A Bit More on Elizabeth Olten

Connected Mid-Missouri updated its coverage of this case yesterday with the following:

Confidential law enforcement sources and St. Martin's residents continue to tell KRCG the suspect to be charged in Elizabeth Olten's death is a 15-year-old girl from Elizabeth's neighborhood.
Cole County authorities will not confirm the information.

A poster at InSessions has stated that the identity of the accused is pretty much common knowledge, locally. I figure that anyone in St Martins who doesn't know, will, by the end of school today.

I can understand officials trying to keep the news close and rumours closer, but I don't understand what possible bearing the gender of the accused can have.

There is, as usual, a lot of hate being spewed, mostly at the news sites that are covering the case. People want to string the accused up without benefit of trial, and some want to string up her parents, as well, just for good measure. A few want to throw Elizabeth's family to the wolves, too, just because her dad and brother are in prison and her mother thought that letting a nine-year-old walk four blocks in daylight was OK.

The fact of the matter is that Elizabeth was not killed by some stranger she encountered in her quarter-mile walk home, but by a denizen of the house she was visiting.

Everyone wants to see the person responsible punished for this senseless murder. However, I see no point it attacking entire families with this scattershot approach. I didn't approve when people lined up outside the Anthony home to screech imprecations at the family, and I won't approve of it if it happens in this case. Free speech is one thing, but acting like a lynch mob is something else again. I hope the residents can calm down and realize that there is a victim and a suspect here, and that both families are suffering. I read that Elizabeth's father heard about her death on a TV in the prison common-room. How horrible is that? I don't care what he's locked up for--he could have been told privately, by a professional, rather than being allowed to hear of it from a news broadcast.

Are we losing all sensibility?