I had intended to be the one writer in America who was not going to huff and puff about Lindsay Clancy’s strangulation murder of her three children, but the sheer hideousness of her killing her own two sons and daughter speaks to my subject: our peculiar fascination with—and sometimes ridiculous forgiveness of—the unhinged committing the unforgivable. We love crime stories, and we’ve always had a morbid attraction to the worst among us. Look at our popular entertainment from Cody Jarrett to Don Corleone to Darth Vader; the baddest are the bright, shiny objects that attract our gaze, and many people, strangely enough, are absolutely fascinated with those who kill without compunction. Movies, television—and now the Internet—provide the seductive drug that feeds the fixes of those among us who thrill to playing amateur psychologist between sips of their morning coffee. GoFundMe Read more