Looking for the dark cloud behind the silver lining

When most normal people read that a serial killer has been captured, they view it as an unalloyed good.

A killer off the street, what’s the downside?

OTOH, MSM pundits and editors seem to take a perverse pleasure in finding the potential downside to every piece of good news.

Case in point--the capture of Lonnie David Franklin who is accused of being South Central LA’s “Grim Sleeper” serial killer. After years of frustration, investigators made their breakthrough when they used familial DNA analysis. Lonnie Franklin was not in the state’s DNA database so earlier searches came up empty. When investigators looked for close matches (i. e. family members of their unknown killer), they got a hit. Further investigation led them to Franklin. Undercover officers snagged his DNA from an discarded slice of pizza. That DNA proved to be to be a match with the evidence from the murders and an arrest was made.

What’s not to like?

MSM pundits and editors have found plenty not to like:

A Yellow Light to DNA Searches (NY Times)

The Grim Sleeper and DNA: There's much to be concerned about (LA Times)


Familial DNA analysis is promising but hazardous (KC Star)

Most of the arguments are either short on logic or light on facts. Or both. For example, the New York Times is fine with how California handled this case and thinks it should be a model for the nation. Yet, Jerry Brown has imposed a couple of bizarre restrictions on police:

Under rules set up by Attorney General Jerry Brown, familial searching cannot be used unless all other investigative leads have been exhausted. The crime must be murder or rape, and the criminal has to be an active threat to public safety still committing crimes.

Why must other, possibly less effective methods be “exhausted” before police turn to familial DNA analysis? In the case of serial murder and serial rapists this give the criminal more time to find more victims.

Similarly, why should cold cases be excluded? Just because a case seems to be cold, that does not mean the killer is no longer a threat. The “Grim Sleeper” got his nickname because he apparently stopped killing for fourteen years. In the case of BTK (Dennis Rader) police thought he stopped killing in 1978, but, in fact, he committed three murders in 2004 and 2005 that police did not link to BTK until Rader confessed to them after his capture.

I not sure what drives this obsessive desire to find a perverse angle to stories in the news. Is it merely a need to look clever and stand apart from crowd? That’s the most likely explanation. But I cannot help thinking about something David Gelernter wrote after he was almost killed by the Unabomber:

Between lawmen and reporters on the whole it is impossible, however, not to notice this difference: Most lawmen seem to hate criminals, and most reporters couldn't care less.