Some of you may have heard of the woman in southern Indiana who... how to put this politely? ...went completely off her nut recently.
It seems that after suffering a miscarriage, she cast off from the pier of sanity and set sail out over the bounding crazy main. She didn't tell her husband about their loss and continued to stuff her "tummy" ever more full of pillow as the months went by, apparently even devising a gizmo via which she could invite people to "feel the baby kick."
As time began to run out on the ol' cow-or-countess shot clock, she decided to go baby-shopping, as it were, in the birth announcements section of the local paper and showed up on the front porch of a young couple claiming to need to use their telephone. As soon as the new mom let her inside, she went all Norman Bates with a pocket knife. The husband came running into the room and got cut up pretty good too, as he (alert the irony police) tried to subdue her carefully without hurting her "baby".
As long as she doesn't say anything notably sane between now and her trial, I'd say she's got a pretty good shot at non compost mental and can look forward to a diet of pancakes and flounder for the remainder of her days. I'm not sure what the alternative is should she accidentally convince anyone that she was sane at the time, at least in the legal sense of the word, but hopefully it will keep her away from decent people for some time to come.
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Here is a weird compulsion of mine: I don't completely understand, I think, but every time I hear a story like this -- not necessarily about a pregnancy-psychosis, but anything this extreme -- I just have to see if I can turn up a photograph of the perp's face.
It's about the unbelievability aspect of it, I think. The story is related in terms of a human being, but I sometimes just can't quite connect it to reality until I see that look in their eyes in the glamor-shot.
Almost always, when I finally do, my response is something like: "No fucking way. Tell me that you didn't really do that."
It's not that I have any problem believing that evil exists, in the abstract. It's more as if I require some concretization of the abstraction in any given case, just in order to fit some kind of gauge on just how far-gone this culture is, now.
These things are signs, kids.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thank God the mother and father of this child is ok..I had read a similar story to this. Where the crazed lady stole a child just a few blocks away from where she lived, She had the baby for over a week..Long story short the couple got their baby back..and the woman responsible was given a 10 yr. sentence. Which she declared was an unfair sentence for what she had done..And that she should be set free..Know I wouldnt want her as a neighbor..
HAH!!! pancakes and flounders.
You know, of all the reasons for someone to snap and lose all touch with reality, that's one I can actually sympathize with.
It's not an excuse for what she did, but still...
Y'all know this sorta thing happens a lot right?
I mean not "americans killed in car accidents" a lot, but a couple times a year in this country.
You should check out the way they've changed neonatal security procedures at hospitals in the last ten years or so.
Psyco mom wannabees are apparently the number one suspects in most infant kidnappings.
It was all the extra special sauce of crazy that caught my eye, actually.
There's no shortage of stories about such psycho wannabe moms either attacking a woman who has recently given birth or one who is about to do so, both with the aim to taking the baby. If the birth is impending (and not in the last few days), then it usually results in death for the real mother.
The cases are comparatively rare, but they're out there, and the attacks tend to be completely random.
Not sure I buy the crazy here. Takes a little too much planning to do what she did, the stuff the truly irrational aren't capable of.
For that matter, I question whether she suffered a miscarriage at all (as opposed to lying about the pregnancy from the get-go). Seems more likely she's using it as a sympathy card.
I've only had one miscarriage, and I can tell you the last thing it occurred to me to do was fake a continuing pregnancy. (Of course, the whole hemorrhage/ER run thing would have nullified it anyway, but that's not the point.) I've a couple of acquaintances who've had multiple miscarriages and to a woman the reaction is sometimes-crippling depression. I'm not saying it can't cause a break with reality, just that I doubt that happened here.
So the Coen Brothers are prophets?
While TH is ever so slightly south of the Big I, it is some two hours north of the Ohio River. I'd hardly call that southern Indiana. Unless, maybe, you are in Gary or Elkhart at the time.
We certainly have our own special crazies here and about Evansville, which is truly in southern Indiana. But central Indiana can keep that particular crazy all to themselves.
If she ends up behind a locked door for being crazy, or behind one for being sane, either way I'll sleep a little better at night.
No monsters, only people.
Jim
Sabra,
I'm questioning how tightly bolted down she was to begin with: The whole "I'll just fake being pregnant for 8 months and maybe nobody will notice" thing doesn't suggest someone whose boat is well-anchored in Reality Bay. :o
Pancakes and flounder! OH! MY sides are splitting!
And her local DHS could have had a child in her house to take care of and love many months ago.
Sad AND evil.
In law school, they said it was "non compos mentis", but I like "non compost mental" MUCH MUCH better. Somebody needs to bribe some law school textbook editors to get that implemented, toot sweet.
It's non-compass menthol.
HTH
Girls go crazy in characteristically girlish ways, boys go crazy in characteristicly boyish ways. When Jews and Gentiles, and Chinamen go bad, they go bad in characteristicly Jewish and Gentile and Chinese ways. It's Human Bio-Diversity, baby.
There is always the universal, though, the difference between Good and Bad, and also the difference between sane and loony, no matter that those qualities might be expressed differently in different individuals or statistically in different ethnies.
Tam,
Damn, you do have a way with words. The posts are great, but the replies in the comments.
"...doesn't suggest someone whose boat is well-anchored in Reality Bay." Sheer unadulterated awesome.
The whole "I'll just fake being pregnant for 8 months and maybe nobody will notice" thing doesn't suggest someone whose boat is well-anchored in Reality Bay
No argument there. I guess I'm looking at the difference between "bitch be CRAZY" and "that poor soul"...(Not that you were offering sympathy.)
Go easy there, Scott M. She has to be able to fit her head into that motorized skateboard she drives! Although, I suppose she could just drop the top :D
Sabra,
Speaking as someone who has had to deal, in a professional capacity, with folks that one might consider to be "totally irrational" more frequently than I would like over the last several years, let me assure you that they are quite capable of some serious planning and conniving.
My question in the whole deal is, how in the hell did she fool her husband for several months? He never got so much as a glimpse of her sans clothing? He never, like, spooned with her after the onset of pregnancy? Never wanted to feel her (supposedly) expanding preggers belly? Come-on, there had to be some contact for her to get pregnant and have a miscarriage in the first place. Most men wouldn't understand a total blackout of all contact thereafter.
I'm also a bit baffled by the "kicking baby device" that she came up with so she could have people feel the baby kick. I mean, you might be able to pass off a pillow or some such padding as a pregnant body under suitable clothing, but I just can't see it passing the feel test.
Leaving the Loony Tunes Lady aside for a minute, why would any one in today's world allow a perfect stranger inside their home to use the phone? How did that couple know that she wasn't packing? What if she wasn't a Nutjob, but the point person for a couple of thugs? Home Security Rule One: No one comes in the house unless proven safe. Stranger needs your phone? Ask who they want to call, get the number and make the call for them. If they're safe, they don't have a problem with you calling for them. If they get offended and/or pissed, 911 and a muzzle covering the door tends to settle the issue. But don't let them breach your perimeter.
"...why would any one in today's world allow a perfect stranger inside their home to use the phone?"
Answer: very deliberate curiosity.
This is a true story, from ten years ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.misc/msg/fb848bd4811c8684?hl=en
Caveat: all technical and tactical critique will be met with implacable disinterest.
I knew what I was doing, and I still do.
@Bubblehead Les,
I suspect that "9-months-pregnant woman" ranks at the absolute bottom of most people's threat meter, and near the very top of their Strangers I'd Help In A Pinch chart. Especially when the person answering the door is a woman who just had a baby herself.
Of course, the woman who answered the door didn't know that the Very Pregnant Woman on her doorstep (1) wasn't actually pregnant and (2) was totally psycho, but I suspect she would have been much more suspicious had the stranger been a twentysomething guy in dingy clothes.
My wife and I have helped pregnant women in distress before, and never thought about something like THIS happening. We honestly never considered the possibility, because most people just aren't wired to think of pregnant women as potential threats.
Billy,
you are a far more patient and curious individual than I. I do however applaud your efforts at imparting some semblance of sense to your "guest".
But most of all, I loved your parting gift. If Ayn Rand can't straighten him out it can't be done.
"While TH is ever so slightly south of the Big I, it is some two hours north of the Ohio River. I'd hardly call that southern Indiana. Unless, maybe, you are in Gary or Elkhart at the time."
Where I live, it is broadly understood that the navel of Indiana lies between 86th street to the north and 38th street to the south, although I'll grant that "Central Indiana" could loosely be applied to anything inside I-465. ;)
Montie -- that had been my working copy of "Atlas" for about ten years. I had extensive notes and indexing in it.
No kiddin': I figured he needed it more than me.
BenEzra, when people come to my door asking for help, I tell them to sit down while I get the phone. I have a nice bench seat outside by the front door. Those who get weird or angry usually just leave. 3 times I had to show my pistol to those who would not leave unless they could come in to use my phone. They left in a hurry. The remaining few used my phone, thanked me, and a couple of them asked if they could wait there. I let them, then called the non-emergency police line and gave them a heads up. No trouble happened, their rides showed up. One guy chatted with the police who cruised up while his friend brought him the gasoline for his disabled car.
Of course, this does not apply on Halloween, or it's one of my known neighbors or friends/relatives. But this policy was started after the Big Blackout a few years back, when I noticed my neighbor across the street standing on his porch with his old police 38 on his belt. I went and talked to him, listened to what he had to say, and initiated the same policy that he does. I figure anyone who served 25 years on the NYPD during the 60's and the 70's in the BRONX might be a little smarter than me on how to answer your front door.
Breda, of the Breda Fallecy lives a few miles away from me. She has posted some interesting crime/shooting news on what's been happening 20 miles to the WEST of us in Cleveland. Also, a few months ago, a local judge 20 miles to the EAST of us in the next county over said, due to the county commissioners cutting the budget, he is going to have to relase prisoners and fire Sheriff's Deputies. His quoat that made the local news was "unless we get some Federal money, I'm telling everyone who lives in this county to keep a gun handy, because it might take an hour or two for the Sheriff to respond to a 911 emergency".
A couple of months ago, OUR county laid off half the Deputies and released a bunch of prisoners. But since we have a lot of "bedroom cities" in our county with their own police, it hasn't gotten too bad yet.
I'm just glad in the year 2 A.O.( After Obammy), my state still has CCW and Castle Doctrine. But the old days of trusting strangers to be who they say they are is long gone in my neck of the woods.
One final note: today, with everyone and their brother walking around in Condition White with their cell phone crammed in their ear or not seeing where they're walking because they're too busy playing with some app they just downloaded, should not one be worried about someone wanting to come in and using YOUR phone?
Didn't Liz 1sts predecessor do something similar. Got a good 11 months out of it as I recall.
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