Just when it seemed as if nothing could worsen the circumstances of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks’ murder last month, something did: As part of his guilty plea agreement, 17-year-old Everett Gentry said the price to kill Chelsea and the baby she was carrying allegedly was $500, payable by her 20-year-old “boyfriend,” Elgin “Ray-Ray” Robinson Jr., to 49-year-old Theodore G. Burnett. Then again, would a price of $5,000 or $500,000 have made the crime seem any less heinous? At least with Gentry’s confession and plea, the state has been spared the cost and Chelsea’s family the emotional toll of one of the three capital cases related to her death.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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27 Comments
Not casting blame…but I can’t help but wonder, where were this girls parents when she, at 13, was sleeping around with a 20 year old man? Were they totally clueless as to what their 13 year old was doing?
When everything in our society encourages young people to be sexaully active, it’s no wonder these tragedys happen. Parents today have a lot to deal with because kids are more influenced by their peers at that age, and it’s an X-rated world out there. This is the price we’re paying for living in a culture where life has become disposable if it’s inconvenient and anything goes.
The question is whether Nola will let the others plead or force a couple of trials so she can try for the death penalty. She should make offers quick to the others and spare the family any trial at all.
I am so angry at these thugs who snuffed out life so carelessly all to avoid prosecution is a much less severe crime. As I read the report last week about Gentry’s guilty plea, I was crying and cussin’.My heart broke for Chelsea’s family. I’m sure her mom is beside herself – if only I didn’t pressure her to give up ‘ray-ray’ (lack of capitalization intentional) as the sperm donor (let’s all face it – he wasn’t gonna be a daddy or involved in his daughters life).
Unfortunately a lot of parents don’t know what’s going on with their children. Not many know who their kids hang out with, who their favorite teacher is, what their favorite food is. Many parents assume that just because they haven’t gotten calls from the police that their kids are good kids (it may just mean that the kids haven’t gotten caught yet) or that the police are ‘picking’ on their kids because there’s nothing better for the police to do.
Chelsea surely thought that ‘ray-ray’ loved her and would be supportive of her. She paid the ultimate price for her naivety. I hope that her death does not go unheded by other teens (and pre-teens) – guys will say anything for sex and you as beautiful, vibrant, young women deserve so much more than meaningless words – it really is worth the wait for someone who really really loves and truely cares about you.
What, and girls never want sex and boys never want love and meaningful relationship?
Queen Victoria is no longer on the throne, Julie.
I invite you to join the 21st century.
It was been my experience as a teen girl (granted it’s been more than 10 years) that guys will profess undying love and girls foolishly believe them and sleep with them only to get ‘dumped’ the next day. I’m sure that some boys really do want love and meaningfullness but that (in my experience) happens after they turn 23 – before that it’s all about the nookie.
Somewhere in the dictionary between the words neice and night is the word that discribes these people that killed Chelsea Brooks.
“The question is whether Nola will let the others plead or force a couple of trials so she can try for the death penalty. She should make offers quick to the others and spare the family any trial at all.”
Posted by: Mr X | July 19, 2006 at 08:21 AM
NOT SO FAST MR. X.
If Chelsea Brooks were my child, I would opt for a trial to get the death penalty.
Let the parents decide what they want and you keep your nose out of it.
Something needs to be done with our ghetto culture. It’s becoming a huge problem in America. It’s like our own homegrown terrorist problem at home.
When did things get so bad? I’ve heard many theories about what transformed the thuggish ghetto culture, but I don’t see any remedies.
The only remedy is for today’s parents to develop a backbone and quit being afraid to parent. There is no way our “anything goes” culture is going to turn itself around and start taking responsibility for the garbage it floods kids with. I feel sorry for parents today, it’s really hard to support a family and keep a roof over their heads and at the same time be super vigilant in their kids lives in order to know what’s going on. Our parents never had that kind of pressure when I was growing up, because back then the “village” did raise the child and there wasn’t all the negative influences that we see today. You can’t let kids fill their heads with garbage then act all shocked and upset when they mirror it back to you, wondering where the hell it came from, children really do learn what they live.
Joe,1) MTV2) Gangsta-rap that glorifies violence and abusing women3) Breakdown of traditional family values by the secular-progressive movement.4) Out of touch with God.
There was once a time when living clean and working hard to get what you want was the common ideal of American culture. But today, thanks much in part to the glorification of stupidity ensconsed and immortalized by rap music and MTV, it’s now desirable to be: a thug, a gangster, a pimp, a drug abuser / dealer, to impregnate girls out of wedlock and not pay child support, in other words, to be a lowlife good for nothing waste of space. It is unfortunate that popular culture has embraced this retardation of American family values. When my grandfather was still alive, he held Americans in high regard, I shudder to think what he would say about us if he were alive today.
Billy Boy,Your comments on Rap are interesting, since they are almost word-for-word the arguments put forth by the christian crusade back in the late ’60’s, blasting rock music, and predicting the exact same results for your generation. Maybe you ought to go look in a mirror and decide how accurate their prognostications were, based on those same arguments, before you recycle them for Rap!
Billy Boy,”There was once a time when living clean and working hard to get what you want was the common ideal of American culture.”
It may have been somebody’s ideal, but I should remind you that about the time your grandfather was born, 75% of all adult males in New York City were infected with a venereal disease (had they surveyed, results would have been pretty much the same across the nation), and most of the fortunes made were based on theft and political corruption. The hard-working, clean-living men you idealize were mostly victims of the robber barons, and hardly ever got what they wanted and worked for. That was the reality; so much for your ideal!
http://www.thekansan.com/stories/071806/opinion_20060718018.shtml
Murder leaves a multitude of emotions and pain is the worst. A pain so deep, high and wide, no words are big enough to describe it. You can’t get around or through it.
And then there is an anger, anger at everything, wanting revenge, the knowledge everything is beyond your control and a feeling of total helplessness.
How do I know this – my son was murdered in 1982. I wanted to hurt the person who murdered my son like he had hurt me, I wanted to poke his eyes out, among other things, but I never wanted him dead. I wanted him to wake up every day knowing he was in prison because of decisions he had made.
I resented my taxes paying for his room and board. Strange as it seems, I learned it is cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to put them to death. The cost of the legal procedures including the last-minute appeals to prevent capital punishment far exceed paying for their room and board.
However, there is a cost greater than money for family members and friends of the victim. And that is waiting for the legal procedures to be finished.
It is hard to work at healing as long as there are court dates to cope with. Each date is like pouring salt in a wound. Once more you are forced to listen to all the legal words.
Once more things you might have started to resolve are torn apart. I have heard victims express disappointment after the offender was put to death. They expected to feel better, but they didn’t.
I am grateful there was not a death penalty when my son was killed. I didn’t have to deal with going court appearances. I could put the offender out of my mind, start to work at healing and go on with my life without more legal interruptions.
It’s very hard to do, but it can be done.
- Wilma Loganbill,
Hesston
That assumes the legal process is finished just because an offender did not get the death penalty. Not true at all.
This confession was the result of a plea-bargain.Would that plea-bargain have happened if the death penalty had not been a possibility, taken off the table only as a result of the promise of future testimony?I don’t take the death penalty lightly, but it is a tool to gain confessions in cases where there is more than one wrong-doer.This subject rarely comes up in capital punisment debates.
MR X, What about when someone murders someone you love, only to get out after less than 20 yrs and then get thrown back prison twice for breaking parole by commiting new crimes, and then coming up for parole every three years for the rest of his life? We have salt poured into our wounds every three years when we appear before the parole board and argue as to why he should stay in jail. How is all that helpful to getting on with life, when you have to worry about him getting out of prison AGAIN? If he’d have gotton the death penalty like he deserved for killing two people in cold blood while committing a robbery, we COULD go on with our lives without having to give him a second thought, at peace knowing he’d never be able to hurt anyone again?
Mary- I agree When someone’s actions goes beyond the pale of humanity, they lose their right to be treated as a member of humanity. At that point, removal is appropriate, and I find the argument that death by whatever means is inhumane or too painful to be ridiculous. An injection, hanging or electrocution has to be less painful than what is inflicted upon murder victims by shooting, strangulation, etc. At that point, who cares?
I agree with you, CruWil. I think our culture has eroded in the last few generations. There is a lot more illicit drug and alcohol abuse, there are many more children born to single moms (which is the reason why children are the largest group living below the poverty level), many more divorced families, and kids are becoming sexually active at much younger ages and having more sexual partners. I remember when there was only one kid in my class whose parents were divorced. Now days, kids living with both biological parents is getting more rare. Women and children are viewed as objects to use and abuse for sexual gratification more than ever, and our society is paying the price.
Sorry Jed, I don’t think we saw the magnitude of societal problems in the past that we do now. We wouldn’t have so many kids growing up in foster care and single parent families if things haven’t taken a turn for the worst.
Uh, I wouldn’t over-romanticise the “good old days” too much, Mary.
It wasn’t that long ago that women had a choice of any profession they wanted–as long as it was secretary, stewardess, nurse or school teacher.
I remember when black people got lynched and the local police didn’t even investigate. Half the time, they were part of the mob that strung the victim up.
I remember when women got expelled from college or fired from their jobs for having made the poor choice of getting raped.
When women stayed with their cheated bastard husbands because they had no economic choice.
When political candidates lost elections because their opponents called them “thespians.”
When some of the best minds of our generation were destroyed by black lists and witch hunts, shot in their beds by the police (Fred Hampton) or on college campuses by the national guard in Ohio.
We now have life without parole for those convicted of capital murder who do not receive a death sentence. I understand it was not always that way but now family members no longer have to wonder if the defendant will be released.
And that sentence is not subject to appeal after appeal, the same as capital punishment?
BoyHowdy, I realize the “good ‘ole days” had many problems, but it wasn’t all bad and kids, for the most part, were allowed to be kids. If I had a choice, I’d rather raise my kids in the 50’s than today. At least the kids were allowed to be innocent and most of them didn’t grow up in a single household with a mom who was working 2 or 3 jobs just to put food on the table. More kids are growing up in poverty than ever before and it’s because the government makes a lousy dad.
Mr X, That’s IF they get the life sentence without the possibility of parole. Not all murderers are put away for life with no hope of ever getting out.
Mary-It may be naive, but I agree with you. I don’t think I would want to raise a kid today, but if I had that responsibilty, I would do of couse. Kids today seem to have to be little adults way too young, with all the associated baggage!
wow, after I read about this girl in the magazine “SEVENTEEN” i felt really bad. She thought she was in love. Dont get me wrong, she shouldnt have done it. But she was young and in love. All the drama wasnt worth killing a 14 year old..
these are sad times! blacks and whites don’t mix!this whore got what’s expected!