Charges Dropped Against Embalmer Accused of Mutilating Sex Offender’s Corpse
Last year, FAC reported on the disturbing case of a Texas embalmer accused of mutilating the corpse of a deceased registrant. According to investigators, the embalmer allegedly castrated the body and stuffed the severed penis into the corpse’s mouth. Prosecutors alleged the conduct was intentional, criminal, and deeply abusive.
This week, however, the criminal charges against the embalmer were dismissed.
According to reports, prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges after the woman took a “class”. A class?!?! The message sent to the public is that when the target is a registered sex offender, even grotesque acts of vigilantism are often met with shrugs, jokes, or outright approval.
If the victim had been anyone else, the outrage would be immediate and universal. But because the deceased person was on the registry, much of the public reaction instead bordered on celebration. Suggesting he “deserved it”.
This was a crime. Period! Once we begin excusing crimes because we dislike the victim, we erode the very principles that separate a lawful society from mob justice.
What makes this case concerning is how normalized these attitudes have become toward people on the registry. Society has increasingly accepted vigilantism, harassment, banishment, threats, unwarranted termination of employment, homelessness, and violence directed at registrants as somehow understandable or deserved. In most cases, crimes committed against registrants are not investigated, minimized, mocked, or treated as less serious because of who the victim was.
FAC has long warned about the dangers of dehumanization. Once society accepts the idea that certain people are no longer entitled to dignity, rights, or protection under the law, it becomes easier to justify increasingly extreme conduct against them. History repeatedly shows where that road leads.
The law must apply equally, or it ultimately protects no one at all.
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This is very disturbing for a lot of reasons One there is no safety at all for the family that it has a loved one that is on the registry and for the individual that has to register there’s a lot of us including our families that are suffering right now because we have made a technical error as far as the registration on a internet identifier or email goes and it’s immediately where we’re going to get prison more or less no matter what they don’t want to hear anything else let alone offer anything and then you have it person like that that can mutilate a person’s body dead or alive it doesn’t seem to matter and just walk and everybody’s supposed to be okay with this laws have to be changed laws have to be made fair majority of this stuff on this Florida registry if anything should be a misdemeanor charge not a felony charge if there is not a victim as far as a crime being done from any of this except the fact of a mistake on it registration of a email address or not internet identifier it should be a misdemeanor charge My heart goes out to the people and the family and friends of that poor victim
Wow. Wish I could’ve taken a “safe drivers class” ( or equivalent) to make all my charges go away as well.
This is a real concern for us in the future. What kind of protections can we put into place to ensure we get proper human respect by others after our death?
Since she spent so much effort on abusing the deceased’s genitals, perhaps she belongs on the SOR.
I’m not hoping for any future corpse tampering, but since her actions only merited a class, this sets a precedent for ANY future corpse abuse.
Once a corpse abuser, always a corpse abuser.
Especially if they focused their abuse on genitals and orifices, as Amber Laudermilk did.
Someone like that can never be rehabilitated.
I see what you did there.
Another slap on wrist