DESPERATE FRAULEIN

An article concerning foreign death row groupies by Scott Farwell of the Dallas Morning News reports that every month "dozens" of European women come to Texas for visits with condemned inmates. Pictures accompanying Farwell's article showed that these women were not Dallas Cowboys linebacker look-alikes. From their pictures, these women could easily qualify as beauty contestants.

Amazingly, just like rock stars, condemned inmates attract their own groupies. While rock stars tend to attract girls in their teens and early twenties, death row groupies tend to be in their late twenties and beyond. Many of the European groupies are from Gernany - desperate fraulein they must be.

Some death row groupies end up marrying the condemned, even though there is no chance for them to consummate the marriage. In my blog COME ON, GIVEE HER A BREAK (11-14-07), I referred to Marsha Richards who met and married her husband 15 years after his arrival on death row.

Michael Richards, who had been sentenced to death for the 1986 rape and murder of a 53 year old nurse and mother of seven, was executed on September 25, 2007, becoming the last condemned killer put to death in this country pending a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of death by injection. The "grieving" widow has filed a wrongful death suit against the Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for effectively blocking Richards' last minute appeal by refusing to keep the court clerk's office open past 5 PM.

What in the world would ever possess a sane and intelligent woman, whether attractive or not, to do something so incredibly stupid as to start up any kind of relationship with a cold blooded killer awaiting execution? Farwell lists several reaons given by "experts." Some of the groupies have been victims of violence or sexual abuse. Others are motivated by compassion or a "desire to nurture." Some are attracted to "the baddest of the bad boys."

According to experts, many of these relationships "typically begin when women join anti-death penalty groups like Amnesty International." Other women find condemned soulmates by researching the internet. LostVault.com and other pen-pal groups post free personal ads "based on letters and pictures from death row inmates." Some anti-death penalty groups encourage these relationships and facilitate them by identifying nearby places of lodging which cater to European women wanting to visit with death row inmates.

Many of the condemned inmates are running a scam by romancing "10 to 20 women at a time." One fraulein admitted she knows "that some death row inmates manipulate European women for sport, sexual stimulation and money."

Women who become romantically involved with cold blooded murderers awaiting execution have made a mockery out of women's liberation. They must not be playing with a full deck. What you've got here is two sets of losers - the condemned and the death row groupies - and two losers never add up to a winner.