I am rather annoyed today. That is a shame because it was a beautiful morning in Phoenix. Somehow when I am annoyed I just cannot get into to enjoying the moment. First, there was all of the noise at 7:00 AM when someone started a power lawn mower (why can’t they be like me and use a noiseless manual model) which made me to close patio doors and windows. Then there were the two inconsiderate motorists that did not bother to use turn signals. After that I passed the “McCain 2010” headquarters. Hasn’t he decided to retire yet? Finally I read an article in the Washington Times from the Associated Press that I would like to have quoted for this blog. The annoyance came when I saw that they have a new policy about using excerpts from articles. They charge per word. I would pay for it but I am cheap so you will have to do without. Hope that doesn’t annoy you.
Last Tuesday, September 29, 2009, I read in the Ventura County Star that it has been 50 years since Twilight Zone debuted on TV. I don’t remember if I watched that very first show but I did watch and enjoy many of them. The article, 50 years later, 'Twilight Zone' bridges time, is filled with facts and trivia about the show. As a teenager I was always impressed by how Twilight Zone always imparted a sense of reality to the un-real situations found in every episode. Maybe that was because Rod Serling often based the stories on subjects having to do with the meaning of being human and universal truths. The sci-fi label enabled Twilight Zone to have subjects that probably wouldn’t have made it past censors any other way. Today, “twilight zone” is often used to describe situations that have inevitable but unwelcome results. Thinking about this during the past week gave me a different slant on the news of a killer being sentenced to life.
The man was Kevin Kelly. He killed his wife last February 22 in the parking lot of his wife’s church. He had a bible in one hand and a 38 in the other when he shot his wife. I could not determine if it had been his church also but his wife had attended there for many years and was well known there. The estrangement had occurred recently – his wife and her family had asked him to move out. He believed his wife had a lover and it was apparently this that fueled his anger. His wife’s friends and family denied that she was involved with anyone else.
The scenes for this episode as I pictured it are like this:
Opening scene:
Kevin and Patricia Simmons Kelly fall in love and are married in 2000. They are not young both are in their 40s.
Fast forward to 2009 and the next scene:
Kevin gets in his car (in New Jersey) being careful to bring his trusty 38 as well as his bible, and drives to Silver Springs Maryland to talk to his wife where he knows she will be attending church. He sits in a back pew waiting until she shows up and they go into the parking lot to talk. They argue. He pulls his gat and shoots her multiple times. Off duty police officers (directing traffic for the church) wrestle him to the ground and arrest him.
Final scene:
The location is the courtroom. Kevin claims the crime was not premeditated. The jury didn’t buy it. They were out for less than an hour. The judge likewise had a problem with the not premeditated claim. The judge sentenced him to the maximum, life without parole, and called him egocentric.
This story is twilight-ish to me for several reasons. Kevin is 53 and an accountant. Presumably he is mature and capable of thinking logically. He is accustomed to carrying a bible to church. He must have thought he loved Patricia or why else would it matter is she had a boyfriend. I also believe that the separation must have had some basis in his actions toward his wife. They were married for more than eight years; he had suspicions of infidelity with no basis in fact. There seems to be a sort of twisted logic and inevitability about this.
The most un-real part of this is the car ride from New Jersey with the gun in his pocket and the bible on the seat next to him. A book about life positioned next to an instrument of hate for the long ride.
The choir was singing O happy day as Kevin shot Patricia.
I wonder if Kevin ever read the bible he carried. Could he or Patricia hear the choir?
Final notes: I got most of the information about the murder from two articles in the Washington Times, Sense of Sanctuary Lost As Church Attacks Spike and 'Egocentric' Husband Sentenced In Slaying. I did not need the article, Man gets life for killing wife outside Md. Church, from the Washington Times. The same article was also carried on Philly.com and the Washington Post.
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