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.
Thanks, Truthspeak. I appreciate the hug. It has been a long hard road to recognize that my son is gone, the little boy is no more….but you know what, even if he had grown up to be a man I liked, admired, my LITTLE BOY WOULD STILL BE GONE.
In truth it is that little boy I miss. Letting go of the man in the prison cell is no longer a hard thing to do since I realized that the little boy and the man are NOT THE SAME.
Yep…..the ex spath also blames his mother for EVERYTHING that happened in his life….Well, that was until I came along. 🙂
He has a step mother who shouldered the blame also…..because the mother left and went NC with spath……so he replaced her with the step mother blame bag.
But….it is funny how the step mother was who he ran to when all else alenated him……..but she’s back to being the step monster in his eyes. Poor woman (not!)…..she just doesn’t get it!
He’s on his way up to our town, AS WE SPEAK folks…….I’ve got a quasie plan in place if any ‘trouble’ comes knocking…….he’s coming up to pee on our territory with his new ‘lady Gaga’……and show off ‘the ring’ and just how great he is yadayada…….
The Jr’s changed their phone numbers last weekend. They all picked different area codes also…..which was VERY FUNNY to watch them look through the phone co. computer and decide where they wanted to ‘pretend’ to live. Now I can’t remember ANY of their numbers to call.
It’s about the portrayal of dis information.They figured that out on their own.
I’ve found a real bond with the jr’s, at the shooting range. So I plan on taking them out this week and spending several days shooting. We have a blast when we go out shooting.
Just to get em outa dodge.
I’m trying to act dis interested in his ‘visit’ as far as the kids are concerned……..I’m trying!!!
Spath will stink up the town for a week with gaga…….so I’m braced for several scenarios.
We’ll see how this ends up.
Hey EB,
The family that shoots together says together.
You know what gun control is? Hitting what you aim at.
Giving someone a second chance is like giving ammunition to someone who fired at you and missed.
I could go on! LOL Yep, good for you and the Juniors. Teaching them good gun handling and safe shooting is good for them. At one of the last NRA training courses my son D went to (he is a range director for BSA) there was a guy there who was a Tulsa SWAT team member and he tried to recruit Son D for the Tulsa SWAT team because his “gun control” was so good. FIVE .22 shots inside a dime at 100 yards. (I can’t help but bragg a bit!)
EB:
What happened with your friend and the married guy? Did you and her go and meet him?
Skylar,
I don’t think I want to find him (Michael) on a spath site….The things that I learned from the young spath I believe I was able to learn only BECAUSE of his age. The timing was right.
And it wasn’t exactly like the young spath on the other site was “giving” me information to be helpful to me…Lol. It wasn’t like that at all.
It was like taking alot of distorted, some of it even “word salad” information given during a long period of time in his post and I was steady slipping some pieces of the puzzle aside….And at some point being able to fit those pieces together. It was a complicated process to “put them” together. But when I was able to, it kind of came together and made “sense” in the DISTORTED way that ONLY spaths seem to comprehend things.
There were several things that indicated to me that this young man was truly a spath.
When it came to speaking of his mother….He was seemed rather “indifferent” to her.
Outwardly his negative comments came out more often over his spath father.
However it was what he DIDN’T outwardly say about his mother TO ME that seemed to speak volumes.
And the outward negative comments that he did say about his father also had a distorted sense of some kind of weird respect attached to them?
In the end my take was : that he HATED his mother and RESPECTED (in THAT weird way) his father.
Even though this is the exact OPPOSITE of how he presented his story of them? He said he hated his father….But I was convinced deep down he hated his mother.
Yes, Witty, that’s exactly how my spath was about his mother. He hid his hatred of her so I was unaware of it, but somehow he slimed me with it so that I began to feel disdain for her.
He did this by using the pity ploy. When he talked about his childhood or his mother, he seemed so pathetic. He made me want to rescue him. It made me angry at his mom for not taking better care of him, blah, blah, blah… you get the picture. It was all a con to slander his mother without ever actually saying anything bad about her.
Fast forward 25 years and I realize why so many people hated me. He did the exact same thing to me. He slandered me by telling people how “concerned” he was for my mental health blah, blah, blah.
This MOFO is REALLY good at slandering. He does it without even appearing to be doing it. He appears to be doing the OPPOSITE. He appears to care very much while he mentions the myriad of flaws that make up your personality. Of course this makes him appear to be the martyr and you are the evil, selfish one.
In the last con, the reality was revealed. He was conning me and he called his mom on the phone and cussed her out and called her a C**T! Of all things to call your own Mother!
That’s when I knew.
She died later that year, but not before telling him to grow up and let go of the past.
Oxy,
Bless you…You have been through so much. (((hugs)))
On the outside I have “let go” of my son in many ways. I have detached outwardly. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice on my part when he left home. At some point you disengage.
The internal stuff is still there though. Emotionally disengaging is the hard stuff. The heart has never caught up to the brain here.
In the present….I don’t get to speak to him very often. When I do it is very impersonal/casual. Grey rock conversations…Sometimes the conversation IS about the weather! Always boring.
This is something that was done rather unconsciously on my part for awhile. And only more recently is something that I am aware of.
I think this has been my way of still being able to speak with him, to know that he IS alive & well (NOT WELL, in the sense of healthy, you know what I mean) AND not get emotionally drained by a simple phone conversation.
witsend, it’s not really a spath site, where you can contact Michael. It’s a site for lots of issues, including PTSD, with a forum for each mental issue, and one of those is sociopathy.
Witsend, I had the exact same impression from my ex-spath… he would be angry at his father, I witnessed him purposefully disgracing him, and yet in some weird way he respected him. He hardly ever talked about his mother, solely in a “factual” manner…. and yet the facts weren’t true. Not that it surprises me now… he’s also a spth who can’t open his mouth without saying a lie.
Oxy,
That was a heartwrenching disclosure you made about your son. I’m so sorry for you. I think you hit the nail on the head though when you said, that mothers lose their sons (little boys) when they grow up… yours just did not end up growing into a man worth keeping in your life.
Witsend,
Knowing they are alive and not being tortured (by other convicts in the prison) is important, but we cannot protect them from themselves and the consequences of the things they do. Patrick put himself in prison “for life” by cold bloodedly shooting a young girl in the head…he planned it in advance and even told others what he planned to do and about where he would leave the body…they didn’t even call the cops or warn her. ONLY AFTER the fact did they inform the police where the body was in a taped phone conversation.
Your son also got into trouble with the law on a minor (this time) drug violation…but you can’t keep him “safe” any more than I could Patrick if he decided to do something that is unwise.
That EMOTIONAL disconnect is difficult…and it is something I must work on continually. It is not a “one and done” thing. I wish I could tell you that there is a magic pill you could swallow and it wouldn’t hurt…but it is a hurt, but we learn to reach acceptance over the long haul, that what is IS. We can’t change it. It just IS what it IS. Our baby boys are gone, but they would be gone even if the men that they became were wonderful men. I love and miss that little boy, but I don’t miss the STRANGER CONVICT and I hope he never gets out because if he does it very well may come to a kill or be killed situation. I don’t want that, but if it comes, I am PREPARED to do what I have to do to keep myself alive. I also realize that if that does come, and I have to protect myself I will go back to SQUARE ONE with the PTSD and everything that goes along with a traumatic event. But it would do that even if the person I had to protect myself from was a total stranger. I’ve had my fellow fire fighters when I was on the volunteer fire department have traumatic events when they would find suicide victims, or car wreck victims they had to do CPR on etc. It takes a toll even if it is a stranger. So I don’t think I could defend myself against anyone with fatal results and it not be very traumatic. Even Cops have to go through psych evals after a “good shoot,” where they have to use their weapons against a bad guy. I don’t think I am so “strong” or prepared that I wouldn’t be effected traumatically.
Louise,
She hasn’t heard from him since his return from his bus. travel. Just aswell.
I’m sure she’ll hear from him next week though…..
We’ll see.
I’ve got my plate full at the moment though.