Letterman was topical last night… Top Ten Signs an Astronaut Is Trying to Kill You
[QUOTE=Lightnin’]
Have you guys seen the “before” and “after” pics? Her NASA bio photo makes her look actually fairly cute… but her mugshot makes her look, well, scary.
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Yeah, she has some shots where she’s attractive. In one shot, her breasts appear to defy gravity…
er…wait
[QUOTE=Diceman]
I’ve often wondered if the police have someone whose job is to make you look as hideous as possible for your mugshot. An anti-beautician, if you will. They could arrest Jennifer Lopez, and her mug shot would make her look like a 45-year-old crack whore.
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I think being booked and handcuffed will put a little strain on your appearance.
Not to mention realizing the trouble you are in and probably crying for 4 or 5 hours straight.
I’m convinced the only way to get away with murder is to be really good about cleaning up after the fact or acting batshit crazy while committing the crime.
[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Letterman was topical last night… Top Ten Signs an Astronaut Is Trying to Kill You
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They were pretty funny! That’s got to be a real low point in your life when your life makes Letterman’s top 10 list.
Joking aside (temprarily… please continue!) Everyone in her position should be so lucky as to have a friend like her commander, frequently seen helping her in her difficult and humiliating trek from a Florida jail back home. While one went over the edge, no doubt the overwhelming majority in that program really do have the right stuff. Her story is a shame but shouldn’t reflect negatively on the competancy of her peers or the program they’re involved with. Obviously, their superior abilities and judgement are in part what made her relative failure so spectacular.
Good on her commander for being there for her when she needed it the most and all her other friend that will worry about her well being and immediate needs first and perceptions later.
Now, regarding Letterman’s Top 10…
#5: Her previous attempts to kill you have been postponed due to high winds
low whistle and a generous golf clap
[QUOTE=Caridwen]
I’m convinced the only way to get away with murder is to be really good about cleaning up after the fact or acting batshit crazy while committing the crime.
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The former didn’t work for Scott Peterson, and the latter is very rarely a successful legal stratagem. The best way to get away with murder is to leave it to the professionals. But sometimes that can backfire on you, too.
Better yet, just hire a good lawyer and sue them to death.
Stranger
“Lisa Nowak! You just drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando in a diaper, kidnapped and killed a girl that you thought was involved with a man you were obsessed over! What are you going to do now?!”
“I’m going to Disney World!!”
[QUOTE=Caridwen]
I’m convinced the only way to get away with murder is to be really good about cleaning up after the fact or acting batshit crazy while committing the crime.
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Considering that she brought along garbage bags, I’m guessing that she was planning to have the girlfriend “disappear.”
[QUOTE=Diceman]
Considering that she brought along garbage bags, I’m guessing that she was planning to have the girlfriend “disappear.”
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I figure those were for the diapers.
Bodies (so they say) are best dealt with via a large body of water, a footlocker and concrete blocks.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
I figure those were for the diapers.
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What about the pellet gun, the rubber tubing, and the mallet?
Stranger
[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Letterman was topical last night… Top Ten Signs an Astronaut Is Trying to Kill You
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Speaking of topical: Dork Tower
[QUOTE=Zabali_Clawbane]
I would hope so! Do you have a link to this interview online? I’d like to read/watch it myself. I hadn’t thought of brain tumors, but what if it is? There is something here we aren’t privy to, that’s for sure, IMO.
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I wish I could remember where I saw it. I think it was on one of the local DC newscasts – since she grew up in this area, there’s been a lot of coverage. I’ll dig on the local NBC station’s website and see if I can find it; that’s the most likely place.
She’s clearly got good friends who are standing by her in addition to her commander. A fellow astronaut talked last night about how she’d been there for his daughter when his wife died of cancer a couple of years ago, and apparently her neighbors came over before she got home and hung blinds in her whole house to keep the prying cameras out.
In spite of the fact that the jokes just write themselves, I still feel so sorry for her. Most of us have bad times in our life – perhaps not this bad, but nevertheless, our breakdown isn’t broadcast in intimate and excruciating detail to the entire world. This poor woman is going to be a laughingstock for the rest of her life, even if she’s shown to have gone off the rails for a genuine physical reason.
[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
I saw an interview with a retired NASA shrink yesterday who suggested she also should be investigated for a physical cause of her off-the-rails behavior, such as a tumor or something else significant like that. It’s certainly a better explanation than anything else I’ve seen.
Would insane behavior taken as a result of a brain tumor classify as legally insane even if there was careful plotting and planning involved that normally would suggest a level of competency?
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Brain tumors and neurological trauma can cause in psychosis, including states of lucid but atavistic or nefarious behavior either transiently or continuously. However, this is a pretty rare occurance. A lot of the original three groups of astronauts had a variety of substence abuse and emotional problems in their post-spaceflight careers, so it’s not as if emotional breakdowns or problems are unheard of among the astronaut corps, just well concealed.
As for the legal issue, I don’t know what kind of precident exists for committing a crime under a temporary psychosis (i.e. induced by non-voluntary drug use or correctable neurological dysfunction) but I would expect that it would be considered a mitigating factor toward a judgement of diminished capacity due to temporary insanity, requiring psychiatric or neurosurgical treatment rather than prison time. Perhaps one of the resident jurists experienced in criminal law can provide a more authoritative answer.
Stranger
Um, nevermind. 
Wrong page.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
What about the pellet gun, the rubber tubing, and the mallet?
Stranger
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Was it a pellet gun or a BB gun? It doesn’t seem likely one could kill someone with it. I concede the tubing might be used to tie someone up, but cable ties would be better and available. A ball peen hammer would kill or cause injury better than a mallet.
Perhaps she planned to build a hot air balloon from the trash bags to facilitate her escape. The BB gun would serve to deflate the bags when she wished to descend; the tubing was to hold water as ballast. The mallet would knock the wheel chocks out from the landing gear.
[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
I wish I could remember where I saw it. I think it was on one of the local DC newscasts – since she grew up in this area, there’s been a lot of coverage. I’ll dig on the local NBC station’s website and see if I can find it; that’s the most likely place.
She’s clearly got good friends who are standing by her in addition to her commander. A fellow astronaut talked last night about how she’d been there for his daughter when his wife died of cancer a couple of years ago, and apparently her neighbors came over before she got home and hung blinds in her whole house to keep the prying cameras out.
In spite of the fact that the jokes just write themselves, I still feel so sorry for her. Most of us have bad times in our life – perhaps not this bad, but nevertheless, our breakdown isn’t broadcast in intimate and excruciating detail to the entire world. This poor woman is going to be a laughingstock for the rest of her life, even if she’s shown to have gone off the rails for a genuine physical reason.
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I feel a lot worse for the woman she stalked for two months that she was either going to kidnap or kill.
There’s a lot more that’s going to come out about this. Have they released the contents of the emails? Where did she get them? Did she have a relationship with this guy? She denied it so far.
If you read the papers at the Smoking Gun, the police that took her into custody clearly thought she was trying to kill the woman.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Was it a pellet gun or a BB gun? It doesn’t seem likely one could kill someone with it. I concede the tubing might be used to tie someone up, but cable ties would be better and available. A ball peen hammer would kill or cause injury better than a mallet.
Perhaps she planned to build a hot air balloon from the trash bags to facilitate her escape. The BB gun would serve to deflate the bags when she wished to descend; the tubing was to hold water as ballast. The mallet would knock the wheel chocks out from the landing gear.
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She said she had the gun to make the woman go with her. Don’t forget she also had a 4" hunting knife. Plus a cooler and $600 in cash.
[QUOTE=Caridwen]
She said she had the gun to make the woman go with her. Don’t forget she also had a 4" hunting knife. Plus a cooler and $600 in cash.
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I dunno, if I wanted to kill someone, I’d do it with a 12ga and #3 buckshot, blow their heart and part of their spine out their back with what amounts to a handfull of .32 slugs. Surely not a BB gun.
You think she planned to dress the body out and put it in the cooler a’la Hannibal Lecter? 
[QUOTE=Caridwen]
She said she had the gun to make the woman go with her. Don’t forget she also had a 4" hunting knife. Plus a cooler and $600 in cash.
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I shudder to think what the police would think if they went through my car… nothing illegal, but I usually have a 4" knife, I usually take a cooler on long drives, I tend to have garbage bags especially on long drives, and pellet guns are not so strange in Texas if you live out in the country and want to scare deer away from your tomatoes without leaving the comfort of your porch.
Besides, I would want more than a 4" knife to butcher a human corpse. I wouldn’t butcher a chicken with a 4" knife.
YMMV I guess.
I can’t help but think that she was really after Moon Unit Zappa.