Coleen Ritzer: A Legacy To Leave Behind 2

In “Coleen Ritzer: A Legacy to Leave Behind,” I explored issues of crime, gun control and gun-free school zones.  All of those contemporary arguments combined to leave a fine young woman dead.  In that article, I wrote:

Coleen Ritzer

Were I investigating this crime, I would be certain to follow up on one very likely and obvious possibility: rape.  In crimes of this kind, rape is often a primary factor, if not as the ultimate motivation, then as a secondary, opportunistic humiliation of the victim.  The suggestion that Chism was infatuated with Ritzer makes that possibility more likely.

Significantly, the Daily Mail has provided what I knew would be found:  “The 14-year-old student accused of raping, robbing and murdering his high school math teacher used a tree branch to sexually assault her and left a hate note next to her body, it has been revealed.

Philip Chism left a folded piece of paper with the words ‘I hate you all’ next to the corpse of Colleen Ritzer after he slit her throat in a bathroom and left her body in a ‘sexually staged’ position at Danvers High School in Massachusetts, according to court court papers.

The documents also describe how Chism’s parents were going through a difficult divorce and the student had become visibly upset at Miss Ritzer after she asked him to stay behind after class on the day of the killing, according to the Boston Herald.

Miss Ritzer, 24, had asked Chism and another student to stay behind on 22 October and began talking about Tennessee – the state where Chism used to live – causing him to become distressed.

Chism, whose mother left his father and moved away this summer, was seen talking to himself quietly after his teacher changed the subject.

He wore gloves and a mask as he followed Ritzer into a second-floor bathroom after the argument armed with a box cutter.

He raped her, slit her throat with the box cutter, wheeled her body outside in a large recycling bin and dumped it in the woods behind the school. Her body was found naked from the waist down with the three foot branch still inside her corpse, which was covered in leaves. HR Bra was pulled down and her top pulled up.

An unidentified woman also walked into the bathroom as Chism committed his terrible crime at 3pm, but left quickly when she saw his naked behind and clothes on the floor. She told police that she assumed someone was changing in the bathroom.

Chism was also seen on CCTV emerging from the bathroom after killing Miss Ritzer, leaving the building and using a service elevator to return with a recycling bin in which he stuffed her body.

The new details come after Chism was indicted in a Massachusetts court on charges of murder, aggravated rape and armed robbery on Thursday.

As one might suspect, there is more:

District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett also said in court on Thursday the teen stole her iPhone, credit cards and underwear. He was found with her underwear and a bloody knife in his bag.

‘The indictments returned today detail horrific and unspeakable acts,’ District Attorney said.

Despite all of this information, some are still confused about Chism’s motivations:

The new developments come after MailOnline revealed that Chism confessed to carrying out the attack, according to officers attached to the case, and that he was caught on security cameras at Danvers High School, Massachusetts, dumping the body, covered in blood.

But despite fully cooperating with police, telling them exactly what happened during the October 22 tragedy, the Freshman soccer star refuses to tell anyone why he did it.

MOTIVES:

When horrific crimes of this sort occur, people are dumbstruck.  “Why would anyone do that?  What was their motive?”  At such times, I do my best to explain, but most people simply can’t process the explanation.  It’s just too frightening to accept because reality does not provide them protection.  There is nothing they can do to magically ward off that kind of evil, to render them selves immune.  People want to believe that they won’t be attacked, raped with a tree branch and slashed to death in a bathroom.  The truth is, there is no shield against criminal attack, only precautions and means of defeating it.

Philip Chism

Why did Chism do it?  The police have several theories: he wanted Ritzer sexually, but she rebuffed him.  He was afraid if he failed her math class, he couldn’t play soccer.  These are both plausible theories, but they explain little.  Millions of kids have crushes on attractive teachers.  Millions of kids fail a class and are temporarily prevented from participating in athletics or other school activities.  They don’t brutally rape and murder anyone.  What makes Chism different from the overwhelming majority of 14 year-olds–or adults, for that matter–that deal with such stresses every day without resorting to violence?

Often, criminals act for no reason other than that they want to do it.  Rapists like to rape, to beat, torture and hurt their victims.  They derive immense pleasure from their acts.  Even burglars, thieves and non-violent criminals act because they enjoy what they do, even deriving a kind of sexual thrill.  They often think themselves smarter, more cunning than others.  They may think themselves superior, possessed of a kind of insight others lack, but ultimately, they do it because they want to do it and they like it.

That’s scary.

It’s scary because there is no way to prevent that kind of behavior.  In most cases, there is no way to predict it.  As in similar cases, those that knew Chism, his soccer coach, fellow players, classmates, even his parents, can’t understand why Chism (allegedly) went off the deep end.  They say he was the nicest kid on the soccer team, quiet, never violent, the last person anyone would suspect.  This too is common and makes this kind of violence so inexplicable.

Is Chism a sociopath, someone essentially lacking a conscience?  Does he feel nothing for the suffering of others, or is he a sadist, delighting in that suffering?  Perhaps a combination of both?  Or do we just need to have names for that kind of unimaginable cruelty, because if we name something, it implies we understand and can control it?  We certainly need to feel we are in control.

Chism has reportedly confessed in full, but has refused to explain why he did it.  This too is common.  Killers and other criminals often delight in withholding that kind of information, knowing that it continues to hurt the survivors of their crimes and vexes the police.  They delight in exercising control over others, in torturing others even though they are behind bars and can’t do it in person.

Or is Chism simply someone who saw an opportunity to act out a fantasy and took it, believing in his juvenile lack of rational thought and experience that he could get away with it?  That too provides no comfort.  It’s one thing to shoplift or steal something from an unlocked car.  This is something else.  He stole and kept her underwear.  He stole and used her credit cards.  He had to know–intellectually–he’d be caught.

LESSONS:

As I noted in the first article, Coleen Ritzer once spoke of leaving a legacy behind.  Perhaps a part of that legacy can be knowledge that can help prevent what happened to her.  Understand that I do not for a moment blame Coleen Ritzer for her rape and murder.  One person and one person alone is wholly responsible, and he has admitted to his acts.

Lesson 1: Sociopaths and criminals of all types surround us.  They are everywhere.  We pass them on the sidewalk, we stand by them in lines at supermarkets and movies.  We don’t hear their thoughts as they imagine what they’d do to us and our wives and children if they had the chance, but they think them just the same.  They don’t look like sociopaths.  They look normal.  We virtually never find out who they are until they act, and even then, in many cases, not until they have acted many, many times, leaving a bloody trail of misery and tears.

Lesson 2: In dealing with such people the media will not be helpful.  The media have certain narratives to maintain, and they’ll warp the facts–or simply manufacture them–to support those narratives.  The media hates to report on black people attacking white people, thus do we have little media coverage on gangs of black kids assaulting and killing white men and women in the  “knockout game.”  It is white people that are supposedly attacking helpless blacks, you see, as in the Trayvon Martin case.  More and more, I’ve come to rely on the British press for in-depth, honest reporting on such issues, which leads to a related lesson:  

Lesson 3: Juveniles are as dangerous, even more dangerous, than adult criminals. In the Trayvon Martin case, the media played up the false narrative that Martin was a tiny, harmless, cherubic child, much smaller and lighter than George Zimmerman.  In fact, he was much taller and not much lighter than Zimmerman.  In addition, he had the lean musculature of an athletic juvenile and the lack of experience and impulse control common in teenagers.

Phillip Chism was 6’2” tall and obviously strong.  Any such teenager will be able to overpower and seriously hurt, even kill, most adult women.  The male advantage in upper body strength, aggressiveness, and propensity to violence is an overwhelming factor in any confrontation between men and women, and it applies with most teenagers.

Lesson 4: There is only one means of equalizing the force disparity between men and women: concealed handguns.  From what is know, Chism struck Ritzer in the face, obviously stunning her, but had she been armed, the encounter may have turned out very differently. It’s possible that she was unconscious from the first blow, but the point is she was denied the possibility of equality of force, of protecting her life.  She had no chance.

The other related issue is that if people know their victims may be armed, they are deterred.  This is the advantage of concealed carry.  In states where criminals know citizens can carry concealed firearms, they have to behave as though everyone was carrying.  This gives an advantage to even unarmed citizens, but particularly to those who are carrying.

Lesson 5:  “Gun-free” zones deprive the law-abiding of the ability to protect their lives as effectively as states that deny citizens the right to concealed carry in general.  It is the law-abiding, those that threaten no one, that obey the law.  Teachers face threats not only from crazed shooters, but from their students.  Any teacher can tell about students they keep an eye on, students they fear will one day do violence.  These threats are worse in some parts of the country, such as inner city schools, or schools on the east and west coasts.  It is particularly ironic that those schools are often full of people that would delight in denying others the right to protect their lives, people who think that “gun-free” zones magically prevent deadly violence.

Final Thoughts:

On the day that Phillip Chism–for whatever combination of reasons or motivations–decided to demonstrate who he really is–Coleen Ritzer, by all accounts a decent, dedicated, caring young woman, was going about her business, teaching and doing her best to help a young man who needed help with mathematics.

She didn’t know a monster was sitting in her classroom.  Probably, she didn’t know there are always monsters sitting in classrooms and everywhere else.

Perhaps Colleen Ritzer would not have chosen to arm herself even if it were possible, but she never had the chance.  When she needed a handgun to save her life, there was no possibility she could have had one, and she died in a brutal, horrifying way.

And now, because we have elected politicians who value making statements and promoting dangerous, politically correct gestures rather than upholding the unalienable rights of citizens, we, the surviving citizens of these United States, will support Phillip Chism for the rest of his long, natural life, and Coleen Ritzer will be, forever, 24.