Can the dead talk?

I've always been interested in criminology and came very close during the end of my college years at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh back in '91 to pursue a career in law enforcement. Part of it was because of my Grandfather who was a Waltham, MA cop, I guess part of it was doing something of worth.

Ironically 90% of my experience with police hasn't been the greatest, but I do believe that there are good police out there trying to do the right thing no matter how much bullshit they need to deal with to get a case turned from red to black.

Needless to say I'm a huge fan of police dramas, books, television, movies etc. Though I find myself rooting for both sides sometimes. Not certain what that means-

This brings me to how I found Miss Brittany Tate, a 21 year old woman from Indianapolis who was killed at the beginning of October of this year. I became aware of Miss Tate from a site called MyDeathSpace.com I had come across this site a few years ago after stumbling across several MySpace pages where the victims & killers pages still existed. It was always an eerie feeling to me to view information like this. I have read non-fiction books about crime scene investigations and have also done boat loads of research on serial killers, the mentally insane and your average criminal. People fascinate me, this is coming from a reccluse of course. But I think what it is, is that they interest me in their actions and I always find myself asking WHY? No matter if the crime has been solved or the killer has confessed, it's always a nagging question in my mind.

Now I go further back to a conversation I was having with my business partner about several projects that we're working on. Both "Sever" and "Frozen" are films that I wrote based off of research, personal experience and stories I've heard over the years etc. "Write what you know," RIGHT?

I guess, but most of my characters in these stories have a beginning middle and an end. With the exception of usually the protagonists who makes a decision and in the end someone is either hurt or killed. Then we as the audience follow and try to figure out why or accept what is happeing in front of us. Sometimes it's satsifactory but within my world of writing I've never come to a complete closure when it comes to characters I write, especially the bad guys or what I call the "grey guys". I guess it's because I've never been happy with the answers I've read or watched in various docs etc. where the "bad guy" gives his excuse why. Which usually placates the listener. So I find it very difficult to give my characters their answers because frankly after years of writing and doing the research, I guess there is no dead-on answer..DAHH No kidding...perhaps.

This brings me back to Miss Tate, I discovered an except on MyDeadSpace which was dated October 3rd 2008. So tonight I did a Google search to see if there was any further news on the case and there was. The full link is below which goes into detail.

She was shot in the head after asking her boyfriend's friend to "not play with a loaded gun" which was what he was doing in the backseat of the car. He didn't like the fact that she told him what to do so he shot her in the head. Now her boyfriend and another friend were also in the car with them. Now I can theorize the WHY until I'm blue in the face and frankly I could probably give you a dead-on or a very close answer to why the boyfriend aided in helping them get rid of the body.

What disturbs me about this story that you can read here, Indianapolis News.

Is that, Miss Tate, who after she is killed and before they dump her body the boyfriend and his two buddies decided to- "abuse her corpse." Now this could mean anything, but I'm thinking the worst.

How could her boyfriend not only sit by and watch this happen, but also participate. This excerpt below from what I assume is a family friend said it perfectly.

"They were so-called friends and that was so-called her boyfriend and he loved her and they cared about each other," Chapman said. "How could they just throw her away, like she was nothing?"

Since the advent of the internet and sites like these, I find myself staying up late at night. Reading about people I've never heard of or even met and try to understand the WHY? Perhaps I never will, Perhaps I'll never accept the answer I'm given. I know it's not denial I'm just looking for a deeper meaning that I hope is there and not something so mundane as...

"I don't like you telling me what to do." Then ending a life of a 21 year old woman from Indianapolis.

If only she could tell us why?

- DW