The Miami Herald's Nikki Waller offers a simplistic and forgiving explanation as to why girls who knew that Thomas Daugherty, Billy Ammons, and Brian Hooks had beaten a homeless man to death didn't come forward:
It's a cliché that often holds true: Young women are attracted to bad boys. Experts say girls' attraction to dangerous, even violent boys, and their ability to emotionally detach themselves from the boys' crimes are typical of adolescence and symptomatic of modern teen life.
Is it also typical of the middle-aged? This pair are at least being held accountable for their actions:
As the hunt for fugitive Carlos Garay intensified on Friday, detectives arrested two women they say helped the accused rapist after he escaped by stealing an unmarked police car while in handcuffs.
Police charged Garay's girlfriend, Giannandrea Gonzalez, 35, and her friend, Lucelena Slyper, 43, with harboring a fugitive.
The two allegedly hid Garay in a warehouse Slyper rents to raise tropical fish.
''What's wrong with these broads? There can't be anything that great about this guy,'' said Phil Clark, who rents her the warehouses and land behind his West Kendall house.
Waller interviews Mitch Spero, director of Child & Family Psychologists, a local firm:
Teens can coolly compartmentalize in the face of murder, because the victims were not part of their community, Spero said.
A homeless man with seemingly no family or attachments becomes ''almost not a person,'' he said.
Mr. Spero must have forgotten about this case, made into the movie "River's Edge":
A teen-ager who the authorities said bragged to friends about killing his girlfriend pleaded guilty today to first-degree murder, ending his murder trial.
Anthony Jaques Broussard pleaded guilty to strangling 14-year-old Marcy Conrad despite a ruling by Judge John Flaherty of Santa Clara Superior Court that a diminished capacity defense could be used in the case.
The police said that the 17-year-old defendant displayed the corpse to friends who reportedly threw rocks at it and did not report it to the authorities. One youth covered the body with leaves so it could not be seen from the road. The corpse was found in a ravine near Milpitas, southeast of San Francisco.
No mention is made in the article of any criminal liability these girls might have for aiding fleeing felons or hindering prosecution. By Waller's lights, it's all just a part of growing up.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice)
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Previous postings:
No House Arrest For You, Little Man
Homeless Attackers Identified, Warrants Issued
Some Homeless Are More Equal Than Others
A Bit Of The Old Ultra-Violence In Ft. Lauderdale