Chris, the in-utero baby snatcher won't be the next Scott Petersen mostly because people don't care that much about unattractive, poor folks killing each other.
People are murdered every day in America but for some reason, it only garners major media attention if it's middle- to upper-class, white people. Trailer park stabbings and ghetto shoot-outs are so cliche. It's takes a scandalous affair and/or a high-end murder-for-hire plot any day of the week as far as staying power is concerned.
While the baby snatcher is unusually creepy due to the gruesome nature of the crime, I bet a year from now no one on earth will remember the name of the woman who committed this heinous act.
Now if she lived in Malibu and had a nice tan and drove a fancy car, well ... you get the point.
Unfortunately, Americans and the media are fascinated by hideous, isolated crimes against the beautiful, but are virtually indifferent to larger crimes happening to poor people every day across America.
It takes the government years to even locate the origins of an entire social epidemic, but kill one suburban wife and suddenly you got the president's ear.
I don't understand how people can place so much emotional grief into the death of one person and can be relatively indifferent to the deaths and suffering of so many others. The exponential decline in emotional concern for the poor is confusing and makes for a startling commentary on the collective state of our priorities and interests.
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