Stalking the Bogeyman

May 15, 2004 7:48 PM

"This time last year I was plotting to kill a man. I was going to walk up to him, reintroduce myself and then blow his balls off. I was going to watch him writhe like a poisoned cockroach for a few seconds, then kick him onto his stomach and put three bullets in the back of his head. This time last year I had a gun, and a silencer, and a plan." Westword's best writer makes a couple admissions.
posted by raaka (27 comments total)

Is this non-fiction?


Regardless, it's well written. I can personally sympathize with the subject matter discussed, and I feel like he has articulated so many of the feelings that many of us victims of these kinds of assaults feel. I respect him for his compassion and forgiveness at the end. I hope this is real and not a ficitonal account.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:02 PM on May 15, 2004

quite visceral
posted by memnock at 8:13 PM on May 15, 2004

As a former Denverite and Westword reader, I can vouch for him being one of the best writers there. Additionally, (pardon the self link), this is startling close to an article I wrote here and the followup. It's amazing how that shit sticks with you.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 8:27 PM on May 15, 2004

Thanks for the stories, raaka and Kevin. Pain is easier for someone to bear when they know others share it too, and lived through it.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:40 PM on May 15, 2004

Very powerful. good post.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 9:05 PM on May 15, 2004

powerful---i would have killed the guy tho.
posted by amberglow at 9:17 PM on May 15, 2004

I haven't read Westword in awhile. Looks like I should pay more attention when I see it out. Thanks raaka.
posted by Eekacat at 9:54 PM on May 15, 2004

I have to admit that if this had been my life I may well have killed the guy. At various times in my life I've thought about violence toward people who put me through degrees of hell so much smaller it's probably not even comparable.

Reading this, though, I can't help but think this is the one-man equivalent of Tutu's Truth & Reconcilliation Commision -- vs., say, the Israeli/Palestinian analogue. The visceral illustration brings home exactly how hard this kind of resolution is, but when you look at the alternative, the choice is clearer if not easier. It's not just about the chance that the guy who commited the crime was one of the few who wondered what the hell he'd done and changed and became a real human being, either. It's also about what you become by simply pulling the trigger without bothering to find out. It sounds like Holthouse may have come close to walking through the rest of his life with blood on his hands, likely not being able to share the burden of both crimes with anybody.

Excellent posts.
posted by weston at 10:06 PM on May 15, 2004

To paraphrase Spider Robinson -

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.

Not ever having really been exposed to either of those types of issues, I must admit I can't quite get my head around exactly what the victims must go through, but stories like these definitely help illuminate things for the rest of us.

Thank you very much.
posted by Samizdata at 11:47 PM on May 15, 2004

Jeebus.

A quote from salon:

"It is not the things that others do to us that make us lose our faith in humanity, it is the things we do to others."

Truer words were never spoken.

Good, if disturbing, post.
posted by jopreacher at 2:14 AM on May 16, 2004

Riveting.


Holthouse is a testament to what I admire in humanity. I am inspired to become a better, more profound person.


Jopreacher: amen to that, brother.
posted by sic at 3:37 AM on May 16, 2004

"Two years later, Billy, my youth-league basketball coach, held a team sleepover after the last game of the season. He ordered pizzas and put a gay-porn video in his VCR, inviting us to watch it while he took the two shyest boys on our team into his bedroom and locked the door. So I took a case of soda out on his balcony and launched a pop-can artillery barrage on the cars in the parking lot of his condo complex. I shattered windshields and dented hoods until the neighbors poured outside, screaming bloody murder, and Billy had to go down to pacify them by agreeing to pay the damages. After that, he turned off the porn and stayed in his bedroom, the door open, for the rest of the slumber party. I sat up with my back against a wall all night long. He didn't tell my parents about the pop cans."

beautiful.
posted by quonsar at 5:50 AM on May 16, 2004

oops. i meant to say more. when kids do inexplicable things, there is ALWAYS an explanation. hell, when adults do irrational things, there is always a rational explanation.
posted by quonsar at 5:53 AM on May 16, 2004

Does it occur to anyone else that Holthouse has set up the perfect crime? No, not intentiotnally, and not for himself. If someone else were to kill the rapist (perhaps one of the other victims he claims not to have?), the police would naturally latch on to Holthouse as the prime suspect. Especially if the killer were careful to do it at a time when Holthouse had no alibi.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:27 AM on May 16, 2004

i meant to say more. when kids do inexplicable things, there is ALWAYS an explanation.

would that also apply to holthouse's molester?
posted by namespan at 9:27 AM on May 16, 2004

I found it kind of convenient that both his basketball and football coaches had interests in young boys. Maybe I'm wrong but it seemed like a little bit of "artistic license".
posted by knapah at 9:37 AM on May 16, 2004

Are we really sure that this is a non-fiction piece? Because in the story the molester's name was David Holthouse. In the fifth to last paragraph it says "When I was still planning to kill the man I was now sitting beside on the 16th Street Mall, my plan was to walk up, say, 'David Holthouse. You raped me when I was seven,'". Earlier when the molester is talking to the victim He calls the victim by the name of David. They may merely have the same name. Also in the very first paragraph it says "I had followed him to and from his job as an electrical engineer". I'm assuming isn't Holthouse's real job.

Either way its a damn good piece.
posted by philcliff at 9:59 AM on May 16, 2004

No, the molester's name was not David Holthouse. His plan was to introduce himself. "David Holthouse" was to be him identifying himself to his molester so he'd know who was about to kill him.
posted by kindall at 11:14 AM on May 16, 2004

wow. i don't really have anything else to add except the bible quote he looked up at the end: "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written 'It is mine to avenge. I will repay.'"

...reminded me of denzel washington's line in man on fire: "Forgiveness is between them and God. It's my job to arrange the meeting."

i dunno if it's me but i've just been noticing vengeance as a theme or motif or whatever more, at least at the movies.* dunno what that says about society in general, or our media consumption, except that that's what people want to see more of? it's like dirty harry and death wish are making a comeback of sorts, like it's in vogue or something.

anyway, i'm glad that in his case 'justice' prevailed instead of revenge, in the sense that murdering a rapist doesn't make it 'right' but rather that having someone (and everyone around them) come to the understanding that what they did was wrong and having them change in the process is more healthy in the long run. (if not immediately satisfying? - like a boot to the head!)

like when his rapist admits, "I know that until I was in my thirties, I didn't really believe other people's feelings were real," and that in his position, "I'd probably rip their head off," suggests that empathy really is the beginning of moral conduct... if that's what the lesson in all of this is anyway :D

which brings to mind another movie moment! (i know :)

Oskar Schindler: Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.
Amon Goeth: You think that's power?
Oskar Schindler: That's what the Emperor said. A man steals something, he's brought in before the Emperor, he throws himself down on the ground. He begs for his life, he knows he's going to die. And the Emperor... pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Amon Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Oskar Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power.

and that, sometimes, is chilling in itself!

---
*just saw dogville and mean girls the other day; dogville with a 'message' that revenge is arrogant, but naive forgiveness can be moreso, and mean girls with one saying it's just so uncivilized :D
posted by kliuless at 12:07 PM on May 16, 2004

anyway, i'm glad that in his case 'justice' prevailed instead of revenge, in the sense that murdering a rapist doesn't make it 'right' but rather that having someone (and everyone around them) come to the understanding that what they did was wrong and having them change in the process is more healthy in the long run. (if not immediately satisfying? - like a boot to the head!)

I think this is a bit too much to expect. Recently a man was sentenced to 170 years for rape in my community (repeat offender with lots of extenuating circumstances) who has steadfastly refused to admit that he did anything wrong. In personal letters to the victim and other family members, he keeps blaiming the victim for ruining his life.

Sometimes, the recognition that a harm demanding redress is all you can expect.

And even then, one of the things I've learned to deal with is that sometimes you have to make your own closure. 20 years down the road, I've come to doubt whether naming names and confronting my assailant would be productive.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:21 PM on May 16, 2004

I found it kind of convenient that both his basketball and football coaches had interests in young boys. Maybe I'm wrong but it seemed like a little bit of "artistic license".
posted by knapah at 11:37 AM CST on May 16

I've almost posted about that 3 times in this thread so far. I'm glad someone else noticed it besides me. That he had close affiliations with not 1 but 3 child molesters strikes me as an incredible coincidence, and not a single set of parents were ever aware of anything.
posted by Ynoxas at 4:01 PM on May 16, 2004

I found it kind of convenient that both his basketball and football coaches had interests in young boys. Maybe I'm wrong but it seemed like a little bit of "artistic license".

That he had close affiliations with not 1 but 3 child molesters strikes me as an incredible coincidence, and not a single set of parents were ever aware of anything.

I didn't find it surprising at all - these areas are a natural place for these animals to gravitate towards. Thinking back to my own childhood, with the innocence of childhood gone, I believe that I have had contact with at least that many men with a sexual interest in children and I doubt that any parents had the faintest idea. Given that these things are much more acknowledged now, I doubt that the pickings are so easy nowadays for those who would prey on our children, but those were far more innocent times, on the surface at least.

I don't see how any justice was served in this case, but can see how, if this was truly a one-of occurrence (which I doubt), the harm done to the loved ones of the molester could be worse than him going unpunished, although the idea of someone going unpunished for such a deed makes me angry.
posted by dg at 6:00 PM on May 16, 2004

Not that odd at all. The principal at once of the elementary schools I went to was "dismissed" because of a child molestation scandal, and later it turned out that the father of one of the children I went to school there with was also a child molester. That's two in only a community of a couple hundred, a larger community could hold much more.
posted by Hackworth at 9:05 PM on May 16, 2004

I was sexually molested by 2 individuals unknown to each other, a 3rd watched, so I don't know if he counts, and then 4th was abusive in a non-sexual way. So I don't see it out of the realm of possibility having contact with multiple molesters.

Parents: It's not that odd dude at the end of the block, but the person who is well liked, trusted, and has a great rapport with kids you need to watch.

David wanted to commit the perfect crime, but what concerned me was that he planned to shoot him in the balls and then kick him in the gut. There's a good chance of leaving a bloody shoe print, or getting DNA on himself.
posted by Feisty at 9:21 PM on May 16, 2004

kindall, that seems reasonable, that's just not how it sounds to me.
posted by philcliff at 10:34 AM on May 17, 2004

Compelling.
posted by scottq at 12:00 PM on May 17, 2004

follow up
posted by shoepal at 6:43 AM on June 1, 2004