why in the World should anyone feel sympathy or compassion for a rapist, child molester, thief, and murderer? Making Panzram into some kind of "victim of the system" is soft peddling the fact he was a monster and a psychopath. He died at the end of a rope & that's how it should be.
shareI've just finished watching the movie and reading up on Panzram, someone I hadn't heard up until a couple days ago. Read about him here - http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/panzram1/1.h tml
If the linked site is accurate, the movie really sugar coated the Carl Panzram story. The site says he wasn't interested in women, he had raped over 1000 males and on more than one occasion completed that crime by murdering his victim. The only sexual offense in the movie is the rape of the woman he met in the library, and the movie shows her alive and, save for the violation, otherwise unhurt. That's a misleading portrayal of his sexual abusiveness, which seems to have been about humiliation and dominance. Carl Penzram was a monster, and the movie (imo) way over-stressed his victimhood.
If the movie had started in his youth than yeah, maybe it could make the argument than the injuries inflicted on him caused something to snap. But as an adult he was nothing more than a vicious beast. Whatever injuries he may have suffered he returned a hundred fold, and I'm not sure the state had many options beyond executing him.
"maybe it could make the argument than the injuries inflicted on him caused something to snap."
I not only saw the links above and movie, but actually read the book.
Sure as an adult he was irredeemable and could only be put down like a rabid dog (he CLEARLY stated that fact quite clearly himself), but the lesson is also quite clear: Keep abusing/mistreating people (especially children), just don't be surprised later to have them come back as monsters (or terrorists).
Terrorists?
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