Continuing Education: What I Learned Over My Summer Vacation

I have been watching way too many real-life murder mysteries.  There is a series on TLC, Snapped, that focuses in particular on women accused of murder.  After seeing a number of episodes, it is clear that women murder for the same reason men do:  passion, greed and a lethal combination of alcohol and stupidity.

Women murder men for cheating on them, or when they’re in the midst of nasty divorces and especially over child custody arrangements.  Women also murder the women who steal their man, who himself was just an innocent bystander when that heifer seduced him.  Mostly what I’ve learned from Snapped is what idiotic things a person should avoid if she happens to have killed off her lyin’, cheatin’ man or his paramour, and wants to get away with it.

1. Don’t make out with your lover at your late husband’s funeral; and I shouldn’t have to say this, but no dancing on the grave.
2. Don’t say that masked men broke into your home and brutally stabbed your husband while leaving you with just a scratch and a bruise.
3. Don’t get drunk and confide in strangers at bars, or friends who may not love you as much as the reward money being offered for tips leading to an arrest.
4. Don’t start repeatedly calling the insurance company for pay-off mere hours after the murder.
5. Trust me, the cops are smarter than you are.  Seriously.  So no set-ups to make it look like someone else did it, and if the victim was shot in the back, don’t play the suicide card.
6. When leaning over the alleged dead body of your alleged victim, don’t accidentally drop your driver’s license in the blood and then not notice.  And if you do that and get caught, don’t say you would never be stupid enough to do that so it must be someone else trying to set you up.  You are stupid enough, and you know it, because you did it.
7. Do not immediately burn the carpet in your home and bleach all the floors.  Ditto for the car.
8. Don’t buy the gun you’re going to use 3 hours before you use it.
9. Don’t murder your ex the night before you’re supposed to be in court over child custody
10. Do not shake uncontrollably and cry hysterically unless you’re going to be able to squeeze out a tear or two to go with it.
11. Do not have a fresh mound of dirt in your backyard and a muddy shovel in your garage.
12. Wearing your Daisy Dukes and a low cut shirt during interrogation isn’t really going to make this whole thing go away, no matter how hot your think you are.
13. Don’t assume that clicking “delete” on your computer is going to get rid of the document in which you mapped out every detail of the murder, and then signed it.  Remind yourself that you are a moron.
14. Do not accidentally leave a body part in the tub.  Yes, even something as small as a baby toe is going to raise questions.
15. Do not leave a pile of bloody clothes in the washer.

I love educational television.