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.
Skylar,
I think as ridiculous as it sounds I think that you REALLY are onto something 🙂
It really can be all a projection thing with them.
It does take alot of practice to twist my brain around into even trying to figure out some of this “stinkin thinkin” that they do.
Annie,
I don’t think you are missing anything here….
I have heard Skylar speak about this before with her x.
My own son, I believe will never let go of his grudge/hatred for me for my attempt to keep him in school.
He actually LEFT home right after his 17th B-day. And much of HIS issue (from his perspective) although there were a TON of other issues….Was the school thing. At 15 & 16 he just didn’t want to go to school. But he didn’t want to explore any of the other options either. (alternative school or GED etc.)
Anyways after he left home he still went to school!!
The thing is when he left home the people that he stayed with required him to go to school too. But he still blames me that he “had” to stay in school.
His thoughts are that I ruined his life by thinking he should go to school.
So he “showed me”, I guess….By going to school and not getting any credits while he was there??
Ana,
I didn’t notice any grumpiness..?
Anyway, yes, my ex-spath didn’t like school and never went much or learned anything, but when his mom divorced his spath father for being an abuser and a serial cheater, spath got mad and would be truant all the time.
His mom was collecting welfare to raise the 6 boys and she was worried about losing the welfare if her kids were delinquent. So when she couldn’t get him to go to school, she had the cops put him in juvy to learn a lesson. When she went to see him, he told her, “I’ll hate you as long as I live!”
Unfortunately, she didn’t know that you can’t teach a spath ANYTHING. He was only 12 but he conned the juvy warden to get him his guitar – by crying his heart out – and then busted out of juvy with his guitar. He was on his own ever since then.
The funny thing is, one time I was admiring his skills and his intellect, I said, “Gee honey, you’re amazing, imagine all the things you could do if you had gone to school.”
Spath replied, “Yeah, imagine…”
I think that their defiance to learning is a self-limiting factor on what would other wise be a really genius evil.
Skylar,
I’m not at all grumpy are you? LOL
whoops!
sorry Ana and Annie, you guys LOOK a lot alike!
LOL!
No Ana, you arent’ grumpy.
No Annie, you aren’t grumpy either, but I can see you have a bone to pick with deBecker. I do appreciate his books very much.
I think that certain ingrained attitudes are hard to change, that’s why even knowing that there are many women spaths, my mind thinks of a spath as “he” more often than “she”.
I remember talking to an acquaintance and explaining to her that spaths don’t think like we do. She finally got it. She understood that they think backwards. She said, “I get it, whatever they say, just flip it.”
But it’s hard to remember to do that. Only a few minutes later, we were discussing something her spath said and I forgot and didn’t flip it. She had to remind me.
It really takes a toll on our brains.
WHy would they hate school? Euhm, just brainstorming here:
-confronted with peers developing and growing up, but not them?
– the rules?
– having to share attention from teachers with more than a dozen peers who are in a teen-narcistic stage
– only way to get attention is negative one, but they’ll get detention and punishments over it, and so they feel even more woe-me
I just think HS must be an environment booby trapped with narcistic injuries
Witty, I tried to keep Patrick out of prison…but HE SHOWED ME! LOL Yep, they showed us both!
Darwinsmom,
my exspath could barely spell and he hated school and quit.
My spath bro was a spelling bee champion in grade school and he hated school and quit too.
I think it has to do with their oppositional defiance disorder. If you tell them they should do it, then they won’t. If you tell them not to, then they will. Reverse psychology actually works on them if you can get them to believe you. You have to plan way ahead and make up lies as convoluted as theirs. lol!
As to why they are this way, I think it is because they feel like they can take away what you want. Whatever you want, they can take it away by not doing it. Whatever you value, they will destroy. But that only takes us deeper into the layer. There still remains the question as to why they need to do that.
My little niece when she was 15 about 10 years ago, became defiant, ran away and all that stuff. She called me and we talked. She said she never told her parents what she wanted because she knew they would just take it away from her, they would use it to try to control her. She was describing what spaths do and she was gray rocking them! Her dad is an N and both her parents were very controlling.
She was a good student but refused to go to college. I think she was taking away what they wanted because they had done that to her.
I also think that they had negated her as a person because she was very into fashion and the rest of her family is … “naturally gray rock” 🙂
So she was negating their values in defiance.
In other words, they tried to shame her for who she was so she retaliated in kind.
She’s doing quite well in the fashion world now.
Edit: it seems to me that everything spaths do revolves around their mothers. Even 50 years later, they are still sabotaging themselves, just to show their mothers. Even after their mothers are gone.
Oxy,
Yep, I suppose that is one way to look at it! Lol.
I can remember when school first became an issue…..It wasn’t long after that there were so many “issues” I didn’t know what to focus on first…
But anyways at first I just tried to reason with him. I was hoping to try using just plain old reasoning & logic!
Wow logic and reasoning! What was I thinking? At the time the only way I probably would have been able to get him to go to school and actually particiapte while he was there was to absolutely FORBID HIM TO GO TO SCHOOL & participate in actively getting his credits!
LOL Witty,
we must’ve posted over each other.
You are exactly right.