So, here’s something that should surprise absolutely nobody. A serial killer of women in Portland. That’s Oregon, not Maine, although I’ve not been to Maine in a while, so I can’t say for certain Maine isn’t cooking up their own psychopaths.
This is Jesse Calhoun, serial killer of presumed to be 6 women, and there’s a lot of shit about this that I just don’t like. First and foremost, he punched a fucking K9, so if you ask me, he’s guilty. Also, if you punch a dog, fuck you.
I don’t know what it is about the Northern California through Washington situation, but they cook up serial murderers like I do organic dog treats. This shit is insanity.
However, I watched this unfold in my true crime threads over on Reddit. For months, there have been these couple of people trying to make these connections, and everyone kept pulling the, “no, it’s the homeless and drug abusing lifestyle”, and “the cops would have figured it out”.
Wellllllp. Turns out, it was not the homeless and drug abusing lifestyle, and now it seems, months later, the cops have figured it out.
Better late than never, that’s what I’ve heard anyway.
They actually issued a statement about a month ago saying that the online rumors were false, there was no connection, etc. That’s the funny thing about following the true crime threads, a lot of people post there about their family members. I have spoken with a lot of relatives of missing and deceased people because I’m always following one situation or another, as y’all are aware, with my girls we sometimes help.
Sadly, the two often go hand in hand. Randomly, you’ll pick up on situations like this, where it seems so evident, but nothing is done about it. It’s really frustrating. However, in this case, more than usual, because this asshole was actually given clemency by the former Governor because he was an inmate wildfire firefighter during his last prison sentence.
They’re not talking a lot about details, but all of the women were homeless and drug addicts, it’s been stated. That is a bad scene anywhere, but out there? Oh, that’s problematic. The west coast has more serial killing than any other area of the country, and Oregon is also known for a shit ton of missing women.
Really, I thought we had outgrown the serial killer, what with everything being caught on camera now. There is no way to leave your house without it being on a doorbell cam or two. So, to get away with killing a presumed six women over a period of months, that’s jaw dropping news.
I don’t think he wasn’t on camera. I think somebody didn’t give a fuck enough to do a thorough job. Then people starting linking bodies, and someone had to give a fuck.
Normally, my sights aren’t on this type of shit, but as many of you know, my older sister was a homeless heroin addict, and she died as a result of that about 8 years ago. I don’t often talk about how she was found, because it isn’t dignified, so I completely understand the way these families feel. I try to point out that they’re people too, but that’s a hard selling point, and I get that. Really, I do.
Addiction is a bad scene, if you believe it to be an illness or not, it’s not my place to call it. I have my own demons there, but some people, they’re not ever going to be able to put it down. My sister was one of them. The women that this man killed are said to have been the same.
It’s difficult to even know how to close this, because as much as I want to say if you have someone living like this, they need help, I also remember trying to get my sister off the street. She didn’t want help. She wanted to be high. It’s the long and short of it. Some people don’t want anything to do with sobriety for any amount of time.
I hope, if you have someone in your life living this way, they can be helped. And if they cannot, that you take comfort in knowing that those of us who have lived it understand. You can’t make someone want better. You just prepare for shit like this, and hope for the softest landing possible.
Bitchface lines are open. That’s all I have tonight.
So... notes about, "why, north Pacifica??", as I'm a Seattle area native, for whatever it's worth. There are a ton of factors at play here, in the environment.
We have less natural sunlight in Oregon and Washington. Much like in Nordic countries, most of Canada, Alaska and anywhere else above the line, we tend toward depression and domestic abuse because of the long hours shut indoors from the rainy/snowy weather, and frequently away from the sun even outside because of the cloud cover.
The ethics of the infrastructure and society are "me first" Boomer relics of "bootstrap" individualist, Calvanist mind-fuckery. The progressives haven't been in control frequently enough, for long enough stretches of time, to actually make effective policy changes that stop a lot of Bad Things Happening to Good People.
However, even having said that, part of the reason we end up with so many mental health crises are the well-meaning progressive policies that closed down most of our mental health hospitals instead of reforming them and putting in better oversight. All those folks got dumped into the street, when they had been sent here for help. With homelessness being criminalised, it drives the desperate and the mad underground.
When you create a breeding ground for desperation, there are a lot of dark alleys where people go missing in the shining Emerald City and pretty Portlandia.
Our very tolerance for people's eccentricities is used against us. We try to be bastions of rationality, understanding, compassion. We approach things medically, scientifically, realistically. We underestimate the power of insanity, the infection that is a person's own innate sense of disgust.
When someone is triggered into disgust, there is no way to find common ground, peace, or even rationality. We see this in how polarised our country has become, where the argument is between the center right and the fringe right radicals, while everyone on the actual left they're trying to lock out of the political conversation entirely.
Disgust is what drives many killers, especially murderers of women. It's not lust, fury, hatred, lonliness--it's disgust and desperately severe mental illness unnoticed and unchecked.
Take all of these ingredients, add white supremacist influences from Idaho and the rural sticks, strange eldritch forests that are every bit as weird as the Appalachians, and starting off with a majority population of Catholic and Protestant colonizers who left their old-fashioned Puri-tyrannical stamp on everything, and you have a unique recipe for either genius or disaster. Frequently both, in varying ratios.
I don't know if this helps explain us at all or not. I hope it makes sense. ✌️
My baby brother. He will be 57 in December. He just packed TWO bags, and snuck off in the night to get back to California, and his Meth habit. We tried everything short of trying to get him deemed incompetent to keep him here, and sober. He's had 2 or 3 strokes, and I'm all but certain we will get that dreaded call sooner rather than later. As for serial killers and the great NW, see my reply to Annika.