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A Mad Scheme To Kill A Scientist

63 points by krisneuharth 17y ago

dkarl 17y ago
They discovered that the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space. Not to make light of a tragic story, but I hope no police or news media ever have anything to say about my life.
- argv_empty 17y ago
  I'm inclined to believe it was just SETI@home. After all the other eccentricities they'd described, that seemed rather anticlimactic.
  - astine 17y ago
    Analyzing radio signals from outerspace? What else could it be but S@H? (I wonder if he had an F@H setup in his basement :))
  - bitwize 17y ago
    Dear Media, The A Beautiful Mind guy is real, and he has a name. It's John Nash. You should start using it more often as, movie or no movie, he's a remarkable guy in his own right.
  - jcl 17y ago
    Agreed. SETI@home is exactly the sort of thing an engineer would run in the background on a cluster of computers. And a cluster of computers is exactly the sort of thing a guy would have if he were making millions through "investment algorithms". I suppose he wouldn't have been much better off if he ran Folding@home instead. The article would probably have said something like "Six powerful computers were found analyzing the inner workings of mad cow disease."
- Eliezer 17y ago
  If the media ever report on your life, you will find that it's even worse than you think.
astine 17y ago
Oh, so they just wanted his money. Nothing sensational there. (Tragic and shameful nonetheless)
- philk 17y ago
  The sensational thing is that they're preying on the mentally ill.
rgrieselhuber 17y ago
"Prosecution is also more common thanks to surveillance cameras and other new tools." A sadly ironic statement, considering the victim's struggles with paranoia.
- joeyo 17y ago
  That reminds me of one of my favorite Onion News videos: Is the government spying on paranoid schizophrenics enough? http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_is_the_government http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_is_the_gov...
aarongough 17y ago
Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-being of another human being, they really don't deserve to continue living...
- malkia 17y ago
  Burn the fuckin witch! Capital punishment is not enough for her...
- vaporstun 17y ago
  I look at it from a financial standpoint. When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a right to their life. Whether that be by ending it via capital punishment or by keeping them incarcerated forever, they essentially no longer have a right to their life. It costs ~$48,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated (at least in MA where I am: http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-senate-bill-no-2210 http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-se...) If a court determines that someone will no longer have a right to their life and their remaining lifespan is, for example, 40 years, we will spend somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to keep them incarcerated for their lifetime. Of course, that assumes the value of the dollar is constant (it isn't) and that the price of keeping this murderer in a maximum security prison is the same as the average cost of keeping someone incarcerated. (it isn't) When we are locking the door and throwing away the key, why not save the $2,000,000 keeping someone alive who we've deemed has no right to life anyway?
  - Retric 17y ago
    When you include the cost of appeals etc we spend more than that (on average) actually killing someone. In the old days of trial > hanging your argument was more reasonable, but we also killed more innocent people back then.
    - aarongough 17y ago
      Are there any hard stats available on this sort of thing?
og1 17y ago
"She said Willa Blanc just showed up and said she had a large dog in the trash can, and paid her dad $1,000 to help them burn it," prosecutor Smith said. "They took all night to do it. This was even weirder than we were imagining." Seriously...why would anyone believe a lie like that? This story makes me angry.
ahi 17y ago
A lot of engineers have similar mental health issues, so I'm sure we all know someone like this. It's hard to strike the right balance between respecting their privacy and looking out for them.
dschobel 17y ago
They discovered that the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space. If that's SETI @ Home (as I believe) then in addition to being a "monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life", my living room is also a cryptography lab (PrimeGrid) and a quantum computing and AI laboratory (AQUA@home). Who knew!
- JacobAldridge 17y ago
  I guessed it was most likely SETI as well, so hardly another brick in the wall of mental illness. Applying my (ex) journalist nous to the story, however, I think it was only included so they could run this quote in full (my italics) later in the story: "In her mind, he was perfect," Cox said. "She's tapped out. He has lots of money. He doesn't know anybody. He lives behind closed doors. He's trying to communicate with ET. Who would miss him?"
rsheridan6 17y ago
An interesting feature of this story is that the victim's internet friend was the one who reported him missing. 20 years ago, a guy like this would have had no friends at all, and, as the murderer intended, nobody would have noticed that he was gone for a long time. Maybe she would have even gotten away with it, especially if she had taken the main part of his money, which she did not have time to get, and fled the country.
jcnnghm 17y ago
A relative of mine always used to say "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me." Perhaps he was right. Also, given the topic of his research, nuclear weapon design, it doesn't seem too unlikely that government agents would tamper with his vehicle. The article seems to sensationalize a lot about the man. Running SETI@home isn't exactly that strange of a thing to do. Isn't it built into the PS3.
sethg 17y ago
There’s a common stereotype that to be “crazy” is to be dangerous, but as stories like this indicate, the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of abuse than perpetrators.

63 points by krisneuharth 17y ago

dkarl 17y ago

They discovered that the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space. Not to make light of a tragic story, but I hope no police or news media ever have anything to say about my life.

argv_empty 17y ago
I'm inclined to believe it was just SETI@home. After all the other eccentricities they'd described, that seemed rather anticlimactic.
- astine 17y ago
  Analyzing radio signals from outerspace? What else could it be but S@H? (I wonder if he had an F@H setup in his basement :))
- bitwize 17y ago
  Dear Media, The A Beautiful Mind guy is real, and he has a name. It's John Nash. You should start using it more often as, movie or no movie, he's a remarkable guy in his own right.
- jcl 17y ago
  Agreed. SETI@home is exactly the sort of thing an engineer would run in the background on a cluster of computers. And a cluster of computers is exactly the sort of thing a guy would have if he were making millions through "investment algorithms". I suppose he wouldn't have been much better off if he ran Folding@home instead. The article would probably have said something like "Six powerful computers were found analyzing the inner workings of mad cow disease."
Eliezer 17y ago
If the media ever report on your life, you will find that it's even worse than you think.

astine 17y ago

Oh, so they just wanted his money. Nothing sensational there. (Tragic and shameful nonetheless)

philk 17y ago
The sensational thing is that they're preying on the mentally ill.

rgrieselhuber 17y ago

"Prosecution is also more common thanks to surveillance cameras and other new tools." A sadly ironic statement, considering the victim's struggles with paranoia.

joeyo 17y ago
That reminds me of one of my favorite Onion News videos: Is the government spying on paranoid schizophrenics enough? http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_is_the_government http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_is_the_gov...

aarongough 17y ago

Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-being of another human being, they really don't deserve to continue living...

malkia 17y ago
Burn the fuckin witch! Capital punishment is not enough for her...
vaporstun 17y ago
I look at it from a financial standpoint. When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a right to their life. Whether that be by ending it via capital punishment or by keeping them incarcerated forever, they essentially no longer have a right to their life. It costs ~$48,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated (at least in MA where I am: http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-senate-bill-no-2210 http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-se...) If a court determines that someone will no longer have a right to their life and their remaining lifespan is, for example, 40 years, we will spend somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to keep them incarcerated for their lifetime. Of course, that assumes the value of the dollar is constant (it isn't) and that the price of keeping this murderer in a maximum security prison is the same as the average cost of keeping someone incarcerated. (it isn't) When we are locking the door and throwing away the key, why not save the $2,000,000 keeping someone alive who we've deemed has no right to life anyway?
- Retric 17y ago
  When you include the cost of appeals etc we spend more than that (on average) actually killing someone. In the old days of trial > hanging your argument was more reasonable, but we also killed more innocent people back then.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    Are there any hard stats available on this sort of thing?

og1 17y ago

"She said Willa Blanc just showed up and said she had a large dog in the trash can, and paid her dad $1,000 to help them burn it," prosecutor Smith said. "They took all night to do it. This was even weirder than we were imagining." Seriously...why would anyone believe a lie like that? This story makes me angry.

ahi 17y ago

A lot of engineers have similar mental health issues, so I'm sure we all know someone like this. It's hard to strike the right balance between respecting their privacy and looking out for them.

dschobel 17y ago

They discovered that the scientist had converted his living room into a monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life: Six powerful computers were running a program that analyzed radio signals from outer space. If that's SETI @ Home (as I believe) then in addition to being a "monitoring station for extra-terrestrial life", my living room is also a cryptography lab (PrimeGrid) and a quantum computing and AI laboratory (AQUA@home). Who knew!

JacobAldridge 17y ago
I guessed it was most likely SETI as well, so hardly another brick in the wall of mental illness. Applying my (ex) journalist nous to the story, however, I think it was only included so they could run this quote in full (my italics) later in the story: "In her mind, he was perfect," Cox said. "She's tapped out. He has lots of money. He doesn't know anybody. He lives behind closed doors. He's trying to communicate with ET. Who would miss him?"

rsheridan6 17y ago

An interesting feature of this story is that the victim's internet friend was the one who reported him missing. 20 years ago, a guy like this would have had no friends at all, and, as the murderer intended, nobody would have noticed that he was gone for a long time. Maybe she would have even gotten away with it, especially if she had taken the main part of his money, which she did not have time to get, and fled the country.

jcnnghm 17y ago

A relative of mine always used to say "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me." Perhaps he was right. Also, given the topic of his research, nuclear weapon design, it doesn't seem too unlikely that government agents would tamper with his vehicle. The article seems to sensationalize a lot about the man. Running SETI@home isn't exactly that strange of a thing to do. Isn't it built into the PS3.

sethg 17y ago

There’s a common stereotype that to be “crazy” is to be dangerous, but as stories like this indicate, the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of abuse than perpetrators.