Pubdate: Wed, 02 Feb 2005
Source: Peoria Journal Star (IL)
Copyright: 2005sPeoria Journal Star
Contact:  http://pjstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/338
Author: Pam Adams
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

DRUGS, MORE THAN RACE, AT CORE OF MURDERS

First police denied race or lifestyle played a role in their reluctance to 
call the strange deaths and disappearances of 10 black women here the work 
of a serial killer or in the seemingly slow progress of the investigation.

"It makes no difference if they are black prostitutes or green mothers," 
Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy told the Chicago Tribune in November. 
"We're doing our best to solve these cases."

Now prosecutors seem to be denying that race was behind Larry Bright's 
alleged choice of victims. Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons and 
Stewart Umholtz, his counterpart in Tazewell County, told reporters the 
deaths weren't racially motivated. However, Lyons chose to release an odd 
piece of information involving Bright's penchant for sex with black women 
and watching pornographic films featuring black actors. Bright, 38, is white.

Race, it seems, is both everything and nothing in this tale. But drugs 
trump all.

Bright, like his victims, has a history of drug abuse. He is jailed and 
allegedly has confessed to eight murders, having been charged with just 
one. Authorities have dug up burned body parts in his backyard. Still, it 
is too soon to deny the myriad and complicated roles race and lifestyle 
play in the wounded lives of the victims and the suspect, too soon to 
exhale a sigh of relief.

Drug use, more than race and sex, oozes from every pore of this tragedy: 
the lingering questions about who killed two of the dead women if Bright 
did not, the possibility of yet more unimaginable news, the prospects of a 
death-penalty trial, and the undeniable fear and grief and sorrow of it all.

As the numbers of dead and missing women mounted, many asked repeatedly, 
how many dead black women does it take for police to say there's a serial 
killer at work? But before Larry Bright, there were convicted serial killer 
Joseph Miller and Arlie Ray Davis, who was convicted of one murder but is 
believed to have been responsible for more. Most of their victims, though 
white, also led lives dotted with drug abuse sustained by prostitution.

How many serial killers does it take to say, "Hey, there's got to be 
another way to look at this?"

It is taking dozens of dead women, gang wars, broken families, dispirited 
neighborhoods and budget-busting prisons to challenge our notions about 
responding to the drug scourge beyond a war on drugs or criminal punishment.

It took exactly one student, firing a gun in the hallways of Woodruff High 
School, for parents and school officials to reach common ground on the use 
of metal detectors. But the metal detectors aren't likely to reduce the 
numbers of guns on the street or a student's access to them. They are meant 
simply to reduce the likelihood of a student bringing a gun into school.

That is known as reducing the harm, a practice that's finding its way into 
prevention and substance abuse rehabilitation programs. The going theory in 
drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs is that users find their way to 
rehab and sobriety only after they hit "rock bottom," whatever that may be.

That Bright's victims did not get that chance led at least a few to ask, 
"But what do we do in the meantime?" The question presents a challenge. The 
answer lies in the wide gray area between black and white, but it boils 
down to a community as willing to look at ways to reduce the harm of drug 
abuse as it is to see a serial killer punished.
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MAP posted-by: Beth