They say you can gauge how you lived your life by how many people attend your funeral, the rationale being that those that you touched during your existence are more likely to show up to mark the fact that you were once you are not. Well, Christopher Barrios Jr. must have touched a lot of people considering the hundreds who attended his service in Brunswick, Georgia on Thursday. The real sadness, though, comes in the reason why so many were there - most of whom had never met Christopher in life - a life that lasted only six-plus years. Indeed, many of the attendees were complete strangers to the entire Barrios family. A lot of them had spent days searching for Christopher after he disappeared from a local playground on March 8. They were shattered when his body was found a week later. It had been stuffed into a trash bag just three miles from his house.
Christopher had been murdered in the more horrific way possible - as if killing a 6-year-old child isn't horrific enough. The authorities say that a 32-year-old "man" named George Edenfield, already a convicted child molester, allegedly abducted Christopher, took him home and repeatedly raped the boy anally and orally - with the help of his 58-yer-old father David. The authorities go on to allege that Edenfield's 57-year-old mother Peggy watched all of this go on - and pleasured herself in the process. After all of this gratification, Christopher was strangled to death and dumped like he was so much garbage.
Apparently George Edenfield, who was on probation for molesting two other boys in 1997 (I wonder how that judge is sleeping these days), admitted to killing Christopher, claiming that "the devil" told him to do what he did. Let's see how that holds up in court. Then again, it's been revealed that Edenfield was in a courtroom just days before Christopher was abducted, accused of violating his probation by living too close to a playground. A deal was made to extend Edenfeld's probation by another 10 years, though there seems to have been no provision that he move away from the area where so many kids lived and played. Oh, and did I mention that Edenfield wasn't the only sex offender living in his house? Turns out that Daddy pled guilty to incest with another relative in 1994.
I usually keep my political beliefs out of this blog for a number of reasons. But most of my friends know that I am against the death penalty for reasons both moral and practical. I though long and hard about whether the case of the Edenfields merited an exception. But in my mind, if they are indeed convicted of these crimes against young Chris Barrios, the death penalty would be too good for them, too easy. I would sentence each of them to life in prison without parole. Then I would find the worst prison in the state of Georgia - or worst male and world female prisons, that is - and throw their asses into the general population. I would also make sure to announce very loudly to their new neighbors who they were and what they were there for, fully cognizant in the knowledge that even the most hardened convict have their own code, and that said code strictly prohibits violent crimes against innocent children. And then, as an added touch, I would accidently put each Edenfield in a cell with a flimsy lock - you know, so their cellmates could provide their own form of welcome wagon for the newbies. These pieces of filth deserve nothing less.
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