The type of anger, bitterness and mental sickness that makes a person stab her former female lover 222 times is something that is hard to understand but it certainly qualifies under the header of "violent" and "rage".
Huffington Post writer, Carol Anne Burger, murdered her former lover, Jessica Kalish, by stabbing her 222 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver, around the back of her head and across her back, arms and face, according to police.
At a news conference Wednesday, police laid out what they'd learned during a week of investigation. They said the evidence pointed to one conclusion: Burger killed Kalish, a 56-year-old software executive whom friends described as worldly and intelligent, and then tried to throw investigators off her trail.
Burger and Kalish were married in Massachusetts in 2005, broke off the relationship last year but for financial reasons they continued to live in the same house.
All in all, the former couple seemed to be doing the best they could as their lawyer drew up plans to sell the house and divide the money. But secretly, police said, something was building up in Burger that would explode in a sudden, sustained burst of rage.
Minutes after someone called their home and said he had found Kalish's wallet and keys near 548 E. Gateway Boulevard, Burger reported Kalish missing Thursday afternoon. She told police Kalish left for a workout Wednesday night and never came home.
As investigators studied the case, several telltale signs, including the ferocity and personal nature of the attack, pointed to Burger, they said.
But before they could question her, Burger walked out into her back yard, pressed a gun up under her chin and pulled the trigger, police said. Detectives found her body there last Thursday but couldn't locate a suicide note.
Because there was no suicide note, police have had to use clues to put together the timelines of what had occurred in the days before the suicide.
In the days that followed, detectives and crime scene investigators put together this theory:
On Wednesday night, Kalish exercised at LA Fitness at 2290 N. Congress Ave. and was home by 9:30 p.m. A confrontation ensued, and she probably was dead by midnight.
After stabbing Kalish, Burger put her in the BMW and drove her to the Congress Avenue site. She walked home, a distance of about 2 1/2 miles.
Burger cleaned up the garage and used the washing machine and bathroom sink, where traces of Kalish's blood were later detected. She got into her Toyota Celica, drove to Gateway Boulevard and tossed out Kalish's keys and wallet.
On Tuesday night, detectives proved their theory, said Lt. Gary Chapman, who heads the department's major crimes squad.
Using Luminol, a chemical agent that causes blood traces to fluoresce under ultraviolet light, they found a "tremendous amount of blood" splattered throughout the garage, where the attack must have taken place, Chapman said. The Luminol also revealed Burger's glowing sneaker prints on the garage floor, mapping her steps after she walked through her old flame's blood.
"We believe the process of killing Jessica was pretty lengthy, in and out of the car," Chapman said. "She obviously was out of her mind."
Tragedy and unimagined horror for both families and while I didn't agree with Burger's writing, nor her specific political philosophies, the situation is heartbreaking on a simply human level.
Our sympathies to family and friends of both.
You can find Carol Burger's bio and Huffington Post blog entries here, as long as they leave the page active.
(Note- If you cannot manage to show some compassion for these two women's families and comment appropriately, I ask you show the respect and decency to not comment at all then.)
P.S.- My regular readers know me and I do not have a problem with speaking my mind about liberals, but this is not a liberal or conservative thing, this was an act of sickness, violence and rage and it goes beyond party lines and political sniping.
Tragedy has no political affiliations.
RIP
.
