If We Cared

Itzcoatl Ocampo wanted to kill. So he joined the semper fis.

That’s certainly the place for it. For according to their own death-cult chant, the Marines are serial killers “in the air, on land, and sea.” Monsters who have slaughtered “in every clime and place/where we could take a gun.” Their anthem of utter poisonous filth even ends with the anathema that those who “ever look on Heaven’s scenes/they will find the streets are guarded/by United States Marines.”

But Ocampo was bummed. Because when he got to Iraq, the semper fis made him drive a water truck. He never got an opportunity to go out and bomb and shoot and strafe and slit, like all the other good ol’ boys.

So, when he returned stateside, Ocampo decided to go freelance. As a serial killer. He determined that southern California homeless people would make good targets. For, as he would later explain, such people are a “blight.” And, in killing them, he would be performing a kind of service. Sort of like, back at the semper fi ranch, shooting to shit Iraqis who ventured out after curfew.

As a form of practice, it is said, Ocampo first took a knife to a childhood friend, and the friend’s mother, there in Yorba Linda. Birthplace of Richard Nixon. One of the premier transnational serial killers of our time. Once those two were dead, Ocampo set about stalking homeless men. Ocampo was suspected of serially killing four, before he was caught.

And, once caught, in his various happy yammerings to law-enforcement officials, it became evident that Ocampo was batshit insane. And had been for many years.

Not that the criminal-justice system, in its supreme unwisdom, would be likely to conclude that.

Ocampo’s batshit insanity was certainly stressing his attorneys. One of them, Randall Longwith, began reporting last year that Ocampo “had been behaving erratically and complained that he heard voices. He said Ocampo suffered from tics and headaches.”

“Behaving erratically” is a nice euphemism for killing people.

Then again, if Ocampo had succeeded in serially killing people for the semper fis, he would have been hailed as a hero, showered with medals, and people would have been expected to bow down, genuflect, and kiss his cock and balls, everywhere he went.

Strange world.

On Thanksgiving Day, Ocampo, 25, was found violently ill in his Santa Ana jail cell. He was transported to a local hospital, where he died soon after. It was determined that he had swallowed Ajax. Not a real pleasant way to go.

A spokesmouth for the district attorney’s office, Susan Schroeder, subsequently revealed her own serious mental impairment, expressing anger that Ocampo had done away with himself, as “it really deprives the victims and the people of California of the ability to put Mr. Ocampo to death on our terms and get justice for the victims of these crimes.”

Look: the guy is dead. It can’t get any worse than that, for him.

But no. This woman is pissed because the state wasn’t allowed “to put Mr. Ocampo to death on our terms.”

Lady: you are one. sick. mother. fucker.

When the state of California put to death Robert Alton Harris, I journeyed out to San Quentin, for a newspaper, to “cover” the people gathered outside the gates. One red-faced, foam-flecked gentleman kept shouting, “kiiiiiiiiill him! Then dig him up, and kiiiiiiill him again!“

Maybe Ms. Schroeder could do that. She could take Ocampo’s corpse, haul it into the death chamber, strap it to a gurney, and shoot death-drugs into its veins. Then, for old time’s sake, she could slap the corpse into an electric chair, and give it a nice fry. Next, prop it up against a wall, and let people fire bullets into it. Finally, the Ocampo corpse could be transported outside, and hung by the neck until it is even more dead. It could be left there, hanging from a tree, for people to throw stones at it, until the birds had devoured it. Then, whatever was left, could be set on fire.

Then maybe Ms. Schroeder might conclude there had occurred sufficient “justice” and “closure.”

Meanwhile, another of Ocampo’s attorneys would like to know how the hey his client was able to accumulate enough Ajax to poison himself to death.

“I’m completely baffled as to how this can happen to a guy who is, if not the most high-profile inmate in jail, one of them,” Michael Molfetta said.

“The temptation by people is to say, ‘Who cares?’” he added. “That is a slippery slope right there because he is presumed innocent.”

“There’s no excuse; this should not have happened,” Molfetta said. “How hard is it to keep poison away from him? The answer is, it isn’t at all, if you cared.”

But nobody cared. For of all the people in all the nation that nobody cares for, prisoners are cared for the least. That’s one of the reasons there are so many of them. Prisoners. Because Americans, as a whole, presume that if you disappear into a jail cell, you belong there, and whatever might happen to you there, you deserve. Doesn’t even matter whether, as with Mr. Ocampo, you had not yet been found guilty. Or, as with Mr. Ocampo, you are batshit insane. Because once you go into the cell, you’re gone. You cease to exist. Your presence is no longer discernible on this planet. And so Americans are free to turn and walk away. Because there’s a Black Friday sale. And if you get in line early enough, you can get a 50-inch flat-screen TV. For but $299.

Semper fi.