The Devil made me do it!

 Roy Gutfinski aka "Caius Veiovis"   

In the summer of this year (ad 2011) hikers walking across a patch of idyllic New England countryside came across three horribly disfigured bodies. After much investigation it was discovered that these men had been potential witnesses in cases against a prominent local member of the Hell's Angels bike gang. The men, David Glasser, 44, Edward Frampton, 58, and Robert Chadwell, 47, had been set on and killed, and left to rot as an example.
Well the list of suspects was not that long, and in a matter of days they had their men. Adam Hall, 34, along with Caius Veiovis, 31, both of Pittsfield, and David Chalue, 44, of Springfield Mass were all charged with kidnapping, torture, and murder.
'Veiovis' is a particular quandary for law enforcement. He is not only a repeat offender, but an admitted and unrepentant Satanist who has disfigured himself with tattoos and scarring in order to profess that ideology.
The Global Post reports 'sentenced to 10 years' jail in 2000 (he served three) for assaulting a teenage girl in a motel room as part of a ritualistic blood-drinking ceremony.'
Ten years for kindapping little girls and drinking their blood? There are people in jail on dope charges that long. Come on now Mass!
Is he nuts? Certifiable.
Evil? Definitely.
Ugly? Hell yes.
Satanic? He says so...
Here's the Faustian take on this evil man.
Veiovis, Gutfinski or whatever spent years cultivating this satanic image and personality while the authorities looked on. Why did no one notice and prevent this madness from becoming harmful?
There are many answers but the short one is: Moral subjectivism and relativism.
The authorities saw this man's beliefs as simply the same as any others.
I am reminded of an agnostic colleague of a few years past, who exclaimed to a room full of angry religious sectarians 'come on! you guys are all basically the same! You all believe in supernatural powers and God, so how can you disagree on these silly little issues'. Silly issues? Maybe to him, but they were killer issues in the real world. It was not a good scene.
Or another more recent and infinitely safer environment; when an Atheist internet friend commented to a Wiccan/Pagan friend 'You religion and beliefs is just as good as any'.
Just as good, just as bad, just as meaningless.
I know my Atheist friend meant this in a kind, if totally condescending, way. But, it was still a vapid observation. It simply does not do the job. My Pagan friends beliefs are unique and his own, but they are not the same as mine. We are each defined by what we do, based on those beliefs. They are motivators. To reduce them to a pathology is both shallow and at the observer's peril. It is to deny a practical reality.
Veiovis used that para-logic well.
He hid in the ignorance of that world view, well out of sight.
He was just another 'superstitious nut', like all those Church goers, Jews, and Muslims. Everyone knows there is no REAL Devil, right?
He used the fact that nobody believes in him or his ideas to do what ever he wanted with immunity... and now he has taken lives - horribly.
I am not suggesting the individual cop, journalist, investigator or what have you is an adherent of this subjective notion of morality; a moral relativist. I am sure some are, but most are not.
What I am suggesting is that in this post secular and utterly Faustian world, we have a SYSTEM that is subjective in it's discrimination; relative in it's morality.
It sees not good nor evil, only legal and illegal.
This justice is truly blind. It does not simply refuse to judge a book by it's cover (rightly so), but falls off the cliffs of madness is REFUSING to even look at the cover and ignoring the substance of the text almost entirely! All the while insisting books are all just 'books' and the same.
The problem, I am afraid, is top down.
It is doctrinal, philosophical...and not easily remedied.
A solution would require painful reversals. In this sedated society, I cannot see a willing embrace of such discomfort.
We must gorge some more of this poison before we vomit the whole lot up.
Ah Well then....
At least this one little Devil has been ejected from his paradise, and can now rot in his earthly hell...hopefully this time he stays there.