I suspect that even the most hardened life-long serial
criminal looks back and regrets some choices that they made, people that they
hurt and costs that they incurred. Maybe
they think about the circumstances that led them to commit their first crime. Did it happen by accident or intent? Were there social, economic, educational,
parental or peer influences driving them?
What about drugs and alcohol? Were
they simply fated to live outside of the law?
It was different for me.
None of those things drove me to commit my first of many
crimes. Had I been born a century
earlier criminologists of the time might have struggled to understand my
behaviors. How was it that this semi
wholesome-looking freckled-face boy with a normal sized head with right-sized
jaw and ears had been compelled to such behaviors. It’s true that I was small for my age and,
given nothing else to go on, they might have been left with that to explain my
miscreant tendencies. But there was
something else.
I don’t think that anybody ever figured it out, but I could have told them if they had asked because I can clearly remember the exact moment when I formed the intent of transforming myself into a lawbreaking malefactor and menace to society. Overnight I became a juvenile delinquent with a determination to break the law, inconvenience, disappoint and hurt loved ones, be a bad influence on friends and lose the respect of peers. I became “that kid” that parents warned their children to stay away from. I became known to the Seattle Police Department who seemingly watched for me to commit my next crime.