Murder of attorney in small town (not RO for me)

The BBQ Pit
1

My first pit rant. Yay me.

Just got a phone call from my mom. A family friend was shot in the back three times while coming out of the door of his law office. His wife, daughter, and four-year-old grandchild witnessed it. The shooter then killed himself.

The shooter was the ex-husband of a client that my family friend represented in their divorce. He had not fulfilled most of the court orders regarding property settlement, so last week, my family friend had served him with a Contempt of Court citation, which police feel triggered the reaction. A note was found in the suspect’s car stating he intended to do harm to the attorney. Mom was unaware as to whether the suspect’s ex-wife was okay, or even had been located.

So, my rant is FUCK YOU, you pathetic redneck backward-assed cowardly greedy bastard. Because you couldn’t BEAR to let your 61-year-old wife of however many years to have some property you felt she didn’t deserve, you deprived a large extended family of their patriarch, and deprived the life of a small town one of its major figures and lynchpins. Because you wanted to show the world what a badass motherfucker you are, you took the life of a person who was hired to DO A JOB. Because things mean more to you than human life, you felt justified in shooting down in cold blood a grandfather in front of his four-year-old grandchild, while his wife and daughter watched, all because of a piece of property.

I hope you suffered before you died, and I hope the nurses at the county hospital did not treat you gently, although I know that they are too professional to do such a thing. I do not disparage them at all if they mishandled you, in spite of the fact that it would be unethical for them - the town only has 3000 people, and everybody knows everybody, and I hope when you looked up from your gurney you saw the face of a relative of your victim, and died being afraid of what she or he would do to you as you lay there, even if they did nothing.

I hope you went to your death in TORMENT, believing that you were heading toward Hell and an afterlife of utter agony, according to the traditions of your fundamentalist evangelical faith.

And how I wish you were there in reality.

2

this is one of those times where you hope that morticians actually do fuck with (and actually fuck) dead bodies.

3

The funeral home he will use (because everyone does) is run by members of my extended family, and they are consummate professionals, although they may have a struggle with this one.

The suspect’s attorney in the divorce is actually a friend of the victim. My mom’s best friend is the suspect’s attorney’s secretary. The victim and my stepfather used to sit on a pro bono defense attorney county roster together. I mentioned it was a small town, yes?

This is devastating on a town level.

4

i didnt mean to suggest that your family fucks corpses or anything… just expressing frustration at those who cheat judgment by suicide

5

is this in Colorado btw?

6

Oh, no, I totally understand! The people I’ve spoken to, Mom and others, are feeling the same frustration.

No, not Colorado, my home state.

7

care to elaborate? i want to see if there are any musings from the bar on this…

8

Check your PM.

9

That’s normal even in not-so-small towns: lawyers can be friends outside the courtroom as well as representing opposing interests in the court. I’m sure they’re feeling just as bad about the killing as anyone in the town.

10

Is it, er, my home state? In Pickens? Saw something like that in the news.

11

Oh, yes, I’m aware of that, and the news from my mom is that everybody is absolutely traumatized about it. And the latest news is that the shooter’s divorce attorney has been appointed as executor of the victim’s legal cases. Jesus, it’s Peyton Place.

12

I guess it’s too much to ask that instead of using a local funeral home, where the people who work knew the victim… That instead they just toss his corpse out in the woods somewhere for animals to pick over? I mean, why have a formal funeral?

13

Sorry to hear about your friend, Kolga. :frowning:

14

Wow.

Well, I was once the victim of an attempted mugging by one of my clients, but that’s as close as I ever came to this kind of threat.

I’m very sorry to hear of your – and your friends’ – loss.

15

Situations like this make me feel sad.

What makes me pissed off is these fuckers never have the balls to face the consequences of their actions. Think you’re a big man, slaughter an innocent. Then take your own life.

Pussy.

16

Have they found out whether the shooter’s ex-wife is safe?

17

Yes, she is safe, she was out of town visiting friends which is why they couldn’t immediately locate her.

Talked to my mom for long hours last night, and there’s so many twists and turns in the connections in this case it made my head spin. But none of them are interesting to anyone but me, since I grew up there.

Everyone is still very much in shock.

18

That is a legitimate question. All too often the ex-wife is the first one the aggrieved and crazed former husband turns on. You can’t help but suspect that the ex-husband turned on his former wife’s lawyer because he could not get at his former wife.

After more than forty years in the small town lawyer racket I can tell you that this sort of thing is one of the risks of being in this business. At any given moment there is always some poor SOB who thinks that his advisory’s lawyer is dishonest, corrupt, in cahoots with the judge and the direct and proximate cause of all the circumstances that have put his life in the toilet. Beating up the lawyer, setting fire to his house or his barn, vandalizing his office, maiming his horse, sending slanderous letters to his family, friends and other clients, making spurious complaints to the professional licensing people and as a last resort killing the lawyer (all of which I have seen happen) will not redeem the sad SOB’s life but he will, by God, have his vengeance (even if only momentarily) and have the short lived satisfaction of inflicting pain on someone he thinks has unjustly caused him pain.

Life is short and full of pain. Man born of woman is small potatoes and few to the hill. There are more than a few crazies out there.

19

How very sad. I’m so sorry.

20

I’m very sorry for your and the whole town’s loss. I practiced family law in Columbia for years. I didn’t know the victim personally, but knew who he was. The state’s legal community is not that large and any loss is acutely felt. And family law is the worst for exacerbating already-raw and -heightened emotions.

SC also lost another lawyer the next night. I don’t know many details, but apparently he arrived home during a home invasion and was shot in his driveway. Sad times.