Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I can't say I'm not glad he's gone

Although I don't generally support the death penalty (I don't think it's a deterrent, I think some innocents are wrongly convicted, and I believe there is a tendency for those of certain races and low intelligence levels to be convicted at higher rates than others), I can't say I'm not a little relieved that not only has this person been locked away, he has truly been removed from society. Overall Angel Maturino Resendiz was linked to 15 murders, but here in Lexington he left a survivor, and DNA evidence eventually linked the crime to the killer.

In Lexington he killed a young college student then raped, stabbed, beat and left the girl he was with for dead. She spent five days in the hospital and has had to deal with the emotional and physical damage that he did, especially living in fear for the two years it took authorities to catch him. Instead of choosing to hide, Holly Dunn came forward, not only identifying her attacker but giving talks to other college students about the dangers of rape and its effects.

Her take on the execution, which she did not attend, choosing to spend the day with friends and family in her home state of Indiana?
"I have to say that I guess it will be a relief when he's not in the world anymore," Dunn said in a written statement. "But I'll live with the emotional trauma whether he's in the world or not."


That pretty much covers it. To Dunn and the families of his other victims, the Railroad Killer's death might give a certain sense of closure, but never will it undo what happened. As someone who used to walk across those very same tracks in the wee hours of the morning on her way to work (just four years before the attack), I want to thank Dunn for coming forward and for helping put Resendiz in jail. We all felt a little safer to know he was behind bars. Now we feel a little safer knowing he will never get out into the world again, although unfortunately the world has an unhealthy share of similar violent criminals in it, so we can never truly be safe.
'Railroad Killer' is executed in Texas

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