Posted on 12/02/2008 11:59:45 AM PST by NormsRevenge
TRACY — Police have arrested a Tracy couple in connection with a case involving an emaciated teen boy who stumbled into a local gym Monday wearing a heavy chain padlocked to his ankle.
Kelly Layne-Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, face charges of torture, kidnapping, false imprisonment, child endangerment and corporal injury to a child, according to police spokesman Matt Robinson. Kelly Layne-Lau also goes by the alias of Kelly Lau-Schumacher, police said. They are each being held on $1.185 million bail.
Police served a search warrant on their house Monday night and pulled out evidence.
Another woman, Caren Ramirez, is apparently the boy's aunt and is being sought by police for possibly having a role in the boy's kidnapping. She is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 100 pounds and police say she may be headed to Palo Alto.
The teen, whose name hasn't been released, was reported missing from a Sacramento foster home in 2007. He was apparently picked up by the Tracy couple, witnesses said.
--snip--
A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said he thought the boy was a member of the family and would see him playing with the other children who live in the house. He said they had limited contact with the couple — which he said kept to themselves and would only say "hello" and "goodbye."
He said they had lived in the rented house for about a year.
"They appeared to be a normal family," the neighbor said. "We don't even know their last name. (The boy) wouldn't be allowed to talk to us when we'd see him outside or ask him questions."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
hmmm well the solution here seems obvious. In a heinlein esque world the abudctors would be hung or pushed out an airlock and the boy would be returned to his parents.
case closed.
I wonder what drove him to it?
“He said they had lived in the rented house for about a year. “They appeared to be a normal family,” the neighbor said. “We don’t even know their last name.”
This, sadly, is an example of neighbors in a commuting exurb. People are gone all day, running around all weekend, and seldom even know the names of their neighbors, let alone their personal circumstances. Tracy is a city which has sprung from 35,000 people in the early 90s to 85,000 now. Everyone is a newcomer and everyone just tends to mind their own business and ignore the others around them.
I’d Black Flag ya but .. good catch. ;-)
OK, I’m sick. People go to jail for treating dogs this way. This couple needs to lethal injection, and quick. Hell just posted two new openings. How despicable. How can people possibly become so depraved? I’m baffled. And nauseated. And very happy he escaped with is life, although I don’t think he has any chance for happiness in this life, after his ordeal. May God show him every conceivable mercy in this life and the next.
Hang em.
Another foster child or ward of the state , chained not by the state and its policies, but rather captured by those who prey on the vulnerable. He’s lucky .. he got away from his captors.
But, now the state will likely return him to his old set of chains.. he will remain a victim and his captors will also become wards of the state with chains. Fitting, in a way.
I await Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who was at the forefront of foster child care reform in this state, commenting on this case.
This is the result of your social services “industry” in the US. It is ALL one big ‘social’ experiment don’t you know?
Git a rope.
Splurge, git two ropes.
he was wearing only flesh-colored boxers. He had visible cuts and burns on his back and was described as being emaciated and covered in soot, dried blood, feces and urine,
How do you sit in your living room with a half starved child in your basement?
How do you sleep at night after burning a child with cigarettes?
How does one achieve such depravity?
It is impossible for me to relate to these people.
It was and still is basically affordable, at least compared to prices in the Bay Area. But it is of necessity a commuter town where people spend three hours a day on the road and just want to sit at home with their big-screen tvs and luxury deck fireplaces or pools and ignore the world around them at nights and on the weekends. It is not surprising the neighbors were strangers.
“It is impossible for me to relate to these people.”
Societies everywhere are full of these types. The next time you hear a liberal want to “negotiate” with some dictator, or “understand” their point of view, just remember this couple. The bad dictators are these people, maybe a little smarter and even more evil so they were able to take over a whole nation.
I live in a commuter type ex-urb of the Twin Cities. Everyone on our block knows everyone else and we socialize on weekends quite often when the weather is nice. In the winter, it’s a bit different, but neighbors are very quick to help dig each other out in snowstorms. I’m getting together with the the neighbor gals to bake Christmas cookies and we all keep an eye on each others’ children. It must be a midwestern thing.
I’d like to think a situation like the one in the article couldn’t happen here but with the way the world is going, who knows?
“Kelly Layne-Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, face charges of torture, kidnapping, false imprisonment, child endangerment and corporal injury to a child.”
But...but...what could we have done to make these two tormented people act in such desperate ways? Their’s was but a cry for help, and we ignored them. Why weren’t we less selfish, more willing to reach out, quicker to decriminalize their only means of entertainment, etc. etc. etc ????
Oops. Sorry. Was just practicing my ACLU defense lawyer dialogue for when the movie rights are settled.
Dead, soulless eyes....
too fat. Got Perv-???
It is impossible for me to relate to these people.
The thing is you are a Human Being in the true sense of the word. You have a moral compass.
I guarantee these people do not set foot in a church and the only thing that allows us to call them human is their strands of DNA. They are human but have no Humanity.
Here’s a “zabasearch” of the house. Click on the **long** link. :o/
Meth users ...current and past...come in all shapes and sizes...we see them quite often in our office....
I would not be so quick to make such a guarantee.
I have read of similar people who attended church every Sunday.
Sometimes these people believe that they do God’s work when they do these things.
Because you think of them as human.
San Joaquin’s one of California’s red counties. Good luck you two animals.
They sure look like tweakers to me, too. That does not rule out the “pervert” hypothesis, though.
That’s the ideal and there certainly are neighborhoods like that but most I have seen have families that know perhaps the neighbor in either side and across the street and that’s it. The houses here are upper middle-class homes, mostly, 2,000sf-4,000sf with some ostenstacious ones on the outskirts. The main employers are in Silicon Valley, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco. Those few families who manage to live here on one income do form ready networks, if not in the immediate area, at least in the community and we have a lot of internet groups. But there are a lot of neighborhoods which empty out in the daytimes (bait to burglars) and shut themselves in at night. Those with kids get to know others in the same sports programs; otherwise most socializing is done within worship congregations and not that many attend church here. (But we are all hooked into the internet, big time.)
“I have read of similar people who attended church every Sunday.”
Dennis Rader comes to mind...president of his church council.
My money's on them just being garden-variety scumbags.
Because such actions require a total lack of empathy.
Such a person would have to not see his victim a person; more as an object.
I can not imagine looking at a young boy’s face and not seeing a person like myself or even myself at his age.
Bernie Ecclestone
These two have long since passed the point where they can be called "people".
These people are human and, regardless of what happens to them legally here in California, they will be held to human standards in the final judgment which comes to us all.
But I think too many people have lost sight of what constitutes human nature. While many people naively believe that people are by nature kind, gentle and loving and they become different because of external influences on them, the reality is that people are by nature selfish, cruel and unloving unless acted on by external influences. One of the starkest differences between liberals and conservatives is their view of human nature. Liberals look at brute mankind and ask “what happened?” Conservatives look at brute human nature and ask “what didn’t happen?” Conservatives look to laws to restrain the most egregious behavior of brute mankind while leaving as much freedom of action as possible. Conservatives by nature distrust “messiahs” like Obama. Liberals look to law to level the playing fields and enable everyone to reach perfection. They implicitly trust messiah types. All our most dangerous public policies stem from this fundamental disagreement about the nature of mankind.
People come in all sizes, shapes and degrees of depravity and outward appearance is seldom a clue.
I believe there is a special place in hell for creatures like this.
I agree with you.
This is also I believe why Radical Islam appeals to so many people in our prisons.
They see in it a justification and a outlet for their abnormally violent nature.
As I said in an earlier post...we get meth users in our medical office....some are ‘normal looking’ and yes, even fat. I think it really depends on what kind of life you are able to lead while on the meth...if you live in the streets...sure you will look like a total mess.....if you are able to do meth and work a job....a few execs out there...and eat well etc....one could look relatively normal....
Yeah, right.
Rope is an easy answer to predators.
They are definitely not the kind of people I would want to spend an evening with.
They are certainly still people in the sense that they are entitled to be tried by their peers and receive a just and equitable sentence but they are also severely warped and perverted.
If and when they are convicted this crime deserves the maximum sentence.
“This is also I believe why Radical Islam appeals to so many people in our prisons.”
Quite right. It also satisfies a deep human desire to be part of something bigger than yourself while also allowing yourself to be “natural” or selfish and violent. Those who lack religious fervor or some quasi-religious cause are suckers for all-consuming radical philosophies such as that espoused by Muslim terrorists. Real religion calls you to a higher plane of existence, away from brute sensibility.
You say it like it's a bad thing!
I'll defer to your expertise on the meth habitus of current and past users.
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