Teens keep committing murders here in Washington state, and news reports follow - in the usual piecemeal, value-neutral fashion. Occasionally, reporters may drill down into a particular case. Or not. Either way, there are precious few timely trend pieces, editorials or commentaries tying the cases together....investigating the histories of the families behind the young killers for common pathologies. I'd like to see this change.

Before I pick up my morning paper and read about the next teen killer from The Evergreen State.

Let's review some of the recent news.

There was a conviction last month in this case, and another defendant going to trial in October. The backstory: in the summer of '03, Jenson Hankins and Josh Goldman, two football players from Roosevelt High School, in a comfortable, North Side Seattle neighborhood, lured teammate John Jasmer to woods north of Seattle and - prosecutors alleged - hit Jasmer with a hammer, stabbed him and left him dead in a grave.

Hankins reportedly thought Jasmer had raped his girlfriend at a party. Goldman, described by his attorney as an immature video games buff, wanted to help his friend, and "right the injustice," though the girl later recanted her charges of rape, and Jasmer told police the sex was consensual (see following link).

Prior to the murder, there had been two calls to school officals (one from a parent, one from a school district administrator) warning of the possible crime. Talk had been going around. In late August of this year, Goldman pled guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, and now faces a likely sentence of 22 years. His attorney blames his immaturity, and video games.

Goldman "had a hard time understanding the reality of this," defense attorney Max Harrison said after the plea hearing. "I'm not blaming violent video games for this happening, but Josh played lots of video games. He's very immature for his age."

I'm no fan of video games. But the lawyer is disingenuous. It is parents that bear responsibility for what kids do. More on that from Ambra Nykol, here.

Goldman will testify against Hankins, who faces trial for murder in October.

Next, the two, then-12-year-olds from Eastern Washington, charged with killing a peer.

And then....

Jeremy Boone, a 16-year-old boy from south suburban Seattle (Sumner, Pierce County, a nice middle-class community in the shadow of Mount Rainier) confesses to shooting dead a 15-year-old friends's mom's ex-boyfriend, Larry Kloes, in northeast suburban Seattle, over his friend's beef with the well-intentioned surrogate father figure.

Boone is to be sentenced Oct. 21 and faces up to 40 years. He's to be tried as an adult, for first degree murder. His 15-year-old friend had lived with Kloes briefly, kept coming back to the vic's house and community to commit crimes, and didn't like it when Kloes reported him to police. Consequences. Not good.

Here's more on their relationship, one that seems to have arisen in part because the youth's father was long-gone.

Kloes' family said the victim, who once dated the boy's mother, tried to keep the boy occupied with positive activities to make sure he stayed out of trouble. They said Kloes even let the boy live with him for two weeks when he was 13. When Kloes told the boy that he and his friend could stay the night on May 2, he awoke early the next day to find they had loaded his laptop computer, guns, chain saw and motor oil into his sports car. (Snohomish County sherriff's detective George) Wilkins said Kloes found a steel floor-jack handle on the floor outside his bedroom.

"Mr. Kloes believed the metal bar was going to be used against him in his sleep," Wilkins testified. Wilkins said the boy apologized to Kloes, who reported the incident to police. Kloes also told police that in December 2002 the boy showed up at his house but left after Kloes called 911. About a week later Kloes told police the boy had stolen his car.

Boone said in court that the 15-year-old convinced him to join in the mayhem because Kloes "had a lot of stuff" and the kids could make "a lot of money," off it.

Unspoken here, but a glaring question, is that Kloes may have become a surrogate father figure - or something vaguely like that - because the 15-year-old's mother couldn't handle him, and "dad" was in absentia. It is the job of reporters and editors to explore this story further, and answer these questions.

The down-side of single-parenting is one of those often "untouchable" subjects, just like problems with day-care for younger kids, or teen girls who become mothers far too soon.

More alleged teen murderers in Washington State.....

....bail has been set at $200,000 for 16-year-old Robert Suarez of Benton City, accused of sponsoring 14-year-old Jordan Castillo in what was first described as a gang-initiation slaying of popular teacher and athletic coach Bob Mars in Kennewick.

The usual stuff from fazed relatives.

Suarez's mom: "This is not my son. I cannot believe that he did what they say he did." Saurez's 13-year-old sister: He's "not capable of anything like this."

Don't we all wish?

This report on the alleged murderers from Sunday's Tri-City Herald speaks of gang activity and fear in the streets, a far cry from this Seattle newspaper story the same day, attempting to minimize the gang connection, and warn against anti-Hispanic racial stereotyping among angry townsfolk.

I agree with the Seattle newspaper piece, at least in part. The race of the alleged perps makes no difference to me. It is their actions, and the role of their families in allowing them to develop into alleged murders, that concerns me. Simply writing it off as robbery-related as opposed to gang-related, and warning against bigotry, isn't enough.

I will eagerly await further Seattle media coverage on how and why these kids - assuming they really killed Mars - went wrong. And how it is their parents were so clueless.

As it happens, I've been reading a sobering call to arms by Robert Shaw, M.D., the director of the Family Institute of Berkeley, called, "The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children." It may not explain what happened in Benton City, but the author's got insights about violent and transgressive acts by today's teens.

Shaw is a former child psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC, who trained residents in community psychiatry when he headed up the Family and Children's Mental Health Services for all of the South Bronx.

Shaw's drawn to the way kids are raised by their parents in the early years, because he's convinced there's a connection to the teen misanthropes who commit blatantly anti-social acts, extending to the murdering of classmates, teachers or other adults.

Shaw writes that when kids kill or otherwise screw-up big-time, we try to "normalize" such events by insisting "the perpetrator is a 'good boy,' 'bright,' 'well-behaved,' 'popular,' and certainly not capable of such an act....we try to legislate abberant behavior with metal detectors, guards, limitations, and regulation of well-adjusted students as well as the problem children....nail clippers or scissors tucked into your backpack can get you suspended in some districts....Our comfort and safety have been shattered, and we're trying to point the finger everywhere but at home. We are frightened of our children."

With Vietnam, racism, consumerism and stifling conformity much on his mind, Frank Zappa told a concert crowd at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Hollywood in the mid-60s, "if your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll kill you in your sleep." (12th down in this link, and originally on the gatefold of the double-album "Freak Out," by Zappa and the Mothers of Invention).

OK, he was exaggerating a bit back then, but today, even that grim forecast has been exceeded. Given enough rope by lame, fearful parents, kids will not only kill their families (Menendez Brothers, Atif Rafay of suburban Seattle); they'll also go after classmates, mom's ex, the coach and the teacher.

Shaw warns against trends we take for granted.

Communication and connection between parents and kids is key as kids reach middle- and high-school age, he argues.

...the door between the lives of parents and their children may slowly begin to shut as they grow more and more influenced by today's warp-speed world. As the child moves full-time into school, parents tend to move further out of the family as well...as for the children themselves, their activities increase in proportion with their age...it becomes quite possible to spend seriously little time with your children by the time they are ten or twelve...you may be in the stands during your child's...soccer game, but...it actually promotes far less communication than playing catch in the backyard....that parents feel comfortable dropping out of sight so soon is yet another product of our hands off child-rearing era.

Little things add up to big things. The idea of taking my kids to Disneyland for a vacation is utterly repulsive: such important, time-away-from-home bonds should be forged in natural environments, not a blaring, crass shrine to commercialism and consumerism.

What kind of vacations your family takes; where you put your television set in your home; whether you allow your kids handheld video games; how family arguments are settled, and concerns voiced; these are among the political acts inherent in parenting. Acts with real consequences, of one sort or another.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 21, 2004 02:43 PM

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