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,
This really makes me sad to think about…..However I do believe that it is true.
I remember once asking my son if he was angry at me because his dad had suicided? I thought that possibly he had blamed me? Just the way some kids blame one or the other parent for getting a divorce.
Witty,
It’s so hard to respond to you. I want to give you wisdom and solutions so badly, but I don’t know how.
He’s young. that’s the good part.
I understand how you feel because as much as I hate to admit it, I still grieve for the spath that I loved. He has so much potential, but I’m helpless to make it right.
I think that is my lesson that I have to learn, it’s not up to me to make it right. But it’s paradoxical because then I think, “ok, I gave it up to God, ARE WE THERE YET?”
Letting go is the worst.
When I was a teen I was engaged to a sweet young man. I broke up with him because he wasn’t ambitious like I was. LOL. Can you see the irony? I broke up with him and found a spath to torture me for 25 years.
10 years later, I heard that my ex-fiance had died of MS. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of him. I dreamed that he was alive and that he had only made me think he was dead because he was taking revenge on me for leaving him.
We’re all on this journey at different stages. I think the stage where we stop trying to control others is a big one. I’m not there yet.
Sky,
I’ve been wondering about the “it’s their mom’s fault” too. My ex-spath didn’t like his mom either, and had a story about her being a cheater, multiple relations, how his father raised him from when he was five, etc…
But nothing indicates it’s the truth, any witness and the little I’ve known from his mom negates this. His sister-cousin speaks very highly of his mom too, and she was practically adopted by his mother (hence the “emotional” sister). He had an active interest to compartmentalize his mom from me, since first the pregnant girl lived in her house and afterwards she was raising his son that I didn’t know about. His father most probably took him along to his new home, because it was the town of chances: better schools, better jobs (touristy place); at least his father was thinking of doing the same for the grandson, BUT only if my ex was not living in town anymore… both his father and mother did not want to give him any chance to have a big influence over the grandson.
Perhaps this “mother is the source of their evil ways” is started because often the mother is the first person a normal child would bond with. Since they never really bonded with mother, because they can’t, they blame their mother for not teaching them how to feel and love as normal people do?
Darwinsmom, these are some insightful observations about the “blame the mom” syndrome among spaths.
The first exspath blamed HIS mother for emotional/mental instability and would tell horrific stories of her behaviors when he was a child. What he was unable to connect was that her “mental instability” was a direct result of severe domestic violence.
The second exspath (yeah, I did it TWICE!) was disdainful of his mother, yet I clearly remember when his parents came to the condo that we were renting and he placed his head in her lap when she sat down in the living room. At the time, I thought, “What a sweet sight to see a son love his mother so much.” Today, I can clearly see it as an unspoken plea for his mother to forgive him for cohabitating with a woman who did not meet the mother’s rigid standards. In THIS case, the mother is spath, as well.
But, the inability for the spath to truly bond with the mother does make sense where their disdain for the mother goes. WOW………that really makes sense to me. Then, again, we need to look at our culture and societal makeup: women are STILL expendable.
Darwinsmom,
Many blame their moms but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually her fault. My spath’s dad was a spath and he considered him a saint. So how they FEEL is not necessarily based entirely on reality. There might be a kernel of truth buried in a mountain of 180 degree lies and we’d have to be anthropologists to find it.
When Michael was here, we should have asked him what he thought of his mom. We know he says his dad abused him, but he didn’t say anything about his mom. This is why I don’t think he’s a real spath. Because I think all spaths hate their mothers.
Hating your mom would be a red flag except my spath hid it and pretended to love his mother as much as he pretended to love me. So maybe some spaths hide it.
Truthspeak, I agree that our cultural and societal makeup is part of the problem. A woman is still lower on the hierarchy than a man. It’s “safer” to hurt a woman than it is to hurt a man because she’s less likely to retaliate.
Maybe the mother is chosen as the scapegoat because she is the most innocent of all?
It’s so confusing
😯
Truthspeak,
It’s what makes the most sense to me too from a spath’s pov… Mine griped over his father too though, as if he was the black sheep of the family (why would that be, huh?), but he presented his mother as evil. From all accounts, based on her actions, rather than appearance, the opposite is true.
Sky, could have been a question for him yes…
Skylar,
you read my mind! That was actually something I was going to try and explore next with Michael…The “mother” questions! I just wanted to get a “feel” for how he was going to answer my other questions first.
Years ago when I first came here to LF I was also posting on another site. This was also a site for victims trying to learn and heal from sociopathic relationships.
There was a young man on this site who at the time was 3 years older than my son. He was a self proclaimed spath.
Many of the posters baited him and naturally he would go off on them and act exactly as many of the trolls who come here would act.
But over time he became a wealth of information. I learned more from him about spath behavior than anywhere else.
His age had alot to do with what I was able to maybe learn from him.
Because of his age of course he loved to talk about himself.
What he said about his family of origin was very interesting to me. And I have to say I am grateful for the experience.
Witty, I can show you where to find him on psychcentral. I don’t know how often he checks in, though.
But really, I don’t think he is a spath at all. I think he has ODD and perhaps borderline pd, but without a really firm mask, it’s not what I would call a spath.
For example, how would you ever experience a WTF? moment if he already told you he’s a spath?
Where is the love bombing? how can he be a spath if he doesn’t love bomb or pity play or rage? All spaths do those.
Some might say that this is his mask: he’s a spath who doesn’t seem like a spath in order to confuse us. But that doesn’t confuse us because we already know that spaths never seem like spaths!
Wow. the mind bending contortions that spaths put us through, just trying to talk about them!
Well, guys, my son Patrick BLAMES ME FOR EVERYTHING…he blames me for finding him when he ran away at age 11, for busting his butt for running away, for taking him out of public school and putting him in private school, for separating him and my foster son Steve when they got caught at school with a gun, for turning him int to the cops when I caught him with all of their computers he stole from their office after hot wiring MY car to haul the loot in….it is all my fault…because I made him clean his room, mow the grass, and wash the dishes…oh, and make his bed.
The reason he is in prison now for murder (almost 4 years after the last time he lived in my home) was because I turned him in to the cops when he was 17…for the robbery.
My husband was a saint and I was a troll…but he does not realize that my husband did not like him at all, my stepfather was done with him, knew him for what he was. Only my egg donor with her “protect the golden child no matter what they do” mind set is under his spell any more. My sons C and D are done with him, I am done with him.
It has only been since I have ALLOWED MYSELF to LET GO COMPLETELY, to divide the little boy I loved image from the image of the STRANGER in the prison cell that I have been FREED from the pain of my child becoming a monster.
That sweet little boy, that funny young teenager are not the same person as the CONVICT IN THE CELL. I don’t know that man, I only know that he is dangerous and hates me with a passion.
(((((((OxDrover))))))) gentle hugs for you, dear heart.