I just read the story about Melissa Jenkins, a popular teacher in Vermont, who went to help her neighbors, only to be brutally murdered as soon as she got out of her car.
I am sick to my stomach. Not only because of the stupid, horrific crime, but because I believe the victim suspected something was wrong.
The story in the Burlington Free Press begins:
ST. JOHNSBURY When Melissa Jenkins answered the phone Sunday night, the couple who used to plow her driveway said they were stranded half a mile from her home. Their car had broken down on the remote country road, they said, and they needed her help.
Before driving out to meet them, Jenkins called longtime friend and coworker Randy Rathburn and said she “wanted someone to know what was going on,” police would recount later. She told Rathburn about the “weird call” she received from the couple whose first names she could not remember. She still had their business card and asked Rathburn to write down the pertinent information: the name Prue, a phone number, an address in Waterford.
The fact that Jenkins called her friend tells me that she had a bad feeling about the call for help. My guess is that she was afraid, but chided herself for her fear, convincing herself that she had no reason to worry.
Jenkins should have listened to her intuition. As Gavin de Becker eloquently explains in The Gift of Fear, our intuition has been honed over millennia to keep us safe. The best thing we can do to protect ourselves from predators is heed that inner knowing.
But we don’t. We are not taught to listen to our intuition. In fact, our rational world seems to regard intuition as mumbo jumbo, so we talk ourselves out of our fears.
This is one of the most important points that I make in my new book: Red Flags of Love Fraud—10 signs you’re dating a sociopath. The book is based on last year’s survey of Lovefraud readers. The results showed that 71% of Lovefraud readers had a bad feeling about the sociopath or the relationship early in the involvement. But most of them did not listen to their gut. Instead, they doubted themselves, or felt like they had to give the individual the benefit of the doubt.
My guess is that Melissa Jenkins had those same exact thoughts. If she didn’t, why would she have called her friend to let him know where she was going?
This murder is a tragedy that I suspect could have been avoided.
Read Melissa Jenkins answers a call for help, and then a sudden attack, on BurlingtonFreePress.com.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
Drat – fat fingers – just lost my post!
I’m not saying that this is true for the case Donna has written about, but in the two present cases I’ve mentioned it wasn’t the women who were arm candy for the men, it was the other way around. Both women wrote extensive stories of kidnapping and torture, pior to ever meeting their male partners, that closely mimicked the killings. In the latter case, even though it was the male who did the killing, the crown has laid a range of charges such that the male could be found guilty of 1st degree, 2nd degree, or manslaughter. But they’ve limited the charges to the woman to a choice between 1st and 2nd degree only.
In the case of Karla Homolka (the one Redwald mentioned earlier) there was forensic evidence that would indicate it was she, and not he, who committed the murders. It was actually presented in our Canadian Senate as part of a petition to the govt. to have her plea deal overturned. But no-one seems to want to believe that women can kill as easily as men. So Bernardo sits in isolation for the rest of his life, but Homolka was out in twelve years, has three children, sells infant clothes to unsuspecting parents through her online company, and teaches ESL to youth in the Carribean. I don’t see anyone stepping up to protect her children’s rights either. She was involved in the kidnap, rape, extended torture, murder and dismemberment of three young women ****including her own younger sister**** and yet we seem to be OK protecting her rights over her children (or society). I just don’t see where we would be this ‘tolerant’ if she were male.
While researching how dangerous my mother might be, I found that female serial killers usually kill in far greater numbers, and for far longer, than male serial killers. Most of them aren’t caught or often even suspected due to our cultural biases. They often pick more vulnerable victims whose deaths aren’t considered important enough to waste money investigating. And, in my opinion, a big part of that does indeed lie at the feet of Mr. de Becker. I can’t tell you how many times, when I’ve been trying to discuss the issue of female-violence, that I’ve had his book thrown up at me.
I truly believe my mother is a danger to the public, but I can’t get anywhere with it because no-one wants to admit to, or even research, female perpetrated violence.
Oxy,
I’m not too familiar with the Jaycee Dugard case, but in the case of Elizabeth Smart, the children of Wanda Barzee were so concerned that their mother was being portrayed as a poor helpless victim (arm candy) of Mitchell that they went on Oprah to make sure that people realized she was a sadist and abuser long before she ever met him.
Annie, Jaycee dugard was kept for 18 years a captive and he fathered 2 children with her….she worked in his company and lived in the back yard in tents. He was on parole. It was only when 2 college cops noticed he was there preaching on the campus with small girls and they got suspicious and it started the chain reaction that got him arrested and Jaycee freed.
His wife of course was involved in the kidnap and the keeping her there, and of course knew about the babies etc.
I wasn’t aware that Wanda Barzee’s kids went on Oprah to make sure that people realized she was a saddist before she met him.
I knew my daughter in law was a psychopath, a mooch, a liar and a manipulator, but I never ever thought she would try to KILL my son C (her husband) Didn’t surprise me she stole from the egg donor but the attempted killing of C was a total surprise.
I also knew my son Patrick was a thief but it totally blew me away when he killed that girl. I realize now that if he had come home to live after he got out of prison the first time it would have been ME he killed for turning him in to the cops, not her (she had turned him in) and sometimes I feel “survivor’s guilt” that it was her that was killed,, not me. But I have no doubt that he would do his best to kill me if he was out…even if he knew he would be killed in the process.
This is a sick case. I do think these two may have grown into a serial killer couple, if not for the call this teacher made to her friend beforehand. Serial killers tend to try it out initially with a very easy victim, someone they know. Heck most crimes, violence and murders are perpetrated by someone you know and trust against your better jugement (gut feeling). He sounds like the budding serial killer top dog, and she the enabler, but as sick as he is.
Annie,
please believe me that I’m not disagreeing with you – except for the part about DeBecker. I think the perception of men being more violent than women, has been around before he was born.
I agree with you that women can be equally spathy and dangerous. Women use the same ploy that my spath used, they come across as being harmless. For women, it is very easy to do this, while my spath had to use arm candy.
Just as men will get a female accomplice to do the luring, women will get a male accomplice to do the physical work. What makes the spaths so dangerous, is that they work together when they want to. Furthermore, they get unsuspecting dupes to help them as well. By allowing my spath to portray me as his wife, I gave him a legitimacy he didn’t have on his own.
He poisoned me so I couldn’t work. So when he was doing the pity ploy, he would tell his friends and potential dupes, that I was so sick and we had doctor bills and he felt so bad about it, so they gave him money. Yet, to my spath neighbors and his evil friends, he would say that I was an alcoholic drug addict that refused to work. This was so they would help him in his plan to kill me.
No matter what I did, he would use me as part of his mask. Just my presence was enough.
This is why it’s so important to recognize the scum of the earth and to shun it. No matter what you do, you WILL BE SUPPLY if you are in their vicinity because they are opportunistic.
I agree that portrayals of women as capable of violence and/or as aggressors is underplayed in many areas, including, I am afraid, here on LF.
When I first started coming here, and it’s the reason why I stayed away for as long as I did, was exactly for that reason. Women were almost always victims and the perpetrators were always men with, what seemed to me, a token woman thrown in here or there.
The abuse that I have suffered has come primarily from my mother and younger sister.
I grew up with emotionally unavailable men, who were nice and non-violent, just not there emotionally. I do gravitate to them because my instincts were women can’t be trusted.
I believe Dr. Hare and Dr. Babiak in their book, Snakes in Suits, talk about how there are certain professions, which attract certain personality types, that don’t buy the spins and manipulations or see through them very quickly. I happen to be in one of those fields, quality assurance.
My job is non-stop analysis as well has matching up the facts against statements. It makes me very unpopular in some quarters and with some people, but employers who depend on that information to make as informed decisions as possible appreciate my contributions. They love what I do.
The day that I get something wrong at work will be the kiss of death for my career because the powers-that-be couldn’t trust my input and those who resent what my job entails would delight in my failing and I’d never hear the end of it. It can get very stressful, but it’s a job that needs to be done.
Because I am required to analyze everything in the interest of fairness and being accurate, as well as check and recheck ad nauseum, I don’t get many things wrong. That’s not to brag. It doesn’t make me perfect. It means that if there is a way for someone to challenge my conclusions, they will. It can get very tedious and boring.
A lot of that checking and exploring everything comes from a survival skill that I learned growing up. My S mother sought to discredit me every way she could. That forced me to have to think of all possibilities and have answers because I knew that I’d end up getting abused in some way. I would get hit or punished in some other way for not knowing or being wrong.
Know what I hate? Statements like, “What mother wouldn’t want the best for her child? What mother wouldn’t give her life for her child? What mother wouldn’t sacrifice if it meant something better for her child?” Statements like that. Is anyone paying attention? Every day there are stories about mothers abusing, neglecting, starving, and killing their children. Ovaries no make a woman a caring person than a penis makes a man a good provider.
With my mother, I was seeking approval. I wanted to be told that I was right. Instead, what she said was, “You think you know everything, don’t you? You think you have all the answers.” So much for that.
Nobody has to convince me that woman can’t hurt or aren’t vicious. I’ve seen that happen so many times. I don’t know where Gavin de Becker got his beliefs about women. He was very abused as a child. Consequently, he might have an emotional need to see things that way. Write to him and let him know. He seems like he might be open to the feedback.
I read something recently online by a male author who said that it’s OK that women are so often portrayed as abuse and murder victims because there isn’t much public outcry over that.
His argument was that people get upset only over the elderly or children getting hurt or murdered, but women don’t matter. Nobody seems to care too much what happens to women; that’s shown in the media all the time. He hasn’t seen many objections to that. I have no idea what he’d been smoking or reading. I thought he was an idiot, but he was very sincere. The scary part is he was writing on a very acceptable, mainstream website.
Women can be as aggressive and dangerous as men. They have the advantage of being prejudicely regarded as the “weaker” sex. If they then attack, they have a surprise, shock and disbelief advantage. Adrenaline has as much a powerful effect in a woman than a man anyway. And yet, in general men are physically stronger, and also overall aggressive in a direct physical way, and culture condones it somewhat in men, certain cultures more than others especially towards women. But women are even better at disguising themselves, using unerhanded ways, backtalk, manipulation and silent aggression (lots of female serial killers were poison fans)… and that too has been culturally condoned and expected. These biases on both sexes are not totally unfounded, but are not the gender rule either. Male spaths can be as conniving, manipulating and underhanded as the cultural picture of “women”, and spath women can be as extremely aggressive as “men” are thought to be.
G1S my own egg donor isn’t a psychopath by anyone’s check list, but he is very toxic. She invalidated me even as a child. I also wanted approval, I did not get it. I could not get it. It hurt. I kept on trying to get it even as middle aged and older–but I finally saw the look of contempt on her face as she sneered at me while I was begging her to listen to me, to save her own life.
That look of contempt made me break free, the same way the look on my son Patrick’s face, the look of pure evil, made me break free from him.
Even then I would have allowed my egg donor to regain my trust if she had sat down and talked to me, acknowledged what she did, even “said she was sorry”—but what she said was “let’s just pretend none of this happened and start over.”
I have to laugh, because that has been her mantra from the start of my life…I just had to ignore whatever was bad and “pretend none of it happened.” I walked out of her house that day and haven’t been back. I can’t PRETEND any more.
Passive aggressive is aggression.
Yes, women can be “as mean as snakes” and as bad as mad dogs, maybe worse than men sometimes. Jezebels, Delilahs, etc.
People can be horrible, evil. Not just men. Not just women.
Oxy,
Your egg donor’s mantra “let’s just pretend none of this happened” is curiously similar to the common psychopathic refusal to talk about the past.
Let me see…from my spath brother, “That’s in the PAST! Why do you have to talk about the past?” and “You’re always bringing up the past!”
and from my ex-spath, “The past does not exist!”
It’s curious too that for people who don’t want to talk about the past when it comes to what THEY’VE DONE, they certainly hold grudges longer than anyone else.
When he was 12, ex-spath told his mom that he would hate her, “until the day I die.” And he does. Not only is he stuck in the past but he extends that past to all women he meets in the future, as if they had something to do with his anger at his mom for trying to force him to go to school.
I think this bizarre attitude about the past, forgetting their own transgressions but remembering everyone else’s, is a huge red flag.
Sky, The past DOES exist, the best indiction of future behvior is past behavior.