Parental Sacrifice Thwarted

A very bizarre case has developed this week up in New Hampshire,
the Northeast’s last bastion of rugged individualism and trailer park
chic. A couple
were arrested after invading a church and informing the Reverend that
they wanted to sacrifice one of their children on the alter!

The mother
came to church in her pajamas, police said, and made a gruesome request:
She
wanted
to
sacrifice
one
of her
children.

On Wednesday afternoon, Nicole Mancini, 29, and her boyfriend, John
Thurber, 35, walked into Saint Mary Church in Rochester, N.H., with
her three children
with the intention of sacrificing one of them on the altar, police said.

Mancini and Thurber live in the Peaceful Pines Mobile Home Park in Farmington.
According to Ivon Preble, whose mobile home abuts the couple’s, Mancini
and Thurber have had problems with neighbors, including one who put up
a stockade fence to separate their yards. Police said that the couple’s
7-year-old son has severe medical problems, but they would not elaborate.

We saw the mother on TV, leaving the courtroom, out on bail. Rail
thin, with stringy red hair and nervous, bird-like movements. She had
a wild, demented look in her eye as she rambled on in a stream-of-consciousness
narrative "just don’t look at the cameras, act normal and play along
and it will all work out, now just follow the plan. you don’t understand
but it will all become clear soon when they let me tell".

We immediately recognized the effects of long-term crystal methedrine
abuse.  The precise but spastic movements, the haunted fixations
on intricate illusionary plans, the erratic and irrational behavior.
Going three weeks without sleep can wake up a lot of mental weevils
and open
doors
of perception best left closed, locked and barricaded.

Crystal Meth, known as "Poor Man’s Cocaine" or "Crank", can be whipped
up in a bathtub with ingredients available at any Super K-Mart with
a pharmacy, making it perfect for trailer park production, distribution
and consumption.

It’s a shame the State does such a lousy job of bringing up kids,
because there are a whole lot of young Americans who would be better
off just about anywhere except with their putative "parents". Bringing
up kids is just about the most important job in the country, and we
let any old messed up psycho give it a whirl.  Go figure.

from the Boston Globe