At Least They're Committed

In light of the Steve McNair murder/suicide, it occurs to me that it might be appropriate to write my final ‘journalism’ entry in here, which concerns co-covering the trial of Carolyn Gloria Blanton who soon before I moved to the small southwestern town had shot her boyfriend five times while he slept, removed his legs, wrapped his torso in some Native American blankets, bundled the legs and bummed a ride from one of her boyfriend’s unknowing friends who happened to be driving by. She then stripped the flesh and meat from the boyfriend’s bones and made a stew. She wanted him with her, in her, always.

The police filled me in on the details as the trial date drew near. They’d found the victim’s leg bones — feet skyward — sheared up to the ankles, sticking out of the tall silver trash can in the alley outside Blanton’s apartment door. They had found his torso stuffed in a closet at his home. When he’d first been reported missing, an investigating officer had seen it in there but it never occurred to him it could be remains: It was too short. Back at the apartment, the rest of the victim — chunks of pink flesh and meat — roiled to the surface of the crockpot when one of my favorite cops stirred the brew.

Another reporter covered the trial itself; I did background and “color,” a story on the collective life of this schizophrenic, lost soul, read  by the judge from a 1,000 page psych eval. 

Blanton had pale blue eyes and looked at me with sadness, loathing and fear as she was escorted out of the courtroom after being found insane. 

I, myself, was thought insane when I put the headline “Woman Charged with having Friend for Dinner” over a pretrial article. I just thought it covered the topic nicely, but honestly, since there is no cannibalism law — only murder, dismemberment and improperly disposing of a body — it in fact wasn’t all that accurate. Maybe “Woman Charged AFTER having Friend for Dinner” would have been better. I still think the community would have been pissed. A bit sensitive, methinks.

That was in 1995-ish and it was one of the strangest, most troubling stories I’d heard about, let alone covered and I really should write about it here.  

But honestly, it was just kind of sad and thinking about it makes me tired and I just don’t feel like writing about it right now. Maybe next time.

Upsetting about Steve McNair.

Blanton got out six years ago.