When Smoking Kills…

Reader Bill Cook sends along this link from the London Telegraph:

'Devil' man killed wife and two sons over her smoking

…

A hotelier who became obsessed with the devil murdered his wife and two of their children because she would not give up smoking, a court heard yesterday.

John Jarvis, 42, had persuaded his wife, Patricia, to sign a pre-nuptial agreement limiting her to six cigarettes a day.

When he discovered she was smoking more than that number, he stabbed her in the heart and then murdered their sons, John, 11, and Stuart, eight, so they could join her….

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Mo]

Was
murder by stabbing part of the prenup?

So do you think this will go in the statistics as a murder or a smoking related death? Will the kids be counted as second hand smoke deaths?

[Tim Cavanaugh]

I hope we're not going to let one bad apple discredit the war on smoking!

[Will]

At least this wasn't government action to prevent smoking!

Look at all of the benefits of privitisation. 🙂

[Warren]

This isn't about smoking. It's about sex and violence in the media, causing cultural degradation. Wake up people, think of the children for God?s sake. ?When officers reached the Winslow Hotel in Blackpool, they found Jarvis lying critically ill in bed beside his wife. A Bible, open at the Book of Revelations, had been left on a table in the bedroom.? Could it be more obvious? This man was a fine family man, a perfectly respectable member of the community. That is until he fell under the evil spell of the print media and READ THE BIBLE! After being exposed to the ubiquitous violence in THE BIBLE, he was powerless to stop himself from stabbing his wife and children to death. How many people must die at the hands of BIBLE crazed zombies before we as a society say ?Enough!?? WE MUST BAN THE BIBLE NOW! If not for our own sake, then for the safety of our children.

[D Anghelone]

He should try the Fawlty Towers defence.

[Evan Williams]

Mo raises an interesting question: in a libertarian society, if you willingly sign a contract [read: prenuptial] that stipulates that you will submit to death if you break certain terms of the contract, can it be legally enforced? I would say yes. You own your life; if you willingly agree to forfeit your inalienable right to life, then who should stand in your way?

[Tom Pearson]

Webster's defines "inalienable" as: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred.

If your right to life is truly inalienable, then you can't legitimately contract it away.

[Matthew]

The only logical thing to do is to sue John Banzhaf. Clearly, he did not do enough to warn people that the practices that he preaches can lead to domestic violence and murder. I'd say that this sort of pain and suffering is probably worth about $1.7 billion, so even if Banzhaf is only 40% responsible, that's still a lot of cash. If we just keep suing and suing, somewhere there will be a jury that will buy this, and then the floodgates will open.

Isn't that how the logic goes?

[Larry A]

Get serious. What we obviously really need is knife control.