Killing Out of Boredom

Kevin at Wizbang has a post up on Kevin Ray Underwood, a sicko who had some wicked plans for a ten year old:

Months of strategic planning and preparation led Kevin Underwood to invite in, kill, attempt to dismember and sexually assault his upstairs neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin, District Attorney Tim Kuykendall said Saturday.

“It is our belief that though she was chosen to be the victim of this particular crime, other people, children and adults, had been targeted,” said Purcell Police Chief David Tompkins.

Bolin, 10, was found dead in a plastic tub in the closet of Underwood’s apartment Friday afternoon. Police began searching for the girl Wednesday night, originally hypothesizing she may have been abducted by an online predator.

First of all, this is a sick man and this is an awful deed. Everyone’s right that this is the type of offense the death penalty was made for.

What makes the Underwood case so interesting is that Underwood maintains a blog. Now I’ve written about Joseph Edward Duncan, the blogging murderer before. I disagree with Court TV who linked the two cases.

Duncan used his blogging as a way of discussing his killings and his criminal impulses. Underwood uses his for more random stuff. Blogging had nothing to do with the crime. With the growth of MySpace, and blogging in general its silly to describe anyone who commits a crime as a “Blogging Murderer” anymore than you’d describe them as a “TV Watching Murderer”.

Indeed, what shocks you about Underwood’s blog is its normality. If not for that, you’d notice its longevity. Its been around Since September, 2002.

Going through the posts, here are some observations based on reading the blog (which was much less uncomfortable than reading through Duncan’s). Looking back at his posts going back to 2002, Underwood for all intents and purpose was a directionless sci-fi/fantasy fan boy (two time college drop outs). He talks about a lot of purchases of anime and going to see sci-fi movies.

The biggest thing that glares out at me is you get a lot of joking on blogs about the blog host being evil and you just think they’re horsing around. Evil’s often a joke, but then you see some of the stuff on his blog and it really gives you a disturbing perspective of whether there’s something more serious beneath the joshing.

December 3, 2002: He writes Satan’s Cheerleaders.

December 31, 2002: He posts the results of a couple online quizzes. One, which he admits to certifies him as “an evil genius” the other which he says is false, says his fetish is “probably illegal, go get help.”

January 9, 2006: He repeats the results of the first test which rated him as “pure evil”. Underwood declared:

Stupid test. I’m not that evil. Not anymore.

Indeed, so from now on I’m going to take bloggers who make being evil part of their schtick a lot more seriously.

What else do we know about this guy?

The guy hates the churches in the area, particularly because its hard to get pornography. Writing back in September, 2002 he said:

You also can’t get decent pornography in Oklahoma, you have to drive to Texas for that too. You can get the magazines here, but the movies are all “cable version.” Basically an R-rated porno. Like what they show on Cinemax late at night. To get real porn you have to drive to Texas. So, like the tattoo parlors, there are several Adult Video shops on I-35 right after you enter Texas. One of them is right on the border, it’s like 100 feet from the Red River, the border between Oklahoma and Texas. I’ll admit, I’ve driven all the way to Texas solely to buy porn. I’m not the only one though, I know several guys that have done the same thing. It’s a six hour drive there and back. Long way to go for porn.

I fully expect them to find adult material at the center of this situation. It generally is when a porn user commits what amounts to a sex crime.

We also find out that He hates Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He believes that human beings are just “domesticated primates” (must make them easier to kill.) He posted press releases for the ACLU, and he was a fan of Hunter Thompson.

Now, that doesn’t mean we should get suspicious of everyone who has those attributes. There are a lot of people who have those attitudes and don’t kill anyone, don’t dismember or rape anyone. There are people who never act out on pornography.

I’d say the good rule for suspicion is to be concerned for someone whose life has no meaning and is drifting aimlessly through it. Despite Underwood developing this sick fantasy. The motive for the killing can be summed up in one word: boredom. He was bored with his life, and so he set out to make himself a big time serial killer.

I mean there are probably a hundred thousand blogs out there just like Underwood’s and 99% are run by people who’ll never do anything. But its a true saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop, and people who are so incredibly disengaged from reality, from any meaning or purpose are most often (thought not always) going to be the type who snap. So, if you know someone like this, reach out before they go totally psycho.

Before we leave this topic, one last disturbing note and that’s from the comments of the blog. There are many enraged responses to this guy. I was utterly shocked to find this supportive comment:

Many people are angry about what you did, I’m not one of them. I admire you for having the courage to do this. I like to think that in the far future, people will look back to cases such as this and see it the way we see now feminist and homosexual activists of the past: courageous enough to discard social taboos and not only admit one’s honest desires to oneself, but actually do what you feel passionate about.

Brave new world indeed. Some things go beyond social taboos, and I’d be suspicious of anyone who doesn’t realize this is one of those cases.

UPDATE: 04/17/06-11:25 AM

AP Report seems to add credibility to my “boredom theory”.

Underwood worked for nearly seven years at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant, where shift leader Bill Verdan described him as a quiet person who kept to himself. “He did a good job,” Verdan said.

However, he said Underwood, who quit about a year ago and was working as a stocker at a Griders Discount Foods grocery store in Oklahoma City, was a “boring” man who rarely smiled.

“Just his tone of voice, he just sounded dull,” Verdan said. “Trying to get a smile out of him took an act of Congress.”

Again, boredom, dead end job (seven years at Carl’s Jr’s), it all adds up to the same relative motive. The AP has more on some additional insights gleaned from the blog.

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