Zona’s Baseline Killer: A Different Kind of Evil, Part II
Lest I be considered an uninformed, bird-brained cretin I think I should talk about part II of the evil sweeping the hot Phoenix landscape. The “Serial Shooter” has been caught and it actually turns out it was two guys, fueling a new trend that sprung up with the Beltway Sniper scandal but that’s another story all together.
So now I say: and then there was one. That is to say if the “Baseline Killer” is just one guy and I’d be really surprised if he wasn’t. His MO reeks of the classic, deranged loner and his assault on the safety of the Arizona public has been far more personal. The Baseline Killer (I’m doing away with the quotation marks) gets his name from Baseline Rd., a long stretch that runs west to east in Southern Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, where many of the murderer’s alleged 23 crimes have taken place around.
The scariest part of the Baseline Killer, other than his disturbing composite that I’ve included here, is his prepotency to rape his victims. While usually attacking at night, Baseline’s targets range in age from 12-39 and he has also been connected to some robberies. On August 6th he celebrated the one year anniversary of his reign of terror and with the apprehension of the alleged Serial Shooter(s) he becomes Arizona’s (and subsequently this country’s) number one domestic terrorist at large.
Throughout the country over the last few years the numbers of violent crime has been steadily on the upswing. Most citizens would not consider unhinged lunatics like the Baseline Killer, or any other violent crime participant for that matter, a terrorist in the traditional sense of the word but frankly I can’t tell the difference anymore. Sometime I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, literally pounding on this keyboard as if it were the flesh of some equestrian friend. I’m at a loss and I’m losing my mind and all that good stuff.
Americans fear serial killers and with good reason, why shouldn’t they? They are quite evil. However, I’d be surprised if a majority of Americans thought they’d be more likely to die by way of a domestic bullet than the explosion of a terrorist bomb, even if the former is statistically more probable. I’m running around in circles, going backwards on a carousel of death as a funeral dirge plays above my numb head. I feel this way sometimes.
Does it feel wrong to use the ghastly crimes of one deranged, southwestern maniac to make a useless point about the state of your country? I guess. But you have to wonder if the National Guard was on Baseline Rd. and not Baghdad, Iraq if these crimes would continue.
