Pennsylvania State Police are reporting that Steve Stephens, wanted by the Cleveland Police Department for the murder, streamed live via Facebook, of 74 year old Robert Godwin, has killed himself after being spotted by law enforcement near Erie, Pennsylvania.
Steve Stephens was spotted this morning by PSP members in Erie County. After a brief pursuit, Stephens shot and killed himself.
— PA State Police (@PAStatePolice) April 18, 2017
Here is the latest statement from Cleveland Police Chief Williams regarding the case.
UPDATE on Steve Stephens case https://t.co/Yoc9KA8UF5
— Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) April 18, 2017
The Moar You Know
Good.
LAO
I simply don’t get it. If your (Stephens) end game is to kill yourself, why take anyone else with you. Just kill yourself man. (I feel this way about mass shooters, as well.)
ruemara
@LAO: Because the endgame is to hurt as many people as possible before taking yourself out. Pain expressed and shared to nth degree.
mai naem mobile
Asshole did the world a favor.
The Moar You Know
@LAO: Be glad you don’t get it. The man did this to get attention and make his ex-girlfriend sorry that she left him.
Bet she ain’t.
TaMara (HFG)
Good.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: @ruemara: Before it all got pulled down, the video of the murder, his facebook comments, etc, he was ranting and raving online about having killed 17 others, some other stuff, sending messages to his boss he wouldn’t be in to work on Monday. I’m pretty sure there is more to this than just wanting to commit suicide and trying to take others out along the way. This guy had some serious issues at the end. People are speculating it was the breakup with his girlfriend, but whatever it was something acted as a trigger for this guy and he quickly decompensated in a violent way. If this was just suicide, he wouldn’t have waited several days to do it and only have done it right before being caught.
Betty Cracker
Glad he won’t be killing any additional innocent bystanders. I feel bad for the family of the man he randomly murdered, knowing that the video of the murder is all over the internet. It’s bad enough having a relative murdered, but having to deal with it as a public spectacle must make it that much worse. :(
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: It was not pleasant to watch, but if there’s any solace he flinched with his phone so you don’t actually see the shooting – you see him approach and aim, you hear the shot, but the video has jumped away, and then it comes back to poor Mr. Godwin.
And before anyone asks: I watched it to see exactly if it was as it was being described because I didn’t want to post it here if it was even close to accurate. It was.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m glad you didn’t post it, the descriptions were enough.
Good riddance.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: No worries.
MJS
Not getting all the comments of “good” here. Yes, it’s a good thing that he didn’t kill anyone else, but why is it good that he escaped punishment? Unless you believe there is an actual Hell that his soul is currently inhabiting, he has ceased to exist, which is really no punishment at all. I would have much preferred for him to be captured, tried and convicted, to live out his days behind bars.
Frank Wilhoit
Let me choose my words with the greatest possible precision here. There is no reason to believe that the story put forward by the Pennsylvania police is accurate. It may be; but there is no real reason to believe either that it is or that it isn’t. The vast majority of past cases that were reported in identical terms were police executions.
I surmise that there are substantial populations who simultaneously believe that (A) police should in general and in principle be held accountable and (B) this case was handled properly, or at least acceptably, or at least that the outcome is acceptable, and further that if the official statement of what transpired is knowingly false, then in this case, or in some space of similar cases, that is also acceptable.
My point (and I do, at long last, have one) is that if you believe (B) then you do not believe (A), even if you think you do.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
OT:
I don’t know if Vanity Fair’s take on what happened in Berkeley is any improvement on the rest of the media coverage, but at least they put some emphasis on pre-event planning by the alt-right crowd.
Kropadope
@MJS:
Well, having him removed as a threat is good and, if that’s all there is, still good. Absent the existence any actual “hell,” if you believe in anything along the lines of a soul or any part of you lasting beyond death, his soul was clearly not at peace. Dying won’t change that,
HRA
I am very glad this is over and done. When a ping was traced to Erie, we knew he had to take a way through our area to get to Erie from Cleveland. Facebook also showed a photo of him in Niagara Falls and that set off a lot of “why can’t they catch him”.
I feel a deep sorrow for Mr. Godwin’s family and also for the mother of this a-hole.
No One of Consequence
@MJS: Personally, not speaking for others, but your original calculus was correct. He did not hurt anyone else, and self-selected.
First and most important variable: didn’t hurt anyone else.
Bonus points: saved the taxpayers time and money having to try/defend, incarcerate him.
A human being has died. One that took the life of another human being before taking his own life. It is sad for his victim, tragic for his family.
It is also sad for the murderer, and tragic for his family and loved ones.
Wisdom is (in my opinion) lies in the discovery that sadness pervades, and that we would all be the better for it if we did not compound our (already unexpected yet anticipated) bounty of tears with thoughts and feelings of punishment, pain and malice.
Your mileage, may of course, vary.
Peace,
– NOoC
Roger Moore
@MJS:
I’m not much of one for punishment for punishment’s sake. IMO, the goal of our criminal justice system should be to do everything we can to minimize crime in the future. Sometimes that means keeping people locked up permanently to deny them the opportunity to commit more crimes, and it certainly means having some kind of deterrent so that rational people will decide that crime doesn’t pay. It should also meaning rehabilitating people who can be rehabilitated, and accepting people back into society when their sentence is over so they aren’t forced back into a life of crime by a lack of legitimate jobs.
It also means I don’t believe in locking people up because they “deserve” to be punished. This guy killing himself means he won’t hurt anyone else, and society won’t have to pay to house him and protect other prisoners from him (and vice versa) for the rest of his natural life. I don’t really care whether suicide is adequate punishment for what he did.
raven
fuck it
Hal
So how long before the “Where’s black live matter now?” chorus starts?
Betty Cracker
@raven: I’ll take a hard pass on that discussion.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Yea, I bailed.
DocSardonic
@MJS: Glad the guy offed himself, because now the good citizens of the state of Ohio get to save all the money that would be tied up in the court trial, and appeals. Not too mention the expense to the taxpayers of having to feed, cloth and house this asshole.
Frankensteinbeck
@MJS:
I’m with @Roger Moore. Revenge is not justice. I don’t care that people ‘get what they deserve.’ Even the most evil person’s suffering accomplishes nothing. It’s just more suffering. And the philosophy of hurting the wicked leads to hurting the people you disagree with. See: Conservatism.
Justice is about systems that reduce bad things from happening. Warnings, rehabilitation, carrot-and-stick. If this guy killed himself before he killed anyone else, that’s as good as any other result. He can’t do it again, and no punishment would likely be more effective than that in discouraging others.
rikyrah
May he burn in hell.
Mnemosyne
@MJS:
From everything I’ve read, he was a disturbed guy who wasn’t making rational decisions. Given that, it’s quite likely that he would have ended up in a secure mental hospital rather than a prison cell, because our justice system does (sometimes) try not to punish insane people for the irrational things they do.
@Frank Wilhoit:
It’s certainly possible, but it’s also pretty common for distraught people having a psychotic break to kill themselves. I don’t know that there’s enough evidence right now to prove that the cops killed him.
MJS
@DocSardonic: The “good citizens of Ohio” put on a lot of trials and appeals, and feed, cloth and house a lot of assholes. Do you wish all those convicted of crimes would off themselves? Or just the murderers? And do they have to off themselves, or are you cool with the state doing it? I’m not defending what this guy did. It’s obviously reprehensible and disgusting. But the cheering over someone’s death is a little much.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
And if he was having a mental breakdown, I don’t think there was any level of “deterrence” that would have helped here. The only thing that might have prevented this was better mental health care (IMO, of course).
TaMara (HFG)
@MJS: Mine is just a gut reaction – no one else would be hurt. The victim’s family would not have to relive it over and over again during the trial and possible appeals. All my sorrow goes to them and to the murder’s family who now have to live with all of this as well.
And as someone who lives in a state with two high profile mass shootings – I’ve seen nothing good coming from dragging victims and family through a trial – there were no more answers with the Aurora theater shooter after his trial than before, victims and family members (by their own account) felt re-traumatized and the jury needed counseling afterwards. In the end he got the same sentence he plea bargained for…before the trial even started.
trollhattan
Thank goodness we have a brave political party working to preserve the rights of the mentally ill their access to firearms. Whew, that was close.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
What a shitty story, all around. I can’t even think what life will be like for anybody who ever had anything to do with this guy, but my heart bleeds for them all.
MJS
@Mnemosyne: @Frankensteinbeck: Incarcerating people who commit crimes is not “revenge” and is, in fact, one part of justice. It is a decision by society, through their laws, that what someone has done requires that they be removed from society, either for a period of time, or for the rest of their life. My reference to “punishment” was in response to the cheering of his suicide. Apparently those who view him killing himself as a good thing think of it as a form of retribution for what he did, and my point was that he actually took the easy way out.
TaMara (HFG)
@MJS: Oh, so you aren’t really interested in why we reacted as we did, you just want to prove yourself better than by making broad, unrelated statements. BTW, I didn’t hear any cheering. Just people relieved it was over and pissed this guy did what he did. All valid and human responses.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Stricter gun control might have helped, too. Somebody who has really lost it might still try to kill someone with a different weapon, but stricter gun control certainly wouldn’t have hurt in this case.
MJS
@TaMara (HFG): I understand your point, but let me ask you a question – if it wasn’t that he killed himself, but instead he was shot by police, would you feel the same way?
TaMara (HFG)
@MJS: I’m done discussing this with you…you aren’t here to listen and debate, you’re here to incite. I don’t play. You must be new if you think I do.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@LAO: Beyond Stephen’s murder of Godwin is an accusation, my guess would be to make his’ death mater.
or
Stephen knew enough Anglo-Saxon to know “Godwin” meant “good eating” and inadvertently engaged in cannibalism and was overcome with remorse.
trollhattan
O/T feel free to join me in a hearty HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
Pondering the enormous gulf between “Tend to stay away from homes” and “It’s in the bedroom!”
James E Powell
@MJS:
Dying and being dead are not punishment?
The Moar You Know
@raven: Pretty sure I know where you were going and think you made the right decision. Trying to keep my mouth shut myself.
MJS
@TaMara (HFG): Umm, not sure how you got that, at all. Not trying to prove myself better. And if you didn’t hear any cheering, what exactly do “Good” (the very first comment) and “Asshole did the world a favor” mean?
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I would add only that it’s my rational mind arguing in favor of the style of justice I’ve described. There’s certainly an emotional side of my brain that wants to see wrongdoers punished, often in really awful ways. But I’m a firm believer that a vital role of civilization is to keep those vicious emotional responses in check.
mai naem mobile
OT – anybody hear about the sweet deal a Silicon Valley wife beater CEO got? The DA was worried about the guys immigration status . He got a month of which he will probably do 2 weeks. It’s in the Daily Beast today. The wife audio recorded the abuse. This is the same DA office jlthat pulled the Brock Martin (??the Stanford swimmer guy) case. Different judge.
James E Powell
@Hal:
I’m no longer on facebook, but friends did tell me that it was an immediate response to the story.
LAO
@trollhattan: I’m with you — holy shit! That’s insane. Humans must have totally destroyed their habitat, for that mountain lion to be so bold.
Frankensteinbeck
@TaMara (HFG):
Yeah, the complete change in terms of debate to some other tactic that supposedly gives it the moral high ground is diagnostic. Pure troll, not arguing in good faith.
mai naem mobile
@MJS: the guy did it on video. This isn’t some situation where he could have possibly gotten framed. I just wish the language of my comment had been better.
MJS
@TaMara (HFG): Not really new, and not trying to incite. I’ve “listened” to others comments on this and while I’ve disagreed, and questioned why they think the way they do, I don’t think I’ve been insulting or condescending. But of course I’m biased, so maybe I did.
MJS
@James E Powell: I don’t know if dying and being dead are punishment. No one really does. I do know that being sentenced to jail is punishment.
Frankensteinbeck
@LAO:
Goodness, no. Mountain lions LOVE eating dogs, and they live very close to civilization. Most of them are at the ‘stay out of humanity’s way’ level of fearing mankind, but they totally attack people sometimes, and they’re damned smart. It may be rare, but it’s not weird that one decided to sneak down the hill to get an easy meal of pet.
NotMax
Contra above, somber story containing nothing good at all. Both pathetic and bathetic.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
“Tend to stay away” is not the same as “always stay away”. I’m also generally skeptical of the “tend to stay away” in the first place. I live just out of the foothills in Southern California, and I know that pumas (and black bears) visit nearby cities with some regularity, especially given that deer tend to move down into the cities, too. There’s also the whole issue of young pumas needing to find unoccupied territories after leaving their mothers; depending on the local density, nearby cities may be the only place available.
MJS
@mai naem mobile: Fair enough. I’m apparently coming off as someone who thinks I’m better than everyone else, so I better put a sock in it. That wasn’t my intention.
ruemara
@mai naem mobile: I encountered the article and I left – rapidly. It’s too much. You cannot get fucking justice because your husband is rich, even with the audio of your abuse being admitted as evidence. Fuck. These. Men.
@trollhattan: I’m not mad at the mountain lion. I’m wondering about the sanity of people who leave their doors to their homes ajar at night instead of installing a sensible pet door. They’re lucky it was just a lion about his business of dinner. Sheesh. Self-preservation might be bred out of the gene pool.
wuzzat
@MJS: I doubt that anyone is “glad” about anything to do with this situation. However;
1. A violent and desperate man is no longer at large.
2. Unrelated black men who may or may not vaguely resemble Steve Stephens have one less reason to worry about being shot by panicked cops today.
3. Ditto for anyone driving a white car while brown.
4. Ohioans pay around $26K per year for a lifer. Stephens probably would have gotten the death penalty, so triple that number. There are probably better uses for the money.
5. With no trial to focus on, the media vultures ought to back off this one. Which means, the victim, his family, Stephens’ family, and Stephens’ ex won’t have to suffer through months of public scrutiny as the press tries to find the most marketable spin on these events.
Any of these reasons outweighs “but now we can’t make him suffer in jail” as a response to Stephens’ taking himself out of the picture.
Humboldtblue
@Betty Cracker:
I aint much, but so far I have assiduously avoided watching that video and here’s hoping that remains the case. Just seeing a still of the victim was enough to break my heart
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: Worth noting Pescadero is in the hills and not an urban area, but still,.. I though big cats don’t like enclosed places with obsticals.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: Sick or injured animal most likely.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: I’m beginning to regret putting the post up…
Betty Cracker
@Humboldtblue: Same.
Adam L Silverman
@mai naem mobile: I saw it, flagged it, and was planning on doing a post later. They have a serious problem with judges in that circuit.
Humboldtblue
@LAO:
Nah, mountain lions have adapted pretty well and a mountain lion sighting is not at all rare here and plenty of people lose cats and small pets to lions that live on the outskirts of all the small towns up here.
This mountain lion story from 2007 caught international headlines
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, it’s not an enormous gulf at all. It’s actually the next level of reduced fear – don’t specifically confront humans, but go prowling human territory for food. It is not rare for animals to jump that gulf, and with bears it’s a big danger.
LAO
@Frankensteinbeck: @Humboldtblue:
I stand corrected; learn something new every day!
Starfish
@MJS: You have a great deal of faith in the police and justice system. What do you think was the likelihood of him being brought in alive?
gvg
@MJS:
Being dead is a punishment for most people. In a better society I would prefer capture, trial and probably conviction, but age and experience have made me doubt that fair trials always happen especially in a highly publicized sensational murder. I have also seen police misbehavior and will have to wait on followups to be sure it was suicide, but most likely it was. Nobody else was shot. We are starting from the fact that one innocent man was shot. Then there is our prison system…..which is a disgrace. not only are we bad at rehabilitation and brutal, i think it contributes to society generally in a bad way. People have bad habits of making joke threats about prison rapes which leads to too many people thinking its ok for prisons to be horrible. Its not that they are nice people, I just think we are worse for being so cruel.
most of the time crimes need to lead to trials and convictions (only if evidence of guilt is good enough) however it is tiring and every once in awhile its ok to feel relief its over.
Then there is the fact i also don’t think he could have been successfully treated for whatever mental illness was tormenting him. Prison care is worse than general, and I don’t have complete faith in regular mental health care, just that it works sometimes, helps sometimes and we have to try.
If further info comes out about the case such as about the police, i will re evaluate then.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I would guess young and without an established territory.
Adam L Silverman
@Roger Moore: That is also a possibility.
I just wish they’d use Zillow like everyone else.//
MJS
@Starfish: No, I really don’t have a great deal of faith in either the police or the justice system, and you are absolutely correct, he’s the wrong color to have had much of a chance to be brought in alive.
JPL
It’s a jungle out there. I just returned from a polling place that is very conservative and waits were over thirty minutes.
It’s been steady all day. It’s unlikely that Ossoff will get fifty percent and if John’s Creek turns our in numbers like Roswell, forty percent is going to be tough. If the millennials don’t turn up to vote, they deserve what they get. I don’t though.
Starfish
@TaMara (HFG): In the case of that counseling, did the state cover it, or did they have to seek their own?
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
My three-part guess would be sick or old, as you surmise, a mom with cubs in the area or a young male kicked out of his home territory looking to establish his own (they have enormous territories and predominantly overlap deer ranges).
Because of the brazen entering a home Fish and Wildlife will probably try to track it. If injured they’d likely put it down but if healthy, dart and relocate. Not sure how they handle a mother with cubs. Chances of finding it are just so-so unless it’s still in the area.
California ended mountain lion hunting a couple decades back and the population has rebounded bigly, plus they’ve lost any residual fear of us two-legged critters.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Likely, but I never underestimate the possibility of an intelligent predator eating a pet dog, deciding this is the easiest meal ever, and going looking for more. Pet dogs are the wonder prey – fat, don’t try to hide, terrible at running away, totally harmless if there’s no human protecting them, and usually won’t even run.
Origuy
@Roger Moore: Yeah, that sounds likely to me. The mountain lion population has been growing on the San Francisco Peninsula, and they wander down into urban areas fairly often. Pescadero is on the ocean side of the peninsula and pretty rural, but lions have been spotted wandering around downtown Mountain View, which is densely populated.
laura
I regret even seeing the news coverage showing the innocent gentleman face to face and realizing his impending murder. I cannot imagine how it traumatized his family and is still being shown.
To me, it is of a piece with the infotainment model that has transformed news as informative, to entertainment for the masses at our peril.
And the not so subtle racism and scary black man, be on the lookout, coming to a town near you!
I fully expect our revanchist AG will use this awfull act to continue his selective and race-based law enforcement and damn the family and friends of this innocent gentleman who’s life has been reduced to a fleeting bit of sensationalism.
The shooter and his death are the least of my concerns and I offer no opinion about his motives or how this fits fits into a discussion of crime and punishment. I reserve my thoughts to this gentleman, his family and friends.
The media needs to be accountable for its role.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
They aren’t afraid of being near humans, but there must still be a lot of fear given the scarcity of attacks.
ruemara
@Roger Moore: We’re also not that tasty. Score one for our toxic diet!
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
There’s a whole huge range of levels of fear, but yeah, you’re spot on with that. If they had lost all fear, they’d be attacking us regularly. We look superficially like a great meal. Only a deep experience that humans go ‘bang’ counters that, and still counters it enough that they only attack us rarely.
@ruemara:
During the British Empire period, they believed that humans were so tasty, any animal that ate one of us would never be content with any other prey ever again.
ruemara
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m fairly sure they meant white people.
efgoldman
@ruemara:
If he wanted to do that, he could have. Guns and ammo really aren’t hard to get on that part of the country.
Timurid
@trollhattan: @trollhattan:
That dog knew too much about Trump. The FSB had to be proactive…
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t. Helps sort the wheat from the chaff among the commentariat, at least for me.
opiejeanne
@ruemara: Pescadero is a very small place, about 600 people live there. Leaving the door open is part of the small town ideal; we have lived in places a lot bigger (one town of 250k) where no one locked their doors at night, but we did because we knew they were all nuts and “bad guys” are capable of driving to your “safe” neighborhood.
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
I think they were thinking of brown people. Certainly the Indians believed that once a tiger had started eating people it would eat them in preference to other prey, and the people they were talking about were generally poor villagers. I’m sure Schrodinger’s Cat will have something to say about it, but I found Jim Corbet’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon a very interesting take.
Rand Careaga
@LAO: I have read that the most common cause of death for mountain lions in California is starvation.
DocSardonic
@MJS: Well I was going to try giving you a reasoned argument, but after reading through the rest of the comments I’ll just offer this short response. Clutch tightly to your pearls and locate the closest couch.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara@Frankensteinbeck:@Roger Moore: Tigers eat humans not because we are tasty, but because we are easy to kill compared to other animals, especially if we are uarmed.
ETA: India’s first National Park was named Corbett National Park after Jim Corbett.
MJS
@DocSardonic: So you’re going with the “I’m a tough guy, and you’re not” strategy. Always a good fall back position.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
@DocSardonic:
@MJS:
I got no problem with punishment. I’d love to imprison and punish the Trump Crime Family, for example.
I DO have a problem with cops executing people. And I have a problem with seeing this guy kill himself. I don’t think that you should get to commit a crime and then impose your own sentence.
I got no problem with paying to keep a person imprisoned. I favor life in prison over execution even though this means spending money to keep the person incarcerated. I would not want to see a killer executed by other inmates (with a few exceptions).
I think that this person claimed to have killed other people. Now we may never know whether this was true or what may have happened to over victims.
Imposing justice is one of the obligations of society. This should not be subject to a Trumpian cost-benefit analysis. As always, your mileage may vary.
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: it sounds like it’s the judges and the DAs office.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I should have made that point. Corbett was always clear that man-eating cats were almost always injured in some way that kept them from hunting their usual prey- broken teeth, porcupine quills that had become permanently lodged, or unhealed injuries from being shot. The theory was that forced them through hunger to hunt humans, which they normally wouldn’t have, only to find that we were easy prey.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
My favorite cartoon.
A clown is sitting in a big pot.
A cannibal has taken a sip from a spoon.
Punchline: “This tastes funny.”
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
That’s a very good point I hadn’t thought of. It will still be possible to investigate to see if there are any links between him and cold cases, but it would have been much easier if he were alive to talk.
ET
@ruemara: and get a lot of attention while you are doing it……..
janelle
@MJS: I believe the “good” is the fact that he will never be able to harm another human being. I agree that it would have been preferable for him to have to face his crime and his victims and spend the rest of his living days contemplating what he did, but there is still solace in knowing that he will never, ever harm another human being.