"Blogging the Fifth Nail"...

...or, Confessions (Rationalizations?) of a child killer.

Joseph Duncan's Criminological Theories

We haven't really been following this horrific story, except inasmuch as it's unavoidable on the cable news networks. But now there's a new-media connection:

Convicted sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan III spent months on the Internet documenting his internal struggle over right vs. wrong. Then, four days before two Idaho children he is accused of kidnapping disappeared, he wrote: "The demons have taken over."

Literally.

It was one of the last entries in Duncan's Weblog before the 42-year-old North Dakota man was arrested and charged this week with two kidnapping counts. Authorities believe he took 9-year-old Dylan Groene and 8-year-old Shasta Groene from their Idaho home shortly before their 13-year-old brother, mother and her boyfriend were bludgeoned to death May 15. Police say Duncan also is a suspect in the killings.

We checked out Duncan's blog, and it is as creepy as you'd expect. It also turns out Duncan has theories about crime and punishment, as evidenced by this Feb. 21 entry:

If you knew without doubt that closing 9 out of 10 prisons and releasing the 9 least violent out of 10 prisoners would reduce new crimes by more than half in less than 5 years, would you be for it?

In the real world, meanwhile, the number of people in prison keeps rising despite lower crime rates! The New York Times should look into this.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today.)