Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Man's Inhumanity to Woman

The trial of a Marianna, Arkansas man accused in the rape and bludgeoning death of a Little Rock TV anchorwoman finally ended today when the jury handed down a guilty verdict, and am I ever glad it's over. Read more about the trial here on KATV's website. The investigation into the murder of 26-year-old Anne Pressly, an anchorwoman on KATV's morning show, received a lot of media attention here in Memphis, partly because the victim was a graduate of Rhodes College here in Memphis and partly because the suspect was a resident of Marianna, Arkansas, which is in the Memphis viewing area. As the trial unfolded, I read and heard a lot about the crime...horrible things...and lately I have been having bad dreams.

I think the dreams started with the October trial of Lemaricus Davidson, a Memphis native who was found guilty in the 2007 rapes of murders of 21-year-old University of Tennessee student Channon Christian and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Christopher Newsom. That was another crime that got a lot of Memphis coverage because of the Memphis connection. Click here to read more in the Commercial Appeal. It was a particularly brutal crime: the couple was abducted in Knoxville during a 2007 carjacking by several armed men. Both the man and woman were raped, afterwards, the "lucky" one, the man, was fatally shot. The woman, Channon Christian, was repeatedly raped and beaten over a period of more than 24 hours. Then she suffocated after she was choked and then stuffed in a garbage bag and trash can. Let me make this clear--she was folded and stuffed, while still alive, into a kitchen-sized garbage can. She died of what is called "positional asphyxiation." In other words, she might have survived her injuries, but she couldn't breathe after being stuffed into a kitchen-sized garbage can.

I'm told that the evidence in this case was so horrifying that one of the prosecutors fainted in the courtroom. It was so horrible that the hard-bitten journalists at the Commercial Appeal decided to leave some details out of the stories that were eventually printed because they were deemed too shocking to be published in the newspaper.

The trial in the Pressly murder case was just as shocking. The young anchorwoman Anne Pressly was beaten until every bone in her face was shattered. Her pale blond hair was so soaked with blood that emergency room doctors thought she was a redhead. She died of her injuries five days later. Medical examiners determined that what killed her was a blow to her face so powerful that her jaw was forced to the back of her head and cut off blood flow to her brain. Pressly was also raped, but apparently it's not clear whether that occurred before, after or during the savage beating. As if the facts of the case weren't bad enough, the worst aspect of this case, in my opinion, is that Pressly's own mother is the one who discovered her shattered body barely clinging to life. Can you imagine? Anne Pressly was her only child.

I think maybe the Pressly murder really hit home for me because I, too am a Rhodes College graduate. I also worked in morning television in my early 20's. I, too, reported to work at strange hours and lived an upside down life. I, too, came home and left for work at odd times. I don't know anything about the neighborhood where Pressly lived, but I know that when I was young and making very little money in television, I lived in some very cheap apartments in some very scary neighborhoods. I, too, could have been attacked, beaten and raped like Pressly was, and left for my mother to find.

Hence, the dreams. Several times now I have dreamed I am being attacked and raped. In the dream I am so terrified! I know I'm going to die! I wake up and I still feel like I'm suffocating... It takes me a long time to calm my breathing and racing heartbeat. Am I haunted by the ghosts of these murder victims? No, I don't believe in supernatural hauntings. I believe that hearing about these murders has brought a primal fear shared by all women to the surface of my consciousness. We are all afraid of being raped. More than that, and worse than that, we are all afraid of being utterly destroyed--beaten until we're unrecognizable like Anne Pressly was--treated like we are so much garbage like Channon Christian was. Women survive rape--in fact, they survive it every day. But no one can survive the kind of attack that was perpetrated on those two women. Their attackers wanted to do more than just hurt them--they wanted to mutilate them and destroy their very humanity.

Another thread connects these two brutal murder cases. According to their defense attorneys, both Curtis Vance and Lemaricus Davidson were the victims of child abuse. Their attorneys used testimony about the abuse these young men suffered to try to convince the juries to be lenient on them. The jurors would have none of that, and neither will I. While I know it's true that many serial killers and perpetrators of other brutal crimes were themselves victimized as children, I don't think that excuses them. Millions of children are victims of abuse. Heck, if you think child abuse is bad now, just imagine what it was like decades ago, when adults in positions of authority looked the other way when a child showed up to school with bruises or a black eye. No, whatever happened to Vance and Davidson when they were young was not nearly as bad as what they did to Pressly and Christian. How do I know that? I know it from what's happened to me in my dreams... I just hope the dreams will stop now that the trials are over.

4 comments:

  1. Vixen... while I am not that familiar with the Anne Pressly case - other than what I caught on national news coverage - however I have followed the Channon Christian & Chris Newsom case from the very beginning. I had set up a Google news filter on the last name of 'Newsom', so that I could follow a news story here in NH, and one particular day in early January of 2007, I got an email stating "Newsom Body Found Burning on Railroad Tracks", and that began my interest in this case, right up until the recent GUILTY verdict & subsequent sentencing of DEATH by LETHAL INJECTION for Lemaricus Davidson, one of four men & one woman that have been charged in the case. Like you, I have had frequent nightmares that I can only attribute to hearing all of the disgusting details of what these ANIMALS did to both Chris AND Channon... making each watch while the other was violently raped and brutalized... I cringe just thinking about it. And not only did they try to blame their childhood abuse, they even went as far as attempting to blame the victims, with allegations of drug use and stories of a "drug deal gone bad"... can you even IMAGINE that???
    I can only hope that Letalvis Cobbins, who is serving a life without parole sentence for this crime, LIVES TO a RIPE OLD AGE, and that the other inmates make his LONG LIFE a living hell... perhaps they can show him ON A DAILY BASIS what it feels like for a man to be raped by another man, or by MANY MEN... only then will he really appreciate what he has done... These men - and I use that term lightly - just don't seem to care what they have done to these families... Perhaps after experiencing that, Mr. Cobbins will have an idea of the pain he has caused the Newsom & Christian families. And while I know the families have expressed "happiness" with the death sentence handed down to Lemaricus Davidson, I am of the opinion that he is getting off too easily... HIS pain will be over once the injection process begins... However the families have to live with this pain & loss for the rest of their lives... I would have been happier to see him get the same life without parole that Mr. Cobbins received... that way, he too could live with the daily "prison justice" THAT HE DESERVES!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MisterK,

    I didn't follow the Christian & Newsom case as closely as you did. I realize now that in my post I focused mostly on what Channon suffered when what was done to Chris was just as bad. Rape is horrible, whether you are male or female.

    While I understand your anger, I have to say I don't think ANYONE deserves to be raped. It might seem like justice if Cobbins suffers that fate in prison, but even if he does, it won't ever make up for what he and the others did to Chris and Channon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree 100% that rape is a horrible thing, and that nobody deserves to go thru it... well - ALMOST nobody!
    I guess the point I was trying to make was that giving him life in prison without parole is a harsher sentence - in my eyes - than lethal injection... Once Lemaricus Davidson is put to death, his "suffering" ends there, while Mr. Cobbins has EVERY DAY of the rest of his life to think about what he did and why he is where he is... And while you are correct in that it serves no positive purpose, for Channon OR Chris - or their families - the fact is that male on male rapes are taking place EVERY DAY in our prison system. So in MY opinion, should Mr. Cobbins become one of those statistics, I am pretty certain that I am not the only person who has watched this case from afar who feels that if "an eye for an eye" were EVER to be appropriate, THIS IS THAT TIME!!!
    In fact, if you have read the court records that detail the sexual assaults, you are aware that both victims were not just "sexually" raped, objects were used on both of them... the medical examiner states that it's possible a coffee table leg that was found broken off was possibly used... So are you saying that someone who is capable of doing things LIKE THAT to these two innocent "kids" deserves anything LESS???
    And after watching Mr. Christian during these trials, I am pretty certain he would agree that these animals deserve ALL that they have coming to them!!! Again, I'm not condoning rape, I'm just saying that there are times when the punishments we have on the books just DO NOT GO FAR ENOUGH when it comes to atrocious cases involving torture & rape - AND THIS IS DEFINITELY ONE OF THOSE TIMES!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is one of the reasons Mr. Cobbins has been placed in protective custody... there have been multiple death threats against him as well as other threats of "retaliatory attacks"... with the notoriety of this case, one would think that the line of would be "justice providers" will be a LONG ONE!!!

    ReplyDelete

About Me

My photo
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
Cute, fluffy, and not afraid to leave a mess on the sidewalk!