows from both girls to finally kill Honora Rieper. The brutality of the crime has contributed to its notoriety.

After being released from prison, Hulme...took the name Anne Perry, the latter being her stepfather's surname.

Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published under this name in 1979... As of 2003 she had published 47 novels, and several collections of short stories. Her story "Heroes", which first appeared in the 1999 anthology Murder and Obsession, edited by Otto Penzler, won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Perry

[cali]

60. I'm quite familiar with that history and it's not really analogous

horrific as it was.

[Lars39]

65. Damn.

And here I thought I'd found a pretty neat author. :(

[Initech]

58. Fucking sick pieces of shit.

[varelse]

59. Yes, they're young

are they human?

Wow.

[LaydeeBug]

62. Oh, they'll get paroled early because some three strikes weed smoker is deemed more of a threat. nt

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

63. They should be executed.

[flvegan]

64. Punishment.

Life in prison. No parole, no death penalty. General population.

60 years of fear...mental and physical suffering.

Yes, if convicted, that sounds right.

[Initech]

66. Fuck the death penalty.... These guys are due for a visit from Dexter.

[Heidi]

67. So many here describe people like this as "sick." Is thrown away forever how we treat the "sick"?

I hope not.

[TexasObserver]

68. Assuming they're found guilty in a fair trial, life imprisonment is proper.

I'm always amazed at the vengeful attitude of some at DU, as if they're having a contest to see who can be the most outraged. The crime was terrible, but it's the act of individuals, and if they are sick, then they need incarceration and treatment, but not parole.

Compare that to the actions of police, beating to death a prisoner, as happens several times a year in the US. With few exceptions, little is done. Where's the outrage?

Or consider our military. We send in troops and mercenaries to kill civilians whose main crime is not liking being invaded by a bunch of infidels and told how to live. Women, children, old people. Crimes that are just as bad as the one in the OP. Where's the outrage for them? Where's all that bluster and big talk about justice for the dead?

I agree with you that life imprisonment is appropriate. My comments are more directed at those who always have to talk about how mad they are and how much they would like to beat, torture, kill the perps. We prosecute the accused. We give them a fair trial. If they're sick, we try to get them treatment.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell happened to progressives in this party. Twenty years ago, you couldn't call yourself a progressive or a liberal if you favored the death penalty.