The pastor murdered his wife in the parsonage and passed it off as suicide. It sounds like something you would hear in a movie or read in the opening lines of a fictitious novel, but it actually happened in the little town of Anguilla, Mississippi. I know personally that it happened because I was there when he was tried in court, found guilty for murder, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. I was pastor that followed this evil monster impersonating a pastor.
He had planned her pseudo-suicide well. The next lesson in the Bible study the church had been going through was on “suicide.” He took her .22 revolver while she was sleeping, put it up to her head as if it were her hand or maybe he did use her hand, and pulled the trigger. But she didn’t die instantly, so while she was laying there dying or possibly not dying, he put another round through the same hole. Once she was dead and past resuscitation, he called for help and put on his best Oscar winning performance. Not long after that, the “pressure” of everything would get to him and he would “understandably” quit being this church’s pastor. One of my dear friends there told me later, he headed north in the moving truck instead of south to be with his family. What everyone didn’t know was that his long-time secret internet girlfriend was north.
His two bullets would be his undoing because some persistent family members were finally able to get the body exhumed and an autopsy performed. It is impossible for a conscious person to shoot herself in the head in the same hole.
I saw this monster on the witness stand answering the lawyers questions. I saw the gun as the lawyers brought it out as evidence. I saw the man handle the gun and act as if he was someone from a different planet who had never seen a gun before. It was obvious to me and more importantly to the jury that he was pretending.
It was the strangest thing, no one ever blamed the gun. The gun was brought out in the court room and no one ducked down, no one ran out of the room, and no one acted as if they were horrified of the instrument of murder. Why? Because the gun didn’t murder her, the evil malicious vile monster did. No he wasn’t sick. He was evil. The weapon wasn’t sentenced to life in prison without parole, he was.
People should be held responsible for their actions. No one wants to ban forks for making people obese. No one wants to stop the manufacturing of pizza and candy bar because they are making people fat. In that courtroom, no one blamed the gun, only the monster behind it.
What make a person a monster? Their own personal choices to do evil things and cooperate with evil.
As a little child, my mom, dad, and teachers told me there was no such thing as monsters. At least not the kind that I was imagining. There are monsters in this world. Make no doubt about it. And they should be held responsible for their evil monstrous actions. Put the blame where the blame is due, on the people who do evil things.
Guns are not the issue. Evil and personal responsibility are the issues. There are monsters in this world.
