In Robert Dahl’s essay, Lamb to the Slaughter, the wife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then destroys the evidence by feeding it to the investigators. In Newark, N.J., 76-year-old Marlene Mackenzie was certainly as creative but not nearly as successful: she killed 80-year-old Robert Mackenzie by throwing a cocktail glass at his head.
Marlene will now be charged with reckless manslaughter — a charge that presumably reflects a heat of passion act since she was not charged with murder. (She was originally charged with aggravated assault). Ultimately, any jail time is likely to be an effective life sentence for a 78-year-old woman.
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i totally agree with bartlebee. it was just an unfortunate accident. let her go she’s suffering enough..
Well, at the risk of chosing the unpopular choice, I’m gonna say the DA is overreaching here.
This was an accident more than manslaughter. This was not some young man, knowing the power of what he was doing to someone this was an old lady, probably suffering from dementia, apparently intoxicated, and she tosses her drink at her husband during an argument. She was drunk, so she threw it to hard, it hit him, end of story. She didn’t mean to kill him, she meant to toss her drink at him while telling him to shut up or something.
It was an unfortunate tragedy but it was accidental, and while certainly reckless, I’d say its punishment enough for her to come to the end of her life, and what apparently was a nice, quiet marriage with a normal family life, (according to their neighors) to suddenly be responsible for your husbands death.
I doubt unless she’s Mickey Mantles mom I doubt she meant to hit him there, she’s 76 and was drinking. The police are exagerating the charge about the glass being used as a “rock” I am sure. It was more probably just a quick windmill toss that happened to land.
This lady’s 76. She’s probably got what, 3, maybe 4 years left to live? At best 10 or 11 if she’s lucky?
I say let it go. Theres criminals out there that the police and courts are supposed to be protecting me from, not someones grandma that lost her temper and it resulted in a terrible accident that killed her husband.
Let the courts and police start doing what they’re being paid to do, with our tax dollars, and start going after criminals who want to hurt me and my family. We’ve become a Penal society, where everyone must pay, as if some great taskmaster sits hidden behind a veil meting out rewards for our punishing our fellow man. We need to worry about getting criminals, real criminals, and give our people who screw up, a break.
She’s old. She just killed her husband. She’s suffering enough. Tell the DA to let her alone, and go catch some dangerous criminals.
Prof. Turley, I will stay away from anything that she is pouring! We had a drink in college that we called a “Happy Tiger”. Maybe Mackenzie needs to drink more of those in the future, if she isn’t in a penal institution somewhere. A few of those would mellow her out.
Indeed, Rafflaw, Mackenzie has “thrown” one party too many. Just avoid asking for a Highball or a “Kill Me Now Kahlua.”
Alfred Hitchock used “Lamb to the Slaughter” for one of his show’s episodes, featuring Barbara Bel Geddes. It’s available to watch, if anyone has 1/2 hour to kill.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=lamb%20slaughter%20alfred%20hitchcock&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#
It was Roald Dahl’s sly short story, in either “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” or “Someone Like You,” *certainly* not “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” though the demises there were pretty sly, too.
That is one 76 year old woman that you do not want to “cheat” on. I wonder how her ill 80 year old husband was supposed to be carrying on with this other person, but I guess we will never know. Remind me to send our regrets the next time Mrs. Mackenzie throws a cocktail party.