Dateline: Tuesday, August 22, 2000, at 1900 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company

Crime of a sordid, startling nature is one of those mundane events of the piteous treadmill I find particularly interesting. There was a doozy of a sordid crime in our hamlet on Monday night.

Hard-eyed Natalie, fifteen and much too hot for her mama's sensibilities, convinced her lover Tony to kill the old witch, put her in the cold ground. Mama was getting in the way of their sex life. Enough was enough.

Blonde and blue-eyed, lean and mean as a polecat, sixteen-year-old Tony tried. Although the young lovers had talked for a week or two about doing away with dear old mom , the actual murder attempt was a spontaneous deed of cold rage and evil passion.

That'll teach the bitch, Tony told his sweet Natalie. We'll just make love right here under her nose while she bleeds to death in the tub. Then I'll sneak over to my trailer while it's still dark. You wait here 'till morning, then call the cops, act like you been asleep, tell 'em you woke up to find her there, dead in the tub. They'll think she committed suicide. That's what women do, ain't it? Cut their wrists in the bathtub when they wanna kill themselves?

Natalie had already forged the suicide note. She told Tony she would put it in the bathroom after her mama shut-up crying.

Tony and Natalie wanted to make love. The prospect of freedom from mama's interference in their life together was plenty reason to not feel guilty. Instead, they felt the rush of a blood-letting. It surged through their black hearts. Knowledge descended upon them like a whirlwind, furious and emboldening in the darkest hour of the night.

Then the cops arrived at the trailer park.

The patrolman heard a woman moan. The sound was coming from inside the trailer. Ma'am, you're going to have to step aside. Natalie obeyed. Her freedom to be with Tony was going to be over before it could even begin. She listened to the cops call for an ambulance, listened as Tony gave himself up, listened to sirens wailing in the night.

Mama survived. The police had arrived soon enough. The emergency room doctor treated her wounds and sent her back into the world.

Natalie and Tony were handcuffed, put in separate patrol cars, and driven to the jailhouse. They sat in their separate cells all day Monday while the authorities looked into the matter.

In Natalie's bedroom, the detectives found a note in the girl's handwriting: "Mom Must Die." The bedroom was also Natalie's classroom. She was home schooled by mama.

This morning, the Prosecuting Attorney charged Tony and Natalie with attempted murder. The juvenile judge ruled they would stand trial as adults. The judge set bail at one hundred grand.

In the courtroom, Natalie Marie told the judge she owned a television worth one-hundred dollars and nothing more. The judge declared that Natalie would be eligible for a court-appointed attorney.

For young Anthony Robert, it was a different matter altogether. He was well-heeled, he intimated to the judge. His comic book collection, he estimated, was worth at least seventeen thousand dollars. Add to that numerous Magic Cards worth at least three thousand, he said, and I'm good for about twenty grand. The judge ruled that Anthony Robert would have to hire his own attorney.

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