Every so often you read or hear about a crime whose gravity, whose heinousness grabs you by the throat and offends every sensibility in your body. That’s the way I felt when I read about the brutal murder of a New Caney woman named Deborah Applegate in the Friday, July 9, 2010, edition of the Houston Chronicle. The 46-year-old disabled mother of three was apparently murdered by Robert Ellis Hinton.

            The newspaper article did not disclose how the lives of these two individuals entwined or exactly how Applegate “janked” Hinton enough to cause him to kill her. What is clear, based on accounts from Applegate’s sister, Marie Shull, is that Applegate could not support herself; she depended upon Social Security benefits and the few jobs she could get taking care of other disabled people who could not independently get around.

            Shull said it became evident her sister had disappeared in April when she did not show up for a Social Security benefits hearing. How much of a search Montgomery County authorities put together to determine what happened to Applegate is not clear. Too often victims of violent crimes simply disappear into the law enforcement woodwork of indifference because they are not important enough to warrant serious police attention.

            But even an aggressive law enforcement manhunt for Applegate would not have saved her from the criminal madness of Hinton. An unnamed female witness came forward recently and led authorities to the burned remains of Applegate in an isolated wooded area. According to the Chronicle, the witness went to the residence where Applegate was killed and found Hinton dressed in her sister’s “coveralls.” The witness said she walked into a bedroom where she saw Applegate’s body on a mattress with her skull beaten into a pulp with a hammer used by Hinton. The killer then took a pocketknife, according to the witness, and grabbed Applegate by the hair of what was left of skull, pulled the bloody mess back, and slit the woman’s throat.

            The Chronicle reported that the witness told the authorities Hinton then took Applegate’s body, stuffed it into a trash can, and “hid it in a storage shed.” The killer next burned the mattress and the bed linens to destroy the evidence of the killing. Several days later Hinton moved the trash can to his ex-wife’s residence where, as he tried to unload it from his pickup truck, “a thick black liquid spilled out,” according to the newspaper. The trash can remained at the ex-wife’s house until she called Hinton complaining about a bad odor in her back yard. Hinton retrieved the trash can and took it a half mile into a wooded area behind the ex-wife’s house.

            The witness told the police that in early May Hinton took her into the woods where he showed her the partial remains of a human body (part of a skull and eye socket) in the trash can. Hinton then poured gasoline into the trash can and set it on fire. “This is what happens to people that ‘jank’ me,” Hinton reportedly told the witness.

            In late June Hinton was charged with the murder of Deborah Applegate and remains in the Montgomery County Jail on a half-million dollar bond.

            This kind of case defies human comprehension. You wonder what kind of hate or anger or psychosis would make a man bash in a human being’s skull with a hammer, slit the person’s throat and burn what’s left of the body in a trash can in some remote wooded area—and then to so casually dismiss the crime and the victim with the passing comment that that’s what “happens to people that ‘jank’ me.”

            This case will never see a death penalty trial. A plea deal will be struck. Hinton will spend the rest of his natural life in prison. Applegate’s life simply didn’t measure up to death penalty status. The death penalty is reserved for those victims with extended family, social status, or professional prominence. A disabled person living off Social Security benefits who happens to get her brains bashed out by some “sick fuck” who doesn’t like people “janking” him around doesn’t quite qualify for that special death penalty “victim” status.

            I’m not advocating the death penalty for Hinton. I’m just pissed that Applegate got second page “City & State” coverage in the Chronicle when several weeks ago a local high school basketball player, who killed himself and another innocent young man while driving sleep impaired, got “front page” Chronicle coverage because he was a “star athlete” with a promising future. The news media, which reflects the feelings of society at large, rate victims based on who and what they are—the more important they are, the more attention and concern they are given.

            That’s the greatest injustice about the death penalty. It is reserved and applied almost exclusively upon victim class status.