| Danial Rinehart found Jesus. Whoop-di-freaking-do. |
Rinehart's mother, Delores, talked to reporters at the sentencing. Instead of apologizing for the damnable creature her uterus expelled 49 years ago, Mama Rinehart said she was proud of her boy. "He's done wrong, but now he's found the Lord."
Delores Rinehart's ability to look on the bright side made her sound callous to her son's wickedness. Though aggravating, her comments hit a familiar note. It seems that whenever unspeakable crimes are committed in western Missouri or eastern Kansas, a friend or relative of the suspect does or says something so stupid, you begin to wonder if they live in communities where the hymn books are printed in ink that causes brain damage.
5. James Gallup
The uncle of Danial Rinehart, Gallup -- with his wife -- made the two-hour drive from Gallatin, Missouri, to Harrisonville in order to attend Rinehart's trial. Gallup did not want his nephew to feel alone as the jury heard testimony about the years Rinehart made his daughter act as his sex slave. "I look around the courtroom and I don't see anybody on his side," Gallup reportedly told the court. "I love the guy, and he ain't all that bad."
Gallup would make this list for suggesting that a man so vile cannot be "all that bad." But the "ain't" really sells it. It's as if Gallup stood in the courtroom that day and thought to himself, "I'm not sure people will see me as the stereotypically ignorant rural American I am if I merely vouch for my twisted's nephew's general decency. I know, I'll throw in an ain't and provide a full portrait of a dumb hick."
| KMBC |
| Lisa Atkins took a polygraph on daytime TV, a sure sign of bad decision-making. |
4. Lisa Atkins
Everyone knew that Dan Porter killed his two children, ages 7 and 8, after he failed to produce them after a weekend visit in 2004. Jailed in Jackson County on kidnapping charges, Porter gave a number of false accounts of what happened, the "secret" being the only thing left in his pathetic life.
Lisa Atkins, a friend of Porter's, played an attention-seeking part in saga. She appeared on Dr. Phil, mortifying Porter's estranged wife, Tina, with the revelation that she had been corresponding with the suspect. Months after the children disappeared, Atkins continued to hold out hope that Porter had placed them with an Amish family ("They have no radio, no TV, nothing," Atkins said), one of his more ludicrous feints. In truth, he had shot them in the head and buried their bodies in shallow graves, a crime he confessed in 2007.
| Dennis Rader, evil personified. |
Serial killing dealt Clark a tough hand. The pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita, Clark found himself in the spotlight when a member of his congregation, Dennis Rader, was revealed to be BTK, a murderer who had eluded authorities for three decades until his capture in 2005.
A textbook psychopath, Rader all but started stroking his penis in the courtroom on the day he confessed to 10 murders. Clark, however, was not satisfied with the notion that Rader has a personality disorder. Instead, the clergyman began talking about demonic forces. He even contemplated an exorcism, while noting that he was not qualified to perform such a task. ("It takes special training and knowledge of what you're doing," he told The Pitch.) Yo, rev, every once in a while God stamps out a bad one. Best just to wish him a nice trip to hell and be done with it.
| Burrell Mohler Sr. allegedly oversaw an incest ring. |
Shock and disbelief are natural emotions to feel when a loved one is accused of a crime. But at some point, dismay begins to look like a pair of clown shoes. Gamble illustrated this idea with his defense of Burrell Mohler Sr., the family patriarch accused of 20 felonies in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of his grandchildren.
In an interview with The Kansas City Star last fall, Gamble dismissed the charges against Mohler, Mohler's sons and Mohler's brother as "smoke and mirrors." Gamble based this opinion, in part, on the fact that the Mohler men are active in church -- as if no harm has ever come to a child in that setting. Gamble continued: "I've never known any of them to smoke or to drink or to carouse around or gamble -- any of the vices that you could think of."
With those words, Gamble made a normal Saturday night for millions of Americans seem equivalent with rape in a chicken coop. Nicotine is a vice. Adultery is a sin. Child abuse is a crime. See the difference, Gomer?
| Jesse Herd prostituted his stepdaughter. |
Jesse Herd prostituted his 14-year-old stepdaughter, a crime he liked to aggravate by mounting the girl after strangers finished. In one instance, 20 men took turns with the victim inside a booth at Erotic City, a scuzz joint in Blue Summit.
According to court records, Kindra Herd, the girl's mother, had told her daughter to "quit fussing" when she complained about having to accompany her father to strip clubs he claimed he needed to visit for business reasons.
Herd received a 21-year sentence in federal prison in 2008. The Pitch's Justin Kendall described the appalling courtroom scene as Herd's kinfolk hissed at representatives from Bikers Against Child Abuse, who had come to support the victim. Kendall overhead one of Herd's misguided supporters say: "Jesse has to answer to the federal government, but those bikers have to answer to God." Meanwhile, Kindra Herd sulked. "The truth is not going to come out in this case whatsoever," she said. In fact, the facts had come out. Herd entered a plea agreement in which he admitted, in so many words, that he was a 390-pound sadist and that his wife was a really shitty mom.
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