The Washington Post reports that an internet escort in Charleston, W.Va., may have saved her own life and the lives of many other women, when she shot and killed an alleged attacker who showed up at the woman's home on July 18 after answering an escort ad she had placed on Backpage.com. Neal Falls showed up with multiple pairs of handcuffs and a Subaru full of weapons and tools, including a shovel, knives, a bulletproof vest, a machete, bleach, trash bags, sledgehammers and axes. In Falls's pocket, police said, was a list of names of potential future victims, all of whom are sex workers who advertised on Backpage. Investigators are trying to determine whether Falls is responsible for a string of slayings targeting sex workers in Ohio and Nevada. "We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States," says Steve Cooper, the Charleston Police Department's chief of detectives. "If his DNA has been located in any other crimes and his profile was entered into CODIS, there will be a match."
From the moment Falls showed up at the home of his latest alleged victim, he turned violent. "I knew he was there to kill me," says the victim who asked not to be identified. Falls pulled a gun on her and began strangling her. "When he strangled me he just wouldn't let me get any air. I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me." Local authorities are treating the shooting as an act of self-defense. According to Cooper, "when we find multiple sets of handcuffs, a machete, an axe, a bulletproof vest and container of bleach, the first thing that comes to an investigator's mind is, 'This is a serial killer kit.'"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @05:00PM
Your happy hooker myth statement is based on a practice that is illegal. A fair assessment about prostitution and the effects of it on the workers would require an analysis of legal prostitutes. Such analysis would also need to be compared against the physical and psychological assessments of other professions. I.e In almost any profession, you will have percentages of people who are happy, sad, feel exploited, etc, so you have to make sure that when studying *legal* prostitution, if the percentages are different just because of the sexual nature of the job.
And, even if such analysis exists, I am unsure how you can deal with the factor of societies' irrational views about sex, which can influence the mindset of those involved in sexual-based practices and professions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @10:25PM
So hop on a plane, come to New Zealand, and interview ours. Prostitution is legal, here.