I don’t claim to understand women, but c’mon. The guy is accused of killing his pregnant wife.
The details of the crime are here:Peterson
Even if he didn’t do it, wouldn’t it make sense to wait and see? Besides, he was cheating on her, hardly a great catch.
My question, I guess is what would cause any normal woman to contact this guy?
Normal women wouldn’t—but it’s a well-known phenomenon for women to court prisoners; there was even an A&E special on it recently. Remember, Ted Bundy got married in prison!
Eve is right, it’s as common as mud in these cases.
I’m too lazy to check, but dig around in Crime Library, & you’ll find plenty of examples, I’m sure.
I remember when they caught Richard Ramirez, the infamous “Night Stalker” serial killer in Southern California. This person had raped children and elderly people, cut peoples eyes out, and shot or stabbed everyone to death.
When he got to prison, he had a very loyal “fan club”, including a woman who was desperate to marry him. Granted, he was no real danger to her. Nobody was ever going to let him out of prison.
Still, I found it disgusting that someone would fall in love with him and I feel the same way in this case. Geez women, what are you thinking???
Remember, these are seriously emotionally disturbed women we’re talking about, here . . . I doubt The Woman On the Street (no, that doesn’t sound right . . .) has scrapbooks of Scott Peterson or a Menendez Brothers lunchbox.
Yeah, that’s the thing that strikes me about this case, the ‘evidence’ against Peterson, isn’t very strong, there’s a good chance he’ll get off. Bundy wasn’t going anywhere.
I guess like the women dating OJ, they figure has long as they don’t push him into a corner, he won’t kill them. Maybe they’ll be the one to ‘change’ him…living dangerously and all that.
Even discounting the murders, OJ is a wife beater, yet there’s an abundance of women who seem to have no problem with him. I can see Peterson getting off and in six months dating “model” types. What’s the deal?
Is is the money? The chance to have 15 minutes? Are they (the women) all *damaged?*I don’t get it.
Eve I agree with you that some of these women need help…but all of them? I’ll bring up OJ again as an example, do you think the women dating OJ are emotionally disturbed or are looking for the ‘nicer’ things in life?
Hmmm. Maybe that’s what I need to do! Commit some kind of weird high profile crime, that gets me lots of media attention, and then I’ll finally find a woman willing to settle down with me. (Gotta wonder what kind of marriage proposals the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart’s been getting.)
Note that word “accused”- as Holmes pointed out, they haven’t released any evidence yet that is at all convincing. Right now, it seems like the only reason they chacrged him is that the case was so high profile they felt they had to.
Sure, he did cheat on her. OTOH, he seems to have been otherwise a good husband- supported her well, no abuse. He is good looking, fit, and not poor. Many women have settled for less.
However, it would seem that these women are not “normal”. After he is aquited, then…
I imagine part of the appeal is just the notoreity – Scott Peterson’s in the news a lot, and a segment of the population is inclined to support anyone who’s high-profile.
Anyone remember the segment on Michael Moore’s TV Nation where they sent out junk mail to regular folks, trying to raise funds for serial killers – and got a couple’a hundred dollars in response? Compared to that, love letters to Scott Peterson seems trivial IMO.
These women, I suspect, suffer from extreeemely low self-esteem. If nobody wants them, why not go after someone nobody but them wants? It’s a creepy hybrid of teen idol worship and the bad boy allure. While I don’t think all of these women want publicity, they probably like the thrill of the situation yet the relative safety of it- devoting themselves to an abandoned man, spending money to free him (although I can’t imagine what would happen if that really happened…), secure in knowing that he isn’t off cheating (at least not with other women, although many prisoners have multiple penpals that don’t know about each other).
The late comedian Bill Hicks did a routine referring to Bundy’s marriage proposals, commenting, “… and I’m not getting laid!”
Cat Fight, I don’t agree with you saying that they have low self esteem, as a whole.
A daughter of my mom’s friend wrote faithfully to a man in jail for a little over a year. She enjoyed the writing, enjoyed the fantasy of ‘what could be’, enjoyed his dependance on her, and most of all, enjoyed the safety.
She had been raped 2 years before she started her correspondence with the jailbird. SHe very much liked the idea of having someone special to think about… AS well as never having to deal with the physical aspects of a romantic relationship.
Their entire relationship was fansty, romanitc poems, and dreaming with a sense of unity (us against the system, us against the odds). This, at that time, was all she wanted.
Just thinking about this further, I can see why it woudl appeal to many women… and men.
‘Making friends with the enemy’, perhaps finally having a sense of power in a relationship, a total sense of being important and wanted (even if just to write letters and for visits) as well as some twisted sense of being a martyrdom (forgiving the unforgiveable and sacraficying their right to a healthy relationship in order to prove it), they’d never worry about being physically abused or cheated on, and they may get media attention
a lot of THAT is what we all want… attention and acceptance.
. . . And the prisoners use them for all they’re worth. That A&E show noted that these guys are usually corresponding with about 20 “soul mates,” and getting money and gifts from them.
Oh, come on, the reason men write to women in prison is pretty obvious. That whole bondage thing, women being locked up with other women 24/7 and we all “know” what happens in men’s prisons, so the same thing “must” be happening in women’s prisons…(After all, the highest rated episode of Charlie’s Angels was the one where they went to prison!)