Razer Blade Girl

Despite my inquisitive and analytical nature, there are some things in life I still don't get.

I could see if I was maybe a quarter of a century younger, I would not get these things because I would have an excuse... being young, naive and not having lived or seen enough.

However, I am no kid.
Hy husband and I have raised our blended family of four kids into constructive, loving, contributing members of society who....I am proud to say... have not one criminal, sex, drug assault, baby daddy or baby mama claim against them. In this day and age, that's no small accomplishment.

Yet, being a Private Investigator, I know too many families have an underbelly, an undercurrent that sweeps countless kids away in a sea of poverty, neglect, abuse.

And beyond the deprived -- or depraved -- physical circumstances of many lives, there are the psycho-dynamics that play out in all kinds of families: siblings; parents; children; aunt uncles; cousins; in-laws; grand kids; step kids; boyfriends; girlfriends; baby mamas and papas.

Put any clan under a microscope and you usually find a more than a few family units with more than a few screws loose. Add alcohol or drugs to the mix, plus infidelity, divorce, money troubles, custody battles and you have ignition... combustion... and eventually destruction..

In my humble opinion, sometimes insanity... or inanity... is inbred.
Sometimes it is triggered by how a kid is raised.
Other times, it's a combination of factors, many originating in the frontal lobe of the brain. Something as simple as a hit to that lobe can turn a calm life into a violent or insane one.

However, I will spare the technical speculation and cut to the chase... as Private Investigators tend to do... by telling you this:.

Be ever vigilant as this economy continues to tank.
Because those people among us with screws loose.... are becoming unhinged altogether.

I worked for The Public Defender for a years when I first became an Investigator.
This was before I built my own Detective Agency.
I was a novice then, learning how the system worked by working for any of the 90 Public Defenders in that Seattle office.

My job was to represent the "alleged" criminal. There are innocent people accused of crimes and guilty people accused of crimes.
Guilty or innocent, the word "alleged" is key to separating separate the innocent from the guilty.

At The Public Defender I represented whoever they handed me.
In the beginning I was filled with the inner strength and resolve that comes from representing the accused --- the underdog, the indigent, the poor who could not afford to hire a Criminal Defense Attorney or a Defense Investigator for themselves.

And when I was promoted from investigating misdemeanors to felonies, including murders -- serial, familial and otherwise -- I felt I'd hit both a new high and new low in my career.
Because I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the majority of baby shakers, or wife killers, or thieves, child molesters, pimp, abusers, scumbags and cheats I was investigating on behalf of.... were precisely that and they couldn't be locked away long enough for my tastes.

One case in particular bubbles up to my consciousness every time I see a straight razor.
Which is often.
That's because of an incident a while back.

I was investigating a case for a Public Defender representing a girl, a minor, 17 years old, who grew up in a rough area of Tacoma, WA called the Hilltop District.
She had no father, just a sperm donor she never met once. Her mom was on welfare and heroin.
She dropped out of school at 13, joined a gang and was quite the tough kid.
I recall sitting across from her at juvie.
She was stripped of her bandana, bling and street clothes. She was just one more angry institutionalized kid resigned to her fate.
And she was probably eating more steadily than she ever had at home.

She didn't bother smiling at me when she first met me. In fact her disdain for me was obvious. She was black I was white.
And my being blond-haired, blue-eyed works well with Aryans, but not necessarily so with angry black girls who've felt oppressed all their lives.
Rapport took a while to establish. In time, it was. Unfortunately, no amount of rapport could erase the facts, the witnesses, the act -- or build an adequate defense for this girl. She knew it, her attorney knew it and I knew it.

What she did was carry a razor blade in her mouth... as she often did. She said she never left home without it.
Sometimes she tucked it in her cheek, sometime under her lip, she could even carry it under her tongue. And the same way gamblers can roll pennies all over their hands and between closed fingers, she could move that razor blade through her mouth in a metallic ballet that defied imagination. This was not a one-sided blade either, both sides were sharp.

"You ever cut yourself?" I ask.
"Not a once," she replied proudly.
If there was a two-sided razor blade mouth-rolling Olympics, she'd garner a Gold.

One day, our client was at a popular Mickey D's not far from the jail.
She told me, "Okay maybe I did over react a little," before she explained her story.
"But she was after my man."
She repeated the last two words in case I missed them. "My man." she said.

"She was a black girl like me" she said. "She started coming on to my boyfriend and I told her to back the f off. I gave her a warning."

That very same night, at a park where the kids partied after dark, our client's nemesis chose not to heed that warning. The victim approached the alleged boyfriend and gave him a hug. The victim was not aware our client the DEF was present and watching . And within five seconds after that embrace, our client flew over to the soon-to-be-victim, pulled that razor blade out of her mouth and sliced the stunned girl 7 times across her face before the crowd, also stunned, pulled her off.

Witnesses, were abundant. Including the alleged boyfriend who later claimed the girl was psycho and he never liked or dated her.

Right after the attack, The DEF, our client, dropped the blade, ran from the scene and was found later that night high as a kite with her home girls.
She was arrested, charged and awaiting trial when we met.
She showed no remorse. The only regret I witnessed was that she was still behind bars.
My interview complete, my next stop was the victim.

In criminal cases, an Investigator who works for a Public Defender, is allowed to interview the injured victim. The victims are allowed to have anyone they want present during the Criminal Defense Investigator's interview. In this case, it was the Prosecutor, the Deputy prosecutor, and a Victim's Advocate, plus a tape recorder all surrounded the victim while I interviewed her.

There was not a smile to be attempted or had in the room.

I looked at the 16 year old victim's once beautiful face.
It was now marred forever by deep, jagged, ugly razor blade scars across her nose, cheeks, lips, eye brows. As her eyes met mine they locked in on me with a hatred beyond my ability to describe it here.
Suffice to say, I was sufficiently humbled and admittedly humiliated by the position I was in.
I wanted to represent the victim not the girl who sliced and diced her.

I asked my questions carefully and respectfully. I got my answers, none of which would give our client any reason to assault this young woman.

It was this case... and one more... that ultimately led to my hasty exit from the Public Defender's Office.
Now, I do represent victims... with an occasional Criminal Defense Investigation here and there, when I truly think someone is innocent or their case needs mitigation.
And still, despite all the years that have passed since that case and others, I still see acts of ludicrous, unwarranted, unmitigated violence every day.

And still, I don't get it.
All I do get is that some people are screwed too tight, some too loose and some have sick fantasies and no impulse control.
And those in between.... those can go either way depending on the circumstances.
Senseless acts of violence are just that. Senseless.... meaning, no sense involve -- just a primal, visceral response that turns some people into weapons of self or mass destruction.

Razer Blade girl got off with a little less than three years. I never saw or heard from her again. My guess is if she isn't dead, she's in the system.
I saw no way out for that kid... though she was a way out for me.

Odd... how that works.