No way. Keep her locked up.
Posted on 11/15/2003 4:37:55 AM PST by sarcasm
Ten years ago this month, Alamosa police found Peter Green's torso in a closet, his legs in a trash bin and his flesh in a crockpot.
The pot belonged to the artist's girlfriend, Carolyn Gloria Blanton, who killed Green, then cooked and ate chunks of his body. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and landed in the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo.
Now hospital officials say she's ready to be released.
A psychiatrist who examined Blanton a decade ago says Colorado mental health officials are probably right.
Most people found not guilty by reason of insanity in a murder are released after an average of seven to 10 years, said Jakob Camp, who was the first doctor to evaluate Blanton after Green's murder.
"This is about right in terms of inpatient observation and treatment," he said. "We're not looking at a premature process."
Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Gonzales, however, opposes releasing Blanton, now known as Jane Lynn Woodry.
"It's an extremely serious crime," he said. "We have some concerns about public safety."
Blanton, now 50, was no stranger to mental institutions when she ended up in Colorado's state hospital.
She first began hearing voices around the time her first child was born in 1977. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic a year later and attempted suicide in 1979.
Over the next 14 years, Blanton bounced in and out of hospitals in California and Arizona and had another child, which was taken away from her in 1993 after allegations of abuse and neglect.
"People fell down on the job in terms of keeping an eye on her," Camp said.
Around that time, Blanton arrived in Alamosa and met the 51-year-old Green, and they began an intimate relationship.
In November 1993, Blanton shot Green four times with a .25-caliber revolver, then dismembered his body, carefully wrapped the torso in blankets and stashed it in a closet at his home. She took his legs back to her apartment, where she cut the flesh from the bone and prepared a human stew.
Investigators found Green's leg bones, the feet still intact, in the trash outside Blanton's apartment.
Blanton later told deputies that Green was in heaven and happy.
After extensive evaluation, Camp and another psychiatrist determined that Blanton was legally insane when she killed Green.
"It was kind of gruesome," said Camp, whose 30-page report was sealed by a judge who feared it would provide sensationalistic fodder for supermarket tabloids.
"It would be morbidly entertaining for some people," Camp said.
This is the third time in the last four years that the hospital has asked to reduce Blanton's level of supervision, Gonzales said. The other times - in 1999 and 2001 - were approved, despite the prosecution's opposition.
On Nov. 4, District Judge Pattie Swift ruled that Blanton should be screened by an independent evaluator.
She set Dec. 1 to decide who that should be.
"It's absolutely appropriate to have (her) evaluated by somebody from the outside," Camp said. "Especially when people stay in a hospital, treatment providers have a slightly skewed perspective."
If Blanton is released, she will receive four hours of mental health treatment each week. But schizophrenics who commit dramatic crimes rarely do it again, Camp said.
"The psychosis that can take them into violence at that level - once it clears, they are too appalled by their behavior to muster that kind of violence again," he said. "They are not serial killers."
No way. Keep her locked up.
Send her to Wellesley, on condition that she never leaves the campus.
In this state, this process could mean 20 to 30 years easily before they might be able to live alone in their own apartment depending on the offense.
Dennis Kucinich needs a potential first lady.
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tia
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