Sometimes monsters get loose.
That’s Lawrence Paul Anderson above. He has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017—just a few years ago— for a probation violation in a drug case. He was granted clemency last year by the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board as part of a mass commutation program. Then, about three weeks after his release, Anderson forced his way into the Chickasha, Oklahoma home of Andrea Lynn Blankenship, 41. He killed her, then he cut out her heart. .He then took her heart across the street to the house of his aunt and uncle , cooked it with potatoes (personally, I prefer my human hearts with rice, but different strokes…) and tried to feed it to them “to release the demons,” he said later. Then Anderson attacked the couple and their 4-year-old granddaughter, killing his uncle and the little girl by stabbing them. Anderson’s aunt survived the attack but suffered stab wounds to both of her eyes.
The district attorney in charge of the case, Jason Hicks, said during a news conference last week that he might seek the death penalty for Anderson. “When is enough enough?” Hicks asked. “We have put politics and releasing inmates in front of public safety.”
Democrats in Congress have introduced a bill to eliminate the federal death penalty. I had just finished reading a standard issue op-ed diatribe against the death penalty when I learned about Anderson’s rampage. A couple of weeks earlier, I had seen the documentary on the horrific Cheshire, Connecticut home invasion, which I described in this post:
Planning to rob the home of the Petit family, the two broke into their house and found William Petit sleeping on a couch on the porch. Komisarjevsky bludgeoned him with a baseball bat and tied him up, leaving him bleeding and semi-conscious in the basement. The two men locked his wife, Jennifer, and their daughters, Hayley, 17, and Micheala, 11, in their bedrooms, as the invaders gathered money and valuables. Then Hayes forced Jennifer, at gunpoint, to withdraw $15,000 from the family’s bank account. After they returned from the bank, Komisarjevsky raped Michaela, the 11-year-old, and Hayes raped her mother. William Petit managed to escape the basement while this was happening, and crawled to a neighbor’s house to get help. Hayes strangled Mrs. Petit, poured gasoline on her corpse, around the house, and over both daughters, who were tied to their beds. Then Hayes and Komisarjevsky set everything aflame. 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela died from smoke inhalation before they could burn to death.
Hayes and Komisarjevsky were convicted and sentenced to die; Hayes wanted his lawyers to cease appealing. But while their lawyers were fighting the verdict and after the public’s memories faded, the Democratic Connecticut legislature abolished the death penalty in the state.
