Ashleigh Banfield, Feminist Icon: "Couldn't DC Sniper Be A Woman?"

[Tom Bombadil]

"we are just as evil as any man". We demand eqaulity!!

[laker_dad]

Is she wearing high-heels and cutoffs? Very hot!

[GirlShortstop]

I'm expecting Ashleig to profile Annie Oakley on tomorrow night's show.   Good one!!   

[youaculpa]

Try suggesting that the shooter could be a Muslim.

Then of course the person doing so would be a vile bigot.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Annie Oakley: knee-length dress and snakeskin boots
Annie Coulter: cut-off jeans and barefoot
Janet Reno: bag over head (as per Surgeon General's order to avoid frightening the children)
Ashleigh Banfield: K-Mart Jane Fonda Collection Granny Dress and Birkenstock sandals

[MP5]

It said that the shooter was most likely male because the shooter was obviously a "Sharpshooter" and women don't tend to be sharpshooters.

Although when it comes to target practice, my experience has been that women are quite capable of being a "sharpshooter". When I was at Parris Island, our high score shooter on the rifle range was 244 (250 being perfect), but a female recruit (so we were told) had shot 247.

[laker_dad]

Barefoot? Rats... I guess I was seeing what I wanted to see.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Ashleigh Banfield, Feminist Icon: "Couldn't DC Sniper Be A Woman?"

Theoretically the sniper could probably even be a bird-brained newsbabe.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Reminds me of an old Jewish joke (which I permit myself to tell since I'm Jewish):

Back in Czarist Russia, a group of Talmudic students were conscripted out of the yeshiva and forced to join the Russian army.

In basic training, they proved themselves to be by far the best marksmen of all the recruits. So when war came, they were put on the front lines.

"Fire!" Yelled the sergeant. No reaction from the Talmudic students.

"I said Fire!, you idiots!"

"But sergeant, sir," one replied. "There are people out there. Someone could get hurt!"

[xm177e2]

Is it possible the shooter is a 12-year-old double-amputee Jainist? It's possible, isn't it? We shouldn't jump to conclusions...

[governsleastgovernsbest]

No, now that I look again, you're right! Cutoffs, light grey high heels, and a rifle. Nice look.

[bvw]

Yowsah. It's fine & dandy that the shooter would be a female Swedeborgian archbishop, but that the murderers are fanactic teachers of Islamic submission willing to do great violence and loving to kill, why that is simply not evocable from the mouths of the 'lil poofy heads all puffed up for the politically correct camera and audience who suck it up like good wee sponges.

So, yes, this morning we have it more likely that some insane female Swedeborgian archbishop is killng the peeps of DC Metro in a most random fashion.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

The Society of Otherwise-Abled Serial Killers salutes you!

[Brytani]

To say with 100% assurance this is a man would be wrong. There have been women serial killers, as a matter of fact Florida is about to take one out today.

On the other hand, the rate of female serial killers to men is very low. And when do commit serial murders it's unusual for them to use a gun, poison seems to be the choice for women.

While I wouldn't be totally shocked if this killer turns out to be a woman, I would be more surprised if it was.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Fair enough. You're referring to the case of Aileen Wuornos, who is scheduled for execution today. I'm setting out an article on her from today's news.

But while it's true she was a serial killer, her victims were all known to her. She was a prostitute who killed some of her johns. I have never heard of a woman serial killer who killed random people as is the case in the DC area. Still, a good point and good catch from today's news.

Florida to Execute Highway Serial Killer
Sun Oct 6,10:47 AM ET
By Michael Peltier

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Barring an unlikely last-minute appeal, serial killer Aileen Wuornos will be executed in Florida on Wednesday for the murders of six men during a year-long highway killing spree.


Wuornos, who has spent a decade on Death Row and would be only the second woman executed in Florida since before the Civil War, wants to die.

She has discharged her court-appointed attorneys, waived her appeals and twice passed mental competency hearings in her quest to be executed.

Last Thursday, Gov. Jeb Bush lifted a stay on Wuornos' execution after a panel of three psychiatrists determined she was sane.

The 46-year-old is set to die by lethal injection at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday at the Florida State Prison near Starke.

During a killing spree that began in December 1989 and lasted a year, Wuornos, a prostitute who worked Florida's highways, gunned down at least six men. Their abandoned vehicles and decomposing bodies were found in remote regions from central Florida to southern Georgia.

All were killed with a .22 caliber handgun. All had been robbed and their cars were stolen. Many, according to trial testimony, picked her up because they were looking for sex.

Piecing together clues from unsolved murders in south Georgia, and Marion, Dixie, and Volusia Counties in Florida, investigators developed a working theory: With little sign of struggle, someone, possibly a woman, was being picked up by men who were then robbed and killed.

'CUT TO THE CHASE'

It took Florida investigators a year to track her down. Following up on a tip, investigators in January 1991 tracked Wuornos to a small coastal town in Volusia County, where two undercover police officers backed by scores of others arrested Wuornos outside a biker bar in Port Orange.

At her January 1992 trial, Wuornos claimed she was defending herself when she shot electronic repair shop owner Richard Mallory of Clearwater, Florida, four times.

Prosecutors offered their robbery-murder motive, a theory bolstered by Wuornos' confession. It took a Tampa jury less than 90 minutes to find her guilty of first-degree murder.

After her conviction in the Mallory case, Wuornos pleaded guilty to five additional murders over the next several months and received a death sentence for each one.

She became an immediate celebrity. Her story prompted books, magazine articles and a made-for-TV movie, repeatedly portraying her as the nation's first female serial killer.

Court records show Wuornos grew increasing impatient and uncooperative during the appeals process, especially after her appeal in the Mallory case was rejected in 1994. In April last year, Wuornos told the state high court she had had enough.

"Again the information being withheld from all of you is that I've come clean," Wuornos wrote the court to protest the hiring of yet another public defender to handle her appeal. "So (I) would prefer to cut to the chase and get on with an execution, of which I've been sentenced under 6 times. Taxpayers' money has been squandered and the families have suffered enough."

Attempts to intervene in her case since then have been unsuccessful and post-conviction court proceedings have often been filled with vitriolic outbursts from Wuornos, targeted at judges, corrections officials and attorneys. The state attorney general's office, charged with prosecuting the case, says state officials should honor her wishes.

"Wuornos has a constitutional right to control her own destiny," wrote Assistant Attorney General Scott Browne.

Wuornos is not the first female killer to be put to death in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court ( news - web sites) reinstated the death penalty in 1976 and Florida resumed executions 3 years later.

In 1998, the state executed Judi Buenoano, dubbed the "black widow," by prosecutors for the poisoning deaths of her husband, son and a boyfriend. Before that, the last woman executed in Florida was a slave girl named Celia, who was hanged in 1848 for beating her master to death.

[MP5]

"But sergeant, sir," one replied. "There are people out there. Someone could get hurt!"

LOL! Exactly why I said good "target shooters"!

[smiley]

Ashleigh Banfield makes my hair hurt.

[johnb838]

Try suggesting that the shooter could be a Muslim

Not to get sserious or anything but the blasting of a child yesterday, IMO, ought to weight the scale a little more heavily toward an islamic supremacist. They brag about how we are all guilty, as in OBLs declaration of war against 'americans' as opposed to 'America'. I don't recall any serial killers suddenly deciding to do a child after doing adults previously.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

You're certainly right that shooting a child takes the case to a new dimension. There was that case a few years ago out in California where a guy shot up a Jewish day care center or pre-school, then went on a rampage killing adult minority group members.

[johnb838]

Ooops, forgot about that one... I'm not sure about the victim profile in this case but I have this feeling that this perp wants to kill an assortment.