Digging for details

Xanga profiles of the teens in question

In rural Pennsylvania this weekend, a young man shot and killed his younger girlfriend’s parents after an argument over her curfew, then left with the girl. They’ve been found in Indiana and police are investigating.

And so are the reporters. The Philadelphia Inquirer has discovered the Xanga weblogs of both the young man and the daughter and extracted from them their interests and grammatical errors. Of course, the paper focused on the things that made him look disreputable and her look sweet.

I looked at their sites. They seem to be typical American teenagers. Entirely human.

They both like candy. He hunts deer with his friends. They both like Christian rock music. She plays soccer. He is precious about his hair. She belongs to her church youth group. She doesn’t use capitals. He writes in full sentences. They both invoke God in praise.

There’s nothing there to foreshadow what happened this weekend.

If I should ever become a criminal or the vicitim of a crime, what might reporters deduce about me from my weblog? Probably all the wrong things. Bad tendencies and good deed are feely intermingled on mediatinker, as well as terrible typing and an inherited tendency toward too many commas.

Posted by kuri at November 15, 2005 08:44 AM