If the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case demonstrated anything, it is the gross, and grotesque, double standards in race relations that exist in America.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay, “Paula Deen and the Fundamental Transformation of America,” in which I relayed the unimaginably brutal fate that a young white couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, met six years ago in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the hands of four black men and one black woman. I noted that the usual suspects in the Racism-Industrial-Complex who demanded Deen’s head on a platter for having used a notorious racial epithet some 30 years ago or so have been utterly silent with respect to this atrocity.
There is, though, another scandalously underreported instance of black-on-white cruelty that, with shocking clarity, illustrates the hypocrisy and cowardice of contemporary racial discourse. It occurred in Wichita, Kansas, 13 years ago. It is with good reason that it has since been dubbed “the Wichita Massacre” or “the Wichita Horror.”
On December 14, 2000, two black brothers, Reginald and Jonathan Carr, broke into the home of three white men, Jason Befort, Bradley Heyka, and Aaron Sandler. Also at the home were two white women, Heather Muller and a woman who, for the purpose of her own privacy and protection, is now known only as “H.G.” The latter is the sole survivor of the evil to which the Carr brothers subjected her and her friends.
Over a span of hours, the brothers Carr forced their victims to get naked and have sex with one another. According to an Accuracy in Media report, when Sander “failed to perform” sexually, he “was beaten with a golf club.”
Yet the Carrs also forced the two women to have sex with them. Repeatedly, Muller and H.G. were raped, both vaginally and orally.
The rapes, though, were interspersed with multiple robberies. At different times, Reginald Carr drove Heyka, Befort, and H.G., individually, to the bank where they were made to use their ATM cards to withdraw funds. The temperature that evening was at least 15 degrees below freezing, and yet the Carrs permitted H.G. to wear nothing but a sweater during her excursion to the bank.
But it wasn’t only the bank accounts of their victims that the Carr brothers depleted. According to the AIM report, the Carrs “ransacked the house looking for money and valuables.” Sadly, they “found the engagement ring that Befort had planned to give H.G. a week later.”
At around 2:00 a.m. the Carrs took their captives — three of whom had been stuffed into the trunk of Sandler’s Honda Accord — to a deserted field covered in snow. The men were stark naked while the women wore nothing other than a shirt. All five were made to kneel down. The Carrs then shot each one of them, execution-style, in the backs of their heads. Then, they rode over the bodies in one of the vehicles that they stole before leaving their victims to rot.
The Carrs failed to realize that not all of their prey had died. AIM states that H.G. took off her sweater to stop Jason Befort’s bleeding. “‘Blood was squirting everywhere,’” she later testified in court. It was even “’coming out of his eyes.’” Naked, raped, shot and left for dead, H.G. walked one mile to a home where she implored strangers to help. Most tellingly, she would not let them call 911 until after she had told them all that happened that night. Thinking that she too would die, H.G. wanted to make sure that her grisly story was known. AIM reports that “the couple listened in amazement at her courage and determination.”
H.G. is indeed courageous and determined. Thanks to her virtues the Carr brothers were convicted and sentenced to death (though, unfortunately, they haven’t yet been executed).
Had H.G. been black and her attackers been white, there isn’t anyone in America who wouldn’t know her name. More than one “Lifetime” movie would’ve been made about her and her friends. Oprah Winfrey would have interviewed her several times over. Along with that of Heather Muller, her name would already be in the annals of “Women’s History.” She would be a feminist’s icon. The president, and most certainly the First Lady, would have given speeches singing her praises and reminding Americans that “racism” is still very much alive, etc.
And the Carr brothers (deservingly) would be the most vilified men in the country.
But H.G. and her four late friends were white and their assailants black. Thus, if they were ever noticed at all, they have long since been forgotten.
In the spirit of that “honest discussion of race” that Eric Holder claims to want, we should acquaint and reacquaint ourselves with them.
While we’re at it, it is high time that we decry the outrageous racial double-standards on which the Racism-Industrial-Complex feeds.
