John Montgomery Presents This Week's	September 18, 1999	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	Lawrence Russell Brewer
	This Little Piggie Cried All The Way To Hell

There was another one of those mass-killing-suicides this week and it didn't even make the front page of the paper. This time it was in Texas, inside a church, but everything else was excruciatingly familiar. Some demented dickhead with a gun began raving and shooting, and then, following the cookbook ritual tradition that is now required for this kind of event, aimed the gun at his own deviant head and blew himself away. Eight people died, including some teenagers, but it wasn't a big story. Dan Rather didn't rush to the scene. Bill Clinton didn't call in a bunch of shrinks and clergy for a White House conference. Our collective "Oh my God!" limit has been raised about twelve notches and stuff like this doesn't even register anymore. The only comments of any consequence were made by the presidential candidates, all of whom saw these church killings as verification that their own particular pessimistic view of the world was the right one and if we vote for them, nothing like this will ever happen again and the White House will soon be filled with cocaine and Viagra.

Fortunately, there are still a few things left that can shock us. Another Texas killing last year, the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. by three racist pigs in Jasper, remains a chilling example of how far we've strayed from the evolutionary path. The first little piggie, John William King, was convicted in February and sentenced to death, maintaining a stoic, stone-faced silence the whole time. This week it was the second little piggie's chance, but unlike his fellow pig, Lawrence Russell Brewer took the stand in his own defense.

Sort of. Sobbing and bleating, Lawrence exclaimed, "I didn't mean to cause his death. I had no intentions of killing nobody." As you might expect, he fingered the third little piggie, Shawn Allen Berry, as the real evil pig. According to Lawrence, it was Shawn who got into a fight with the black guy, slashed his throat and chained him to the truck. "I intended to break up the fight. If I knew the results, I would have gone to the cops." And when the truck went over a culvert, decapitating James, Lawrence got real brave. "I told him (Shawn) to pull over and take the man off." To hear him tell it, Lawrence is just another misunderstood, well-intentioned, righteous Christian gentleman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong pigs.

If that's the case, why did you serve as the "Exalted Cyclops" in the racist Confederate Knights of America while you were in prison, Lawrence? "Protection, man." And why did you tell a fellow inmate that all black people should be shot in the head? "I can't see myself making that statement," says Lawrence. He probably can't see the jurors puking in disgust as they vote to send his bigoted ass directly to death row, either.

Check out how closely Lawrence's testimony matches the one I predicted back at the time of the crime. Do I know my pigs, or what?