“Very nice man” charged with murder of Truro woman.
I heard this story from Sara, and I remember us talking about it months ago. Truro was taking voluntary samples from all the men they could to find out whose semen was left behind when this woman was raped and killed.
We wondered at what person would volunteer his DNA if he knew it would be incriminating. Apparently, we were shortsighted in that regard.
The other thing that gets me is the last couple of paragraphs of the story. The part about how nice a man he is, reportedly.
A woman who identified herself only as McCowen’s longtime girlfriend said he was not capable of murder.
“He’s a very nice man,” she said outside court
No kidding? You were his girlfriend. You think he is nice. There’s a shocker.
The guy has not yet had his day in court, so I’m not comfortable concluding he is guilty. But his semen inside a woman who was found stabbed and naked from the waste down is pretty incriminating. His lengthy criminal history does not indicate any violent tendencies, and he was nice to his girlfriend, so there is that.
I don’t fault this woman for the naive words attributed to her in the paper, because what else is she going to say? Maybe she’s a poor judge of character. Maybe the guy is really good at compartmentalizing. She’s not convinced, and if this has happened quickly, she’ll have trouble adjusting to the idea.
Who wants to think they have misjudged someone so close to them? Heck, who wants to think that someone who was so nice to them is capable of rape and murder?
It brings to mind a rule of thumb I heard of long ago. I think it was advice for people on dates. “A person who is nice to you but not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.”I even mentioned it in a previous post.
Why do we need such a saying? Because we know that it can be hard to judge some people, and that you can tell more about someone (sometimes) by how they treat a “use neutral” third party. But, to be of use, this shouldn’t be taken too literally.
What I mean is, a clever person will certainly try to be nice to the waiter if he knows it will look good to you. So, for the devious person, you really have to observe when it is not clear you’re observing, to see those slips. I don’t know how you explain this to someone so that it becomes practical advice. But the “nice to the waiter” quote above is a decent way to summarize it. It’s a sad truth that, especially in relationships with the possibility of romantic attraction, you can’t always judge someone by how they treat you.
Obviously, if they treat you poorly, that’s a bad start. But how do you teach someone a sensible level of suspicion?
This takes on more significance for a parent, when I feel it’s my responsibility to equip my daughters with the abilities they ought to have. Abilities that I think many people don’t have. But some of these things are hard to quantify and even harder to teach.
Posted by James at April 15, 2005 5:27 PMOn NPR this morning I heard that the DNA samples used to arrest this suspect were gathered two years before the voluntary Truro sample campaign. The people interviewed weren't very happy about that.
Posted by: Mike at April 15, 2005 6:46 PMHow sweet that his "longtime" (her description) girlfriend thinks he's nice. Some of his other girlfriends who had to get restraining orders against him might disagree.
As for the waiter comment, I realize that it's not foolproof, but the way my ex-fiance treated restaurant employees was one of my early red flags. I thought at first maybe it was a British thing, but then I realized that I didn't care whether his dickishness was an ethnic trait or not.
Posted by: Julie at April 15, 2005 9:09 PMI wonder if the girlfriend knew about the restraining orders. But, yeah.
Can you search for that sort of thing?
I'm not sure. MA does have an online database of sexual predators. There are different levels for sex offenders but only the worst ones can be looked up by name online.
Most arrests are listed in a local newspaper, and anyone who goes to court in the NB area gets a listing in the Standard-Times. However, I don't know if other areas are covered as thouroughly by other papers or how easy it is to access their archives online.
Of course, you can pay for a background check on someone.
But I don't know whether restraining orders get listed in the paper, nor whether they show up on a background check. There must be some not-too-hard way to find out about them, because the Cape Cod Times had the scoop on this guy.
Posted by: Julie at April 16, 2005 6:16 PM