CTV.ca News Staff
A young Nova Scotia man suspected of killing two American sex offenders before taking his own life had visited an online registry that listed their names and addresses, a U.S. official said Monday.
Wow. Never could have seen that coming in a million years, right?
The government makes a big deal about publishing the personal information about only a specific type of criminal, giving constantly up-to-date photos and addresses of these people. This specific type has extremely sympathetic victims, who often spawn crusading male relatives.
However, there's absolutely no possible way anybody could possibly ever predict that this sex offender registry might spawn a bunch of would-be Batmans† who would use this information to track down and deliver vengence upon these individuals.
A highly publicized government list of bad people who are walking free on the streets leading to a crazed vigilante hunting them down? Totally unexpected. Nobody's fault, of course. A random one in a trillion side effect‡, right?
† I use the "Batman" reference even though "The Punisher" is a far better example of a crusading vigilante meting out the ultimate punishment as he feels is necessary. My only reason for using Batman is because Batman is "The Great Detective", and a would-be Batman would need some website to find the baddies.
‡ I use "one in a trillion" even though if I weren't being faceitious about this whole thing I still could chalk it up to no better than a 1/6,609,142,241 chance. After all, it has happened once with 6.609 billion people on the planet, so clearly the odds of it having that effect on a would-be crusador is that at a minimum.
Of course, nobody would ever say that X caused Y in a situation like this. Maybe some crazy newspaper editors in Dubai, but I'm sure that's more or less all of them, with possible expections of some tabloid-minded Brits.
Bonus revelation exclusive to Third Edge of the Sword: I haven't seen any ink spilled on this and likely never will, but here's what the CP story has to say:
Gray's name was posted on the state registry because he had moved to Maine after he was convicted in Massachusetts of sexually assaulting a child under 14. Elliott's conviction was for having sex with a girl under the legal age.Note the difference between the two men. Gray had sex with a girl under 14. Elliott had sex with a girl "under the legal age". Ergo, Elliott's girl was under 18 but over 13. Is this setting off any red flags in the minds of any Canadian readers? Well, it should: Elliott was killed by this Nova Scotian for an offense that any number of his friends and neighbours could have been actively engaged in without any legal consequences (and ergo a fair bit of secrecy).
