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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:40AM
I'm sure a man marrying a female child is one of the worst crimes ever right?
The older testament allows men to marry girl children.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @05:04AM
In all fairness - when this "fact" is brought up, people should be reminded that life expectancy back then wasn't what it is today. When a person reached sexual maturity, they were not only expected to, but they mostly WANTED to procreate. Although the Jews never experienced the dark ages of Europe, where life expectancy was often 25 to 30, it was still a rare person who lived to 60 or 80 or 100. A person who didn't start his/her family while still in his teens might not GET a chance to have a family.
A 13 year old is not a "child". Reaching puberty has always been one of the rites of passage into adulthood.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday July 27 2015, @06:01AM
What I've "heard" but can't recall the reference, is that the poor life expectancy back in the day was heavily skewed by infant mortality, and that once past toddlerhood or some other young age, most people could expect to live to 50 or 60.
OK, so searching leads me here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ [nih.gov] and there's some nuance. Big difference between men and women, and of course, historical figures don't include the serfs:
Anyway, as for the troll who keeps posting this crap -- any ancient woman would have been crazy to get in a relationship because child-birth was so deadly. All that shit in the bible (a worse guide for morality is hardly imaginable) was from a time when for the most part, women didn't get to make those choices.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @06:15AM
You get points. I should have mentioned in my own post that childbearing was in and of itself a major contributor to the death rate of women.
And, any research into mortality that neglects death by violent means can safely be ignored. That one specific research paper was apparently aimed at some niche research area, probably involving deaths by disease. Also, "Once infant mortality is stripped out,". There was a time when having only one or two children offered no assurance that any of your childre would suvive to puberty.
I can agree and disagree with parts of that article - but en toto, it's a good find. Thumbs up!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheLink on Monday July 27 2015, @08:53AM
All that shit in the bible (a worse guide for morality is hardly imaginable) was from a time when for the most part, women didn't get to make those choices.
There's another factor too. Thousands of years ago there wasn't stuff like the "Green Revolution" and effective safe birth control, one farmer or one shepherd couldn't really feed as many people as today. Famines were fairly common.
You can afford a lot more mercy when one farmer can feed 100+ other people than when one farmer could barely feed himself and his family (and his children would have to start working the farm pretty early - whatever modern child labour laws say).
Back then who would feed and raise the mostly inevitable children of prostitutes? Would the resulting adults be better or worse than average in upbringing, education etc? I wouldn't be surprised if many of the children starved or were murdered.
Who feeds the bastards? The children born out of wedlock? Would a farmer want to toil hard and have his children share food with a bastard even in a famine?
Who feeds a thief who can't pay for his crime? Who feeds those you want to give "life sentences" to instead of barbaric death penalties? Are you going to force the whole village to build a prison and feed murderers for 20 years?
Those laws are harsh. But the conditions were quite harsh too, so I can understand why some of the laws are the way they are (not so sure about some of the others). They are actually a lesser evil compared to the practical alternatives available
back then.
See: http://animalsmart.org/animals-and-the-environment/comparing-agriculture-of-the-past-with-today [animalsmart.org]
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/how-many-farmer-feed.htm [howstuffworks.com]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday July 27 2015, @06:04PM
In all fairness - when this "fact" is brought up, people should be reminded that life expectancy back then wasn't what it is today. When a person reached sexual maturity, they were not only expected to, but they mostly WANTED to procreate.
Life expectancy, once maturity was reached, was pretty close to ours, consider the bible's mention of three score and ten as the normal range for a man's life. The average life expectancy was brought down by high child mortality, and girls married young and started having children at a younger age in order that there would be more children, thus more that reached maturity.