Mind Soup

Lebanon is reeling from the shock of five brutal killings, four of which targeted members of the same family and the fifth that of the Egyptian man suspected of their murders. He was dragged from police custody,  beaten to death  and lynched by an angry vigilante mob Thursday in the small mountain town of Ketermaya. Graphic footage and video of the murder suspect's lynching (way too graphic to be posted here) began circulating immediately, leading many to criticize the breakdown of law and order. The suspect, Mohammad Salim Mssalem, was arrested after the fatal stabbing on Wednesday of Youssef Abu Merhi, his wife Kawthar and their two granddaughters Amina, 7, and Zeina, 9.  Mssalem was reportedly reenacting the murders for investigators at the scene of the crime when an angry mob overpowered the security officers, dragging the suspect into the streets and beating him severely. The officers were able to retrieve the badly wounded Mssalem and get him to a hospital, bu...

​Jennifer Daugherty may have been 30, but she was mentally disabled with the mind of a young teen. Still, she seemed to be doing well enough and was involved with a community center in Greensburg, Pennsylvania... ​So her stepdad, Bobby Murphy, put her on a bus to Greensburg on Monday. She'd mentioned meeting a number of friends there, so dad wasn't alarmed when she called later that day to say she was spending the night with someone named "Peggy." She would be back the next day. That didn't happen. She apparently went to an apartment with six people she knew, but for reasons unknown they decided to turn on Jennifer. Perhaps just because they could. They forced her to drink vegetable oil, detergent and urine. She ate spices and medications. They shaved her head and beat her with a towel rack, a vacuum cleaner hose and a crutch. Then they forced her to write a suicide note before stabbing her to death. She was wrapped up in Christmas decorations and clot...

When Lynn Middlebrooks Geter found that her 12-year-old son's report card wasn't to her liking, she didn't offer to help him with homework or ask teachers for extra instruction. No, she decided something more drastic was in order. The 38-year-old mom from Warm Springs, Georgia decided the best way for her boy to learn was to kill his pet hamster. With a hammer. The kid, naturally, was quit upset. What would happen with his next report card? Would he have to beat his sister to death to improve his commitment to math? So he told his teacher about it the next day. The teacher called social workers, who in turn called the Meriwether County sheriff's department. For her visionary parenting strategies, Geter is now in jail for animal cruelty, child cruelty and battery. UPDATE: Lynn Geter was either the greatest mom in Georgia, or a Mommy Dearest who put up a good show in public, but was a wicked witch inside the privacy of her own home. Those seem to be the radically dif...

A 78-year-old Hallandale Beach grandmother ticketed for driving on a suspended driver's license spent 15 days in jail before authorities announced her license wasn't suspended and an outraged judge set her free. County Court Judge Lee J. Seidman ordered Gabrielle Shaink Trudeau's release in December at her arraignment. "She's handcuffed like Houdini, for the record. She's got chains around her waist, and she's got handcuffs in front around her hands as if she was some kind of a violent criminal," said Seidman, according to a transcript. "I want her released. I think she's suffered enough at our system's mistakes." Safeguards built into Broward's judicial system are designed to prevent what happened to Shaink Trudeau. But the prolonged jailing of an elderly woman with no previous criminal record over a traffic ticket has left red-faced authorities admitting they botched her case. "We fell down and we fell down badly,...

BOSTON (AP) — Police say a frustrated Boston woman called 911 to say she couldn’t get her 14-year-old son to stop playing video games and go to sleep. Police spokesman Officer Joe Zanoli said Monday the mother called for help around 2:30 a.m. Saturday to say that the teenager also walked around the house and turned on all the lights. Two officers who responded to the house persuaded the child to obey his mother. Zanoli says the mother’s 911 call over video game obsession “was a little unusual, but by no means is it surprising — especially in today’s day and age when these kids play video games and computer games.” The Boston Herald first reported the 911 call, saying the boy was playing the popular “Grand Theft Auto” game.