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by JENN WOOD
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In the hours after his wife and younger son were brutally gunned down in the South Carolina Lowcountry four years ago, multiple messages pinged across Alex Murdaugh‘s cell phone. Many of these messages are familiar to those who have followed this case from the very beginning. Others are not so familiar – especially the batch of messages which never made it into the 88-page “comprehensive” timeline (.pdf) prepared for Murdaugh’s jury by the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
We’ve written previously about what Murdaugh’s jurors didn’t see – and how those omissions could prove every bit as impactful as the alleged targeting of a juror who apparently didn’t see the case the same way her colleagues did.
The potential impact of these omissions only escalates in the event Murdaugh winds up receiving a new trial in the double homicide of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, Paul Murdaugh.
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Among the text records omitted from SLED’s timeline were repeated attempts by Murdaugh’s alleged drug dealer/check casher, Curtis “Eddie” Smith, and another unknown individual to reach an “unknown number” ending in 13.
According to Smith and the unknown individual, the number – which surfaced multiple times in the preserved texts obtained by FITSNews – wouldn’t connect.
Our review of records suggests the likely owner of the number was Barbara Ann Mixson, the beloved housekeeper who worked in the Almeda, S.C. home of former solicitor Randolph Murdaugh III and his wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Murdaugh, for more than four decades. If this link holds, it reframes several key moments in the 24 hours after the murders — and raises new questions about who Murdaugh was trying to reach, and why.
Is there an innocent explanation to these exchanges?
Was Murdaugh trying to score drugs to feed an escalating addiction?
Could he have been arranging a more permanent disposal of the murder weapons used to kill his wife and son (weapons which have still never been recovered)?
Did SLED investigators pursue any of these leads?
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“(IT) DON’T WORK”
One of the clearest examples of what jurors never saw is preserved in a string of messages exchanged on June 8, 2021 — the day after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were murdered on the family’s hunting property, known locally as Moselle. Both Smith and the unidentified contact were actively trying to reach Murdaugh – with both informing him the same “unknown number” was refusing to connect.
If, as records suggest, this masked number belonged to the longtime Murdaugh family housekeeper, it meant people in Murdaugh’s orbit were urgently — and unsuccessfully — attempting to get through to the very household which would later be inexplicably tied to his alibi.
Here’s what those messages show:
June 8, 2021 — The day after the murders
- 7:48 a.m. — Smith: “Tell me what I heard is not true”
- 7:50 a.m. — Smith: “Call me please”
- 5:50 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “I’m ready”
- 6:24 p.m. — Smith: “At fishing hole”
- 7:09 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “Give me the # again. I cannot get through”
- 7:16 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “Don’t know what is going on with phones. I’m setting (sic) in parking lot across from where you told e (sic) to go”
- 7:17 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “803 *** **13 don’t work”
- 7:21 p.m. — Smith: “803 *** **13 it will not go through on my phone”
- 7:34 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “OK I’m headed home. I seen her and she has changed # but I have new ones. If you need anything you let me know. I know timing sucks but get me some soon.”
- 7:34 p.m. — Unidentified contact: “As soon as you can/ Love you Brother you know I’m just a phone call away”
That evening, less than 24 hours after the murders, two different contacts were circling the same number — one Alex’s alleged drug dealer, the other still unidentified — but both failing to connect. The frustration is plain: parked in a lot waiting, insisting on new numbers, professing loyalty.
Yet none of these exchanges appeared in the state’s 88-page timeline.
If the mysterious number was indeed Mixson’s line, the omissions cut directly into the heart of Murdaugh’s narrative: who he was contacting, the role his parents’ Almeda home played in the double homicide of his wife and child, and why investigators left this entire sequence out of the record shown to jurors.
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RELATED | WHAT THE MURDAUGH JURY DIDN’T HEAR
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WHAT JURORS SAW AND HEARD
In its official timeline, the state listed Mixson’s number as 843-842-0853 and logged multiple calls between Maggie and “Barbara” on June 7 — including attempts at 7:18 p.m. EDT, 7:39 p.m. EDT, and 7:50 p.m. EDT. The record also showed a 3:58 p.m. EDT call from Barbara to Alex about his agitated mother.
On paper, Mixson appeared as a steady caregiver, a routine presence in Murdaugh’s family life.
When she took the stand to testify in front of the jury on February 22, 2023, Mixson described Murdaugh as “like one of my kids.” She recalled her last conversation with Maggie the night of June 7, and confirmed she called Alex Murdaugh that afternoon when Libby was upset. She also testified that she never saw a blue tarp in the Almeda house, pushing back on testimony from another witness.
Importantly, she admitted she did not immediately report her June 7 call with Murdaugh and could not remember when she first told investigators about it.
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On the stand, Barbara Mixson painted a picture of loyalty and routine — a caregiver who loved the Murdaughs like her own family. To jurors, she came across as a steady, maternal presence who spent four decades tending to the family’s needs.
Just three months after the murders, though – in the aftermath of a bizarre roadside shooting incident involving Eddie Smith – Murdaugh gave investigators a vastly different account of Mixson’s role in his life. In a September 13, 2021 interview with SLED investigators, he placed her not only in his family’s household orbit – but also in his drug orbit. After naming Eddie Smith and Kenny Hughes as regular suppliers, Alex added Mixson to the list — admitting he had “on occasion” paid her for pills. It was a small but significant detail jurors never heard, and it casts her June 7 call to Murdaugh — and the frantic attempts to reach her number the following day — in a very different light.
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That contrast — the trusted housekeeper in open court versus the occasional pill supplier in private messages — reveals just how differently Barbara Mixson’s role was portrayed depending on the audience.
Does it reveal more than that, though?
The discrepancies don’t stop with calls, texts and testimony – the money trail also tells its own story.
As previously reported by FITSNews, bank records indicate Alex Murdaugh paid Mixson more than $278,000 over an eleven-year span — a staggering sum compared to what he paid other housekeepers who worked for the family (including the late Gloria Satterfield).
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RELATED | FOLLOWING ALEX MURDAUGH’S MONEY
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THE MISSING GUNS
Using ammunition signatures, prosecutors have compellingly argued Maggie and Paul were killed with family-owned firearms — a shotgun and a .300 Blackout rifle — yet investigators never recovered either of the weapons believed to have fired the fatal shots.
That’s where the June 8 text messages could take on a darker edge. An unidentified contact told Alex, “I’m ready,” then sat waiting in a parking lot before complaining that the number identified as potentially belonging to Mixson “don’t work.”
Hours later, the same contact messaged, “I seen her and she has changed # but I have new ones. If you need anything you let me know.”
Murdaugh left his family’s residence at 9:07 p.m. EDT on the evening of July 7 – moments after the murders – and drove to see his mother in Almeda, arriving just before 9:23 p.m. EDT. He stayed there for approximately 20 minutes and departed on his return trip to Moselle shortly after 9:43 p.m. EDT – returning to the property at around 10:00 p.m. EDT.
Shortly thereafter, he “discovered” the bodies of his family members – and called 911 at 10:06 p.m. EDT.
What happened during this critical hour of the timeline remains a matter of hotly contested conjecture – but we know what didn’t happen afterward.
Despite being granted blanket permission by the Murdaugh family to search all of its properties in the hours following the murders, SLED did not obtain a warrant to search Almeda for another three months.
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“That was an opportunity missed?” Murdaugh’s attorney Jim Griffin asked lead SLED agent David Owen during the trial.
“Probably, yes,” Owen acknowledged.
SLED eventually searched the residence on the day Alex Murdaugh was arrested following the roadside shooting. During that search, its agents retrieved a blue, water-resistant rain jacket (or blue tarp) belonging to Murdaugh which was coated with gunshot residue. Prosecutors suggested the blue jacket was used to transport the murder weapons and other potentially incriminating evidence from the crime scene to Almeda for disposal at a later time.
More than a year after the murders, on August 30, 2022, SLED agents conducted another extensive search underneath the concrete bridge which carries Highway 278 (a.k.a. Grays Highway) over the Coosawhatchie River. This bridge is located approximately 2.13 miles south of Almeda.
As we reported at the time, this search came up empty.
Murdaugh’s attorneys have suggested the conversations tied to the number linked to Mixson on the day after the murders were related to pills – arguing Murdaugh disposed of the pills he had on him when he realized he was a suspect in the murder case and needed to replenish his stash.
Is that true, though?
Or were the individuals involved in the conversation up to something more sinister?
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In addition to his alleged role in Murdaugh’s drug and money laundering operations, Smith was the star figure in a bizarre roadside shooting that took place 89 days after the murders on the side of Old Salkehatchie Road. Following that incident, Smith was accused of conspiring with Murdaugh to pull off a botched suicide attempt – one ostensibly intended to help Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, collect on a $10 million life insurance policy.
Smith has disputed that theory, arguing that if he had meant to kill Murdaugh – he’d be dead.
Prosecutors were expected to call Smith to the stand during Murdaugh’s trial, but never did. A month after the trial, Smith was granted bond on the charges he was facing related to the roadside shooting and released from jail after being detained for nearly nine months.
Assistant attorney general John Meadors told former circuit court judge Clifton Newman that Smith had “cooperated completely” with prosecutors during Murdaugh’s double homicide trial.
“We wouldn’t be back here for no reason,” Meadors told Newman, crediting Smith with spending “numerous hours” with prosecutors.
“He fully cooperated with us throughout this process,” Meadors said.
Four years later, prosecutors have yet to take Smith to trial – a delay which continues to raise suspicions.
Meanwhile, Murdaugh’s attorneys have said their decision not to call Smith to the stand might have changed had they known about the text messages we reported on this summer.
Prosecutors insist all of the texts were provided to the defense – but Murdaugh attorney Dick Harpootlian told Fox News this summer that the defense team was “not aware” of them.
Three years ago, Murdaugh’s attorneys dropped a bombshell pre-trial motion to compel asking the state to “produce all polygraph data, examiner notes, and quality control notes related to the polygraph examination of Curtis ‘Eddie’ Smith on May 5, 2022”
Smith failed a polygraph related to the double homicide on that date, Harpootlian and Griffin asserted. In fact, they took it one step further and accused him of being the killer of Maggie and Paul.
“The state is turning a blind eye to the obvious, that the reason Smith failed the polygraph when asked if he murdered Maggie and Paul is because he in fact did commit these heinous crimes,” the attorneys wrote at the time.
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WHY IT MATTERS
Taken together, these puzzle pieces form a pattern investigators and jurors never fully saw. The potential linkage of the mystery phone number to Mixson showed Alex’s inner circle scrambling to connect with someone tied to his alibi in the hours after the murders – someone Alex implicated as an occasional drug supplier.
None of this information — not the masked number, not the drug link, not the money trail, not the potential tie to missing firearms — appeared in the state’s so-called “comprehensive” timeline. Instead, jurors were handed a sanitized version of events, one that froze Mixson’s role as a loyal caregiver and kept out evidence that complicated Alex’s alibi.
That gap feeds directly into a narrative Murdaugh’s attorneys have hammered since day one: that SLED never seriously considered suspects outside of Alex Murdaugh. The omissions around Mixson don’t just raise questions about her role — they underscore broader questions about whether investigators pursued every lead, or whether they built their case inside a circle Alex was never allowed to escape.
During his testimony in the double homicide trial, Owen noted that SLED had conducted a cell phone analysis to determine whether Smith or any alleged gang members related to Murdaugh’s drug network were at or near Moselle on the night of the double homicide. Owen claimed he did not have any numbers and that gang members used burner phones, anyway.
Prosecutors have also repeatedly – and convincingly – pointed out gang members generally do not use family weapons during hits.
Owen stated SLED’s analysis did not identify any phones in the area other than first responders arriving on the scene after 10:25 p.m. EDT. However, multiple sources familiar with the investigation have confirmed Smith’s cell phone was turned off on the night of the murders.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.
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6 comments
Rather than helping “Elick’s” case, it appears to make it worse – if Mixson was a supplier, she could also have lied about “not” seeing any weapons or a blue raincoat / tarp.
I don’t know if you’ll be a gentleman or will vulgarly insult me just because you can as almost everyone else does; but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and invite you to think about it after reading my comment below which shows there is nothing “staggering” about paying a housekeeper/caregiver circa $10/hour which, over 11 years, add up to $278K.
First and foremost, this blue raincoat/tarp story makes no sense whatsoever.
If Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) wanted to dispose of the alleged murder weapons, why this grand-production number? (1) Conceal the weapons somewhere handy immediately after the murders; (2) go back a whole week later and pull them from wherever they were concealed and remained undiscovered; (3) wrap them in something, out of all colors, obvious blue; (4) take them to Almeda where at least two people could see them; (5) leave the wrapping fabric in an unlocked wardrobe in Almeda; (6) take the unwrapped weapons on a long journey to their final resting place.
How stupid is that? Specially if RAM had been planning those murders for a long time?
Why not just dispose of them the night of the murders? No wrapping, no intermediate steps, no anything.
Second, Barbara Mixson’s being an occasional supplier of pills to RAM does not make her an accomplice to the murders or to supposed concealment of the murder weapons. I totally buy her loving RAM as if he were one of her own sons; and I totally buy her being an occasional enabler of one whom she had seen unable to kick the habit. No different from a kid going to the store to buy cigarettes for his mother because she sent him there even though he wishes his mother would quit smoking. Sad but classic dynamics.
Third, and I challenge you to prove me wrong: if RAM were the killer, why return from Almeda that night at all? RAM would have slept that night in his father’s empty bed (RAM’s father was in hospital that night; and Maggie expected RAM to go to Almeda to sleep there and so texted her sister) and left the bodies of Paul and Maggie to be discovered in the morning by one of the Moselle workers.
Coming from three generations of prosecutors, RAM undoubtedly knew that whoever discovers the bodies becomes automatically the prime suspect.
There is also an interesting line in Malicious Mandy Matney’s book: an unnamed woman jumped off a bridge in that vicinity the night of the murders.
I think SLED’s belated dive-search is related to that woman and has nothing to do with any real belief that RAM dumped the murder weapons in the river.
Again, prove me wrong if you can; but please do it politely.
Jenn Wood, just when I was trying to respect you and take you “out of the circle” of Richard Alex Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) false accusers, which circle you entered by befriending a willing adult prostitute (somebody “Edwards”?) and claiming she was “sex-trafficked”), you do this.
You entered, and stayed in, RAM’s false accusers circle (after you dredged up that irrelevant prostitute and realized even the Prosecution found her fabrications not credible) by dredging up a “family annihilator” theory and literally giggling that “it fit [RAM] to a T.” Your STUPID basis for that supposed “fit to a T” is some study that claimed that 30% of family annihilators have financial problems.
If your husband is a rocket scientist, he should teach you BASIC arithmetic.
If he does not, I hereby try to.
Back then, I pointed out (but you ignored me) that even if your statistic were true, it means that 70%, THE CLEAR MAJORITY of “family annihilators,” do NOT have financial problems. That RULES OUT “financial problems” as motive for “family annihilation.”
Today, you compound your IGNORANCE OF ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC by claiming that RAM paid Barabara Mixon “more than $278,000 over an eleven-year span — a staggering sum compared to what he paid other housekeepers who worked for the family (including the late Gloria Satterfield).”
Jenn, Jenn, Jenn! Let your “rocket scientist” husband confirm to you that $278,000 divided by 11 years is ONLY $25,272 PER YEAR, which is ONLY $2,160 PER MONTH of ONLY $445 or so PER WEEK.
Assuming Barbara Mixon worked a 40-hour week, that is ONLY $10 (ten dollars) per hour.
NOTHING “staggering” about that. Indeed, it is equal to, or less than, the $15 (fifteen dollars) per hour RAM was reportedly paying Gloria Satterfield.
ALSO, the blue jacket (NOT a “tarp”) did NOT belong to RAM but was several sizes too small for him.
Why do you do that, Jenn?
Are you stupid or do you think all your readers are?
Remember: you can’t fool all the people all the time. Not when the great Dr. Marie Faltas is still, thank God, among all the people anyway.
Guess who’s NOT sitting down for dinner.
Guess who dressed Scout up for church.
Yes, they are a movie and a novel; but they reflect the lack of gratitude for, or even recognition of the humanity of, the black household element who brings up white children but is ignored.
Isabelle Sanford, later of The Jeffersons success and fame, had her first break into the entertainment biz in the movie Guess who’s Coming to Dinner. The movie ends with the black bridegroom and his black parents, the white bride and her liberal white a-religious parents, the Irish(?) Catholic priest friend who likes to play golf and drink, all sitting down to an impromptu expanded dinner AND the black maid, played by Isabelle Sanford, standing and pouring the drinks.
No one asks her to join in the dinner she made for seven people on such short notice. No one even thinks to do so. Not the liberal Catholic priest, not the young lady Isabelle Sanford’s character brought up from infancy, and not even the black bridegroom’s working class parents.
It’s the hypocrisy of money which knows no color.
To Kill a Mockingbird, the movie, so minimized the role and humanity of the real mother-figure in Scout’s life it totally omitted one of the scenes I found most touching in To Kill a Mockingbird, the book. When Atticus Finch is out of town on business, the black maid who mothered Scout and her brother after their biological mother dies, is so excited to dress the children and take them to her black church and brag on them to her black co-parishioners. Perhaps the movie did not want to spend any wardrobe item for Scout’s character other than the play overalls in which Scout is stuffed from the beginning of the movie to its end.
At 75 now, with Libby and Handsome Murdaugh dead, and Paul and Maggie Murdaugh killed and Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) wrongly incarcerated for their death, who comforts Barbara Ann Mixson for the loss of the family to whom she devoted 40 years of her life?
Did she get invited to Buster’s and Brooklyn’s wedding?
Does she get to visit RAM in prison?
Does she have a caregiver if, God forbid, her own health fails?
I hope this non-partisan comment gets through and that Ms. Mixson gets to know that she is appreciated.
We shall, God willing, see.
Because I am still moved by Barbara Mixson’s lasting love and courage to say (in her single[?] post-testimony interview I saw) that Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) “did not do it,” and because I hope David Pascoe becomes South Carolina’s next, but ANTI-death penalty, attorney general, I paste here, too, what I just did on Will Folks’ guillotine-glorifying article from last month:
I hope Pope Leo XIV, Vice President JD Vance, and Mrs, Kirk, make it fashionable (or at least acceptable) within MAGA to be Catholic.
And while we are at at, I hope Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II are not forgotten already.
I hope, too, that Usha Chilukuri makes it acceptable, even fashionable, within some circles who worship the Germanic beauty dreams of tall, blue-eyed, blond and big-breasted and big-footed (whether naturally or artificially), to be petite, natural-dark-haired with silver streaks of wisdom, with wise brown eyes un-weighted-down with artificial eyelashes and the allergenic glue it takes to apply them, AND frugal in fashion.
With that said, I know that Will Folks is not Catholic though I am unsure of which, if any, theology he brings his children up in. I know that Jenn Woods claims to be Catholic, and that, before the Citadel, David Pascoe went to a preparatory academy with a Catholic-sounding name.
Though I converted in later adulthood to Coptic Orthodoxy, my 100% childhood-into-early-adulthood Catholic education is indelible. And looking back at it, I marvel at how skilled the nuns were, in co-operation with the monks. in ingraining in us the JOYS of chastity, charity, and studiousness. The nuns took us to visit the sick and the poor while the monks taught us the basics of Catholic philosophy and that the purpose of life is to know God and to love Him.
The Coptic Orthodox phrasing of the purpose of life is to unite with God.
Since my conversion, the only thing I do differently is where and how I take Holy Communion where and when I can.
The Coptic Orthodox Church does not YET oppose the death penalty (how can it in majority-Moslem Egypt?) but the Catholic Church does and now requires the faithful to actively oppose it, too.
And come what may, I believe it hypocritical to oppose abortion without opposing the death penalty and/or to oppose the death penalty without opposing abortion.
So, insult me you self-anointed righteous right and lofty left all you want; but remember that God is love and God told us to choose life. Period. No age brackets.
So, today, remembering Revelation 3:20 English Standard Version
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
and the Parable of the Sower Mark 4:1-20 New International Version
“1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. 2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
9 Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
I hope, God willing and FITS permitting, to show the political candidates that literal guillotine-glorification is unsound, unscientific, and unconstitutional.
Because Jenn Wood has now updated her photo and the caption thereunder on this article (and elsewhere on FITSNews?), I want to rescue her from three very dangerous and self-destructive ideas that FITS is promoting using Jenn, specially after Will Folks’ TERRIFYING personal fantasies of extreme AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL sadism in applying the death penalty:
1. “Justice” means harshness;
2. Harshness reduces crime; and
3. Hypocritical judges who now pander to “lawyer legislators” who elect them will not pander to the governor who appoints them or to the public at large who elects them or to the donors who finance their campaigns, or to the U.S. Senator who employs them in his/her office then elevates them to the federal bench, or to any other form of judicial selection.
I’ll take the second point first: slow hanging in the public square with tickets sold to witness actual death as entertainment.
Where, in today’s world, do executions take place in the public square but without “tickets sold”? In case you have not guessed it, look it up.
Has the cutting of hands of thieves reduced thefts in those places? No.
Has the public beheading of adulterers reduced adultery in those places? No.
Hs the public flogging of alleged blasphemers reduced internal doubts about religions which stifle such thoughts?
And let me ask those who claim to be Christian this: Has the public and cruel crucifixion of Jesus Christ stifle Christianity or cause it to spread?
Remember: Christianity was a crime in the “judgment” of the Pharisees and of the Roman Emperors.
But Simon, who witnesses Jesus Christ’s crucifixion from afar in Jerusalem, later became Saint Peter, who willingly gave himself to be crucified.
And Saul of Tarsus, who PARTICIPATED in the stoning of Saint Stephens later became Saint Paul, who was willing to be martyred for the same cause for which he had participated in the public stoning of Saint Stephens.
To the a-religious who still claim to be latter-day American patriots, I ask: Did the British’s literal “quartering” of captured revolutionaries defeat the American Revolution?
You will insult me by falsely claiming that I equate Christianity and/or the American Revolution with base child rapes or production of CSAM.
But you will be promoting the very hypocrisy I am trying to expose and reduce BECAUSE you know THAT IS NOT MY POINT.
My point is that public cruelty promotes private cruelty; and violence against (good or bad) ideas only promotes violence by those who espouse bad ideas and, for those espousing good ideas, willingness to be subjected to violence for the sake of good ideas.
You do NOT eliminate child rape or production/distribution of CSAM or drug use/distribution or even murder by public torturous executions.
You DO or CAN eliminate such evils by filling people’s hears with JOY from GOOD activities such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, sheltering the stranger, and visiting the prisoner.
You DO or CAN eliminate the DESIRE to look at CSAM by giving people great art to look at or great photos and videos of the wonders of nature to look at.
In Pharmacology, it is called “competitive inhibition.” In simple terms, it means a drug that binds to the receptor site of a different molecule prevents that molecule (good or bad) from acting. It does not break down that other molecule itself but prevents it from acting on the receptor by getting there first.
So, do not scare your children with public torturous hangings; get to them “first” by filling their time with learning, art, creativity, good sports, etc.
I shall, God willing and FITS permitting, get to points 1 and 3 later.